The Fourteen Facts about US Aid to Ukraine

Hudson Institute ^ | 11/3/2024 | Luke Coffey

[C210N]

The Fourteen Facts about US Aid to Ukraine

15. It's Bottomless.

16. Aid Money grows on trees. Yep, the trees next to the Federal Reserve building in Washington.

[JonPreston]

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years.

Now recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.

‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’ Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight

TIME
10/30/23
Simon Shuster

[jimwatx]

Wow they actually removed my comment. Guess it’s getting time to leave here Same as I did when you idiots were pushing for the Iraq war. I guess this is a forum for stupid people only.

[JonPreston]

why did you have comment #2 pulled?

[marcusmaximus]

Read the article with an open mind.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

The Muskovite agents of influence on FR are gonna go crazy with this posting. Rationality has no place in their weltanschauung.

[JonPreston]

the Zeepers are getting testy as Ukraine collapses.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

When all you have to offer is insults, that’s what happens.

[marcusmaximus]

Simon Shuster is a Russian and has a pro-Putin bias since 2014.

[JonPreston]

Neocon blather, and too late to make a difference.

Russia won, Zelensky is a thief and NATO is nearing collapse.

[kiryandil]

why did you have comment #2 pulled?

Too much truthiness.  

[Chad C. Mulligan]

“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers.” -Socrates-

[jimwatx]

I read everything with an open mind. You ought to try that sometime.

[marcusmaximus]

Read the article with an open mind. Particularly the facts about Iran, Hamas and North Korea.

[JonPreston]

Putin is demanding total surrender

[kiryandil]

Welcome to Free Republic, CHAD.

[ransomnote]

Twitter link to post #1

#1 @DavidSacks talks about Donald Trump's criticism of Victoria Nuland's involvement in the ousting of Ukraine's democratically elected government in 2014:

 

"Nuland is the Fauci of this situation. In the same way that Fauci was supposed to be protecting us from viruses, and then he funded gain of function research, Victoria Nuland was supposed to be our chief diplomat with respect to Russia and Eastern Europe. And what did she do instead?

 

She ginned up this conflict by backing an insurrection in Ukraine in 2014... They brought in these Ukrainian far-right nationalists as the muscle. She was the State Department official who was responsible for backing this insurrection of a democratically elected leader in 2014...

 

Ever since then, the relationship with the Russians over Ukraine has been heading south. If you are wondering why Putin seized Crimea, it was in direct retaliation for the coup that we backed in 2014. This is the origin of the conflict, and the fact that Trump is willing to talk about it is pretty incredible."

 

ransomnote: video at link is 2 minutes, 34 seconds in length.

 

 

 

Twitter link to post #2

 

#2 @DavidSacks discusses how the U.S. has been unwilling to pursue diplomatic efforts to end the war and how BRICS nations and the southern hemisphere want the U.S. to engage in peace negotiations:

 

"Before the war, Biden refused to take NATO expansion off the table. He refused to recognize the Russian interest in Crimea, and we gave no support to the Minsk Agreements, which would have given some limited autonomy to the Russian speakers in the Donbas area. If we had just done those three things, there would have been no war."

 

"It's a lose-lose situation now... Biden has invested his whole presidency in this, and he can't just let them lose, which means more escalation from us. And on the Russian side, if they lose, then they have the incentive to use nuclear weapons to rescue the situation. So both scenarios are really bad."

 

"We actually don't have the whole world with us at all; the BRICS countries, the whole southern hemisphere, they would like the U.S. to negotiate a peace deal, not saber-rattling or escalating. This is why the Russian sanctions have not been effective, like a 3% to 4% hit, because there are enough other countries that are willing to do business with them."

 

ransomnote: video at link is 2 minutes, 6 seconds in length

Twitter link to post #3

 

#3 @DavidSacks discusses how the Biden administration's Ukrainian policies are driving Russia, China, and India toward forming a new axis bloc:

 

"We are pushing China and Russia together into a new axis block. This is very foolish. Even during the Cold War, we worked to keep Russia and China apart. And, whatever you think of those regimes today, they were much worse back then.

 

Remember, the Soviets had a Stalinist regime, and the Chinese had Mao; those are two of the three biggest mass murders of the 20th century, and Nixon and Kissinger still went to China and shook Mao's hand and toasted him because it was important to keep China and the Soviet Union divided.

 

And what are we doing today? We are basically pushing them together with all this condemnation and outrage. It is not a smart strategy.

 

This is poisoning our relationship with India. India is the biggest democracy in the world, and our relations with them have gone south since this war because they have a friendship with Russia that goes back a long way."

 

ransomnote: video at link is 1 minute, 41 seconds in length

 

Twitter link to post #4

 

 

#4@Jason and @chamath  believe the War in Ukraine might not have happened if Donald Trump were still the President:

 

"I think he is exceptionally pragmatic on being anti-war, and I think that is one of the most positive characteristics that he showed. He was really the only president in modern history that hasn't gotten us embroiled in a new war.

 

So I suspect that there would have been some kind of deal... He would have fired all the deep-state blob that started to position anything toward a conflict.

 

I think he would have shut the door so ferociously on Ukraine and NATO and I think the end result would have been Putin could have found an off-ramp before he invaded."

 

ransomnote: the video at the link is 1 minute, 42 seconds in length

Twitter link for post #5

 

#5 @Jason and @DavidSacks advocate for the Biden administration to prioritize de-escalation and diplomacy over escalation and saber-rattling:

 

"That's the thing I didn't like about Biden's speech over there. He's escalating, escalating, escalating... You don't need to have Biden go in their saber-rattling; it was too much saber-rattling and not enough de-escalation.

 

Nobody wants to fight a never-ending war. This is what got Bush in trouble. This was the big critique; we are spending all of this money over in the Middle East on these conflicts."

 

"The American people want an American president to focus on American problems... You had Kamala Harris this week go to the Munich summit declaring the Russians are guilty of crimes against humanity...

 

When you accuse them of war crimes, it implies we are going to go chasing them all the way to Moscow. They are not going to want to end this war when they can be put on trial at The Hague. This is highly inflammatory. This thing is not going in the right direction."

 

ransomnote: video at link is 2 minutes, 15 seconds in length

 

 

[JonPreston]

They’re getting edgy, k