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."

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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..."

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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.

 

 

 

How the USA handcuffs its allies and emboldens its enemies

 From the Hill:

"Biden is handcuffing our allies, emboldening Putin and the Axis of Evil

by Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet, Opinion Contributors - 10/17/24

 

The most salient national security aspect of Bob Woodward’s new book “War” is his revelation that Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely emboldened to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

We concur with that assessment.

We have long argued that the “permissive environment” established by Biden and his national security team was taken as a greenlight by the Kremlin — and increasingly on a global basis by Putin’s arsenals of evil, China, Iran and North Korea.

Effectively, the West has been in a global ideological third world war ever since Putin’s ground forces began their ill-fated march towards Kyiv. The post World War II order as we have known it has been destroyed, yet this White House acts as if its equilibrium can be restored if we “defend” democracy into perpetuity. 

Unfortunately, we cannot do that. There is no reset button.

Think of everything major that has happened globally since February 24, 2022, as a series of falling dominoes. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, after it begins to falter, begets the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. Oct. 7. leads to Israel declaring war against Hamas. Iran and North Korea begin supplying Russia’s army in Ukraine with weapons and munitions. 

Khamenei launches a ballistic missile attack against Israel in April. Jerusalem kills Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, along with most of his top commanders.

Iran strikes Israel for a second time on Oct. 1, as the Israel Defense Forces widen their ground invasion of Lebanon to enforce U.N. Resolution 1701. Now we await Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet’s response to Tehran. 

Meanwhile, North Korea is becoming increasingly involved in Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, including unconfirmed reports that Kim Jong Un is sending 3,000 troops to fight in the Donbas.

Nor has China been quiet. Not only is Beijing increasingly supplying Moscow with dual-use technologies and components for use by Putin’s sputtering war machine, but Xi is also continuing his navy’s bullying of Filipino commercial and naval vessels in the South China Sea.

Most ominously, the People’s Liberation Army keeps practicing for a blockade of Taiwan. The most recent such exercise was earlier this week. Notably, Xi traveled to Fujian province in China, which faces Taiwan across the strait. Xi’s messaging to Taipei was unmistakable just days after Taiwan celebrated its National Day: I am coming for you. 

If unchecked, Taiwan and eastern Europe may be the last dominoes to fall in this increasingly kinetic global war Putin and Xi are running against Washington, Brussels and their western allies.

The next domino, however will likely be Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Biden has repeatedly pledged that Khamenei will not obtain nuclear weapons on his watch. Yet Iran is on the cusp of nuclear breakout, if not already there. White House officials have made clear that Biden does not want Israel to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities as part of their forthcoming retaliatory attack.

Yet a failure to strike them would be insane. It would only embolden Iran to accelerate its completion of its nuclear weapons program. It would give Putin the strategic check he needs against Washington to guarantee an uninterrupted supply of Iranian munitions, drones and ballistic missiles via the Caspian Sea.

This White House madness has to stop. Biden and his national security team, as led by Jake Sullivan, is emboldening Putin and his Axis of Evil allies to continue escalating their war against Western liberal democracies.

Biden’s red lines are increasingly turning green. “Don’t” has become “do” for Iran, Israel, Russia and Ukraine. The Biden White House and the U.S. are increasingly irrelevant. The “big stick” President Theodore Roosevelt once wielded has been reduced to a twig.

Democracy is not dying in darkness, but it is at risk of dying in the fields of Ukraine, in the sands of the Middle East and in the waters surrounding Taiwan.

Biden has allowed far too many dominoes to fall, and he still fails to comprehend how they are all connected. Defending the next domino that topples is not going to prevent all of the dominoes from falling.

Biden’s evergreen escalation paralysis has in effect created a deadly purgatory for our country’s national security interests. Our allies — particularly Ukraine and Israel — are paying with their lives.

Equally alarming, Biden’s escalation fears are infusing Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign for the presidency. While campaigning in Las Vegas, Harris, when asked about the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, responded by saying, “We’ve got to de-escalate.”

Like Biden, Harris evidently fails to grasp that every time the Biden-Harris White House utters the word “de-escalate,” solid green lights go off in the heads of Putin, Xi, Khamenei and Kim Jong Un. They invariably respond by taking another step up the escalation ladder, causing more dominos to fall and harming our national security and that of our allies.

The White House must reverse course. Biden can start in Ukraine by authorizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to use U.S. made ATACMS, British made Storm Shadows and French made Scalps to interdict Russian military targets and destroy them wherever they present an imminent threat to Ukrainian forces or civilians.

Ditto recognizing that now is the time to put an end to Khamenei’s nuclear weapons program before it becomes operational. That means getting Israel the 20,000-pound bunker-busting bombs it needs to hit deep inside Natanz — and for Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to stop sending warning letters to Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to placate anti-Israel staffers in Foggy Bottom.

Israel is not our enemy. Putin, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are — and China is preparing and angling to become one as soon as it can get into this fight over Taiwan.

Kneecapping and handcuffing our allies is not a winning strategy to ensure liberal democracy defeats tyranny in the 21st century. It only emboldens our country’s enemies and imperils our national security."

Trump victim-blames Zelensky for being attacked by Putin

 From Marianne LeVine, the Washington Post:

"Trump says Ukraine’s Zelensky should ‘never have let that war start’

Former president Donald Trump blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for allowing the war in Ukraine to start, even though Russia was the aggressor, during an interview with a podcaster that was published Thursday.

Trump called Zelensky “one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen” and marveled at how much aid Ukraine has received from the United States.

“Who else got that kind of money in history?” Trump said in the interview with podcaster Patrick Bet-David. “There’s never been. And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him because I feel very badly for those people. But he should never have let that war start. That war is a loser.”...

Trump has reportedly maintained a personal relationship with Putin since leaving the White House, and this week said, “Russia has never had a president that they respect so much.”...

The podcast interview that aired Thursday is not the first time Trump has appeared to suggest Zelensky is at fault for the ongoing war. During a campaign event in Mint Hill, N.C., for example, Trump said, “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal.”..."

***

Americans, please do not elect this monster!

"I won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now I'm asking the US to send missiles to Ukraine"

 Olexandra Matviichuk, USA Today / Yahoo!News:

"When I started my career as a human rights lawyer, I never imagined one day that I would publicly say we need weapons and missiles to protect human rights.

However, I have found since the unprovoked Russian invasion of my country that you cannot wave the Geneva Conventions in front of a Russian tank. You cannot use the United Nations Charter to stop the raping and kidnapping. You cannot defeat evil without bravery to resist it.

Global freedom and human rights are under attack, and Ukraine is the front line to protecting democracies and civil liberties across the globe. The world’s democratic countries must work together to counter increasing aggression from authoritarian regimes hellbent on suppressing freedom.

In 2023, global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year, with a fifth of the world’s population experiencing reduced political and civil rights. To put this in perspective, only 20% live in countries where they have the freedom to vote in fair elections, freedom to practice their choice of religion and freedom to live without violence...

If Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds in his vision of recreating the Russian empire, neighboring countries in Europe are next, inevitably leading to conflict with North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries, triggering Article 5 and putting U.S. troops on the ground.

Make no mistake, the global decline of freedom and democracy is not a coincidence.

Authoritarian leaders such as Putin are deliberately subverting rights and working to create a world devoid of freedom − a world run by despots and antidemocratic regimes. Today, autocracies outnumber democracies 74 to 63, according to the Bertelsmann Stiftung's Transformation Index.

Hear my words clearly: U.S. troops in Eastern Europe are the last thing Ukraine expects. Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, our ground forces have carried the burden of the war on their own shoulders. We just need America’s support and the weapons to defend our country against Russia’s unprovoked aggression.

History will remember Putin as an evil narcissist and the biggest kidnapper of children in the world. His army is torturing, raping and killing innocent Ukrainian civilians, kidnapping more than 20,000 Ukrainian children and ripping families apart.

They are persecuting Christians who are not part of the Russian Orthodox Church, including evangelicals and Protestants, and torturing religious leaders.

Global freedom is on the line, and if we don’t act swiftly, history will not look kindly at the West’s hesitation.

Ukraine desperately needs more weapons to defend itself and the world against the Russian empire. As President Ronald Reagan said, freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.”

I fear that if Putin succeeds in this war, Russia and its authoritarian partners in China, Iran and North Korea will be emboldened to strike their own targets.

The reality is these countries are already working together to suppress freedom in their countries and around the world − including in Ukraine. We are doing the best we can to stop Russia’s army from advancing, but we cannot do it alone.

Arming Ukraine with the tools it needs to counter Russian aggression will allow us to continue to stand up for global democratic values and ensure that Putin knows democracies will not go down without a fight. Democracies must win wars.

Our values are in jeopardy. It is up to countries, led by the United States, to help Ukraine protect them by standing firmly against authoritarian forces. Ukraine will never stop fighting to save our country and save freedom − we pray the rest of the world won’t either."

FP: In 2022, the US administration promised to Putin not to let Russia lose

 In an Oct. 9 Foreign Policy article titled What a New Book's Explosive Revelations Tell Us About Biden, Trump, And Putin, by Michael Hirsh, in addition to Trump bashing (surely well deserved), there are intriguing paragraphs about the outgoing president Biden:

"...In the two and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden has often been criticized for temporizing over his response and failing to offer the Ukrainians sufficient defensive weaponry quickly enough. He has hesitated in sending first-generation main battle tanks such as the M1A1 Abrams, long-range precision artillery, and fighter jets such as the F-16—though ultimately he has done so. And in October 2022, after Ukraine had launched its successful Kharkiv counteroffensive, Biden warned Americans of a potential nuclear “Armageddon,” saying it was the first time since the Cuban missile crisis that there had been a “direct threat” of nuclear weapons being deployed...

The degree to which Ukraine has fought off Russia’s advances, causing hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties, is also very worrisome in view of another conversation that Woodward recounts between U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Asked to state the conditions for a Russian use of nuclear weapons, Gerasimov responded that one of them involved “the right to use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of catastrophic battlefield loss.” Milley responded at the time that “none of those conditions are going to obtain.”

But they could before long.

Thus, the world now has a better idea why Biden has acted as he has..."

***

In other words, Putin's army invading Ukraine (whose safety the USA had guaranteed with the Budapest Memorandum), razing cities to the ground, murdering thousands of civilians, is no reason for concern. What is "very worrisome" is "the degree to which Ukraine has fought off Russia’s advances". Ukrainian columnist Olexandr Kirsh comments in the Obozrevatel:

"...Milley then calmly promised that these conditions will not be realized, that it, he effectively guaranteed that US aid to Ukraine will never lead to a situation in which we could talk about a Russian catastrophe. So the United States promised Mordor that Ukraine will never defeat it, and all the record of later US arm supplies testifies that the USA is keeping its word. Indeed, Ukraine is not winning."

This is a horrible betrayal of a democratic ally, and proves that the USA as a defender of the Western civilization does not exist anymore.

Mike Johnson has no "appetite" to fund Ukraine

 From Punchbowl News:

"The world according to Mike Johnson

LANCASTER, Pa. — Two weeks from today, Mike Johnson will have been speaker of the House for one full year. That’s longer than Kevin McCarthy lasted in the role...

The most critical moment of Johnson’s speakership came in April, when he put a bill on the floor to send $61 billion in aid to Ukraine [after withholding the bill for half a year, which inflicted horrible and lasting damage on Ukraine - M. M.]. Conservative hardliners immediately triggered a motion to vacate, which the Louisiana Republican beat back with the help of Democrats.

The war in Ukraine shows no sign of ending. And Johnson told us his support for sending additional money to Kyiv is waning:

 “I don’t have an appetite for further Ukraine funding, and I hope it’s not necessary. If President Trump wins, I believe that he actually can bring that conflict to a close. I really do. I think he’ll call [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and tell him that this is enough. And I think everybody around the world is weary of this, and they want it to be resolved. So whatever the terms are, I’m not sure, but I think if Kamala Harris is president, I don’t think it ends, and that’s a desperate and dangerous scenario.”"

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Americans, please vote Democrat! The Republican Party - Reagan's party - has been taken over by Russian agents! They want to see Europe swallowed by Putin, and America obeying him.