Posted on 11/22/2019 11:33:49 PM PST by NorseViking
NOVOOLEKSANDRIVKA, Ukraine — When he’s not engaged in gun battles with Russian-led forces on Ukraine’s eastern front line, Stas, a scruffy 26-year-old soldier, likes to cozy up in his bunker and brush up on his English skills by watching Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live. He cracks up at Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of President Donald Trump.
Watching political satire on American TV — when he’s able to get a strong enough signal on the battlefield to access YouTube — is also how Stas learned that Trump had frozen $391 million in US security aid meant for the Ukrainian armed forces over the summer. The news made him angry. The fighting was hot at the time, and he and his fellow soldiers were stuck with mostly crappy, old gear.
“Look at this. It’s old and falling apart,” he complained of his Ukrainian government–issued bulletproof vest in accented English. It was barely stitched together and slouching on one side. “It’s a piece of shit.”
There’s one thing Stas and the soldiers in Ukraine’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade positioned in the village of Novooleksandrivka do have, which they say has helped them spot enemy soldiers who creep within grenade-throwing range of their trenches at night: a pair of US-made night vision sights.
The only problem? They don’t fit on the Ukrainian rifles.
He explained that “they would definitely be more effective if we had them on our rifles,” which is impossible without a special adapter. He demonstrated how he has to hold the sight in one hand, pick a target, lower the device from his eye, and try to remember where he was looking as he aims and fires his weapon. Despite all this, an extra pair or two would be good, he said.
He wondered: Would his brigade have gotten at least another
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
What a bum. Adaptor cost like $7 off Aliexpress.
I’ve been struggling with 200 yard shots lately.
I didn’t know Donald Trump Trump to blame.
Good ole BuzzFeed gettin' down with the cause.
LOL.
If he’s watching Stephen Colbert I don’t think there’s anything that will make him happy with Trump.
“When he’s not engaged in gun battles with Russian-led forces on Ukraine’s eastern front line...”
The implication here is that Russia is running the show in Eastern Ukraine. Are they? Are we being played here, yet again?
I will concede that it is ethnic Russians who are trying to break loose of their government, and that Russia likely supports them. But is Russia REALLY running the show there? I suspect if they were, the war would have ended much sooner.
Just a note, “ethnically “ there is less difference between east of the dnieper Ukrainians and Russians than between the average north and south Dakotan.
The forces in eastern Ukraine are Russian led.
Overwhelming the people in the east don’t care to be labelled Russian or Ukrainian, they are “tutajsi” ‘from here only’ and want to rule themselves.
Local joke:
Why there is a war in Donbas?
Because there are Russian troops.
Why there is no war in Crimea.
Because there are Russian troops for real.
Sigh...cry into your obama blanket.
If your country was not shuffling your money off to foreign banks by means of laundering, maybe PDJT would have been more receptive.
Obama blocked all lethal defensive aid to Ukraine
Trump has reversed that policy and is providing lethal defensive aid ( euphemism for military weapons) to Ukraine so they can defend themselves.
Most effective form of aid is anti tank missiles.
This article is absolute and total bull shit.
The soldier has been provided with a very expensive night vision optical sighting device BY THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION. He just needs a scope mount to integrate it onto his weapon .
The US military does not use Kalashnikov assault rifles so there are no AK-47/74 scope mounts in US inventory to ship to Ukraine on short notice.
However, very high quality AK scope mounts are available via the internet for less than a hundred bucks and decent quality ones go for thirty bucks so just order one.
The night optic is the expensive and unobtainium component - the mount is cheap and easy to order via internet.
To a certain extent this story totally validates President Trump’s concerns that hard earned American taxpayer dollars for foreign aid is often stolen or wasted to no good purpose.
President Trump supplies ( Obama embargoed this type of lethal defensive aid so it did not come from him) a high tech $10,000 night vision optic to Ukraine and it just gets wasted or stolen and sold for a song on the black market
The guy will probably end up selling his new night vision scope for a case of cigarettes and it will be bought by al Qaeda/ISIS.
Thats how our foreign aid is used and abused, even that which is not stolen by kleptocrats
Yep, AK to picatini mounts are cheap and easily available, that’s my point.
And yes, this whining bum will sell everything given to him and on a cheap.
Russian military actually buys American military optics for its special forces so mounts are easy to buy and the Russians will sell to anybody
Aside from the complete bs, buzzfeed makes the Ukraine sound like an African nation.
Too much Stephen Colbert makes this.
As if a delay on 2020 military aid to review corruption would have fixed last summer’s weapons...
Any Russian speaking Ukrainian must be the termed as a ‘Russian jnvader”, eh.
Yes we are being played.
Hearing Nikki Haley talk about Russian invaded Ukraine and the suffering of “ occupied Crimea’ convinced me she must never be allowed near the WH
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