Boris Johnson: Don't drift back to the ghastly negotiation format treating Russia and Ukraine equally

 Former British prime minister Boris Johnson strongly disapproved the recent phone call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin:

 

"I am afraid Volodymyr Zelenskyy is completely right. We risk drifting back to the ghastly Franco-German Normandy format which treated Russia and Ukraine as equally valid interlocutors in a domestic squabble.

That is a shameful betrayal of reality - that Putin has launched a criminal and unjustifiable invasion while Ukraine is an entirely innocent party.

The only way to bring this war to an end is massively and rapidly to strengthen the position of Ukraine."
 

Invite Ukraine into NATO, now!

 From the Hill:

"Opinion - To save Ukraine and avoid World War III, invite it into NATO before Trump takes office

Evelyn N. Farkas, opinion contributor

Mon, November 11, 2024

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated Donald Trump last week on his electoral victory on X and reminded his American counterpart of his “peace through strength approach,” adding, “This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer.”

This is true, but Trump has given no sign of approaching Russia’s imperial aggression the way Ronald Reagan approached the Soviet Union.

For this reason, the period we have entered now — before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 — is critical. President Biden and the Senate leadership have an opportunity to shield Ukraine from the immediate impact of Trump’s election — emboldening Russia President Vladimir Putin and perhaps setting the parameters for the next Trump administration’s policy towards Ukraine.

The situation in Ukraine is dire. Ukraine’s armed forces lack sufficient personnel, equipment and training. They are innovative and technology is helping, but not enough. The state of their democracy is improving, but they need more human capital, which continues to be eroded by the war. The rule of law must be bolstered, and for that, Zelensky and his government will need encouragement and assistance.

The last time Ukraine took the initiative was when the military seized territory in Russia’s Kursk region in August. Putin made his countermove last month, expanding the war to introduce thousands of North Korean soldiers onto his territory to fight Ukrainians. Although this is not likely to prove decisive — and could even backfire on the Kremlin and Kim Jong Un’s regime — we should not downplay its diplomatic significance. This moves the war in Ukraine into the “global” category, especially if you consider Iran and China’s support for Russia’s war effort.

The next move is likely to come from South Korea in the form of direct weapon supply to Ukraine — although we can’t rule out that they may wait to see what a new Trump administration holds in store.

Washington must now immediately make its own move. President Biden should work now with our NATO allies to urge the alliance to issue a swift invitation to NATO membership, one that can be ratified by the majority of the members rapidly. This also means seeking the help of current Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which should be possible since he’s on the record supporting Ukraine’s entry into the alliance.

NATO enlargement to include Ukraine will entail some risk that Putin will test our resolve, so the existing bilateral assurances that most NATO countries signed with Ukraine this year should be referenced as the diplomatic basis for new NATO troop deployments to Ukraine to deter Russia from any further military action in the period between invitation and ratification. We can start preparing now by deploying a Polish Patriot to help create stronger air defenses and consider taking other action to shoot down Russian drones and missiles over Ukrainian territory, much as we have done for Israel in its current fight with Iran.

It has been increasingly apparent to European allies — even in the West — that they could well come under attack by Russia under certain scenarios, that are not far-fetched. Already last year French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of deploying troops back to Ukraine.

But the sabotage operations executed by Russian agents — attacks on the Paris metro, ammunition depots in the Czech Republic and bases in Germany — have provided a jolt to Europe’s leaders, along with break-ins to Finnish water towers and treatment plants and the attempted assassination of the CEO of Germany’s Rheinmetall, a major provider of munitions for Ukraine’s military, including through four military plants in Ukraine.

Russian agents are also suspected of a plot to place incendiary devises on aircraft bound for the U.S. and Canada — this operation alone, if it had succeeded would have brought us to the brink of war with Russia. German intelligence chiefs now warn that Russia could be in a position to attack NATO “by the end of the decade.”

It remains to be seen if this has been a wakeup call, bringing a realization that Putin tested NATO and in our muted response to these attacks, we have invited further probes. Ultimately, as many of us have written repeatedly, Putin wants to eliminate NATO as a threat to his quest to recreate a Russian empire. Only a strong United States with its allies can stop him from destroying the international order, which rests upon respect for sovereignty of state borders and human rights. Providing no response only invites more frequent and lethal attacks from Russia. And it emboldens China to take similar aggressive action against Taiwan and its other neighbors.

We don’t want war with Russia, so we must act firmly now to punish Russia for these acts. We can start by declassifying more information on these attacks and communicating the reality more broadly to European, American and Asian publics with sanctions — adding more Russian banks to the list, and slapping secondary sanctions on countries providing electronics, machine tools and other precursors and components that are being used to manufacture drones and other weapons in Russia. And we can warn Putin that if he persists in such operations on NATO territory, NATO will implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

Bringing Ukraine quickly into NATO will create territorial depth for NATO allies and we gain a member that has the most experience fighting Russians — and in keeping them off balance. President Biden and senators from both parties owe it to the American people to support an invitation to Ukraine during the lame duck. Without the prospect of a NATO security umbrella, Ukraine will be another kind of duck — a sitting duck in Vladimir Putin’s sights."

Why Trump won

 From the New York Times:

"A Party of Prigs and Pontificators Suffers a Humiliating Defeat

Bret Stephens

Nov. 6, 2024

...How, indeed, did Democrats lose so badly, considering how they saw Donald Trump — a twice-impeached former president, a felon, a fascist, a bigot, a buffoon, a demented old man, an object of nonstop late-night mockery and incessant moral condemnation? The theory that many Democrats will be tempted to adopt is that a nation prone to racism, sexism, xenophobia and rank stupidity fell prey to the type of demagoguery that once beguiled Germany into electing Adolf Hitler.

It’s a theory that has a lot of explanatory power — though only of an unwitting sort. The broad inability of liberals to understand Trump’s political appeal except in terms flattering to their beliefs is itself part of the explanation for his historic, and entirely avoidable, comeback.

Why did Harris lose? There were many tactical missteps: her choice of a progressive running mate who would not help deliver a must-win state like Pennsylvania or Michigan; her inability to separate herself from President Biden; her foolish designation of Trump as a fascist, which, by implication, suggested his supporters were themselves quasi-fascist; her overreliance on celebrity surrogates as she struggled to articulate a compelling rationale for her candidacy; her failure to forthrightly repudiate some of the more radical positions she took as a candidate in 2019, other than by relying on stock expressions like “My values haven’t changed.”

There was also the larger error of anointing Harris without political competition — an insult to the democratic process that handed the nomination to a candidate who, as some of us warned at the time, was exceptionally weak. That, in turn, came about because Democrats failed to take Biden’s obvious mental decline seriously until June’s debate debacle (and then allowed him to cling to the nomination for a few weeks more), making it difficult to hold even a truncated mini-primary.

But these mistakes of calculation lived within three larger mistakes of worldview. First, the conviction among many liberals that things were pretty much fine, if not downright great, in Biden’s America — and that anyone who didn’t think that way was either a right-wing misinformer or a dupe. Second, the refusal to see how profoundly distasteful so much of modern liberalism has become to so much of America. Third, the insistence that the only appropriate form of politics when it comes to Trump is the politics of Resistance — capital R.

Regarding the first, I’ve lost track of the number of times liberal pundits have attempted to steer readers to arcane data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve to explain why Americans should stop freaking out over sharply higher prices of consumer goods or the rising financing costs on their homes and cars. Or insisted there was no migration crisis at the southern border. Or averred that Biden was sharp as a tack and that anyone who suggested otherwise was a jerk.

Yet when Americans saw and experienced things otherwise (as extensive survey data showed they did) the characteristic liberal response was to treat the complaints not only as baseless but also as immoral. The effect was to insult voters while leaving Democrats blind to the legitimacy of the issues. You could see this every time Harris mentioned, in answer to questions about the border, that she had prosecuted transnational criminal gangs: Her answer was nonresponsive to the central complaint that there was a migration crisis straining hundreds of communities, irrespective of whether the migrants committed crimes.

The dismissiveness with which liberals treated these concerns was part of something else: dismissiveness toward the moral objections many Americans have to various progressive causes. Concerned about gender transitions for children or about biological males playing on girls’ sports teams? You’re a transphobe. Dismayed by tedious, mandatory and frequently counterproductive D.E.I. seminars that treat white skin as almost inherently problematic? You’re racist. Irritated by new terminology that is supposed to be more inclusive but feels as if it’s borrowing a page from “1984”? That’s doubleplusungood.

The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency.

Last, liberals thought that the best way to stop Trump was to treat him not as a normal, if obnoxious, political figure with bad policy ideas but as a mortal threat to democracy itself. Whether or not he is
such a threat, this style of opposition led Democrats astray. It goaded them into their own form of antidemocratic politics — using the courts to try to get Trump’s name struck from the ballot in Colorado or trying to put him in prison on hard-to-follow charges. It distracted them from the task of developing and articulating superior policy responses to the valid public concerns he was addressing. And it made liberals seem hyperbolic, if not hysterical, particularly since the country had already survived one Trump presidency more or less intact.

Today, the Democrats have become the party of priggishness, pontification and pomposity. It may make them feel righteous, but how’s that ever going to be a winning electoral look?

I voted reluctantly for Harris because of my fears for what a second Trump term might bring — in Ukraine, our trade policy, civic life, the moral health of the conservative movement writ large. Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change."

Podolyak: Media of Ukraine's partners keep implying that Ukraine alone must make concessions

A recent article in the Economist discussed the possibility of having a ceasefire on January 20, 2025, the day U.S. President Donald Trump is inaugurated, and having elections on May 25, 2025. Mihaylo Podolyak, advisor of Ukrainian President Zelensky, minced no words in his comment: 

"The war today is in a hot phase... a high-intensity war... I see no ground to talk about the beginning of a political season or process... When Western media, citing anonymous sources, spread some information, they never explain why things must happen as said. Facts must be obvious to Ukraine's international partners, particularly the fact that the war is continuing with high intensity. 

I have seen many similar publications, citing some sources about the possibility of freezing the war and starting negotiations. The sources are always anonymous, and the publications themselves are always devoid of logic. Because... all these texts are based on the premise that Ukraine must be forced to do something, to make some concessions... And the authors do not even understand the premise around which they build all their arguments. All these publications imply that the war must be stopped at the expense only of the country that was attacked. In other words, that Ukraine must be forced to stop resisting.

At the same time, please notice that in these publications, there is never any analysis how to force Russia to do anything. I find strange the position that everything must be achieved at the expense of the victim rather than of the aggressor. And I find it amoral."

Ukrainian expert: The USA worships Russia's nuclear weapons like a god

 The Times somehow got access to a report prepared for the Ukrainian defense ministry by the expert Olexiy Izhak. Discussing the options for the country to regain its nuclear status, he remarked:

"I was amazed by how much awe the United States feel to Russia's nuclear threat. Possibly this cost us the war. They treat the nuclear weapon like some god. So maybe it is time for us also to pray to this god."

I hope very much that they will do.

Wildcard

 With Trump elected as US president, all bets about world politics are off, and nobody knows what is to happen and what Trump will do. Including, I suspect, Trump himself.

Ukrainian columnist Oleksandr Kirsh wrote best about this, in the Obozrevatel:

"The New World under Trump becomes truly new: the main peculiarity of President 45/47

You say that Putin is unpredictable? But it is fully predictable, compared to Trump...

You say that there is the Pompeo's peace plan? You guessed wrong: the correct answer (from Trump) is that Pompeo will not be in his team, i.e. thank you for the service and get lost. Indeed, this does not mean that the plan will be forgotten, just that it will not be referred to this way.

You say that there is news for Ukraine - Crimea is gone because regaining it would be unrealistic? And Trump has news for his former advisor who announced this: he (Brian Lanza) was just elections organizer, and was not authorized to speak for Trump, so let him know his new place - he is an anonymous nobody, and we must wait what Trump himself will say on this topic (he can of course say absolutely the same).

Silly Orban, proud that Trump mentioned him already 1.5 times during the last year (though mistaking him for Erdogan), says things on behalf of Trump, allegedly told to him by Trump? Let's first figure out whether he is a Hungarian or a Turk to Trump, and then the details.

Trump's world is trumpocentric. The truths and the future are known to him and him alone, provided that he does not reconsider. Get used to this, world, and get used to this, Ukraine!"

Trump's evil degenerate son mocks heroic Ukraine

 From the Newsweek:

"Donald Trump Jr. Shares Video Mocking Zelensky: 'Losing Your Allowance'

Donald Trump Jr. has shared a video mocking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Instagram.

In a video, originally shared by Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, a photograph can be seen of Zelensky frowning while standing next to President-elect Donald Trump. The text overlay reads: "POV: You're 38 Days from losing you're allowance."

Donald Trump has been critical of the amount of aid the U.S. is giving to Ukraine, having previously referred to Zelensky as "the greatest salesman on Earth.""

Below is a screenshot from the video, from UNIAN. 

I really wish that Americans stop electing presidents having evil, degenerate sons: four years ago, Hunter Biden's father, and now, the father of the lowlife who shared that video.

 

Starmer less supportive of Ukraine than Sunak was

 From the Guardian:

"Relations between Ukraine and UK are worse under Labour, say Kyiv officials

Ukraine’s relationship with the UK has “got worse” since the Labour government took power in July, officials in Kyiv have told the Guardian, voicing frustration over Britain’s failure to supply additional long-range missiles.

The UK prime minister is yet to visit Ukraine four months after taking office and a frustrated Kyiv has said that a trip would be worthless unless Keir Starmer committed to replenishing stocks of the sought-after long-range Storm Shadow system...

Ukraine is growing increasingly unhappy with London as Russian troops advance in the east of the country at their fastest rate since 2022, with US officials concluding that the frontlines can no longer be considered static. Ukrainian commanders said they were heavily outgunned...

Ukraine’s principal complaint with the UK is that it has not supplied any additional missiles from its reserves of Storm Shadow, even for use against targets in Crimea and other Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia since 2014.

The official said: “It isn’t happening. Starmer isn’t giving us long-range weapons. The situation is not the same as when Rishi Sunak was prime minister. The relationship has got worse.”

Sunak visited Kyiv in November 2022 within a month of becoming prime minister...

Britain and France said in 2023 they would supply Storm Shadow missiles, known by the French as Scalp, but the number of strikes has dwindled during 2024. “You would know if the UK had provided us with new Storm Shadow missiles because we would be using them to hit Russian targets. We are not,” the official added.

The last Storm Shadow strike claimed by the Ukrainian military was on 5 October, targeting Russian command posts. Prior to that five or more missiles were thought to have been used against Sevastopol naval base in March of this year.

Starmer met Zelenskyy on Thursday at a European political summit in Budapest. The prime minister said the UK’s support for Ukraine was “unwavering” and acknowledged “we need to step up”. “It’s very important that we stand with you,” Starmer said.

But the Ukrainian president pointed to the private frustrations in a social media post, accompanied by a picture of the two leaders. “An important element of the victory plan is providing Ukraine with long-range weaponry and granting permission to use it against military targets on Russian territory,” Zelenskyy said.

Privately, sources in Kyiv complained that the meeting in Hungary led to “no progress at all” on the missile issue. Until deliveries of Storm Shadow resumed there was little point in Starmer travelling to Kyiv, they added.

“We have been discussing since August a possible visit by Starmer. Various dates have come and gone. Starmer has postponed several times,” the official said. They added: “There’s no point in his coming as a tourist. At the moment he’s not willing to take the decisions which are necessary.”...

Zelenskyy has also repeatedly urged the UK to lift restrictions on the use of Storm Shadows against military sites deep inside Russia. Downing Street had been thought to be sympathetic to the request but has not rescinded the ban because of entrenched opposition from the Biden administration.

Disillusionment on the Ukrainian side with the new government follows discussions between Starmer and Zelenskyy last month at No 10. Zelenskyy presented his “victory plan”, which includes Nato membership for Ukraine, and more military and economic support from key allies.

The plan met “no big response”, the senior official said. They suggested that Starmer was unwilling to make strategic decisions without approval from Washington, despite private assurances he made to Zelenskyy that the UK had freedom to act independently.

In recent months the Kremlin has stepped up bombardments using Iranian Shahed and ballistic missiles, with a major drone attack early on Thursday. Much of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has already been destroyed as the freezing winter season approaches, and air raid alerts in Kyiv and other cities sound practically every night.

Meanwhile, as many as 10,000 North Korean soldiers are mustering in western Russia to join battle against Ukraine. In a post last week on X, Zelenskyy accused the US, UK and Germany of passively “watching” as North Korea’s army took part in a war in Europe. He urged allies to approve long-range strikes so that North Korean troops might be attacked before they killed Ukrainians."

***

Despite the nice talk of Western leaders, the harsh truth is that Russia has allies while Ukraine has none. And this, unfortunately, includes the USA and the UK that disarmed Ukraine with the Budapest Memorandum, promising to defend it in return - a promise which turned out to be false.

Putin thinks he has the USA in his pocket

 From the Institute for the Study of War:

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be assuming that US President-elect Donald Trump will defer to the Kremlin's interests and preferences without the Kremlin offering any concessions or benefits in return. Putin stated during his November 7 Valdai Club address that he is open to discussions meant to "restore" US-Russia relations but that the United States must initiate these negotiations, and implied that Russia will only consider a reset in US-Russia relations if the United States drops sanctions against Russia and ceases supporting Ukraine – terms that exclusively benefit Russia and offer no benefit to the United States.[1] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov noted on November 8 that Putin's statement about negotiating with the United States does not mean that Russia's military goals in Ukraine have changed and that instead, Russia's goals remain the same.[2] Putin may be attempting to posture himself as reaching out to Trump, but Putin is signaling to his domestic audiences that the Kremlin is unwilling to concede any aspect of its maximalist objectives in Ukraine or the wider global arena.

Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported that the Kremlin issued a manual to state and pro-Kremlin media with instructions to cover Putin's Valdai statements by highlighting the special role Russia plays in bringing about a proposed "new world order" and portraying Putin as the "world's greatest leader" whose deep thinking, "breadth of political thought," and role as the "voice of the global majority and new world order" distinguish him from Western political leaders, presumably including Trump.[3] Meduza noted that, by contrast, the manual does not mention reporting Putin's statements about Trump or possible future negotiations with the United States about the war in Ukraine, even though Putin largely aimed his Valdai statements at shaping Trump's foreign policy and achieving another reset in US-Russian relations on Russia's terms.[4]...

Putin doubled down on an existing information operation falsely claiming that Ukraine violated its neutral status in an attempt to justify Russia's illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Putin, answering a question about which borders of Ukraine Russia recognizes, claimed that Russia always recognized Ukraine's borders as defined in the 1991 Ukrainian Declaration of Independence as long as Ukraine agreed to remain neutral, but said that Russia did not agree when Ukraine announced its intent to join NATO.[10] Putin did not mention, however, that Ukraine's parliament did not vote to abandon Ukraine's neutral status until December 2014 – months after Russia's illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea in February and March 2014 respectively.[11] Russia also committed to respecting the independence, sovereignty, and existing borders of Ukraine, including Crimea and Donbas, in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in exchange for the return and decommissioning of Soviet-era nuclear weapons in Ukraine.[12] Putin also attempted to use Article I of the UN Charter on the right to self-determination to justify Russia's invasions of Crimea in 2014 and broader invasion in 2022, claiming that these occupied areas voted to join Russia.[13] Russia notably conducted sham annexation referendums in Crimea in 2014 and Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts in 2022 under conditions of occupation and intense militarization, using the referendums to create a veneer of legality and local support for Russia's occupation.[14]"

[1] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/75521

[2] https://www.interfax dot ru/russia/990786; https://tass dot ru/politika/22352497

[3] https://meduza dot io/feature/2024/11/08/sobytie-goda-v-sfere-idey-i-smyslov

[4] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-7-2024

[10] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/75521

[11] https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-parliament-abandons-neutrality/26758725.html

[12] https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf

[13] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/75521

[14] https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/24-210-01%20ISW%20Occupation%20playbook.pdf; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-20; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-7; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-26; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-23

 

Only a tenth of voted and promised US military aid reached Ukraine

 From KyivPost:

"Has US Really Only Sent Ukraine 10 Percent of Arms Promised This Year?

Ukraine’s President Zelensky said fighting Russia is tough when nine out of every ten bucks’ worth of US arms promised this year haven’t shown up – the Pentagon numbers seem to support the claim.

by Stefan Korshak | October 31, 2024

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent charge that only ten percent of the military assistance the US said it would transfer to Ukraine this year has actually reached Ukrainian troops, is largely accurate, a Kyiv Post review of figures published by the Pentagon found.

Speaking at a meeting with reporters in Reykjavik on Wednesday, Zelensky said one of Ukraine’s many problems battling Russian invasion is that allied-promised arms assistance arrives too late or not at all - which complicates defense planning and kills and injures Ukrainians.

In the case of the US, Ukraine’s biggest military materiel supporter, a whopping 90 percent of military assistance approved by Congress for FY 2024 has yet to reach the battlefield, the Ukrainian leader said.

“This is the problem. What to do, for example, when Russia gains (more Ukrainian territory and takes) some steps forward in the East? You [Ukraine’s leadership] do your job. You count your reserves. You count on special brigades. You count on such-and-such [foreign-donated] equipment. And then, if you get ten percent of that package, [which has] already been voted on …You know, it’s not funny… the Congress voted. It’s not a question of money, it’s bureaucracy and logistics,” Zelensky said, speaking in English...

Based on Pentagon-published official figures, Zelensky’s ten percent delivery claim is probably a fairly, if not absolutely accurate estimate of the actual numbers of US arms put into the hands of Ukrainian troops so far this year, Kyiv Post found.

In a move seriously damaging Ukraine’s ability to fight, the US stopped all military assistance to Kyiv at the end of December because of Congressional wrangling over border law reform and political maneuvering between Democratic and Republican leadership eyeing upcoming elections.

The five-month American embargo on arms transfers to Ukraine ended on April 24 when US President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill approving $60.84 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, to be completed by the end of FY2024.

Since then Pentagon aid disbursements, for the most part drawing down existing US hardware or munitions stocks which the funds would replace, have been steady at one or two support packages a month - each almost always valued well below a billion dollars, a volume distinctly less than what would be needed, to buy all the weaponry and assistance Congress approved for Ukraine for the year.

According to the Pentagon figures published in December 2023, a few days before US arms assistance to Ukraine was cut off, the total value of that assistance, counted from the start of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, was $44.9 billion.

An Oct. 21 press release (the most recent on Ukraine assistance published by the Pentagon) placed the value of US military assistance earmarked for Ukraine, incorporating all money actually spent on Ukrainian military support in 2024, at $59.5 billion.

The difference between those two official numbers - $14.6 billion - is less than one quarter of the nearly $61 billion of military assistance approved by Congress in April 2024.

Zelensky’s Wednesday ten percent claim implied that, of the $14.6 billion worth military assistance for Ukraine that the Pentagon had actually said it has earmarked or spent in 2024, slightly more than $6 billion worth is in the hands of Ukrainian troops...

Congressionally appropriated money not spent by a US Federal agency during the fiscal year, in which it was approved, is not typically carried over to the next year and is effectively lost.

A Wednesday evening broadcast by Ukraine’s Channel 5 Television, one of the country’s oldest and most widely watched news platforms, was entitled “Why Has Ukraine Received Only Ten Percent of the Assistance Congress Voted For?” It told viewers the 90 percent gap between promised US military aid and actual arms deliveries was real, and exists because Washington is dragging its feet on Ukraine assistance.

The Ukrainian web news magazine Telegraf published an article on Wednesday article about US arms deliveries to Ukraine headlined: “Time to Get Ready for Problems with United States Aid”. Political Scientist Maksym Yakolev said: “Considering the… rift in US politics, Ukraine should prepare for the worst.”

On Oct. 17 Zelensky broached the once-taboo subject of a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent, arguing at a press conference that Ukraine must be allowed to join NATO to stop Russia from invading Ukraine a third time, because Ukraine gave up its own nuclear weapons, at the behest of the US, in the 1990s..."

 

 

 

 

The Pentagon: In response to North Korea joining the war, we won't hurt Ukraine more than we already do

 From Reuters:

"No new limits on Ukraine's use of US arms if North Korea joins Russia's fight, Pentagon says

WASHINGTON/BRUSSELS, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. will not impose new limits on Ukraine's use of American weapons if North Korea joins Russia's war, the Pentagon said on Monday, as NATO said North Korean military units had been deployed to the Kursk region in Russia."

***

I find it significant that the administration thought that this clarification was needed. It only confirms first-hand that the US priority is to impose limits not on the aggressor Russia but on the victim Ukraine, which the USA promised to defend after disarming it with the Budapest Memorandum.

I can only add what I recently wrote on Charles Steele's blog: "We see that various countries furnish themselves with Putinist rulers, through free elections or otherwise. This is hardly surprising. Because what is the situation on the ground? Russia's allies enjoy peace, stability and (relative) prosperity. America's "allies" can be attacked at the moment Putin sees fit. Their land is up for grabs, their cities are to be razed to the ground, their people are fair game to be murdered by thousands. As this happens, the Democrats provide only token aid in order to avoid "escalation" (whatever this means), while Trump wants the token aid stopped, blames the victims for being attacked, and insists that they "make a deal" with the aggressor."

ISW: Western “Ukraine fatigue” is encouraging Russia

 From the Institute for the Study of War:

Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled that Western “Ukraine fatigue” is encouraging Russia to continue its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and pursue its theory of victory predicated on Russia outlasting Western support for Ukraine. Putin responded to a question during an interview with Russian state TV channel Rossiya 1 on October 25 following the conclusion of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Republic of Tatarstan on whether exhausted Ukrainian troops, Western war fatigue, or Russian military’s power is contributing to the success of Russian theater-wide offensive operations.[9] Putin responded by stating that Russia should continue to double down on its war effort in Ukraine and not pay attention to discussions of the enemy's fatigue. Putin added that the West is “beginning to realistically assess the situation around Ukraine” and “change its rhetoric” about the need for Russia’s “strategic defeat,” and that Russia can “only praise” the West for this rhetorical shift away from complete Russian defeat in Ukraine. Putin later stated in the interview that any outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine must be in Russia’s favor and be based on the "realities on the battlefield," indicating that Russia remains committed to its original goal of forcing the Ukrainian government to capitulate and destroying Ukraine’s statehood and military and that Western hesitance in support for Ukraine only encourages Russia's commitment to this goal. ISW continues to assess that Putin’s theory of victory rests on a critical assumption that the West will abandon Ukraine to Russian victory, either of its own accord or in response to Russian efforts to persuade the West to do so..."

***

Dear Americans, please vote for Harris on Nov. 5! Don't empower Trump who blames Ukraine for being invaded by Russia, and wants to give Putin the world on a silver platter!

Ukrainian defender tells how the West betrayed her country

 From a report by Roland Oliphant (the Telegraph / Yahoo!News):

"Any Western politician suffering from Ukraine fatigue could learn a lot from Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko.

 

“I know that I am tired. I’m really tired. I know that my people are also tired. A lot of them I took from assault units, so they are, like, extremely tired,” the 29-year-old philology graduate says.

“And we are also sort of ready for negotiations, but we are just asking that the West insists on our interests.”...

Sir Keir Starmer met US president Joe Biden, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and French president Emmanuel Macron to discuss the West’s response to the war in a meeting in Germany on Friday.

Their summit comes after Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, lobbied them to support a five-point “victory plan”...

But it depends on massive commitments from the West. And the West does not seem impressed.

President Biden has already vetoed a request for long-range strike capabilities that is central to Mr Zelensky’s defence concept. There has been no serious progress on Nato membership, despite support from Britain and Poland.

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has made no sign that she will deviate from Joe Biden’s policy of providing enough kit to keep Ukraine in the fight, but not enough to antagonise Russia into “escalating” the conflict.

Republican rival Donald Trump has made no secret of his wish to end the war quickly, and most suspect that means quickly cutting a deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin that suspends US aid to the Ukrainians.

Mr Zelensky met all three of them on a recent trip to the United States, and none have embraced his plan wholeheartedly.

So where does that leave the war – and the men and women fighting it?...

Asked if her expectations have changed, Lt Mykytenko remarks that early chances to win and end the war were squandered.

“I knew that the war wouldn’t end in a few weeks, and we wouldn’t be in Crimea in a few months, as our government used to say. I completely understood that. But I was hoping for much more help from the Western world,” she said.

“I was hoping to get F16s at the end of 2022. I was hoping to get Patriots and Abrams at the end of 2022, when we really needed them, when we had a really motivated army, when we had a lot of warriors who were ready to fight.”

If only, she muses, the West had sent enough help on time...

“Now we are being given a small amount of those weapons, and we are expected to use them the same as in 2022 but unfortunately, we won’t, because a lot of warriors are dead, missing and injured.”

“Our motivation, let’s be honest, is much lower than it was even one year ago. So yeah, we had a great chance to end it up to 2023, if we had got everything that we asked for, and now it’s almost impossible. We won’t recover the strengths which we had in 2022 for at least 10 years.”

In short, the victory which once seemed so close has slipped below the horizon.

And Ukraine has already been at war for a decade..."

***

Let me remind any readers I have that the USA deliberately stabbed Ukraine in the back and sent its victory below the horizon because it does not want Russia to lose. And the once great American people seem to be OK with this.