Russian atrocities was discovered in Bucha. How do you make a deal with barbarians? Idiocy
Today is the 2nd anniversary of the Ukrainian troops retaking Bucha and discovering the Bucha Massacre.
Posted on 03/31/2024 11:04:08 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
“Sadly, a few Freepers here dislike President Zelensky”
I dislike Putin as well. I’m tired of paying for other countries wars, even more so when it’s deficit spending.
34.6 trillion and counting. England, France, Spain, Germany......... you know where this is going.
The murdering little Quisling is responsible for the couple hundred thousand additional, uneccessary Uke deaths lost since he turned his back on the deal his representatives had negotiated with the Russians in April of ‘22. Why? Fatter offshore accounts for him and his fellow DC and Uke oligarchs.
It’s those magic red shoes Zelenskyy wears! Just when you thought it was ovah!
So sick of bs
Vladimir Putin wants to destroy Nato, says US commander in Europe Ben Hodges
Russian atrocities was discovered in Bucha. How do you make a deal with barbarians? Idiocy
Today is the 2nd anniversary of the Ukrainian troops retaking Bucha and discovering the Bucha Massacre.
...endorsed Joe Biden in the last election.
"He endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in an op-ed with Ambassador Robert A. Mandell and Lieutenant General Donald M. Campbell Jr." In Wiki article: "Ben Hodges."Source: Ben Hodges
"Two retired generals, retired ambassador, all with Florida ties: Trump is unfit to lead," by Donald M. Campbell, F. Ben Hodges and Robert A. Mandell, Tallahassee Democrat, 29 October 2020.
Source: Hodges endorses Biden over Trump -- who was "unfit to lead."
LOL, nice flashback. I see that one of the Operatives was claiming that Putin knows that NATO would “clean his clock”, yet given that NATO is all but openly in Ukraine, and NATO’s ‘game changing wonder weapons’ have been effectively neutralized. I’d say he got this one wrong, by a mile!
No point-by-point? Just a blanket ad hominem. Well, then, so are you. Nahnahnahnahnah.
The Russians were bayoneting babies too, right? Drinking Ukrainian blood, right?
In concept, Hodges is correct. Yet, as Clausewitz pointed out, “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.”
Thank you for a substantive answer. There’s hope for this forum.
Exactly, the Ukies taking control? With what? Vlad sunk their entire Navy on day one.
Lt. General Ben Hodges is a delusional idiot.
———-
He is a very rich delusional idiot- paid by the Ukies with our tax money to spout their narrative.
Vlad stole their navy in 2014. Volod has been busily sinking their navy with amphibious drones since 24/2/22. Haven’t you been paying attention? One ship after the other, crippled or sent down to Davy Jones. Repeated attacks on the Kersk Bridge has made it unusable. But the “Ukies” don’t need no steenking ships. Crimea is contiguous with the rest of Ukraine, and in fact can’t get any fresh water except through Ukraine, which is why Kruschev declared it part of the Ukraine Republic. So they can just walk into Crimea.
See #34.
When will the Ukrainians start tossing the diseased bodies of their dead over the city walls?
Ukraine ping
JonPreston: [Lt. General Ben Hodges has been wrong about everything for the past two years. I wonder what his Zeeper name is?]
Ukraine has taken tiny sums of of EU and US aid - about twice the US aid to Afghanistan - and somehow held off the second strongest conventional military in the world. In Vietnam, North Vietnam received 500 MiGs, 2000 tanks and 120 SAM systems from Russia, yet couldn’t prevent the US from taking or holding any piece of real estate it wanted for as long as GIs were there. Whereas Ukraine hasn’t received a single US jet fighter and only 2 Patriot systems and two dozen tanks, and is somehow keeping the Russian hordes at bay.
Just how measly is the Ukrainian supply effort? In WW2, the US sent almost 5,000 of a single model of fighter to Russia - a brand new design first put into production in 1941. This plane became a major component of the Russian war effort.
Airacobras served with the Soviet Air Forces as late as 1949, when two regiments were operating as part of the 16th Guards Fighter Aviation Division in the Belomorsky Military District.[64]]
Facts! You dare confuse the Putinistas with facts?! For shame. Their heads might explode and ruin dinner.
Ben Hodges - The Siege of Crimea has Begun as Ukraine Takes Control over the Black Sea and Coastline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34SP5GvCNdk
Jonathan for Silicon Curtain
Mar 30, 2024 At First Hand - Experiences of the War
Strikes on Russian oil refineries have a significant impact on Russia’s ability to conduct warfare. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, Commander of U.S. Forces Europe in 2014-17, stated this during the 16th annual Kyiv Security Forum. “Of course, attacks on oil refineries have a significant impact. Russia is less able to pay for this war, and it also deprives it of the necessary fuel to continue hostilities. I would recommend ignoring the calls for an end to such attacks.”
The Lieutenant General emphasized that sanctions against Russia need to be strengthened. He also added that 2024 will be the year of industrial competition. “Ukraine and the West should win this competition. I am talking about of course building up ammunition supplies, but also moving forward maintenance capabilities so that the Ukrainian soldiers can fix forward equipment that is broken or damaged on site, as well as increasing their ammunition stocks.”
According to Hodges, Ukraine should put pressure on Russian logistics, particularly in Crimea, to make the peninsula unusable for Russian troops. “I would not expect a dramatic drop in Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. The job of (new Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine) Syrskyi will be to stabilize the situation on the front line, but industrial competition will play a role here, while the Ukrainian army needs new units to ensure rotation”.
Ben Hodges is a retired United States Army officer, who became commander of United States Army Europe in November 2014, and held that position for three years until retiring from the United States Army in January 2018. He was most recently a Senior Advisor to Human Rights First, until summer 2023, and serves as NATO Senior Mentor for Logistics. Until recently was the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies, at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, specializing in NATO, the Transatlantic relationship and international security.
We were wrong about his invasion of Georgia. We were wrong about his invasion of Crimea. And a lot of people were wrong about his full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. My question here is, what are we still getting wrong? What rabbits can he pull out of the hat that may unfit us or surprise us?
Well, what we’re still getting wrong is that we are not accepting the fact that Russia is at war with us. There are still too many good people that believe somehow, that Russia is a responsible nation, that they we just really need to stop provoking them and that we need to negotiate. And this will all be worked out. And this is such, in my view, a naive way to look at Vladimir Putin.
But not just him. It’s also the whole Russian apparatus. He demonstrated that he gives not a toss for international law or what other countries think about him. He only wants us all to fear him.
He killed Navalny during the Munich security conference to make sure that even though Russia was not there, they were still part of the conversation. And then, of course, he holds an election that nobody on the planet accepts as a legitimate outcome.
And of course, he is threatening the use of nuclear weapons all the time, threatening to strike bases in NATO countries from which F-16s might fly into Ukraine. So we need to think and act strategically and accept that Russia is at war with us and that we should be thinking about how we deal with that.
Now, being at war doesn’t mean shooting, I think in the West, we tend to think of you’re at war or not at war, meaning only kinetic, whereas the Russians use everything from threats to economic to disinformation to kinetic and everything in between, depending on the circumstances. We’ve got to get on that same kind of a mindset.
The scale of brutality and the actions he’s prepared to take seem to wrong foot us. Or, unfortunately, we seem to sort of normalize many of these barbaric actions and sort of move on with relatively little coverage.
I mean, the combined economies of the EU, let alone the US, UK and Canada, the combined economies of the EU dwarf whatever Russia has. But somehow we’ve talked ourselves into the fact that, oh my God, Russia is on a war footing. 40% of their economy is on a war footing. That’s 40% of Spain’s economy. I mean, that’s what we’re talking about. And so we have with all respect to our Spanish friends.
But you understand what I’m what I mean, and I like what you brought up about this ecocide. There are lots of ships carrying oil from Russia through the Danish, across the Baltic Sea, through the Danish Straits, and then on out into markets. And this not only generates income for Russia’s war machine.
The oligarchs who are making money off of all of this. But it also is a huge environmental risk for Denmark.
And so if we were truly serious, if we were thinking strategically and about competing against Russia in all domains, all of the countries of the EU would be putting their arms around Denmark saying, go ahead, we’ll support you when you invoke your right to stop these ships because of the risk of an environmental disaster that they pose, especially since they refuse to bring on board a pilot to get you through the straits.
So this is an area where not only can we inflict some pain on Russia, but it also would create a problem for them instead of us always responding to what they do and say.
It’s a gray fleet which doesn’t conform to international codes in any way whatsoever. Do you think this is a ticking time bomb? And actually, should we be killing two birds with one stone by effectively strangling Russia’s ability to make money off of that, while also enforcing international norms and protecting the environment?
They thumb their nose at environmental regulations and agreements. And clearly, it’s extremely dangerous what they’re doing, having ships that are known to be either, I won’t say unseaworthy, but that they are not. Nobody should have confidence. There’s a reason most of them are not actually properly insured.
The fact that they will not take on a pilot, a Danish pilot, to get through the Straits is again, it shows a total lack of respect for international norms and agreements. And as long as we don’t do anything about it, the Russians are going to keep doing whatever they want.
Article 5 is an incredible success. And Russia has not invaded any countries that are covered by that. The threat is to Moldova and others that come outside of the Article 5 sort of agreement.
Having said that, there are rumors of Russian troops being amassed next to the Suwalki Gap, and there are speech just last week which Lukashenko was in conversation with his generals, clearly talking about sort of provocations and military action are around the Baltics.
Have we lulled ourselves into thinking that, mutually assured destruction Article 5 we’re okay, actually, because we’re covered by these. And could this be one area where Putin springs yet another surprise?
So nobody should be surprised, although I predict we will be surprised because there are still too many people that have their head in the sand and don’t want to have to address the reality. Because if you if you acknowledge the threat, then you’re obligated to do something about it.
And as you know, right there in UK the government’s having a hard time coming up with a budget that provides the security that UK needs versus what it can afford. I don’t know that there are Russian troops massing near the Suwalki Corridor. But certainly this is the place.
In my view, it would be one of the most likely places where they might attempt to do something, and then to create this so-called escalate to de-escalate situation where they seize a part of Lithuania, for example, and then turn to us and say, do you really want to get into a nuclear war over a little bit of Lithuania?
And by the way, it’s our right to connect, you know, to Kaliningrad and blah, blah, blah. I think that what Lukashenko is doing, of course, this is part of the theatre.
I mean his army could not defeat his police force. I mean, it really is there’s a reason they haven’t been involved in the fight on on the side of the Russians against Ukraine, because he knows they would all be destroyed, in the early days.
I think this is a little bit of theater for him, perhaps it’s the audience he intends to reach. Is Russia there to show that, hey, I’m still on board, but keep some distance? Or maybe it’s intended for a domestic audience? I can’t tell, but I seriously doubt that his forces are much of a threat to anybody.
Nonetheless, that geography is what it is. And so Lithuania, Poland, Germany and the US in particular, which have the closest NATO enhanced forward presence battlegroups, you know, you have to practice, you have to exercise, you have to be ready. And Germany agreeing to have a full armored brigade combat team there in Lithuania within a couple more years. That’s a big deal.
I think they’re going to deliver on that.
What else are we going to see here? And you know, how has Ukraine been able to develop these extraordinary capabilities?
I think this also points to the lack of readiness and capability of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. I mean, they were no better than the Russian army in the early days of this conflict. And they’ve really been exposed now to the point that they are almost a non-factor. It certainly seems that way. And the Ukrainians also have cleverly gone after the LSTs, the landing ships tank, which are the larger vessels that could also be used to move logistics across Azov Sea, for example, if the Kerch Bridge is destroyed or unusable.
So smart targeting by the Ukrainians going after the logistics, just like going after the dry dock in Sevastopol. I mean, I’m not a Navy guy, but even I know that if you don’t have your dry dock, you can’t do significant maintenance. And so they’re having to shift further east. I think much of what has happened in the Black Sea will be applicable in the Baltic Sea as well.
I don’t see the US Navy or the Royal Navy, for example, sending capital ships up into the Baltic Sea. But there’s not a need to do that. If you’ve got maritime unmanned systems out there doing things.
I think the Ukrainians have found a way since the land operations are probably going to remain relatively stabilized for the next many months. This is one of the ways they’re able to keep pressure on Russia.
Is it possible to say at this point that the siege of Crimea has begun, and we could well see further attacks on not just logistics bringing supplies via the Crimean peninsula, but the final destruction of the bridge. In fact, it’s been admitted in Russia. They’re no longer actually sending military supplies across the bridge because of past attacks and because of the likelihood of future ones.
You know, this is an enormous structure. This bridge is an enormous structure. And so it’s going to take more than a couple of Storm Shadows or Taurus’ to drop it. I think it’s going to take a lot of well placed, explosives delivered by some means and probably a lot.
And of course, it’ll be part of a larger operation involving deception and misdirection, and I think Ukrainians who have demonstrated a level of cleverness and savvy. That’s as good as any in the world over the last couple of years.
So I’m pretty sure that they’ve got a plan in the works on how they’re going to do this, and when the time is right, and they are confident that they can do it. But doing things like what you described knocking out reducing the ability of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to protect the bridge is part of it, going after air defenses in the area as part of it, and partisan networks, this is all part of it.
And of course, the Russians realize the vulnerability. That’s why they improved or developed this railroad that runs through Donbass. That can still bring some logistics to Russian troops in the southern, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. But of course, the railroad there is also going to be vulnerable.
We discussed escalation management way back a year and a half in that first interview, you also very clearly made the point that retaking Crimea was pivotal to achieving a victory over Putin. In recent events that I’ve been part of in, in Berlin, Paris and so on. I get the distinct impression that there is queasiness around the idea in Paris.
Maybe less so in Paris now, but certainly in Berlin and Washington about the idea of Ukraine retaking Donbas and especially retaking Crimea. Is it now clearer that Ukraine is not being supplied to retake these territories, but is being supplied to essentially freeze the lines of contact, maybe go up to Mariupol or wherever? But there is a certain disquiet about them going further.
They have not said we want Ukraine to win. I do think that they’re they have allowed Putin to create some sort of mystical properties about Crimea, that oh my God, if Ukraine gets that, he’s going to use everything he has, including nuclear weapons, which I think is nonsensical.
But unfortunately, there’s enough people that believe that. I mean, if it was so important, then why is the third of the Black Sea Fleet underwater and the rest of the Black Sea Fleet is leaving because they can’t they can’t stop it and why?
Are they fighting like crazy in the Black Sea to regain control over the water that they’ve lost? Because they can’t. And so the idea that they would somehow use a nuclear weapon is to me.
Look, I don’t mean to sound so dismissive of it. Of course you have to take it seriously. They have thousands of nuclear weapons. They don’t care how many innocent people are killed.
But I think even the Russians realize there are zero upsides for them to use a nuclear weapon. And their nuclear weapons are really most effective when they don’t use them, because they see how we exactly what you just described.
We’re not willing to help Ukraine take Crimea because we’re worried that the Russians might use a nuclear weapon. So we’ve got to get over that mental block.
How do you get these ideas across, sometimes against fierce resistance, or even in a circumstance where you perceive that a policy is incorrect and strategically could lead to failure?
Number one, obviously, you know, in our democratic societies, we the military works for the civilian leadership. And so, in the US your oaths to the Constitution and officers in the British military and the French and German and so on, it’s our duty to carry out the lawful orders of our civilian leaders. It’s not appropriate for officers to be arguing against policy, certainly in public, that that would be entirely inappropriate.
However, it is the duty of officers to give their best professional military advice to the civilian leadership and say, look, this is what we need to do. This is going to be the cost. This is the cost of failure. Here’s the risk. If we don’t do it, we’re going to do this.
And to be very, very blunt and usually, unless you’re, you know, you deal with it all the time, civilian leadership will not appreciate the amount of time required or the expense or the different sort of factors associated with this and to include the cost of failure. So this is where professional military leaders and defence Ministry of Defence, civil servants have to lay out in very cold facts.
No emotion. Dot dot dot, and especially the time this is how long it will take to do certain
things now. Of course, at the end of the day, when the Prime Minister or the President or the Secretary or the Minister of Defense says, thanks for your input. No, this is what we’re going to do.
Well, then you salute and you carry it out as if it was your own idea. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be doing everything you can to learn from what we’re seeing.
Going to the fullest extent of what is allowed in terms of providing aid, making sure that we’re given the Ukrainians everything we possibly can within the constraints of the policy. I would never advocate for anybody in uniform to intentionally go around or undermine their civilian leadership. That’s I mean, then we’re no better than the other guys.
Despite this and this, I think, you know, keen to see if you’re, you know, share this. The extraordinary story is despite the ammunition famine, Ukraine has been able to consolidate around defensive positions. And in some places, those defensive positions are fairly shallow and weak.
Nonetheless, they’ve held the Russians at bay despite extraordinarily fierce massed assaults. How is Ukraine able to create these possibilities even when they’re not getting the equipment they need?
I mean, we all we focus on Ukrainian side. Oh, my God, they’re running out of ammunition. They’ve suffered casualties. It’s looking bleak. They lost Avdiivka five weeks ago was when Avdiivka fell. The Russians were not able to exploit that because they don’t have the ability to. I mean, they are, you know, the other side is in real trouble.
They? I think they are in big trouble from a manpower standpoint. I mean, about every two months they’ll announce a huge 300,000 people call up. It doesn’t happen. They don’t do it.
They have lost so many people. They don’t have the ability to train a 300,000 new people, or they’ve they’ve built 2 new Guards, Tank Army’s. BS. These are they’re announced, but they don’t exist or they certainly are not combat formations yet.
Now I think their ammunition, you know, this number has been out there so many times that it’s taken as taken for granted as a law of nature that they’ve got 10 to 1 or 5 to 1 advantage on artillery shells.
That’s probably true in certain places, but if you don’t have the ability to exploit or use that they have lost so many of their experienced officers and sergeants. So I would just say, war is not just about math and who’s got the most people? I mean, we lost in Vietnam. We lost in Afghanistan.
So I think that Ukrainians are defending their homeland and they know the terrain better than anybody. And the Russians are the occupiers there, the invaders. And I don’t think you could fill up a school bus with Russian soldiers that actually want to be there.
We see FPV drones and others increasing in accuracy, increasing in capability. On the other side, Russia is developing ever larger glide bombs, but essentially they’re a bit like the V-1s and V-2s in the last stage of the Second World War. They’re weapons of mass terror, mass destruction to be used ultimately against civilian targets.
Do you see these alternative sort of approaches there? And you know, this eventually will lead Russia to lose because they’re not investing in precision capability.
Ben: So this is this is a tough question. They certainly would not talk to my Ukrainian friends. They talk about the overwhelming advantage that Russia has in drones and in electronic warfare. So, I mean, there is there is a challenge for Ukraine in that regard.
These, these Tsar bombs that that are being talked about I mean, that that is going to cause a problem. Certainly they’ll be used, against civilian targets, against power grids, against infrastructure. But bombing by itself, I mean, we know from World War II where, you know, all sides tried strategic bombing, and none of that was ever going to bring about the end of the war by itself.
So. Well, we obviously had to figure out ways to help Ukraine protect their civilian infrastructure from these things, as well as get at the source somehow before these things ever take off.
What can we do to help Ukraine attack air bases from which these things are being delivered? I think that’s part of what we can do to help.
The argument has been put that can drive up oil prices, crude prices. But that seems to be a logical because you’re not hitting the crude supply, you’re hitting internal fuel oil production for the war effort.
How much for veracity did you put on this idea that the US is not happy at that strategy and also at the insurgency that is taking place, which essentially are Russian troops, but very much under the guidance of Ukraine, who are in Belgorod and Kursk Oblasts.
I said, please tell me this is not true. Unfortunately, it appears it was true. And unfortunately, it’s believable that it’s true. and I think, stopping the attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure at the same time that the Russians are destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure.
I mean, it’s a what a cruel joke. And it of course, it comes across as being only for the self-interest of the American politics, which is the other reason that the aid packages have been stopped because of US domestic politics.
And this for me as an American, is embarrassing. And it shows a lack of strategic prioritization and understanding, and we’ve lost our way. I don’t understand it. And of course, the Chinese watched this, the Iranians watch this. All of our other adversaries watched this.
And I hope that the administration comes out quickly and says, hey, that wasn’t us. That was what we meant to say was, but I don’t get any hints that that’s coming out.
Because, I mean, not all lawyers are have the leadership capability of Abraham Lincoln. But it did seem that that Jake Sullivan rushed to Kiev. It was an unannounced trip, and we don’t quite know what was discussed in that trip, but it very much comes in the wake of these oil refinery hits.
One could perhaps put 2 and 2 together, and that gives perhaps some credibility to that story we were discussing.
Anyway, and I think, Deputy Prime Minister Stefanishyna, she said, hey, this is a legitimate target. And we’re going to continue to defend our country. And that’s exactly what they should be doing.
Jonathan: And of course, it gives the signal to Vladimir Putin that he can act with impunity. And even though there are supposedly 100s of 1000s of Russian dead, many, many times more, even in just the offensive than they experienced in Afghanistan, there seems to be no limit to what Putin is prepared to sacrifice, just as there are no limits to his power, no limits to the amount of time he will be spending in office after the election.
Could we be seeing easily a 1,000,000 plus dead Russians by the end of the year? And is there any stopping Putin?
If we got really serious about that. Then you’ve got oligarchs and people that are. No kidding. I mean, they are really suffering financially. I mean, they’re feeling it. Then I think it becomes Putin’s freedom of maneuver, becomes a little bit more restricted.
I don’t envision the Russian people are going to rise up and say no more. Although I was impressed with how many people turned up at Navalny’s funeral. That was that was impressive.
You know, this whole terrorist attack at the Crocus theater a couple of weeks ago how desperately the Kremlin has tried to pin this on Ukraine somehow. Desperate is the word. I mean, I think they are desperate, looking for something to protect the image of Putin as able to protect his people, which obviously he can’t do because they’ve got so much focus elsewhere.
I don’t think the FSB is quite the razor sharp organization it used to be back in the day. There’s some cracks out there that we should be clever in exploitation and I don’t I don’t know that we’re doing that.
Where are the other consortia to, you know, log equipment around the world, whether it be equipment that is set for scrap or is, you know, about to be expired.
Why aren’t governments and, dare I say, their bureaucrats being more proactive in just scraping together everything we can or even, you know, creating consortia or installations to, you know, refurbish equipment from around the world.? We seem to be incredibly slow and incapable of this creative thinking.
Most Americans did not want to get into a war in Europe against Germany, although they were obviously hot to fight against Japan. Neither the Americans or Great Britain had optimism, reason for optimism. But these two leaders sat down and said, Germany first, we’re going to defeat Germany first.
And we’re going to combine our staffs so that we can figure out how to do this. So a strategic priority that required political courage by Roosevelt because, again, it was going to be Germany first, not Japan.
But they understood that if they didn’t defeat Germany first. Number one, Great Britain might not be around. And then it would be very difficult to get into the continent, and then we wouldn’t be able to turn all of our assets towards the destruction of Japan.
And then one year later, January 1943, the Casablanca Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt meet together again, and they come up with the strategic end state unconditional surrender. Not this nonsense of we want to fight to get to a better negotiating position against Hitler or the Emperor of Japan. Unconditional surrender. We’re going to crush it. We’re going to destroy them.
So here you have two leaders with clarity of strategic objective and clarity of strategic priority. Again at a time when there was no reason for real optimism.
And they’re able to explain to the populations, okay, Ford Motor Company, nobody’s going to be buying cars for the next 3 years. You’re going to be making jeeps and trucks and, and we got mobilized in terms of industry, and we raised huge armies, navies and air forces. And we won the war.
That’s what’s missing, now, we don’t have that clarity of strategic end state and strategic priority. And therefore, industries don’t get mobilized, populations don’t get mobilized. We need that sort of clarity.
And really, you know, they’re going for scrap without anyone thinking about whether that could change. If you were in charge, how would you go about this?
How would you go about identifying what’s out there and what would be required to refurbish and ship it?
And of course, the financing in place, I’m thinking in particular, I’ve got a bit of a shopping list here, supposedly 2800 Bradleys in storage, which is, I think about sort of 30-40% of the total number in the US. And these look like they’re going to be stored until they’re scrapped.
You’ve got Challenger I’s in Oman, Challenger 2 tanks are going to be scrapped. While others are going to be upgraded to the next iteration of those, you’ve got tranche one Eurofighter Taipans, A-10 Warthogs, apparently 58 units set for scrap.
And the list goes on. There are Patriots that are close to their expiry date, but we know that Ukraine needs Patriots desperately. And then of course, there’s the F-16s that at the moment are going to be supplied, if they ever are, in numbers that may not make a huge difference. If you’re in charge, what would you do to try and log and get this stuff to Ukraine with a sense of immediacy?
What is our desired strategic end state? You know, we spent 20 years in Afghanistan and did not have a clearly identified end state, except for the first year, then 19 years, we were in search of policies about, you know, schools, girls rights, force cap, you know, blah, blah, blah, without having an end state.
And so you cannot possibly develop good policy without having a strategic end state that’s clearly identified.
So I want to keep emphasizing that. If you have that, then you turn to your secretary of defense or minister of defense said, hey, I don’t care what it costs, you get them. They need the ability to do this and this and this. Empty the warehouse, everything that we have, get it to them.
And then and then it happens. But without that kind of clarity, then, you know, you’re going to run into good, well-intentioned people that say, you know, it’s a we got to change the law here and this and there’s a million reasons why not. And the Pentagon, which is loaded with really good, hard working people.
I served there three times. They weren’t like dogs there. It is the most conservative place on the planet, and that’s conservative with a small C, because their job is to make sure that they never fail a task for the United States. So they’re never going to take risks like you know, if we give these up, then we don’t have any. And so that’s part of it.
Now, I think it’s also important to keep in mind when you talk about, here’s 2,000 Bradley fighting vehicles that have been sitting out in the desert. Right? They have not been sitting in a climate controlled environment. They have not had any maintenance in years.
So the fact is, probably at some significant cost, some of them could in fact be brought back to life and provided to the Ukrainians. But that, you know, that’s time and that’s money. So is that time and money best spent there, or do we focus on what do they really need?
Which is, of course, as you talked about air and missile defense capabilities, long range precision strike capabilities, ammunition. That’s where I would put a focus is to get those capabilities there.
Finally, I just heard that the we have one factory that makes the Javelin and Hellfire and the GMLRS rocket that come off of the attack or the ATACMS, it’s one place that makes them.
And, of course, you know, there’s one company that makes the little rocket motor or all of them. And so this is an area where I would be pouring a lot of money into, say, okay, well, let’s triple that now. I mean, what will it take? Just. Help me. I’ll write the check.
But it seems as we go on, and Putin’s regime becomes ever more toxic, on the one hand, the Ukrainian price of victory when it ever it comes in, this year, next year or 2026, the price of that victory will be far, far higher than if it was achieved in 2022.
But also the systemic instability in Russia and the degradation of whatever vestige it had of civil society is being eroded. So not if, but when it eventually collapses.
That will be far more catastrophic than if Ukraine was able to achieve a speedy victory. So would you class this strategy? I mean, I’m almost thinking of it as a kind of equilibrium appeasement. Are you classing this?
Actually not a low risk strategy, but actually as an extremely high risk strategy, which has just elongated and elongated this conflict out to the point now where the end result could be extraordinarily risky.
And then there, the Iranians are less capable of giving weapons and support to the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah. And then the Chinese are saying, huh? Okay. Well, the West is serious about protecting and the things they say they care about sovereignty, freedom of navigation, international agreements and so on.
So to me, strategically, the sooner that we can help Ukraine defeat Russia, the sooner Iran becomes isolated, and China is dissuaded from making a terrible miscalculation. But that means we’ve got to have people who have a career vested in Russia some great power to start talking in terms of exactly what I like, the way you described it, it’s inevitable.
I mean, Russia, the collapse of the Soviet Union continues to this day. And it i because it’s built on a rotten foundation. It’s going to collapse.
The sooner that happens, the better for all of us. But we should not be scared to think about what does that mean? We were not prepared. I was not prepared for the collapse of the Soviet Union. I haven’t met too many people. That’s in 1988, said next year is the year. Okay? I think we should we should anticipate this and be prepared for that.
But you use the word accountability earlier, which I like. When, uh, during the Munich security conference in February, I was talking to a gentleman. Let’s just say he worked for an agency that is directly associated with the responsibility of finding the million rounds that the EU promised.
And he told me they were having huge difficulty because nations do not want to talk about what they have. So there’s a lack of transparency there for their own security reasons. And companies were reluctant to say what they could make for proprietary reasons.
So really, what we don’t know what what’s out there. And then like five days later, President Powell said, well, I just found a source for 800,000 rounds. And then a couple of weeks later, it’s actually 1.5 million rounds. And now people are discovering that Turkey can make enormous amounts of ammunition.
And so, I will predict that by the end of this year, there are going to be mountains of ammunition that are being produced, delivered, and we will be in a will be in a different place. But it, it has taken the wake up call and political leaders start poking a stick into. Hey, what do you have?
I mean, what what’s out there and when President Pavel, not surprising that the former chairman of the military committee at NATO would have an idea where some ammunition might be. You know, I think there’s a dozen other countries got into a queue saying, we’ll help pay for it.
Well, we didn’t cover the US election. I think we’ll save that one for the next conversation. That’s a can of worms as well. But it does sound like there are reasons to potentially be optimistic from our discussion today.
And of course, I know everyone watching the channel will be immensely grateful not just or your parents here, but for the time you spend in talking to so many people who are, you know, trying to fight the case for supporting Ukraine.
Ukraine has soldiered on ? lol, the average age of a soldier is now 43 and they are now reduced to sending teenage boys and girls. But hey, for as long as it takes, right? :)
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