Tag: ukraine

US Is Shifting Strategy on Ukraine

The US and its European allies are quietly shifting their strategy in Ukraine from supporting Kyiv’s unrealistic goal of driving Russian forces out to encouraging a defensive posture with future negotiations in mind, POLITICO reported on Wednesday, citing US and European officials.

The US and its close allies have discouraged peace talks throughout the conflict, including in March and April of 2022, when a peace deal was on the table that would have left Ukraine territorially intact in exchange for the country’s neutrality, something that was recently confirmed by Ukraine’s lead negotiator.

Instead of pushing for peace, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Ukraine to keep fighting, and the US declared one of its war goals was to “weaken” Russia. Now, Moscow has made it clear any future peace deal must recognize the territory it has annexed as Russian, and Russia has the upper hand and time on its side.

The POLITICO report said that US and European officials are discussing deploying Ukrainian forces in a defensive posture instead of continuing the failed counteroffensive. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the US was suggesting Ukraine should dig in to protect the territory it still has.

The shift in strategy comes as both the US and Europe are struggling to come up with more funding for the proxy war. Part of the Biden administration’s long-term strategy is to help build up Ukraine’s own military-industrial complex so the country is not so reliant on foreign aid.

The Biden administration has not publicly outlined its shift in strategy, but there are signs that the US is thinking about winding down the proxy war. A mantra commonly repeated by US and NATO officials was that they would support Ukraine against Russia for “as long as it takes.” But when President Biden met with Ukrainian President VOlodomyr Zelensky earlier this month, he said the US would continue supplying Ukraine with weapons for “as long as we can.”

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Senate Adjourns Until 2024 With No Deal on Ukraine Aid

The Senate adjourned for the holidays on Wednesday without reaching a deal on Ukraine aid and will not return to Washington until January 8.

The Senate was initially due to break for holiday recess at the end of last week but Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had senators return on Monday to try and reach a border deal to unlock a massive $111 billion spending package that includes military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Republicans want significant changes to asylum and immigration laws to restrict the flow of migrants entering the country before approving the foreign military aid package, which includes over $60 billion to fund the Ukraine war for another year. The White House has indicated it’s willing to support new immigration restrictions, but it’s unclear when an agreement will be made.

According to The Hill, a group of Senate and White House negotiators have agreed to hold virtual meetings over Christmas and New Year’s break, but no votes will happen until next year. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) adjourned his chamber last week. Johnson and other Republican leadership have made clear they will support the foreign military aid package once the Democrats make enough concessions on border policy.

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Ukraine Legalizes Medical Marijuana

Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada’ passed a bill Thursday on the legalization of medical marijuana. The bill was approved in a 248-16 votes, reported the Odessa Journal.

The legislation was recently blocked by a single opposition party and hundreds of its “spam amendments.”

In June 2023 Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed his support for legalizing medical marijuana. He said at the time that Ukraine should undertake an effort to create the best mental and physical rehabilitation sector in Europe by building centers and educating personnel.

“In particular, we must finally honestly legalize cannabis-based medicine for everyone who needs it, [with] the relevant scientific research and controlled Ukrainian manufacturing,” Zelensky said.

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SCIENTISTS ANALYZING ANCIENT SCYTHIAN ARTIFACTS HAVE MADE A GRUESOME DISCOVERY

Anthropologists studying a collection of ancient Scythian artifacts retrieved during excavations at sites in Ukraine have made a gruesome discovery, according to newly published research.

The multi-institutional team reports that two samples of the ancient Scythian artifacts in question, consisting of small bits of leather, were determined to be made from human skin. The findings, reported in PLOS ONE, confirm ancient accounts of the practices of Scythian warriors, namely those of the Greek historian Herodotus.

Largely a nomadic group who resided in the region now recognized as the Pontic-Caspian steppe between around 700 BCE and 300 BCE, the Scythians remain somewhat mysterious, despite the accounts left to history by Herodotus of their ferociousness in battle.

In The Persian Wars (book IV), the famed “Father of History” presents us with a grizzly account of the behavior of Scythian warriors regarding their fallen enemies.

“Many make themselves cloaks, like the sheepskins of our peasants,” Herodotus wrote, describing how Scythian warriors “make of the skin, which is stripped off with the nails hanging to it, a covering for their quivers.”

“Some even flay the entire body of their enemy, and, stretching it upon a frame, carry it about with them wherever they ride,” Herodotus explains. “Such are the Scythian customs with respect to scalps and skins.”

In their analysis, researchers Luise Ørsted Brandt, Meaghan Mackie, Marina Daragan, Matthew J. Collins, and Margarita Gleba sought evidence for the claims Herodotus made about the Scythians.

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The Myth That Putin Was Bent on Conquering Ukraine and Creating a Greater Russia

There is a growing body of compelling evidence showing that Russia and Ukraine were involved in serious negotiations to end the war in Ukraine right after it started on 24 February 2022. These talks were facilitated by Turkish President Recep Erdogan and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and featured detailed and candid discussions on the terms of a possible settlement.

By all accounts, these negotiations, which took place in March-April 2022, were making real progress when Britain and the US told Ukrainian President Zelensky to abandon them, which he did.

Coverage of these events has focused on how foolish and irresponsible it was for President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put an end to these negotiations, given all the death and destruction that Ukraine has suffered since then – in a war that Kyiv is likely to lose.

Yet an especially important aspect of this story regarding the causes of the Ukraine war has received little attention. The well-entrenched conventional wisdom in the West is that President Putin invaded Ukraine to conquer that country and make it part of a Greater Russia. Then, he would move on and conquer other countries in eastern Europe. The counter-argument, which enjoys little support in the West, is that Putin was mainly motivated to invade by the threat of Ukraine joining NATO and becoming a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. For him and other Russian elites, Ukraine in NATO was an existential threat.

The negotiations in March-April 2022 make it clear that the conventional wisdom on the war’s causes is wrong, and the counter-argument is right, for two main reasons. First, the talks were directly focused on satisfying Russia’s demand that Ukraine not become part of NATO and instead become a neutral state. Everyone involved in the negotiations understood that Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was Russia’s core concern. Second, if Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would not have agreed to these talks, as their very essence contradicted any possibility of Russia conquering all of Ukraine. One might argue that he participated in these negotiations and talked a lot about neutrality to mask his larger ambitions. There is no evidence, however, to support this line of argument, not to mention that: 1) Russia’s small invasion force was not capable of conquering and occupying all of Ukraine; and 2) it would have made no sense to delay a larger offensive, as it would afford Ukraine time to build up its defenses.

In short, Putin launched a limited attack into Ukraine for the purpose of coercing Zelensky into abandoning Kyiv’s policy of aligning with the West and eventually bringing Ukraine into NATO. Had Britain and the West not intervened to scotch the negotiations, there is good reason to think Putin would have achieved this limited objective and agreed to end the war.

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Zelensky’s Glory and Its Price

Zelensky’s fame and glory in the West are indisputable, and his rise to celebrity status is remarkable. The transition from a comedian who played the piano on stage with his pants down to a politician who was compared by the media to Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and many other famous politicians will earn him a noted place in history.  The big questions are what would this particular place be and at what price for achieving it.

Let us start with the price. As the war in Ukraine drags on every day it brings new numbers of dead and wounded, additional devastation of cities, and villages plus an increasing risk of nuclear WW3.

Presently, the number of Ukrainian victims is estimated at hundreds of thousands, but for some in Washington, this is acceptable. Cynical politicians like Senate Republican Senator Mitch McConnell and many others from both parties openly declare that supporting a proxy war in Ukraine is a very good and cheap investment. Washington’s declared goal is to weaken Russia, and this is achieved by Ukrainian soldiers perishing while Americans are not. At the same time, U.S., Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is threatening members of Congress that he will send “your uncles, cousins, and sons to fight Russia if aid to Ukraine is not approved.”

The Washington Post columnist Lee Hockstader explains that “U.S. aid for Ukraine is a bargain”, although he has to admit that nearly half of Americans now say the United States is spending too much on Ukraine.

To prove his point, Hockstader quotes Brown University researchers who studied the cost of America’s post-9/11 conflicts and found that 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria drained a whopping $8 trillion from U.S. coffers. He adds that President Biden noted that the Afghan war alone cost taxpayers more than $300 million per day for two decades. That’s about triple what the U.S. has spent daily for Ukraine, so our support here seems like an even better deal.

What Biden and Hockstader conveniently forget to mention is the other math in Brown’s report which the number of victims of the U.S. wars in these countries. Here they are:  Over 940,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting. Over 432,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting with 38 million refugees and displaced persons. At least four times as many active duty personnel and war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died of suicide than in combat. The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the U.S. and abroad.

Who cares?  Biden, Blinken, Hockstader, McConnell, etc. certainly don’t. They and many others in the U.S. and EU don’t care that the whole country of Ukraine was engaged by the collective West in a proxy war against Russia with whom for centuries it was bound by close religious, historical, economic, cultural, and family ties. I placed religion first to underscore that those who declare their adherence to Judeo-Christian values have provoked the war between the two Christian nations, not to promote democracy, but rather to use Ukrainians as cannon fodder to preserve the geopolitical advantage of the U.S. by weakening Russia.

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AS U.S.-FUNDED WARS RAGE IN ISRAEL AND UKRAINE, PENTAGON WATCHDOG WARNS OF MILITARY FAILURES

AS CALLS GROW in Congress to condition aid to Israel and halt funding to Ukraine altogether, the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that details widespread failures in the Pentagon’s operations. 

In a semiannual report to Congress, the watchdog found a breakdown in the process to provide care for sexual assault survivors, damaged artillery earmarked for Ukraine, and continued failures to monitor the Defense Department’s single most expensive program, the scandal-ridden F-35 fighter jet. Taken together, the inspector general’s findings paint a picture of a sprawling military-industrial complex that, while providing billions in aid to foreign militaries, has failed to solve long-standing issues that result in extreme levels of taxpayer waste. 

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Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman accused of trying to profit off Ukraine war with defense contracts

Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who made waves as a witness during the first impeachment proceedings of former President Donald Trump, is now being accused of trying to profit off the war in Ukraine by pitching lucrative defense contracts through his private company.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who was one of the sharpest critics of Vindman throughout the impeachment investigation, blasted him as an “opportunist,” and accused him of undertaking continuous efforts to try and personally profit from his attacks against the Trump administration to his reported dealings in Ukraine.

The first impeachment of Trump centered around a July 2019 call in which Trump pressed Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to launch investigations into the Biden family’s actions and business dealings in Ukraine—specifically Hunter Biden’s ventures with Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings. The president’s request came after millions in U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been frozen, which Democrats and some witnesses, including Vindman, cited as a quid pro quo arrangement.

“When conservatives speak the truth, the mainstream media panics and desperately attempts to provide cover for the left. They did this for Alexander Vindman, just like they did for Hunter Biden, Dr. Fauci and teachers unions,” Blackburn said, referencing liberal media outlets’ staunch defense of Vindman throughout his time as a witness during the impeachment investigation.

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NATO Aspirant Sweden Signs Deal To Let US Military Use All Its Bases

Sweden is not even in NATO yet—amid the continuing holdup and objections from Turkey and Hungary—but that didn’t stop the US and Sweden this week from brokering a deal to let American troops have wide use of Swedish military bases for the first time.

The newly inked Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) this week signals Stockholm finally and fully abandoning its its centuries-old policy of neutrality, given the Pentagon has confirmed that US forces can now “operate in Sweden, including the legal status of US military personnel, access to deployment areas (and) prepositioning of military materiel.”

Defense Lloyd Austin and Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson held a signing ceremony on Tuesday, and hailed that the deal will “create better conditions for Sweden to be able to receive support from the United States in the event of a war or crisis.”

At a moment Sweden is still waiting anxiously for its accession into NATO to be announced, the US State Department has said the DCA with Sweden will “apply seamlessly before and after Sweden’s accession to the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).”

All of this is a result of the Russia-Ukraine war, which led both Finland (who is NATO’s newest member) and neighboring Sweden to drop their non-alignment policies. As the AP reviews:

Sweden’s strategically important Baltic Sea island of Gotland sits a little more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the Russian Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.

The United States struck a similar deal with Sweden’s western neighbor, NATO member Norway, in 2021 and is currently negotiating such an agreement with NATO members Finland and Denmark, two other Nordic countries.

From the start of the war in Ukraine, the Swedish prime minister’s office has cited Russian aggression as making necessary a greater and broader readiness posture in case of a state of emergency, or even potential attack on the nation.

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Biden: If Ukraine Aid Is Not Passed, U.S. Troops Will Be Deployed to Fight Russia

President Joe Biden echoed the warnings of his defense secretary in an address to the public this week, saying if Congress does not pass $64 billion in aid to Ukraine, U.S. troops will end up fighting Russia in Europe.

“This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that,” Biden began.

He then accused skeptical Republicans in Congress of being “willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership not just to Ukraine, but beyond that.”

He argued that Putin has committed atrocities against Ukrainian civilians and that Russian forces are committing war crimes.

“It’s as simple as that. It’s stunning. Who is prepared to walk away from holding Putin accountable for this behavior? Who among us is really prepared to do that?”

He then argued that if Putin succeeds in taking Ukraine, “he’s going to keep going.”

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