Peloni: Williams provides a particularly rational overview of the US negotiations with Russia, and why Ukraine and its supporters might have significant reason to be concerned. Ukraine can not win this war, and they can’t even fight it without the US support, which Trump is offsetting to Europe, which has likewise no means by which to back up their empty words which have always been characterized to fight to the last Ukrainian. I recommend focusing on the first 25min.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/ukraine-is-making-weapons-faster-and-cheaper-than-anywhere-else-in-europe-and-that-s-a-problem-danish-pm-warns/ar-AA1z9zC6?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=HCTS&cvid=a368f11a0e4c4cf893666a96fecfa4cf&ei=26
Amazingly Denmark and some other European nations are expressing concern about competition from Ukrainian arms manufacturers. The Danish government complains that Ukrainian arms manufacturers are undercutting Danish arms manufacturers with more cheaply produced drones, which they, the Ukrainians, are allegedly flooding the Danish arms market. Weird! The Ukrainian president Zelensky says that 30 per cent of it weaponry are now domestically produced in Ukraine. Consisting Mainly drones, which Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials claim that Ukrainian inventors have developed designs for highly effective drones that only Ukrainian know how produce. I don’t know if this is true or not. But some government officials in countries to the West of Ukraine, such as Denmark, believe the Ukrainians.
IN recent posts, the Dennis Davydov and other pro-Ukrainian sites have become almost euphoric in their claims of recent Ukrainian successes in their “air war” against Russia. The Ukrainians claim they have destroyed many Russian oil and gas storage facilities, destroyed at least one Russian oil refinery where petroleum products such as deisel fuel are produced from the war effort, and have destroyed or damaged several facilities where Russia stores armaments needed for their war effort, including tanks and aircraft. They claim to have put out of action several Russian military airfields, The Ukrainians also claim to have slowed down Russia’s offensives in both the Donbass and Kursk regions, although they admit that they haven’t been able to completely halt them. They do claim that the Ukrainians still hold the city of Prokrovsk (did I spell in right?), even though only a few weeks ago they had admitted that it was almost inevitable that Russia would capture the city. But now they claim that Ukrainian forces are still firmly entrenched there.
According to British diplomats and journalists who are currently working in Russia, or have only recently returned from assignments there, the Putin administration has fired thousands of officials over the past year for corruption. One figure these British “observers” sometimes give is “50,000” dismissed officials, civil servants, and even military officers” dismissed for corruption.” Others say that this figure is a mistranslation of a Russian word, and the actual figure provided by Russian officials to British “sources” is more like5,000 dismissed officials.
Perhaps even stronger evidence that corruption of government employees, mainly civil servants, are film clips of President Putin saying publicly to the Russian people that pervasive corruption has become a serious problem in Russia, and asking the entire Russian people to report instances in which government employees have demanded bribes from them to perform services that they are obligated by law to provide to citizens without charge. These film clips show Putin promising such “informants” will be shielded from retaliation by these corrupt officials if they help him in his anti-corruption drive.
2Michael S @ Peloni.
In some ways, Israel is as much an American “vassal” as Ukraine, as both countries are heavily dependent on U.S. arms deliveries to survive. For many years, members of the Israeli ruling class have claimed, both publicly and privately, that Israel must always do what the United States wants, and must never do or even say anything that the U.S. disapproves of, for fear that the U.S. might cut off or “slow walk” arms deliveries. That certainly sounds like “vassal” status to me. It is also one of the reasons that some Arab states who are not especially enamored of the Ruaaia-Iran-N.Korea axis are still unwilling to “normalize” ties with Israel, at least in public. These Arab leaders assume that anything they say to Israel will be passed on immediately to the United States, Israel’s “protecter” and benefecter>” So why not shortcut Israel and deal directly with the ‘Great Satan” itself?
Adam,
I expect this topic to scroll off very soon. Before saying good-bye, here is the complement to my last (Munich Conference) link:
https://rumble.com/v6l6rcj-this-is-going-to-get-constitutional-quickly.-bannon-on-president-trumps-the.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
What we saw in Munich, was Lindsey Graham, Mark Rutte, Volodomir Zelenskyy and the EU countries scrambling to create a European Armed Forces, quickly, to supply the expected deficit if and when the US exits the graft-laden Ukrainian enterprise. Donald Trump and his associates have told them they will need to incrtease their defense spending to 5% in order to do this. The Europeans, meanwhile, are trying to shake the cobwebs out of their heads enough to plan a buildup to only 3.5%, from the current <2%. It is a hopeless situation for them, and they are only now belatedly beginning to realize it.
Even more shocking than the unravelling financial situation, is the social and moral bankruptcy of the continent that VP Vance generously pointed out to them. So far, these leaders seem to be in denial of Donald Trump, not to mention his VP.
Concerning The Russians and Iranians, Pres. Trump appears to be cutting US losses in both places. Russia IS a parallel situation to Iran, and Israel IS a parallel situation to the Ukraine. We can expect that Israel will have to stand pretty much alone against Iran, just as Ukraine and Europe will have to face Russia by themselves. The free-spending days are over.
Adam,
It just occurred to me, that the main impediment to Ukraine joining NATO and other problems concerning that country, has been the rampant stream of corruption at the highest levels on both sides of the Atlantic. THIS PROBLEM IS NOW BEING ADDRESSED, thanks to the efforts of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
I just spent some time perusing the web, to see where everyone stands on these matters. The following is worth noting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g5kcEyzyAk
It is, I believe, the Munich Security Conference; and a very large number of interested paarties are present. Many questions and clarifications of recent statements by Hegseth, Vance, Zelenskyy, etc. are also addressed.
In an interview with Gretta Van Susteren of Newsmax a few days ago, Zelensky claims that he is in the process of developing a good relationship with President Trump, and that U.S.- Ukraine negotiations are going well. He claims that the U.S. and Ukraine have reached agreement on the broad outlines of a future peace settlement. The Ukraine will guarantee that U.S. corporations will have complete access to Ukraine’s mineral and other resources following a peace agreement, in return for ‘meaningful” U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine. Possibly a treaty of alliance between the U.S. and Ukraine. More later.
As evidence of his improving relationship with Trump, Zelensky mentioned that Trump had given him his private cell phone number, and suggested that Zelensky call him “at any time” that a serious issue involving Ukraine “came up.”
Peloni,
I haven’t been ignoring anything; but you have certainly ignored me. To your exact point, I said,
I couldn’t possibly have been more specific. Stop your lies and deflections, and trying to pick a fight with me.
@Michael
None of what you state here, notwithstanding any clarifications on any of it, disputes the fact that your contention, and that made by other Ukrainian advocates, is in any way similar to the conflict in Gaza. They are not similar, which was why I described your comment that they were as being nonsensical, which you seem to ignore as you try to pivot towards a description of Ukrainian talking points.
Peloni
Quite obviously, I do not consider what I say as “nonesense”, or else I would not have said it. I think this latest analysis on Deutsche Welle pretty accurately describes the situation:
Ukraine is not moving anywhere very fast. As for Russia, it has had some severe reversals in the past weeks, and could suddenly go sharply downhill, very fast. Its main loss recently, of course, has been its absolute shattering in Syria, in which it has lost its only practical warm-water base in the Mediterranean.
As for Russia’s allies, Iran has been thoroughly bloodied by the Israelis. North Korea has suffered tremendous casualties in the Kursk region; and we have yet to see what the long-term domestic effects of this will be. Belarus has not jumped in with both feet to help Putin, Vladimir’s oligarch friends continue to have a tenuous relationship with the President, and Ukraine has been conducting a highly successful drone campaign against deep Russian infrastructure.
The only tools, in fact, that the Kremlin continues to wield are absolute terror (bombing civilian centers and overtly threatening the Chernobyl reactor) and Donald Trump’s desire to make a deal with them.
As a side note, until Putin starts making some genuinely positive moves, I see the main result of the recent overtures from the US as a possible awakening of Western Europe to its responsibilities, if it wants to maintain a place of importance in the world. As far as the US is concerned, Poland has become the new “center of gravity” of European defense; and Denmark has even acknowledged that it cannot effectively defend Greenland. Germany also has been put on notice, that Russia can no longer be its nursing mother for petrol, and that it must look westward to supply its needs.
@Michael
Nonsense. If this were even remotely true, why would they be paying Iran billions of dollars, and pressuring Israel to capitulate to Iran. This isn’t throwing a US ally under the bus, it was allying with a US enemy, one which is entirely focused on the destruction of the entire West, including the US.
And whereas Israel is a US ally, Ukraine is an American vassal, completely and utterly under the control of the US, as they can’t even pay their own state employees without receiving the check from the US, nor their army’s salaries, much less pay for the bullets, shells or weaponry coming to them from around the world.
These are different conflicts which supporters of Ukraine like to conflate as being identical, related or similar, when in fact they are not.
Peloni & John Galt,
The unfortunate similarity between the Israeli and Ukraine conflicts, is that the US is enmeshed in both, against the same coalition of Evil (Russia, Iran, N. Korea, etc.); and in both conflicts our govenment has come close to throwing our allies under the bus.
@Michael
Thank you for making this point.
@John Galt IV
Not even remotely true.
In fact, US manipulation of Ukraine against Russia is quite relevant to the US manipulation of the Pals against Israel. Whereas, the US has been trying to regime change Russia and Israel both, they have been trying to preserve both the Monist regime in Ukraine and the Hamas regime in Russia. Furthermore, Ukraine and Russia are each actual states, even as Ukraine and the Russian Federation can only date their statehood and current political arrangement, respectively, back to the fall of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Israel is a state and Hamastan is a terrorist enclave. Notably, both Russia and Ukraine are recognized by any nation as being actual nations, but Hamas is not. Ukraine and Russia have conflicting political situations, and war crimes have been committed, arguably on both sides of the line of confliction, but not only has Hamas alone committed war crimes, but their entire mission statement as described in their own charter is predicated on the annihilation of the Jewish entity. Having regime changed Ukraine a decade ago, the US was intent on regime changing both Putin and Bibi, at the same time in fact, even as there was no such effort to regime change effort ever attempted for either Zel or Sinware. Russia declared its intent to invade Ukraine if the US did not comply with or negotiate a settlement in preference to the Minsk Accords, while Hamas conducted an unannounced, unprovoked attack on Israel. Russia’s armies invaded Ukraine and targeted Ukraine’s army and infrastructure as the first assault of the war, but Hamas isolated communities, burning and raping twenty three Kibutzim, with no pretense of any civilized war goals outside of their real war goals where were to subjugate, murder and enslave their Jewish neighbors, who were in fact their greatest advocates.
I could of course go on, but the distinctions which separate these two conflicts are not remotely similar even as you describe them to be “100% identical”.
This also is not true. Recall that Ukraine was a bipartisan issue in the US. Recall Regime Change McCain and Any War Graham celebrated the coming Maidan coup, even before it took place, and that the US manipulation of Ukraine’s assets was also accomplished on a bipartisan basis, as Romney’s son was similarly situated on the board of an energy company as was Hunter Biden, and so was Romney’s close confident, Cofer Black. Ukraine was the business as usual grift which kept both sides of the US political system deep in cash and deep in corruption, not just the Dems.
The billions supporting Iran came from long before Obama and Biden – recall the Iran Contra Affair – and even under Trump, billions were spent on stabilizing Hezbollah inside Lebanon, something which the current ‘deal’ also call to do.
Hi, John
No kidding! And the Bushocrats and RINOs as well — just one big cesspool of corruption, as we are finding out.
This is all the past; and the best we can do about it now, is (1) try to exact some sort of justice against the worst evildoers and (2) hope to build something better. Dare I say also, that (0) we all need to turn our hearts back to the Living God, or we will accomplish nothing (Pss. 127:1).
With God’s help, we will find a solution to the Ukraine mess — in which ALL the chief actors seem to be bad actors.
https://www.facebook.com/HymnsofPraise1/videos/psalm-127/315932893748885/?locale=ms_MY
https://www.zemirotdatabase.org/view_song.php?id=986
Im HaShem lo yivneh vayis
shav amlu vonav bo
Im HaShem lo yishmar ir
shav shakad shomer
Hineh lo yanum
ve lo yishan
Shomer Yisra’el
Ukraine and Israel are 100% identical wars.
The Democrats started the crap in Ukraine by interfering on a massive scale and then laundering money from Ukraine back to Biden and friends, and no Putin is a jerk but why encourage him which the Democrats did.
Biden and Obama sent $billions to Iran this allowing Iran to fund and train Hamas, Hezbollah and The Houthis. Guess what: October 7th
From 1/20/2017 to 1/20/2021 Trump had peace happening and then the Democrats destroyed it all and got rich.
Hi, Peloni. You said,
I’m not surprized that you think this; but it seems to accurately describe the view of matters by Ukraine’s European allies. Nevertheless, no matter what President Trump’s understanding and attitude are, the Ukraine War is not likely to be solved by Major Power talks that exclude Zelenskyy. cf.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGneLVJ5LFA
Note also, from the above link, that Putin’s first response to the US peace initiative has been to bomb the Chernobyl nuclear plant, endangering all of Europe. This is a mocking gesture on the part of the Russian dictator, not a harbinger of peace.
Much more accomplished historian than I assert quite definitely that the Holocaust began in the Ukraine in 1918 to 1921 in those awful pogroms.
Most Jews do not acknowledge that and that Jews today, especially Israeli Jews, need to thoroughly deal with THE ROLE OF ZELENSKY
The Ukrainian Nazis have been a thorn in the side of democracy for well over a hundred years. They mixed hatred of Leninist and Trotskyist Communist revolution of 1917 with hatred of the Jew, and created the Holocaust baiting of the Jews in the Holocaust
Lenin and Trotsky rooted in the Marxist fight for progress were the very first to expose, challenge and defeat the Ukrainian Antisemitism in the 1918 to 1921 Pogroms of Jews. They murdered 300,000 Jews in those years alone.
They had another arena for their hatred of Jews in the Holocaust.
Their racism and Jew hatred remained forever deep in their hearts but having done their evil in the Holocaust they returned to their first hatred socialist Russia to court favour with the CIA which made them a target for CIA recruitment as world war 2 ended
So the long thread of history is interwoven with this evil in a vicious way.
Trump and Vance need to wipe this evil off the face of the earth forever by joining totally with Putin and Russia. This war was unwanted by Putin who in 1922 and not till then had to act to stop Russian Speakers being massacred.
@wpapke
The notion that the Ukrainian war began after Russia invaded is, I would argue, a limited perspective which denies the greater history of the US manipulating Ukrainian politics, which began before the first US color revolution in Ukraine, which was in 2004, and in which USAID played a critical role, one which was voiced over and over again by US politicos over the years.
Is this why the US backed a coup in Ukraine in 2014? Is this why the US put $5 billion into Ukraine before that coup, and many billions after that coup while the US imposed govt slaughtered innocent Ukrainians, and the subsequent Ukrainian govts were chosen with millions of ethnic Russian Ukrainians being prohibited from voting in those elections?
The war which began in February 2022 was the outcome of the US manipulation of a Russian client state and the threat to include that client state into NATO, this latter part being clearly stated by Trump in his recent interviews. Or so I would argue.
The war is being fought because Putin chose to invade a sovereign nation..
@ Peloni The war is being fought because Putin chose to invade a sovereign nation.
@Michael
This is an absurd comparison.
This war was fought over nothing. It was the outcome of the US warparty leveraging its will over an eastern European nation which borders Russia, not because of any connection between the US and that province, but because that province bordered Russia. Trump ending this useless cycle of violence which was always crafted to simply bleed Russia and kill Slavs disgusts me to no end, and to see it finally, hopefully, coming to an end will be happy news indeed, a view which I have never been coy about expressing.
For those opposed to this outcome, those who foolishly describe this as similar to Molotov-Roosevelt accords, as you have, simply demonstrates that history will continue to be abused to feed untenable perceptions, such as the notion that the Monist Ukrainians were in fact an innocent party in all of this or that the vicious abuse of their ethnic Russia Ukrainians, would not or should not have had a serious and permanent consequence.
This is why it was wise for Israel, against great pressure to the contrary, to remain out of this conflict which was in fact a Great Powers war.
President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Modi discussed the Ukrainian War:
https://rumble.com/v6kjzcj-maga-miga-president-trump-holds-joint-white-house-press-conference-with-pri.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
Peloni,
The following pretty much represents the European response to the latest “Molotov-Roosevelt” accords:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpFDte9Cf0g
In plain English, Donald Trump has thrown Ukraine and Europe under the bus. You seem cheered at this news, which doesn’t surprize me. All I can answer to this, is, “Ukraine today is Israel tomorrow”.