#The first shipment of Ukrainian

[darkmaga-retard]

Zelensky has been appealing to the U.S. to provide long-range missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia

Sep 05, 2024

John Mearsheimer, the professor and co-author of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, told Judge Andrew Napolitano’s podcast on Thursday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is growing more desperate by the day and his only recourse is to try and spark a war between the U.S. and Russia.

“Russians versus the Ukrainians and it's quite clear the Russians are going to win,” Mearsheimer said. “Russians versus the Ukrainians and NATO on the battlefield, it may be the case that the Russians even lose.”

Zelensky has been appealing to the U.S. to provide long-range missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia. U.S. officials told Reuters on Tuesday that Washington is close to signing an agreement for such a shipment, but it first needs to iron out some of the technical issues.

Three sources told the outlet that sending JASSMs to Ukraine “could significantly alter the strategic landscape of the conflict by putting more of Russia in range of powerful, precision-guided munitions, an important concern of the Biden administration.”

Mearsheimer said he does not believe Zelensky thinks that these missiles will make any real difference on the battlefield.

“That's not going to happen,” he said. “We don’t have enough missiles to give them…they won’t do that much damage. What he wants to do is he wants to cross a Russian red line, get the Russians to overreact…and then that will drag the Americans in. And he believes that will pull his chestnuts out of the fire. So that’s what’s going on here. The Americans are, of course, fully aware of this….and they’re going to great lengths to make sure that we don’t end up in a war with Russia.”

[mariacallous]

Shortly before noon on Aug. 19, 2023, a Russian cruise missile sliced past the golden onion domes and squat apartment blocks of the Chernihiv skyline in northern Ukraine. The Iskander-K missile slammed into its target: the city’s drama theater, which was hosting a meeting of drone manufacturers at the time of the attack. More than 140 people were injured and seven killed. The youngest, 6-year-old Sofia Golynska, had been playing in a nearby park.

Fragments of the missile recovered by the Ukrainian armed forces and analyzed by Ukrainian researchers found numerous components made by U.S. manufacturers in the missile’s onboard navigation system, which enabled it to reach its target with devastating precision. In December, Ukraine’s state anti-corruption agency released an online database of the thousands of foreign-made components recovered from Russian weapons so far.

Russia’s struggle to produce the advanced semiconductors, electrical components, and machine tools needed to fuel its defense industrial base predates the current war and has left it reliant on imports even amid its estrangement from the West. So when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, major manufacturing countries from North America, Europe, and East Asia swiftly imposed export controls on a broad swath of items deemed critical for the Russian arms industry.

Russia quickly became the world’s most sanctioned country: Some 16,000 people and companies were subject to a patchwork of international sanctions and export control orders imposed by a coalition of 39 countries. Export restrictions were painted with such a broad brush that sunglasses, contact lenses, and false teeth were also swept up in the prohibitions. Even items manufactured overseas by foreign companies are prohibited from being sold to Russia if they are made with U.S. tools or software, under a regulation known as the foreign direct product rule.

But as the war reaches its two-year anniversary, export controls have failed to stem the flow of advanced electronics and machinery making their way into Russia as new and convoluted supply chains have been forged through third countries such as Kazakhstan, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, which are not party to the export control efforts. An investigation by Nikkei Asia found a tenfold increase in the export of semiconductors from China and Hong Kong to Russia in the immediate aftermath of the war—the majority of them from U.S. manufacturers.

“Life finds a way,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official, quoting the movie Jurassic Park. The official spoke on background to discuss Russia’s evasion of export controls.

Some of the weapons and components analyzed by investigators were likely stockpiled before the war. But widely available Russian trade data reveals a brisk business in imports. More than $1 billion worth of advanced semiconductors from U.S. and European manufacturers made their way into the country last year, according to classified Russian customs service data obtained by Bloomberg. A recent report by the Kyiv School of Economics found that imports of components considered critical for the battlefield had dipped by just 10 percent during the first 10 months of 2023, compared with prewar levels.

This has created a Kafkaesque scenario, the report notes, in which the Ukrainian army is doing battle with Western weapons against a Russian arsenal that also runs on Western components.

It is an obvious problem, well documented by numerous think tank and media reports, but one without an easy solution. Tracking illicit trade in items such as semiconductors is an exponentially greater challenge than monitoring shipments of conventional weapons. Around 1 trillion chips are produced every year. Found in credit cards, toasters, tanks, missile systems, and much, much more, they power the global economy as well as the Russian military. Cutting Russia out of the global supply chain for semiconductors is easier said than done.

“Both Russia and China, and basically all militaries, are using a large number of consumer electronic components in their systems,” said Chris Miller, the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. “All of the world’s militaries rely on the same supply chain, which is the supply chain that primarily services consumer electronics.”

Export controls were once neatly tailored to keep specific items, such as nuclear technology, out of the hands of rogue states and terrorist groups. But as Washington vies for technological supremacy with Beijing while also seeking to contain Russia and Iran, it has increasingly used these trade restrictions to advance broader U.S. strategic objectives. For instance, the Biden administration has placed wide-ranging prohibitions on the export of advanced chips to China.

“At no point in history have export controls been more central to our collective security than right now,” Matthew Axelrod, the assistant secretary for export enforcement at the U.S. Commerce Department, said in a speech last September. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has described export controls as “a new strategic asset in the U.S. and allied toolkit.”

Russia’s ability to defy these restrictions doesn’t just have implications for the war in Ukraine. It also raises significant questions about the challenge ahead vis-à-vis China.

“The technological question becomes a key part of this story and whether or not we can restrict it from our adversaries,” said James Byrne, the director of open-source intelligence and analysis at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

In the Russian city of Izhevsk, home to the factory that manufactures Kalashnikov rifles, shopping malls are being converted into drone factories amid a surge in defense spending that has helped the country’s economy weather its Western estrangement. Arms manufacturers have been urged to work around the clock to feed the Russian war machine, while defense is set to account for one-third of the state budget this year.

“We have developed a concept to convert shopping centers—which, before the start of the SMO [special military operation], sold mainly the products of Western brands—to factories for assembly lines of types of domestic drones,” Alexander Zakharov, the chief designer of the Zala Aero drone company, said at a closed event in August 2022, according to the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti. “Special military operation” is what the Russian government calls its war on Ukraine. Zala Aero is a subsidiary of the Kalashnikov Concern that, along with Zakharov, was sanctioned by the United States last November.

Defense companies have bought at least three shopping malls in Izhevsk to be repurposed for the manufacture of drones, according to local media, including Lancet attack drones, which the British defense ministry described as one of the most effective new weapons that Russia introduced to the battlefield last year. Lancets, which cost about $35,000 to produce, wreaked havoc during Ukraine’s offensive last year and have been captured on video striking valuable Ukrainian tanks and parked MiG fighter jets.

Like a lot of Russia’s weapons systems, Lancets are filled with Western components. An analysis of images of the drones published in December by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security found that they contained several parts from U.S., Swiss, and Czech manufacturers, including image processing and analytical components that play a pivotal role in enabling the drones to reach their targets on the battlefield.

“The recurring appearance of these Western products in Russian drone systems shows a keen dependence on them for key capabilities in the drone systems,” the report notes. Lancets are not the only drones found to contain Western components. Almost all of the electronic components in the Iranian Shahed-136 drones, which Russia is now manufacturing with Iranian help to use in Ukraine, are of Western origin, a separate analysis published in November concluded.

Early in the war, the Royal United Services Institute analyzed 27 Russian military systems, including cruise missiles, electronic warfare complexes, and communications systems, and found that they contained at least 450 foreign-made components, revealing Russia’s dependence on imports.

One of the principal ways that Russia has evaded Western export controls has been through transshipment via third countries such as Turkey, the UAE, and neighboring states once part of the Soviet Union. Bloomberg reported last November that amid mounting Western pressure, the UAE had agreed to restrict the export of sensitive goods to Russia and that Turkey was considering a similar move. Kazakh officials announced a ban on the export of certain battlefield goods to Russia in October.

Suspected transshipment is often revealed by striking changes in trade patterns before and after the invasion. The Maldives, an island chain in the Indian Ocean that has no domestic semiconductor industry, shipped almost $54 million worth of U.S.-made semiconductors to Russia in the year after the invasion of Ukraine, Nikkei Asia reported last July.

Semiconductor supply chains often span several countries, with chips designed in one country and manufactured in another before being sold to a series of downstream distributors around the world. That makes it difficult for companies to know the ultimate end user of their products. This may seem odd—until you realize that this is the case for many everyday products that are sold around the world. “When Coca-Cola sells Coca-Cola, it doesn’t know where every bottle goes, and they don’t have systems to track where every bottle goes,” said Kevin Wolf, a former assistant secretary for export administration at the U.S. Commerce Department.

While a coalition of 39 countries, including the world’s major manufacturers of advanced electronics, imposed export restrictions on Russia, much of the rest of the world continues to trade freely with Moscow. Components manufactured in coalition countries will often begin their journey to Moscow’s weapons factories through a series of entirely legal transactions before ending up with a final distributor that takes them across the border into Russia. “It starts off as licit trade and ends up as illicit trade,” said a second senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The further items move down the supply chain, the less insight governments and companies have into their ultimate destination, although sudden changes in behavior of importers can offer a red flag. In his speech last September, Axelrod, the assistant secretary, used the example of a beauty salon that suddenly starts to import electronic components.

But the Grand Canyon of loopholes is China, which has stood by Moscow since the invasion. In the first days of the war, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned that Washington could shut down Chinese companies that ignored semiconductor export controls placed on Russia. Last October, 42 Chinese companies were added to export control lists—severely undercutting their ability to do business with U.S. companies—for supplying Russian defense manufacturers with U.S. chips.

But as the Biden administration carefully calibrates its China policy in a bid to keep a lid on escalating tensions, it has held off from taking Beijing to task. “I think the biggest issue is that we—the West—have been unwilling to put pressure on China that would get China to start enforcing some of these rules itself,” said Miller, the author of Chip Wars.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) said: “Due to the restrictions imposed by the United States and key allies and partners, Russia has been left with no choice but to spend more, lower its ambitions for high-tech weaponry, build alliances with other international pariah states, and develop nefarious trade networks to covertly obtain the technologies it needs.

“We are deeply concerned regarding [Chinese] support for Russia’s defense industrial base. BIS has acted to add over 100 [China]-based entities to the Entity List for supporting Russia’s military industrial base and related activities.”

Export controls have typically focused on keeping specific U.S.-made goods out of the hands of adversaries, while economic and financial sanctions have served broader foreign-policy objectives of isolating rogue states and cauterizing the financing of terrorist groups and drug cartels. The use of sanctions as a national security tool grew in wake of the 9/11 attacks; in the intervening decades, companies, government agencies, and financial institutions have built up a wealth of experience in sanctions compliance. By contrast, the use of export controls for strategic ends is relatively novel, and compliance expertise is still in its infancy.

“It used to be that people like me could keep export controls and sanctions in one person’s head. The level of complexity for each area of law is so intense. I don’t know anyone who is truly an export control and sanctions expert,” Wolf said.

Export controls, experts say, are at best speed bumps designed to make it harder for Russia’s defense industrial base to procure Western components. They create “extra friction and pressure on the Russian economy,” said Daniel Fried, who as the State Department coordinator for sanctions policy helped craft U.S. sanctions on Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russia is now paying 80 percent more to import semiconductors than it did before the war, according to forthcoming research by Miller, and the components it is able to acquire are often of dubious quality.

But although it may be more cumbersome and expensive, it’s a cost that Moscow has been willing to bear in its war on Ukraine.

Western components—and lots of them—will continue to be found in the weapons Russia uses on Ukraine’s battlefields for the duration of the war. “This problem is as old as export controls are,” said Jasper Helder, an expert on export controls and sanctions with the law firm Akin Gump. But there are ways to further plug the gaps.

Steeper penalties could incentivize U.S. companies to take a more proactive role in ensuring their products don’t wind up in the hands of the Russian military, said Elina Ribakova, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “At the moment, they’re not truly motivated,” she said.

Companies that run afoul of sanctions and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a U.S. federal law that prohibits the payment of bribes, have been fined billions of dollars. Settlements of export control violations are often an order of magnitude smaller, according to recently published research.

In a speech last month, Axelrod said the United States would begin issuing steeper penalties for export control violations. “Build one case against one of the companies extremely well, put out a multibillion-dollar fine negotiation, and watch everybody else fall in line,” Ribakova said.

And then there’s the question of resources. BIS has an annual budget of just $200 million. “That’s like the cost of a few fighter jets. Come on,” said Raimondo, speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum last December.

The agency’s core budget for export control has, adjusted for inflation, remained flat since 2010, while its workload has surged. Between 2014 and 2022, the volume of U.S. exports subject to licensing scrutiny increased by 126 percent, according to an agency spokesperson. A 2022 study of export control enforcement by the Center for Strategic and International Studies recommended a budget increase of $45 million annually, describing it as “one of the best opportunities available anywhere in U.S. national security.”

When it comes to enforcement, the bureau has about 150 officers across the country who work with law enforcement and conduct outreach to companies. The Commerce Department has also established a task force with the Justice Department to keep advanced technologies out of the hands of Russia, China, and Iran. “The U.S. has the most robust export enforcement on the planet,” Wolf said.

But compared with other law enforcement and national security agencies, the bureau’s budgets have not kept pace with its expanding mission. The Department of Homeland Security has more investigators in the city of Tampa, Florida, than BIS does across the entire country, Axelrod noted in his January speech.

On the other side, you have Russia, which is extremely motivated to acquire the critical technologies it needs to continue to prosecute its war. The Kremlin has tasked its intelligence agencies with finding ways around sanctions and export controls, U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Brian Nelson said in a speech last year. “We are not talking about a profit-seeking firm looking for efficiencies,” the second senior U.S. intelligence official said. “There will be supply if there is sufficient demand.”

[tomorrowusa]

People in Washington have belatedly been taking notice that Ukraine, a country with not much of a navy, has chased Putin's fleet out of much of the Black Sea. Things are relatively close to normal for Ukrainian grain exports which use shipping on that sea.

In the Black Sea, Ukraine forced the Russian fleet to retreat from the historic headquarters of Sevastopol in Crimea after hitting ships and key buildings repeatedly with drones and missiles. That was a personal blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who lauded the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.  The maritime success also opened a corridor for Ukraine to move grain shipments in defiance of Russia’s decision last summer to cancel an export deal, an economic and symbolic victory in the war.  “Ukraine won in the Black Sea,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a trip to Washington last month.  Zelensky has made the Black Sea victories a central part of his pitch to Western allies and supporters in the past couple of months — a sign of Ukrainian strength after the ground counteroffensive launched in June largely failed, delivering a stalemate on the frontlines of eastern Ukraine.  “This is huge,” said Olga Lautman, nonresident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “They literally shifted the balance in the Black Sea. … Besides practically reopening the Black Sea, they’ve taken out Russia’s navy and pushed them out for the most part. And the attacks continue.”  Ukraine has maintained an edge in the waters of the Black Sea since the war began in February 2022 — and Kyiv does not have a naval force, let alone one the size of the Russian fleet.  In the early days of the war, Ukraine secured its hold on Odesa, a Black Sea port city in southern Ukraine, and sunk the Russian flagship the Moskva.  Ukrainian troops also liberated Snake Island, where defiant Ukrainian troops emerged famous for cursing at a Russian warship, in spring 2022.  In August, Ukraine stepped up attacks on the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, a hub for the Russian navy since Moscow annexed Crimea, but which has historical importance for Russia going back to the 1700s. In September, one strike damaged the headquarters of the Russian navy in Sevastopol. That month also saw Ukrainian special forces retake oil platforms in the Black Sea from Russia years after Moscow first seized them.  For the next two months, Ukraine kept assaulting Russian ships, leading to a full Russian naval retreat from Sevastopol and western Crimea.  After the fall attacks, Zelensky hailed Ukrainian forces for “pushing the Russian navy out to the eastern part of the Black Sea,” saying they “totally changed” the situation in the maritime domain.  “Russia can no longer use our sea to expand its aggression to other parts of the world,”  Zelensky said in an Oct. 31 address, “Ukraine’s success in the battle for the Black Sea will go down in history books, although it’s not being discussed much today.” 

It's become increasingly difficult for Russia to resupply its positions by sea. Last month Ukraine sunk a Russian ship loaded to the brim with munitions. This took place in Feodosia in occupied eastern Crimea which is only 100 km by road from Kerch where Ukraine damaged a bridge which connects occupied Ukraine to Russia.

Despite heavy and embarrassing losses, Putin will not give up his desire to conquer Ukraine unless he is forced to. Ukraine has been holding its own, but it needs help obtaining weapons and equipment. The GOP House of Representatives is holding up aid to Ukraine for its own political purposes. We need to contact our representatives and tell them to quit acting like Putin's agents on Capitol Hill.

Find out who your House member is.

Find Your Representative

Then contact him or her using the contact information given at the site. With Republicans, invoke the name of Ronald Reagan and insist that they quit supporting measures which help the Evil Empire. Be firm but polite.

[hbfmguy2]

To Russia With Love, Part 18

Olena returned with the coil of rope quickly. With practiced ease, the Ukrainian woman tied up first Hosseini and then his bodyguard one by one. “Agh!” cried the goon as he was bound. “Infidel, shameless whore, you are breaking my arm!” Olena pressed her knee hard into the small of her prisoner’s back to enable her to pull the knots tight. The man’s bound wrists were forced high up his back as she tied him, eliciting another cry of anguish and pain.

Meanwhile Hosseini glared at Kateryna, who was still covering him with her hand gun. “I demand to speak to the Iranian consul!” he hissed. The woman smiled at him sweetly. “I’m sorry but the Republic of Ukraine no longer has diplomatic relations with your sorry little Islamic Republic!” she beamed. Hosseini looked flabbergasted. “Ukraine! What is this?” he demanded. Kateryna stared back at the fuming man evenly. “Once you, your men and Borisov are safely secured,” she replied, “we will ensure your drone shipment at Kabinka has an unfortunate malfunction.” Hosseini’s eyes darkened. “Bitch!” he flung at her.

“Glory to Ukraine.” replied Kateryna.

To be continued.

[usafphantom2]

France has Mirage 2000D fighter-bombers left over and Ukraine wants them

It is no wonder that rumors continue to circulate around France, Ukraine and the Dassault Mirage 2000D fighter bomber.

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 02/09/2024 - 15:41in Military, War Zones

Ukraine needs warplanes. France is retiring some of its Delta Mirage 2000D. And the French government has already promised Ukraine the best precision-guided ammunition from the Mirage.

If France is really going to donate Mirages, the announcement may occur soon. French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to visit Ukraine this month.

It is obvious that Ukraine would want some of the Mirage 2000D left over from the French air force. Supersonic, single-engine and two-seater Mirages are fully compatible with SCALP-EG cruise missiles and Hammer smart pumps. The first missile model is already in use in Ukraine; the Hammer will arrive soon.

The French Air Force acquired 86 Mirage 2000D fighters from the manufacturer Dassault and, after three decades of intense use during which several jets fell, it chose to upgrade 55 of the jets for service by the 2030s. This leaves about 20 of the planes that are surplus for France's needs.

Ukrainian authorities have been keeping an eye on this type while working with Danish, Dutch and Norwegian authorities to acquire dozens of surplus European Lockheed Martin F-16s – and qualify Ukrainian pilots in single-seater fighters in the United States and Romania.

“It is possible that the combat capabilities of the Su-24M bombers will be improved by the Mirage 2000D,” Ukrainian Air Force commander Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk wrote last month.

Oleshchuk is not wrong in linking the French fighter to the existing Sukhoi Su-24M bombers in his air force. The variable geometry sukhois are the main long-range attack aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force.

Firing British-made Storm Shadow and French SCALP cruise missiles at a range of about 320 kilometers, the Su-24 blew up Russian navy warships, attacked Russian air bases, knocked down bridges in Russian-occupied territories and destroyed Russian headquarters.

France gave Ukraine about 50 of the SCALPs of 2,900 pounds in 2023 and recently promised another 40. However, the United Kingdom donated an unspecified number of similar Storm Shadows - probably dozens of copies.

However, the Ukrainians have few bombers. The only Su-24M unit of the Air Force, the 7ª Tactical Aviation Brigade in Starokostiantyniv, western Ukraine, went to war in February 2022 with probably two dozen Sukhois. In 23 months of hard fighting, according to the Oryx website, he lost 18 of the bombers.

Although it is possible that Ukrainian technicians can bring back to flight status some of the dozens of abandoned Su-24s that were mofing in open storage in several aircraft cemeteries throughout Ukraine, there is another way to restore the strength of the front line of the 7ª Brigade: to give it the Mirage 2000D.

Yes, French jets would need new logistics infrastructure. Yes, Sukhoi crews may have to spend months qualifying for the Mirages. The investment may be worth it, however.

On the one hand, it is increasingly unlikely that Ukraine will obtain surplus warplanes from the United States. Republicans aligned with Russia in the U.S. Congress blocked more aid to Ukraine for months. If the Ukrainian air force intends to rearm itself, it should do so with European planes.

In addition, the Mirages may reach Ukraine shortly after Ukraine also receives a large shipment - hundreds, according to Macron - of bombs driven by Hammer rockets, each with a range of up to 55 kilometers.

The Hammers, which come in 276, 1,100 and 2,200 pounds versions with a variety of search engine options. They are comparable to the Joint Direct Attack Munition gliding bombs that the United States gave to Ukraine before the Republicans cut the aid, and that the Ukrainians installed on their former Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters.

Where it takes time and effort to integrate a new Western ammunition into a Soviet-made Sukhoi or MiG warplane, the Mirage 2000D has been compatible with Hammer bombs since the ammunition debuted in French service in 2007.

Source: Forbes

Tags: Armée de l'air - French Air Force/French Air ForceMilitary AviationMirage 2000DWar Zones - Russia/Ukraine

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[ohsalome]

Tkachuk explains how Russia is continuing to prevent grain from leaving Ukraine. The July deal established a so-called “humanitarian corridor” in the Black Sea for the shipment of grain — with ships searched in Istanbul by Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and UN inspectors. The point of inspections is, apparently, to search for “unauthorised cargoes and personnel on board vessels inbound to or outbound from the Ukrainian ports”.

From the outset, Ukraine has complained about Russian inspections of their ships: often ships are waiting “for over a month”, according to the Ukrainian Information Ministry in December. Tkachuk says this is deliberate. “The ports are working; the grain is going on to the ships; we are ready to work. But there are more than 90 grain ships waiting in line in the Bosporus. Four months ago, I was Deputy Head of the port in Chornomorsk [south of Odesa]. I know how this works. They are acting as a break to sabotage the grain deliveries.”

He continues: “The Russians are saying that there are mines in the water — but there are no mines in this corridor. Also, under the terms of the deal, they have the right to inspect a ship before it goes. And they are doing this incredibly slowly. The Turkish inspectors can inspect a ship in three hours — it takes the Russians three days for some reason.”

He is not alone in this view. A few days later, I meet with Oleksiy Goncharenko, MP for the Northwest Odesa region. “The Russians are doing the inspection slowly,” he tells me. “They need a rest, they need to smoke, then a coffee. Then they are ill, and a million other excuses to delay the process. Generally, we have three or four ships going through inspections per day, but during the two days in which Russia wasn’t in the deal, that number was 20 ships.”

Goncharenko believes this contains a vital lesson for the international community. “It was clear from the first day that Russia would do everything it could to kill the deal; it was looking for any excuse. From the beginning, the Russians never wanted it. They want chaos and inflation; they want the Black Sea to remain closed. So when we attacked their fleet in Sevastopol, they obviously jumped at the opportunity to back out. But it was interesting because it didn’t work. They made a huge song and dance about leaving; [Turkish President] Erdogan said, ‘fine then’ and they came back in just over 48 hours.” He concludes. “This is really important because it shows the world how to deal with Russia.”

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up March 22-23, 2023

Under the cut:

Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault "very soon" now that Russia's huge winter offensive is losing steam without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine's top ground forces commander said on Thursday. The remarks were the strongest indication yet from Kyiv that it is close to shifting tactics, having absorbed Russia's onslaught through a brutal winter.

Spain is expected to send its first shipment of modern battle tanks to Ukraine by the end of next week, once officials have completed final firing tests in the field, the Spanish Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday. The six Leopard 2A4 tanks have been undergoing final checks at a weapons factory near Seville in southern Spain, the statement said.

Finland has pledged three more Leopard 2 tanks from its arsenal to Ukraine, bringing the total to six, MTV Uutiset reported on March 23.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) responded on March 23 to threats made by Russia, expressing regret over the country's attempts to obstruct "international efforts to ensure accountability" for violations of international law. "The Presidency of the Assembly emphasizes that the Court, its elected officials, and its staff have the strong support of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute," the statement read. "We reaffirm its full confidence in the Court as an independent and impartial judicial institution and reiterate our strong commitment to uphold and defend the principles and values enshrined in the Rome Statute and to preserve its integrity undeterred by any threats," the statement added.

Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, has signed legislation to make his country part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) during a ceremony on Thursday.

“Ukrainian troops, on the defensive for four months, will launch a long-awaited counterassault "very soon" now that Russia's huge winter offensive is losing steam without taking Bakhmut, Ukraine's top ground forces commander said on Thursday.

The remarks were the strongest indication yet from Kyiv that it is close to shifting tactics, having absorbed Russia's onslaught through a brutal winter.

Russia's Wagner mercenaries "are losing considerable strength and are running out of steam", Kyiv's ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a social media post.

"Very soon, we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we did in the past near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupiansk," he said, listing Ukrainian counteroffensives last year that recaptured swathes of land.

There was no immediate response from Moscow to the latest suggestions its forces in Bakhmut were losing momentum, but Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has issued pessimistic statements in recent days warning of a Ukrainian counterassault.

On Monday, Prigozhin published a letter to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, saying Ukraine aimed to cut off Wagner's forces from Russia's regular troops.

Reuters journalists near the front line north of Bakhmut saw signs consistent with the claim that the Russian offensive in the area could be flagging. At a Ukrainian-held village west of Soledar, on Bakhmut's northern outskirts, the intensity of the Russian bombardment had noticeably lessened compared with another visit nearby just two days earlier.

"It was really hot here a week ago, but in the last three days it has been more quiet," said a Ukrainian soldier who used the call sign "Kamin", or "Stone".

"We can see this in the enemy's air strikes. If before there were 5-6 air raids in a day, today we had only one helicopter attack and it was too far and so ineffective," said the soldier, a member of an anti-aircraft unit in the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade.

A slow-down in Russia's assault on Bakhmut could be in part a consequence of Moscow diverting its troops and resources to other areas. Britain said on Thursday that Russian troops had been making gains further north this month, partially regaining control over the approaches to the town of Kreminna, a Ukrainian target. Intense battles were also under way further south.

But any shift in momentum in Bakhmut, if confirmed, would be remarkable given the city's symbolic importance as the focus of Russia's offensive, and the scale of the losses on both sides there in Europe's bloodiest infantry battle since World War Two.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Europe to provide more weapons, faster to his forces and impose additional sanctions on Russia, warning the war could otherwise drag on for years.

"If Europe waits, the evil may have time to regroup and prepare for years of war. It is in your power to prevent this," a clearly frustrated Zelenskiy said in a video address to European Union leaders, delivered from a train.”-via Reuters

~

“Spain is expected to send its first shipment of modern battle tanks to Ukraine by the end of next week, once officials have completed final firing tests in the field, the Spanish Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday.

The six Leopard 2A4 tanks have been undergoing final checks at a weapons factory near Seville in southern Spain, the statement said.

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles visited the factory Thursday and said four more Leopard tanks due for Ukraine will arrive there soon for inspection and testing.

The first group of Ukrainian troops to learn how to operate the Spanish tanks are wrapping up training at a military base in northern Spain, the Defense Ministry announced last week.

Some background: Robles initially told Spain's parliament last month that the country would send six Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

A day later, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez made a surprise visit to Kyiv on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion. He met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and announced Spain would bump its commitment to 10 fighting vehicles.”-via CNN

~

“Finland has pledged three more Leopard 2 tanks from its arsenal to Ukraine, bringing the total to six, MTV Uutiset reported on March 23.

Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen also confirmed that Ukraine had approached Finland's Defense Ministry about supplying F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets.

Kaikkonen said that Finland "will respond to this query in due time," as cited by MTV Uutiset.

The transfer is part of Finland's 14th defense aid package to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.

Finland will also provide Ukraine with training relating to the use and maintenance of the tanks.”-via Kyiv Independent

~

“Slovakia has handed four of its Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets over to Ukraine, the country’s Defense Minister Jaro Nad said in a Facebook post on Thursday.

This comes days after the country pledged 13 Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, along with Poland which pledged four.

On the question of a military advantage, Russia has been dismissive, claiming the gift of more Soviet-era MiGs to Ukraine will not alter the course of the conflict. Which might be why it is F-16s – and not MiGs – that are in fact at the top of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wish list.

MiG-29s are analog aircraft, using older flight technology. Zelensky’s sought-after F-16s are digital. MiGs can be used for short combat missions, they can deploy weaponry and shoot down Russian aircraft with good maneuverability at short range. But F-16s can fly for longer, are more versatile, possess integrated weapons systems and have dramatically better long range and radar capability, therefore providing improved early warning.”-via CNN

~

“The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) responded on March 23 to threats made by Russia, expressing regret over the country's attempts to obstruct "international efforts to ensure accountability" for violations of international law.

"The Presidency of the Assembly emphasizes that the Court, its elected officials, and its staff have the strong support of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute," the statement read.

"We reaffirm its full confidence in the Court as an independent and impartial judicial institution and reiterate our strong commitment to uphold and defend the principles and values enshrined in the Rome Statute and to preserve its integrity undeterred by any threats," the statement added.

The ICC issued arrest warrants on March 17 for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian official overseeing the forced deportations of over 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia.

In its statement, the ICC wrote that it believes Putin “bears individual criminal responsibility” as the leader of Russia for the crimes committed against Ukrainian children.

Russian ex-President Dmitriy Medvedev went on to threaten a missile strike against the Hague on March 20.

"Everyone walks under God and missiles. It's quite possible to envision a scenario where a Russian ship stationed in the North Sea could strategically strike the Hague courthouse with a hypersonic Onyx (cruise) missile," Medvedev, who is currently the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, wrote.

He went on to warn judges of the International Criminal Court to "look carefully at the sky."

Russian investigators also announced on March 20 that they had opened a case against members of the ICC for issuing the arrest warrants.

Namely, the Investigative Committee of Russia targeted ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, as well as judges Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala, and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez.

According to a press release, the committee is accusing the ICC of "bringing a known innocent person to criminal responsibility" and preparing "an attack on a representative of a foreign state who enjoys international protection, with the aim of complicating international relations."

Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016 after the international organization criticized its illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, meaning that Putin cannot be arrested unless he sets foot in one of the 123 countries that are party to the court.”-via Kyiv Independent

~

“Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, has signed legislation to make his country part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) during a ceremony on Thursday.

Last year, Finland sought to join the military alliance in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and legislation incorporating Nato’s founding treaties was passed in parliament in Helsinki on 1 March.

Hungary and Turkey, the only Nato members that have yet to ratify Finland’s membership, have both signalled they will soon do so.”-via The Guardian

[newstfionline]

Friday, May 10, 2024

Biden Says the U.S. Will Not Supply Israel With Weapons to Attack Rafah (NYT) President Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that American bombs have been used to kill Palestinian civilians as he warned that the United States would withhold certain weapons if Israel launches a long-threatened assault in southern Gaza. In some of his strongest language to date on the seven-month war, Mr. Biden said the United States would still ensure Israel’s security, including the Iron Dome missile defense system and Israel’s “ability to respond to attacks” like the one Iran launched in April. But he said he would block the delivery of weapons that could be fired into densely populated areas of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering. The president had already halted the shipment of 3,500 bombs last week out of concern that they might be used in a major assault on Rafah—the first time since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 that Mr. Biden has leveraged U.S. arms to try to influence how the war is waged. On Wednesday, he said that he would also block the delivery of artillery shells.

With inflation soaring, Argentina will start printing 10,000 peso notes (AP) Prices in Argentina have surged so dramatically in recent months that the government has multiplied the size of its biggest bank note in circulation by five—to 10,000 pesos, worth about $10. The central bank announcement Tuesday promised to lighten the load for many Argentines who must carry around giant bags—occasionally, suitcases—stuffed with cash for simple transactions. Argentina’s annual inflation rate reached 287% in March, among the highest in the world. The new denomination note—five times the value of the previous biggest bill—is expected to hit the streets next month in a bid to “facilitate transactions between users,” the central bank said. The 10,000 peso note is worth $11 at the country’s official exchange rate and $9 at the black market exchange rate.

A grand Olympic plan. But first, the tent camps have to go. (Washington Post) He’d been living in the tent for nine days when the police arrived. “Bonjour, monsieur!” an officer shouted. “Reveille!” Ba Dak crawled out of his sleeping bag, unzipped the tent flap and stepped into the frigid February air. The camp, tucked beneath the Charles de Gaulle Bridge on the northern bank of the Seine River, bustled with movement in the windy pre-dawn darkness. Police officers in neon green vests marched between rows of tents, whose inhabitants rose from slumber to pack their belongings. The government was seeking to remove unhoused people from its streets before the Olympic Games shines a global spotlight on Paris this summer. Officials billed it as an innovative effort to ease Paris’s housing crisis, by relocating people to newly constructed facilities around the country rather than hotels in the city’s emergency shelter system. But advocates for refugees claim the government had more specific motives: to clear Paris of its tent villages, free up thousands of hotel rooms before the Games and identify people who aren’t eligible to legally remain in the country.

The mothers and wives of missing Russian servicemen have become some of the war effort’s biggest critics. (WSJ) Tens of thousands of relatives and friends use social media to swap information in the hopes of learning their loved ones’ fates. Under Russian law, soldiers aren’t declared dead without a recovered body, a death certificate from a medical examiner or a court ruling. In Ukraine, many troops are unaccounted for including deserters and prisoners of war. The Kremlin hasn’t released the number of MIAs. Russian antiwar commentators accuse the military of abandoning dead fighters to avoid compensating their families. President Vladimir Putin ordered them to get the equivalent of $54,600, plus the previously set compensation of around $26,000. Russian officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Ukrainians are using the cover of war to escape taxes (Economist) Since Russia invaded in 2022, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by a quarter. But the ravages of war are not the only reason for the government’s reduced tax take. Businesses are also making use of the chaos to dodge paying their fair share. This is particularly true in agriculture, which before the war was responsible for 40% or so of Ukraine’s exports by income. The sector has been transformed by a scramble to find export routes safe from Russian attack. As Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s deputy minister for agriculture, notes, this disturbance has provided plenty of opportunity for farmers to “optimise taxes”. Around 6.5m Ukrainians—or 15% of the country’s pre-war population—have left the country, shrinking the domestic food market. At the same time, Russia is targeting transport infrastructure, grain silos and other agricultural equipment, which has driven up costs. Many workers have been recruited by the armed forces, and are at the front. Farmers therefore not only have new opportunities to dodge taxes, they are also increasingly desperate. The result is that two of every five tonnes of grain harvests now avoid contributing to state coffers, according to Mr Kachka’s estimates.

Myanmar: A hidden war (NYT) A people take to arms and fight for democracy. A military terrorizes civilians with airstrikes and land mines. Tens of thousands are killed. Millions are displaced. Yet it is all happening almost completely out of view in the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar. Now, for the first time, the rebels claim control of more than half of Myanmar’s territory. In recent weeks they have overrun dozens of towns and Myanmar military bases. Even without foreign intervention, or much Western aid at all, the Myanmar resistance has pushed back the junta. Rebels are now within 150 miles of the capital, Naypyidaw. But that may have been the easy part. The resistance is—perhaps hopelessly—splintered. More than a dozen major armed ethnic groups are vying for control over land and valuable natural resources. Much of Myanmar is fractured between different groups, all heavily armed. Crime is flourishing. The country is now the world’s biggest producer of opium. Jungle factories churn out meth and other synthetic drugs that have found their way to Australia. Myanmar’s civil war may be overshadowed by other global conflicts. But to the Burmese who live with uncertainty and chaos, the war has never been more urgent or real.

In rapidly ageing China, millions of migrant workers can’t afford to retire (Reuters) After three decades selling homemade buns on the streets of the Chinese city of Xian, 67-year-old Hu Dexi would have liked to slow down. Instead, Hu and his older wife have moved to the edge of Beijing, where they wake at 4 a.m. every day to cook their packed lunch, then commute for more than an hour to a downtown shopping mall, where they each earn 4,000 yuan ($552) monthly, working 13-hour shifts as cleaners. The alternative for them and many of the 100 million rural migrants reaching retirement age in China over the next 10 years is to return to their village and live off a small farm and monthly pensions of 123 yuan ($17). The generation that flocked to China’s cities at the end of last century, building the infrastructure and manning the factories that made the country the world’s biggest exporter, now risks a sharp late-life drop in living standards.

Rafah and humanitarian aid (Washington Post) By Tuesday, Israeli forces had seized the pivotal Rafah border crossing that links Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. Israel intensified bombardments on parts of the city, hitting houses and residential towers, and prompted more than 100,000 people into a panicked evacuation. The Rafah border crossing was closed, though Israeli authorities said another crossing at Kerem Shalom remained open to funnel critical supplies into Gaza—a claim questioned by aid groups. “The crossing area has ongoing military operations and is an active war zone,” Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, the U.N.’s agency for Palestinians, currently in Rafah, said Wednesday. “We are hearing continued bombardments in this area throughout the day. No fuel or aid has entered into the Gaza Strip, and this is disastrous for the humanitarian response.” “All the fuel that entered Gaza went through Rafah crossing,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, at a joint news briefing Wednesday of prominent humanitarian organizations. “The whole aid operation runs on fuel, so if the fuel is cut off, the humanitarian operation collapses. Water can’t be pumped. Lights cannot be kept on in hospitals. Vehicles cannot distribute aid.”

“Annihilation Prevention”—Why Some Gaza Families Choose To Split Up (Zumadaraj/English edition) Umm Raja Barbakh, a Gazan woman in her 60s, had a particular request to her children and grandchildren amid Israel’s relentless bombing campaign: when we flee, let’s choose different destinations. The reason is as simple as it is grim: She doesn’t want all her progeny in the same place for fear that the whole family could be annihilated. “The decision to disperse my children and grandchildren is a way to limit the chance that the whole family is gone in case of a bombing on a single place,” she explained. “Their presence in more than one place will reduce the risk of the family disappearing completely.” Indeed, that’s what happened with her sister, who was killed in an Israeli bombing along with her children and grandchildren. Barbakh’s family has instead scattered in different locations in the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza. The oldest of her four children has sheltered in a tent in the Mawasi area in Rafah along with his seven children. A second son and daughter were living with their children in different locations in Rafah. The fourth lives with his five children in Khan Younis.

Smile! (Les Echos/France) It’s amazing to think that this slight movement of the lips and facial muscles, which sometimes lights up an entire face, can resonate so deeply within us and awaken a whole range of emotions—even if it comes from a complete stranger. Neuroscience has established that smiling feels good, and it starts very early. Fetal ultrasound scans have shown that, from the 26th week, babies smile to express a form of satisfaction, particularly after their mother has eaten a certain type of food. We now know that smiling stimulates the areas of the brain associated with reward circuits. And that it lowers levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. It slows the heart rate and lowers blood pressure. Two recent studies have even shown that this beneficial effect holds true even when we smile mechanically, though more modestly—it’s as if the simple act of mobilizing one of the 15 muscles involved in smiling sends a positive signal to the brain.       Another older study from Wayne State University suggests that smiling increases life expectancy. It was based on photographs of 230 American baseball league players taken in 1952. The sportsmen who did not smile in the photographs died at an average age of 72.9. Those who had big smiles lived to 79.9. Smiles also open doors. Traveler Charly Guérin has had many opportunities to verify this. He met a Bolivian grandmother in Sucre on her front doorstep who, simply on the strength of an impromptu smile, invited him into her home, where he ended up spending the afternoon chatting. “If you take the time to meet someone, a smile is a real open sesame,” the globetrotter says. On his blog, he also tells the story of Sarah, a French woman who set off around the world on a shoestring budget and who, when she wanted to attend a concert or sporting event, didn’t hesitate to stand in front of the entrance to the venue with a sign: “Exchange a free ticket for a smile.” And incredible as it may seem, it worked on many occasions.

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 11/6/2023 | The Libertarian Institute

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 11/6/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

Ukraine 

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny acknowledged in comments to The Economist that the war in Ukraine is a stalemate and that there will “most likely” be no Ukrainian breakthrough. AWC

A top Ukrainian official said Kiev is seeking to become one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. The statement comes as the Biden administration has begun pushing Ukraine to engage in talks with Russia on ending the war. Ukraine developing a large weapons industry and selling those arms to the enemies of Russia will likely interfere with any deals to end the conflict. The Institute

The US rolled out its 50th weapons package for Ukraine. The arms shipment will include air defenses, artillery rounds, and anti-armor weapons. The Pentagon will purchase $300 million in arms on behalf of Kyiv, depleting all the funds in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI). AWC

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a bill into law that formally withdrew Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). AWC

Israel

During a trip to Israel, America’s top diplomat pushed Tel Aviv to agree to limited “humanitarian pauses” to allow aid into Gaza and facilitate negotiations for Hamas to release prisoners. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said there would not be a temporary pause in the fighting. AWC

Despite the massive bombing campaign and ground invasion in Gaza, a senior Pentagon official believes Israel has not come close to taking out Hamas’s leadership, The New York Times reported Saturday. AWC

The Pentagon has acknowledged that the US is flying drones over Gaza to help Israel locate hostages, demonstrating deep US involvement in the war. AWC

Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu on Sunday said that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was an option for Israel and claimed there are no innocent civilians in the enclave. AWC

The House on Thursday passed a bill to provide Israel with $14.3 billion in military aid, a strong show of support for the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which has killed over 9,000 people so far. AWC

Twenty-seven days into Israel’s brutal bombing campaign, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) became the first member of the US Senate to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. AWC

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), dismissed the idea there are “innocent Palestinian civilians” in a debate on the House floor. AWC

Middle East

The House on Wednesday passed a resolution that suggested the US would use force against Iran in the future in the name of preventing the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. AWC

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Sunday amid a spate of attacks on US troops in the region over US support for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. AWC

Read More

[workersolidarity]

Just a warning now, something I've seen coming for a while now, don't be surprised if some time this winter or spring we see a complete collapse, Afghanistan style, of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now, pretty much ever since the UAF didn't make a major puncture, or any puncture for that matter, through any of the main Russian lines of defense in the first few days of the Offensive anywhere on the frontlines where they attacked.

It doesn't matter that they seem poised to secure with infantry a small section of trenches Northwest of Verbove, East of Robotyne that does in fact bypass the first line of defense because Ukraine no longer has the offensive potential to exploit it.

And now with Poland ending weapons shipments to Ukraine, the US clearly looking for a way out, and Russian Forces looking poised to launch a missile offensive, pretty much ending any ideas Zelensky may have had at compensating for the loss of Polish supplies with domestic production.

What domestic production? The Russians have grinded out of existence Ukraine's domestic productive capacity.

Long story short, they don't have the productive capacity, the manpower, the munitions, the ammunition, or the logistics to continue this fight alone.

Yet, the Ukrainian leadership went so far as having a law passed that preemptively prevents Zelensky from negotiating with the Russians as long as Putin is the President and as long as they have their Forces occupying any Ukrainian territory based on their 1991 borders.

So you have a regime that cannot continue the fight alone, cannot negotiate, and has now lost over 300'000 men, with many times more severely wounded, millions of refugees have fled the country, their infrastructure and production is decimated, and its allies are backing out.

So again, I'm going to say it now.

Don't be surprised if we see a complete, Afghanistan-style collapse of the Ukrainian Armed Forces sometime this winter or spring or whenever.

I'm not trying to say I know exactly what's going to happen, no one does and anyone who says they do about any war, is thoroughly full of shit.

What I am saying, is don't be surprised if it happens.

All the conditions are there. For some, though not all, of the same reasons.

There are some differences, Ukraine had a much stronger military it started this war with, but the inevitable crush of Russian Forces grinding forward, learning from their mistakes, honing their skills, all the while Ukraine was spending its best forces on losing battles.

The saying, "pick your battles" doesn't exist for no reason.

Ukraine chose poorly, by defending every inch of land, spending endless lives, weapons systems, and ammunition on battles they knew they couldn't win, like Bakhmut, and the Kharkiv and Kherson Offensives. Both of which were a pointless waste of lives spent on taking tiny farm villages instead of building the kind of Defenses the Russians did in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk.

Had Ukraine's leadership chosen to defend land they knew they could, instead wasting Military capabilities and lives on a pointless and exceedingly costly offensive, they wouldn't be in this position today.

And then they did it again! And this time never even broke through a single main line of defense in nearly 4 months, at the cost of more than 70'000 Ukrainian lives.

The insanity of these policies speak for themselves. They don't even make any sense from a strategic, or even tactical point of view. It's just plain stupidity. Any idiot can make these observations.

I haven't even mentioned the simple fact that Russia is, and always was going to be a MUCH MUCH bigger country, with a much much greater productive capacity, and a population pool many many times greater to draw its conscripts from.

And now the Ukrainians are likely going to face collapse. All because they chose to listen to whispers of those who would make them heroes in the eyes of the Western media, at the cost of the country they claim to represent and love.

Love, even as they run 24/7 war propaganda on tv with no other stations allowed, they refuse to hold elections next year, and are in fact extorting the US for billions more dollars before Zelensky will hold any kind of elections, they raid churches, arrest priests, journalists and political dissenters, the ones they don't assassinate and then brag about.

And to add to all this, Zelensky will never ever ever ever again get the kind of weapons or men to launch an offensive of the kind he just fought.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces Offensive capabilities are essentially no more. Gone. Completely and utterly decimated. Tens of thousands of men, gone. All for roughly about 8-12km of gains, depending on where you're measuring.

They've also lost about an equal amount of territory in the Kupiansk direction, so there REALLY was no point in these 70'000 deaths.

Think about that.

This has to stop, but I'm afraid it may be way too late for Ukraine to come to its senses in time. And I don't think the Russians feel like talking anymore.

That's why I expect a collapse.

[dertaglichedan]

The Frightened Left

Weaponizing impeachment is just one of many precedents that Leftists now would not wish to have applied to themselves

By Victor Davis Hanson

An impeachment inquiry looms and the shrieks of outrage are beginning.

The Left is now suddenly voicing warnings that those who recently undermined the system could be targeted by their own legacies.

So, for example, now we read why impeachment is suddenly a dangerous gambit.

True, the Founders did not envision impeaching a first-term president the moment he lost his House majority. Nor did they imagine impeaching a president twice. And they certainly did not anticipate trying an ex-president in the Senate as a private citizen.

In modern times, the nation has not rushed to impeach a president without a special counsel investigation to determine whether the chief executive was guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

But thanks to the Democrats, recent impeachments now have destroyed all those guardrails. After all, Trump was impeached the first time on the fumes of an exhaustive but fruitless 22-month, $40 million special counsel investigation—one designed to find him guilty of Russian “collusion” and thus to be removed from office but found no actionable offenses at all.

Instead, dejected Democrats moved immediately for a second try. In September 2019 a few weeks after Trump had announced his 2020 reelection bid, the Democratic House began to impeach the president on the new grounds that he had talked to the President Zelensky of Ukraine and said he might delay offensive arms shipments—unless the Ukrainians could demonstrate that they had ended corruption and, in particular, were no longer influenced by the Biden family quid pro quo shakedowns.

Trump was proven right: the Biden family is not just corrupt, but, in particular, Joe Biden as head of the family and Vice President had intervened in the internal politics of an aid recipient, by threatening not to delay but rather to cancel outright all U.S. aid to Ukraine—unless it fired Viktor Shokin, a Ukrainian prosecutor.

Shokin was then looking into the misadventures of Biden’s son Hunter, and why the Vice President’s imbecilic son was receiving lucrative compensation on the boards of a Ukrainian energy company Burisma, yet without any demonstrable expertise or education in matters of energy policy.

Since Trump was impeached, we now know that Joe Biden did lie that he had no connection with or even knowledge of his son’s business. And we know that the fired prosecutor believed the Bidens were recipients of bribes. We know that contrary to Biden’s assertions, he was not following State Department policy.

[darkmaga-retard]

Report that Ukrainian team destroyed Nord Stream puts Germany in awkward position.

John Leake

Aug 19, 2024

For my first book about the Viennese serial killer (of prostitutes), Jack Unterweger, I read a fair amount of literature on the ways in which pimps psychologically manipulate the women who work for them. Even though the pimp exploits and abuses the woman, he impresses upon her the belief that he is her protector, and that she must therefore continue to work for him. Nevertheless, in spite of the pimp’s constant psychological coercion, it may nevertheless be possible for the woman to break free of him, though it may require that she completely disappear for a while.

I thought of this psychology when I read a recent report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that the German government has proclaimed that there is no money left in its budget to continue sending military aid to Ukraine.Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “No new money for Ukraine.”

German officials stated that the decision was purely a matter of Euros and cents—that is, there is only so much money to go around, especially considering that the German taxpayer will be on the hook for it, even though military aid for Ukraine has been obtained by state debt financing.

Given how little concern German politicians have shown for the country’s increasing national debt in recent years, another explanation for the German money spigot for Ukraine turning off may be the recent, rather awkward Wall Street Journal report that it was a Ukrainian team that blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. As some people in the West may know, Nord Stream is—legally and technically speaking—critical German infrastructure that was built with a considerable German investment.

Contrary to the mendacious assertions of Green propagandists, natural gas is an energy dense and clean-burning fuel that was (until the pipeline was sabotaged) transported with great efficiency from Russia to Germany. Everyone who has ever cooked on a gas stove knows this to be the case.

Indeed, as I have written about in earlier posts, I believe it’s a plausible hypothesis that one of the U.S. government’s objectives with its aggressive Ukrainian policy has been to drive a wedge between Russia and Germany, which had, until recently, enjoyed a fruitful partnership, with Russian mineral interests benefitting from Germany’s strong industrial demand for natural gas. Self-serving American interests sing the praises of shipping Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to Europe without mentioning the huge amount of diesel burned with each transatlantic freighter shipment, never mind the energy required to liquify natural gas.

[mariacallous]

Wars usually divide people, but Ukraine received overwhelming international sympathy after the full-scale Russian invasion. This was based on several factors. The unprovoked aggression made a moral stance obvious. Historically, too, Ukraine has never invaded or occupied any country. The many layers of the conflict garnered support on multiple fronts: sovereignty and independence; rule of law and human rights; nuclear and environmental threats; democracy against autocracy; and, in the end, the fact that it’s about an underdog stopping a superpower.

Ukraine’s foreign policy has traditionally focused narrowly on European and trans-Atlantic integration. But now that the country’s future depends on financial and military aid, Ukraine has—for the first time in its history—had to proactively engage with the rest of the world.

In June, more than 90 countries attended two days of talks in Switzerland at the behest of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—the so-called High-level Summit for Peace for Ukraine. It was the latest in a series of global meetings organized by Kyiv to rally support. There have been presidential and parliamentary delegation visits (including to Saudi Arabia and Argentina) and invitations for foreign leaders to come to Kyiv (such as the Indonesian president and a delegation of African leaders).

At those meetings, Kyiv has raised a range of issues: sanctions against Russia; providing ammunition (including both new technologies and requests from the states that used to receive aid from the Soviet Union and then Russia); votes in the United Nations; the “Grain from Ukraine” initiative, designed to support shipments to countries in need from Ukrainian agricultural producers; and support on calls for Russia to be held accountable for war crimes.

For more than a year, my organization, the Public Interest Journalism Lab, has been inviting senior editors, intellectuals, and famous media personalities from more than 20 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America to come to Ukraine. They have visited villages and grain terminals and talked to soldiers and war crime survivors, as well as Zelensky. Through this work, I have gained an insight into how thought leaders from many countries are thinking about this war; that feedback has, in turn, helped inform our evolving national strategy for winning hearts and minds around the world. After the initial full-scale invasion in February 2022, a majority of states supported the U.N. resolution calling for Russia to leave Ukrainian territory, with 141 votes in favor, 7 votes against, and 31 abstentions. We need to keep that broad base of support. Kyiv simply can’t afford for the war to become a globally divisive issue—even as Russia works to make it so.

Starting with the 2014 occupation of Crimea, the Kremlin has invested billions into anti-Ukrainian propaganda aimed at confusing Western audiences. Since its 2022 invasion, Moscow has refocused its tactics onto a divide-and-conquer strategy. With this in mind, Russian state media closed a few offices in the EU and the United States and opened more bureaus and outlets in the global south, including in South Africa, Kenya, and Brazil. To audiences in these countries, Russia portrays its war against Ukraine as a fight with the West, thereby challenging the idea that universal values and rules of law matter.

In combating this propaganda, Ukraine understands that there is no one message or one approach that will work across the world. In 2022, Zelenskyy introduced his “peace formula”—a 10-point plan intended to encourage countries to support the Ukrainian initiatives that they found most applicable to them, including nuclear safety, food security, and the return of prisoners and deported persons. This was intended to pave the way for those who wanted to stay away from direct military support or humanitarian initiatives by providing less contentious options.

At the Switzerland summit this June, the agenda focused on the least controversial initiatives— namely, nuclear energy and nuclear installations, global food security, the release of prisoners of war, and the return of the Ukrainian children deported to Russia—and each was in line with international law, including the U.N. Charter. Though China did not send a representative, and a few countries (such as Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia) did not sign the final communique, the majority of the 90 countries in attendance did. The next meeting may be hosted by Saudi Arabia later this year.

Outreach has become especially urgent given the state of Ukrainian stockpiles. The EU does not have enough capacity to manufacture weapons for itself, and recent debates in the U.S. Congress have shown that Ukraine cannot be that dependent on American supplies. (And that supplies are not, in any case, enough for all the U.S. allies around the world.)

So far, Ukraine has mainly relied on its post-Soviet types of weapons, obtained from the countries that used to receive or buy them from the Soviet Union, Russia, or Ukraine itself. Appropriate ammunition is available in Argentina, Thailand, Brazil, and some African states. Since the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and a few recently added members) won’t provide any weapons to Ukraine, the primary aim is to ensure that they do not help Russia either, as North Korea does. And recently, Ukraine reached out to South Korea and Japan for more advanced ammunition.

After North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Russia in September 2023, Seoul has been looking not just at what Pyongyang gives to Moscow, but also what it may receive back. The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office has said the rocket that hit the civilian city of Kharkiv—the second-largest Ukrainian city, located 30 kilometers (19 miles) away from the Russian border— on Jan. 2 was of North Korean origin. And the use of at least 21 more North Korean-made ballistic missiles, including three in the city of Kyiv and in the Kyiv region, has now been identified by that office.

Now that Ukraine is focusing on developing its own weapons capabilities, the hope is that the advanced South Korean defense sector may assist with knowledge and technology, even if it does not supply armaments.

Against this backdrop is the potential precedent that Russia’s war in Ukraine sets for China regarding Taiwan. Ukraine is aware that China is probably one of the countries that benefits from the stalemate between Russia and Ukraine: It has opened up access to cheap Russian gas, led to the annihilation of Russian and Western arsenals, and distracted Washington from Pacific power struggles. There may be people in Washington who dislike the idea of Ukraine giving Beijing any greater role in international diplomacy, but Ukraine cannot afford to ignore it—Beijing supplying weapons to Russia is a realistic nightmare for Kyiv.

In answering a question from a Chinese writer at an interview that I had the chance to facilitate, Zelensky noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping is one of the few global leaders to whom Russian President Vladimir Putin will listen to in discussions around avoiding nuclear escalation.

In Africa, Ukraine has opened seven new embassies since 2023, adding to the 10 already operating on the continent. Meanwhile, the Russian diplomatic service inherited a Soviet diplomatic infrastructure that included hundreds of embassies. Though Ukraine did maintain strong trade relations with North Africa following its independence, mainly due to geographic proximity to the Mediterranean Sea, the post-Soviet republics that regained independence amid catastrophic economic crises couldn’t dream of having comparable reach or even a presence anywhere from Tokyo to Delhi, or Nairobi to Kampala.

But though Ukraine will never be able to compete with Russia diplomatically, there is one way in which Ukraine has reached much of the world: food.

Until Russia blockaded Ukrainian ports in February 2022, thereby disrupting a major route for moving agricultural products, Ukrainians themselves didn’t fully comprehend how dependent so much of the world was on their exports. The World Economic Forum estimates that before 2022, Ukraine provided 10 percent of the world’s grains. The country also grows 15 percent of the world’s corn and 13 percent of its barley, alongside sunflower and other staple crops. In 2020, Ukraine was, for instance, the top supplier of wheat and rye to Indonesia; these are the base ingredients for instant noodles, a staple snack for the world’s fourth most populous country.

In July 2022, the United Nations and Turkey brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which eased the Russian blockade. The agreement allowed for a limited number of cargo ships to leave Odesa along a tightly controlled maritime corridor, subject to Russian inspections. Still, the agreement managed to let out more than 1,000 vessels to send at least 32.8 million metric tons of agriculture products.

It was at this point that Ukrainian leadership understood that there was something Ukraine could not just ask for, but offer. Ukraine also partially succeeded in explaining that food prices had climbed not because of the war in Ukraine, but because of the Russian blockade of the Ukrainian ports, and that—despite fighting for its life—the country was doing its best to continue to feed the world.

The Black Sea agreement was unilaterally broken by Moscow in the summer of 2023. Since then, Russian artillery has been constantly targeting Ukrainian agriculture infrastructure and ports. The Ukrainian message to agricultural consumers is that the liberation of the Black Sea and the Ukrainian south is the only way to return to cheaper commodities.

Appealing to concepts of universal justice and human rights is another important avenue for Ukraine to pursue internationally. As Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, said at an event that I organized in response to a question from a Nigerian editor, “when we understand that the international system doesn’t work, we must talk not just about ourselves, but about all the other war crimes, humanitarian crises, and tragedies of people around the world.”

The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine has registered more than 130,000 alleged war crimes committed by Russia. To prosecute senior Russian leaders, the country seeks global support to create an ad hoc Special International Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression, which Ukrainian attorneys call “the mother of all crimes.” War crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are currently being investigated by Ukrainian law enforcement, as well as by the International Criminal Court (ICC). National prosecutors, overwhelmed by the scale of atrocities, are willing to pass even the most notorious and memorable cases to be investigated abroad under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

National prosecutors, overwhelmed by the scale of atrocities, are willing to pass even the most notorious and memorable cases to be investigated abroad under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

One example comes from an initiative that I am involved with devoted to war crime documentation, the Reckoning Project. A team from this organization, which includes Ukrainian and international members—including journalists and lawyers of Syrian origin—submitted a criminal complaint to the Argentinian Federal Judiciary in April to investigate torture against a Ukrainian citizen committed during the Russian occupation of Ukraine. (The Argentinian Constitution allows its courts, based on universal jurisdiction, to try international crimes, including crimes against humanity and war crimes, irrespective of where they took place.)

Pragmatists warn that striving to promote human rights issues globally in such ways is naive. But my experience is that it feels the opposite when you talk to those who were oppressed in Iran, Nicaragua, or Syria. Talking to the survivors of war crimes left a powerful impression on correspondents from Asia, Latin America, and Africa who came to Ukraine with various interests and priorities. These conversations were particularly powerful because the journalists were able to relate by sharing stories about their own societies with the Ukrainian survivors.

A Nicaraguan reporter compared the suffering of a schoolteacher from the Kherson region who was held in Russian captivity to the torture that prisoners are subjected to in his native country. A Uruguayan editor wanted to learn how the proper documentation of human rights abuses could enable the delivery of justice in the case of still-ongoing trials of the Uruguayan junta for crimes committed in the 1970s.

With a human rights nongovernmental organization from South Korea, we discussed the possibility of working together on how to broaden the definition of sexual and gender-related violence in international laws, comparing offenses in Ukraine and North Korea. In Abuja, after a screening of a clip from a Reckoning Project film about the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, a Nigerian activist asked me to support her campaign to recover the girls stolen by Boko Haram who still remain in captivity.

During an interview with Asian journalists, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin himself raised the repeated accusation that Ukraine receives disproportionally more global attention than other global tragedies. “My way to respond is to say that we have the political ability to use any existing global platform which the government can access to investigate, and we are ready to share it,” he said.

Where else, if not here, can justice be served? Given the scale of the properly documented evidence accumulated by local and international media, the presence of investigators, and a relatively functional national law enforcement, what would be the meaning of those conventions if they cannot succeed in prosecutions in this case?

The warrant issued to Putin by the ICC for the deportation of the Ukrainian children in March 2023 was, if not an immediate game-changer, still likely the fastest-ever decision in ICC history. Ukraine wants to prove that even if the international treaties are impotent in preventing atrocities, there should be a more robust global response to prosecute perpetrators, so they do not enjoy full immunity—like the Russian army’s, which enabled it to master its gruesome practices in Chechnya, Georgia, and then in Syria before entering Bucha and Mariupol.

Still, the importance of the so-called rules-based order should not be confused with a framing of the war as a fight between democracy and dictatorship, which risks alienating much of the world.

Tensions must be navigated carefully. For Ukrainian officials, meeting their Taiwanese or Hong Kong counterparts would be impossible—they cannot afford to alienate Beijing. In such cases, Ukrainian civil society, and sometimes the opposition, takes the lead. In the summer of 2024, the major Ukrainian Human Rights Documentary Film Festival partnered with the Taiwan International Documentary Festival. Likewise, Ukrainian human rights defenders stay away from the officials in semi-authoritarian countries, leaving those relations to authorities.

In January 2023, Cambodia—which experienced the Khmer Rouge genocide and is one of the world’s most mined countries—offered to train professionals in Ukraine in humanitarian demining. Ukraine also maintains strong trade relations with Algeria.

Some of these interactions may look symbolic, but they challenge Russian attempts to claim that all not-fully-democratic countries back Moscow by default.

Ukrainians know how offensive it feels to be denied their agency in a situation in which the whole population stood up to invasion by its neighbor and former imperial ruler. But by now, Kyiv is learning not to push nations to choose a side, and not to treat votes in the U.N. as the only criteria for engagement. Members of the Non-Aligned Movement cherish that tradition, which has no connection to their take on a far-away war. It took time for Ukrainians to understand that some continents have not just anti-American, but also anti-European sentiments because of the horrors of colonial history.

After the Israel-Hamas war broke out in Gaza, a group of experts that worked on reaching out to the so-called global south—a term everybody dislikes but has not yet been replaced with a better alternative—gathered in Kyiv to discuss how Ukraine could navigate this newly polarized environment. Support for Israel outside of the United States and Western Europe may be seen as an attempt to please Washington, but Ukraine has its own historic relations with Israel. The Holocaust was partly committed on Ukrainian soil; many Israelis are immigrants from the territory of Ukraine. Hamas is supported by Iran, which also openly backs Moscow. At the same time, there will be other Ukrainians whose sympathy goes to the Palestinian people, whose land—like Ukraine—is occupied.

The ensuing discussion made it more obvious that invoking parallels to every tragedy may be inappropriate and counterproductive for Ukraine. Nonetheless, Ukrainians intuitively feel that their fate is bound to the rest of the globe and a common struggle for a better world. Global solidarity isn’t something that can be demanded; it must instead be inspired.

In the end, Ukraine does not expect foreigners to fight—it is Ukrainians who are paying the highest prices, with their own lives.

[tomorrowusa]

While Putin is bombing schools, maternity hospitals, and hardware stores in Ukraine, the Ukrainians struck a Russian over-the-horizon radar station 1,800 km (1,119 miles) from Ukraine. Apparently Russia's radar technology didn't see the drone about to hit it. 😆

A long-range drone operated by Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) attacked early-warning Voronezh M radar in Russia's Orsk city in Orenburg Oblast on May 26, a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent on May 27. For the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine attacked facilities in Orsk, some 1,800 kilometers (around 1,200 miles) from the drone's launch location, according to the source. Russian media claimed on May 26 that a drone fell in the Orsk suburbs in the Novoorsk district, allegedly targeting a military facility. No damages or casualties were reported. The military intelligence source told the Kyiv Independent that the consequences of the May 26 attack are still being clarified. Later during the day, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Schemes project published satellite imagery of the radar system after the attack.

Here are before and after satellite photos of the Orsk radar facility. It's a little difficult to make out the damage because the photos were taken at different times of day and from slightly different angles. But inside the red circles there are blackened areas which can't be accounted for by shadows.

Ukraine's military intelligence also struck another Voronezh radar in the village of Glubokii in Krasnodar Krai on May 23, causing a fire at the facility, according to the source. Voronezh radar is an early-warning equipment that provides long-distance airspace monitoring, focusing on ballistic missile attacks and aircraft. Its operational range is up to 6,000 kilometers (around 3,700 miles).

These over-the-horizon radar systems are updated versions of technology developed during the Cold War. With Ukraine set to receive F-16s later this year, damaging these radar installations would make it more difficult for Russia to monitor Ukrainian flyers from afar.

The distance traveled by Ukrainian drones keeps increasing. They may soon have all of European Russia within range of drones. One goal may be to be able to disrupt shipments of arms Russia is getting from North Korea and China as they pass through Siberia.

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON -- The White House on Wednesday accused North Korea of covertly shipping a “significant number” of artillery shells to Russia in support of its invasion of Ukraine.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. believes North Korea is “trying to make it appear as though they’re being sent to countries in the Middle East or North Africa.” He declined to provide a specific estimate on the quantity of ammunition being sent to bolster the Russian effort.

Kirby said North Korea “is covertly supplying” the ammunition to Russia, but that, “we’re still monitoring this to determine whether the shipments are actually received." He added that the U.S. has “an idea” of which country or countries the North may funnel the weapons through but wouldn't specify, because the administration continues to look at how it might respond to North Korea's actions.

Kirby insisted the North Korean shipments are “not going to change the course of the war," citing Western efforts to resupply the Ukrainian military.

The White House would not specify the mode of transportation or whether the U.S. or other nations would attempt to interdict the shipments to Russia.

The White House revealed the new intelligence nearly two months after first alleging that U.S. intelligence officials had determined the Russian Ministry of Defense was in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for its ongoing fight in Ukraine.

Even as the administration revealed information about the covert North Korean artillery shell shipments, the White House also ought to downplay their significance.

“We don’t believe that they are in such a quantity that they would change the direction of this war or tangibly change the momentum either in the east or in the south" where some of the heaviest fighting in Ukraine is taking place, Kirby said.

The finding comes after the Biden administration in August said the Russian military took delivery of hundreds of Iranian-manufactured drones for use on the battlefield in Ukraine. The Biden administration said Iran has also sent personnel to Russian-controlled Crimea to provide technical support on operation of the drones. Iranian officials have denied they have provided drones or other support to Russia.

North Korea has sought to tighten relations with Russia as much of the West has pulled away, blaming the United States for the Ukraine crisis and decrying the West’s “hegemonic policy” as justifying military action by Russia in Ukraine to protect itself.

The North Koreans have shown interest in sending construction workers to help rebuild Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine’s east.

North Korea’s ambassador to Moscow has met with envoys from two Russia-backed separatist territories in the Donbas region of Ukraine and expressed optimism about cooperation in the “field of labor migration,” citing his country’s easing of pandemic border controls.

In July, North Korea became the only nation aside from Russia and Syria to recognize the independence of the territories, Donetsk and Luhansk, further aligning with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.

The North’s arms export to Russia would be a violation of U.N. resolutions that ban the country from exporting to or importing weapons from other countries. Its possible dispatch of laborers to the Russian-held territories in Ukraine would also breach a U.N. resolution that required all member states to repatriate all North Korean workers from their soil by 2019.

[usafphantom2]

In the latest aid package, the US sends new missiles to Ukraine

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 06/01/2023 - 12:00 in Military, War Zones

The Biden administration revealed its thirty-ninth shipment of equipment to Ukraine, valued at up to $300 million to help in its defense against Russia.

The new security assistance includes artillery, anti-armoured features and ammunition, including tens of millions of small arms ammunition cartridges.

In addition, among the items included are additional ammunition for Patriot air defense systems, AIM-7 missiles for air defense, Avenger air defense systems, Stinger anti-aircraft systems and additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

This is the first official confirmation of the transfer of the AIM-7 Sparrow (Air Intercept Missile) to Ukraine. Although the AIM-7 is originally an air-to-air missile with semi-active radar, it will be employed by Ukraine's Buk-M1 surface-to-air missile system, increasing its air defense capabilities. Developed by Raytheon, the first variants of the missile entered U.S. military service in the 1960s.

In addition, the package also includes 155 mm and 105 mm artillery cartridges, 105 mm tank ammunition, precision aerial ammunition, Zuni rockets and ammunition for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS).

In addition, it provides AT-4 anti-shield systems, more than 30 million small arms ammunition, mine removal equipment and systems, demolition ammunition for obstacle removal, night vision devices, spare parts, generators and other field equipment.

After President Biden's meeting with President Zelensky at the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, in May 2021, the United States held its thirty-eighth instance of withdrawal of equipment to Ukraine.

A 9K37M1 Buk-M1 Ukrainian TELAR. (Photo: VoidWanderer/Wikimedia Commons)

In total, the U.S. has committed $38.3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, which includes more than $37.6 billion provided since the start of the invasion of Russia on February 24, 2022.

“The United States will continue to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with resources to meet the immediate needs of the battlefield and long-term security assistance requirements,” the Department of Defense said.

Tags: armamentsMilitary AviationWar Zones

Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work around the world of aviation.

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