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Biden’s Ukraine strategy risks prolonging a violent stalemate
Washington Post ^ | July 6, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT | Josh Rogin

Posted on 07/08/2022 7:08:28 PM PDT by Zhang Fei

Republican James E. Risch (Idaho) was in Ukraine, touring the country. He was escorted by Ukrainian forces because the State Department refused to provide him security once he crossed the Ukrainian border. He met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, and came away with the conclusion that the current U.S. strategy has not properly adjusted to the latest phase of the fighting.

Russian forces are pummeling Ukrainian civilian and military targets in the Donbas with their superior artillery. Ukrainian forces are still not receiving enough of the weapons that might give them the advantage — including long-range air defenses, longer-range artillery, heavy armor and fighter planes. The White House process of trying to parse which weapons would be “escalatory” is a recipe for a stalemate.

“If you are just giving weapons to fight to a stalemate, that’s not a good situation and that has consequences,” he said. “We need to be in or out. And if we are in, we need to give them what they need to win.”

In Madrid, Biden promised that the United States and Europe will support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression “as long as it takes.” But he didn’t say that he would give Ukraine the means to shorten that timeline. Even though the United States has pledged billions to support Ukraine’s military, only a fraction of those resources have arrived, leaving the Ukrainian military badly outgunned in the Donbas.

Privately, several administration officials told me that the delays are not a result of any problem with the actual delivery of weapons. The core problem is the protracted hand-wringing inside the Biden policy team over each weapons decision. Risch said this is caused by a misguided concern that if Putin starts to lose badly, he might escalate further.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Russia
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To: Kazan; marcusmaximus; Paul R.; Bruce Campbells Chin; PIF; familyop; MercyFlush; tet68; BeauBo; ...

Kazan: [There is no stalemate. Ukraine is losing 1000 troops by ITS OWN ADMISSION. Ukraine is getting its ass kicked.

Only sociopaths want to see the Ukrainians fight to the last man and lose every single inch of their country. But, that will happen unless Ukraine surrenders.

The neocon sickos here couldn’t care less about the Ukrainians. This all about futile, feckless attempt to harm Russia that is failing miserably.

The Russians already have gained land that comprises 70-80% of Ukraine’s former GDP. That land will remain controlled by Russia and their allies in the DPR and LPR.]


Ukraine ping

At this point in Operation Barbarossa, the Germans had killed or captured 5m Russians. The Russians went on to beat the Germans back. In fact, it was American Lend Lease supplies to amounting to $11.3b that kept Russia alive and in the war. That was 8.75% of the US economy at the time.


https://www.rferl.org/a/did-us-lend-lease-aid-tip-the-balance-in-soviet-fight-against-nazi-germany/30599486.html
[Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.

“I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war,” Stalin said. “The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.”

Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.

“If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war,” he wrote in his memoirs. “One-on-one against Hitler’s Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me.”]
https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-year-3305543


If we provided 8.75% of the US economy to Ukraine today, the dollar amount would be $1.93T. We have appropriated $40b. That’s 1/50 the Lend Lease aid for Russia during WWII. Note that Russia was a genocidal regime that had a part in kicking off WWII through its provision of a secure eastern front to Germany for its invasion of France and the Low Countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

Russia’s side deal cost the US 400,000 dead GI’s in WWII.

The war has only just started. Even the short Polish-Soviet War lasted 25 months. As aid to Ukraine builds up, and the Russian economy stalls, Russia will start to gasp for air. And that is when Ukraine will pull off its version of Poland’s Miracle on the Vistula, provided the weaponry it lacks is made up by the West, much as Poland’s was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Warsaw_(1920)

Then, as now, Germany supported Russia (albeit only on the down low today), much as the West supported Russia’s traditional victim. Some things don’t change.


21 posted on 07/08/2022 8:57:34 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room.)
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To: DannyTN

So, you’re for peace and negotiations to stop the killing? Or do you want the Ukes to keep fighting till their all dead?


22 posted on 07/08/2022 9:38:07 PM PDT by ARW
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To: ARW
Or do you want the Ukes to keep fighting till their all dead?

The Ukrainians are the ones who are choosing to fight. I know this might be surprising to Putinists who have long since abandoned any pretense of patriotism and love of country.

Fortunately, the Russian military is such a trash heap that even with the Biden administration slowwalking aid, it is highly unlikely that the Russians will keep anything they have gained on the long term. Indeed, into this month and the next, the tides should change dramatically. Expect Russia's agents in the west--and you Putinists-- to become even more hysterical to stop the war as Ukraine finishes its mobilization.

23 posted on 07/08/2022 9:49:31 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
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To: Zhang Fei
If you can't comprehend modern-day Russia IS NOT the old Soviet Union, you're either consumed with Russophobia or choosing to be willful ignorant.

If any foreign policy resembles the old Soviet Union is that of the "liberal world order," which Biden advisor Brian Deese admitted that is what this proxy war with Russia is all about.

"The liberal world order" (of which vile neocons are part of) did everything it could to create this war -- fomenting a revolution in Ukraine, trained, funded and enabled neo-Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists to persecute and commit genocide against the ethnic Russian population, armed Ukraine with offensive weapons, funded biolabs in Ukraine with deadly with pathogens in them and teased NATO membership for Ukraine. All that was a deliberate attempt to undermine the national security of Russia. We wouldn't have tolerated Russia or China doing anything similar in Mexico>

The liberal new world order is all behind the LGBT agenda, abortion on demand and the climate change agenda being used as a means of backdoor Marxism. Anyone on board with it is an enemy of an American first agenda, conservativism and America itself.

24 posted on 07/08/2022 10:02:12 PM PDT by Kazan
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To: Zhang Fei
Thanks Zhang Fei.

25 posted on 07/08/2022 10:09:56 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Zhang Fei

The other side of the story...

Russian propaganda attempts to low motivation of Ukraine’s partners to transfer weapons - Leshchenko
https://youtu.be/osjBfuy2C28

[familyop edit: Russian propaganda attempts to lower motivation of Ukraine’s partners to transfer weapons - Leshchenko. The video presents evidence against Russian propaganda on the matter.]


26 posted on 07/08/2022 10:40:28 PM PDT by familyop ("For they that sleep with dogs, shall rise with fleas" (John Webster, "The White Devil" 1612).)
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To: Zhang Fei

I’ve seen a few videos showing HIMARS units and other new western equipment doing some real damage to Russian units, but the time is not right for more intensity. Patience.


27 posted on 07/08/2022 10:44:47 PM PDT by familyop ("For they that sleep with dogs, shall rise with fleas" (John Webster, "The White Devil" 1612).)
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To: Zhang Fei

Ukrainians aren’t going to budge on the issue, so get busy, Democrats. Democrats don’t know much about high intensity conflicts, so they’d better simply follow what they can see happening now.

We won’t give up our land, the entire sovereign territory of Ukraine will be Ukrainian – Zelenskyy
https://youtu.be/BHCZhFpyZ_E

The greater the defense aid to Ukraine is now, the sooner the war will end – Zelenskyy
https://youtu.be/PsSEiTvD-7Q

And if Democrats don’t grease the skids for materiel, they’re going to see many more stories like this in the face of their effeminate inaction.

School for visually impaired children in Kharkiv suffered Russian bombardment
https://youtu.be/m1BW333Kz5o


28 posted on 07/08/2022 11:04:46 PM PDT by familyop ("For they that sleep with dogs, shall rise with fleas" (John Webster, "The White Devil" 1612).)
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To: Kazan; marcusmaximus; Paul R.; Bruce Campbells Chin; PIF; familyop; MercyFlush; tet68; BeauBo; ...

[If you can’t comprehend modern-day Russia IS NOT the old Soviet Union, you’re either consumed with Russophobia or choosing to be willful ignorant. ]


Ukraine ping

It’s the same old Russian empire with different labels. Nobody gave a damn about Russia’s ideology - it was the nation’s massive size and its grabby tendencies that got people worked up. If Russia had starved every single person in the country to death, no skin off our collective noses. Heck, Hoover arranged for American aid, and his success at propping the Bolsheviks up played into his successful presidential campaign.

It’s not an ideological problem. It’s the fact that Russia is 4x the size of the EU combined, really close to the key parts of Europe, and has a 1000-year history of territorial expansion. Unlike Russia, the EU is small and densely populated - these countries can’t move their capitals away from Russia without ending up in the sea. If Russia feels NATO is too close to Moscow, it has 11 time zones’ worth of land to which it can move its capital.

But that wouldn’t make Putin Vladimir the Greater. Gotta execute a successful land grab for that. So away we go. What the West needs to do is make this a rerun of Russia’s other failed wars. This won’t deter Russia forever, short of the Russian empire’s dissolution and devolution into Metropolitan Novgorod, but should at least keep its treasury and appetite for human losses at a low ebb for a few decades until it’s ready for another round. It won’t be quick and it won’t be pretty, but it’s the only time-tested method to deter future such ventures.


29 posted on 07/08/2022 11:07:44 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room.)
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To: Zhang Fei

Collapse of Russia is ‘very likely’ after a full-scale invasion of Ukraine
https://youtu.be/nyTpUQ7qdFc


30 posted on 07/08/2022 11:08:35 PM PDT by familyop ("For they that sleep with dogs, shall rise with fleas" (John Webster, "The White Devil" 1612).)
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To: Kazan; Zhang Fei

Sudden understanding? Regular russians in social media start suspecting that they are terrorists...
https://youtu.be/Le4l4sfujrw


31 posted on 07/08/2022 11:11:41 PM PDT by familyop ("For they that sleep with dogs, shall rise with fleas" (John Webster, "The White Devil" 1612).)
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To: Zhang Fei
"Biden’s Ukraine strategy risks prolonging a violent stalemate......."

Somebody's idea of a joke, right?

Would you call the Little Bighorn a "stalemate"??

Would you call Cannae a "stalemate"??

Would you call Ye-hu-Ling a "stalemate"??

Would you call Austerlitz a "stalemate"??

Would you call the Mariannas Turkey- Shoot a "stalemate"??

Would you call Mohi a "stalemate"??

Would you call Kursk a "stalemate"??

Would you call Marathon a "stalemate"??

Would you call Waterloo a "stalemate"??

Would you call....

Try living in the real world; the Ukronazis are no where close to a stalemate, they are getting their butts handed to them on a platter.

32 posted on 07/09/2022 3:06:41 AM PDT by ganeemead (There is no definition of patriotism that includes stooging or siding with Nazis against Christians.)
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To: House Atreides; blackdog

33 posted on 07/09/2022 3:41:41 AM PDT by Travis McGee (EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Jim Noble

This Risch guy is a senator from Idaho, and he is explaining the failure of the BIden approach not advocating for it.

Biden’s gradualist escalation is a replay of LBJ’s tactic of gradual escalation in VietNam. At that time the same fear, that too much too fast would “bring the Soviet Union or China into the war,” and it might provoke a nuclear showdown.

But liberals never learn so the Policy wonk/micromanagement into oblivion will continue .


34 posted on 07/09/2022 3:46:43 AM PDT by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative.)
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To: Zhang Fei

Thanks ZF.


35 posted on 07/09/2022 6:29:02 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: eyedigress

Russian desire was to win in 3 days and start their ethnic cleansing operations. Now they’ve been pushed back and are forced to bring T62 tanks to the front.


36 posted on 07/09/2022 6:34:18 AM PDT by Krosan
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To: Travis McGee

Your buddy Putin is Raytheon salesman of the century. After Putin invaded Ukraine Poland put in an order for 500 HIMARS and they’re not going to be the only one.


37 posted on 07/09/2022 6:42:29 AM PDT by Krosan
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To: Kazan

The Russians already have gained billions in oil sales thanks to Biden’s Ukraine strategy and placed many countries into hardship the only friend he has is Xi.


38 posted on 07/09/2022 8:58:26 AM PDT by Vaduz ( )
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To: ARW
"So, you’re for peace and negotiations to stop the killing? Or do you want the Ukes to keep fighting till their all dead?"

I'm for peace and negotiations, but I don't think Ukraine should give up their territory. A Russian gain of territory would have negative implications for Ukraine, Europe and the World. And it would invite Russia to do it again in a few years.

I don't see Russia expending the resources and lives to take this territory only to give it up in negotiations, but the idea should still be explored in negotiations.

I would like to see the deaths on both sides, Ukraine and Russian deaths, minimized.

The best way to do that is to get Ukraine the weapons they need to start forcing the Russians to retreat. That's when Russia will seriously consider negotiating is when they see they are going to lose anyway.

39 posted on 07/09/2022 12:25:44 PM PDT by DannyTN
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To: Krosan

The 62s are being uused as armored police cars, they ae not being used at the front...


40 posted on 07/09/2022 4:39:59 PM PDT by ganeemead (There is no definition of patriotism that includes stooging or siding with Nazis against Christians.)
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