Posted on 07/02/2023 2:09:17 PM PDT by McGruff
President Joe Biden will head to Europe at week’s end for a three-country trip intended to bolster the international coalition against Russian aggression as the war in Ukraine extends well into its second year.
The main focus of Biden’s five-day visit will be the annual NATO summit, held this year in Vilnius, Lithuania. Also planned are stops in Helsinki, Finland, to commemorate the Nordic country’s entrance into the 31-nation military alliance in April, and Britain, the White House announced Sunday.
The NATO meeting comes at the latest critical point in the war. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says counteroffensive and defensive actions against Russian forces are underway as Ukrainian troops start to recapture territory in the southeastern part of the country, according to its military leaders.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Biden: I’m still one of those popular wartime presidents, right?
“as Ukrainian troops start to recapture territory in the southeastern part of the country, according to its military leaders.“
AKA Baghdad Bob
fitty kilometers...
Look for a false flag soon.
Ukraine ‘preparing for nuclear explosion’ as Russian troops ordered to leave Zaporizhzhia plant: ‘Whole world is watching’
Yep.
Don’t be too sure. Biden supports Putin, going back to Obama days.
The man can barely walk across a stage. His presence boosts nothing.
NATO knows that they just ask someone behind the scenes for more money and hardware and they get it.
Tater should lead the charge straight into Moscow “On to vict...you know the thing!”
You post that bullcrap every time on this issue. That was many moons ago.
Why did Putin help get Hillary and Biden elected president? He knew where his bread was buttered.
“NATO against Russia”
I guess we’re now at war against Russia. Don’t remember Congress voting on it, but I’ll check the Congressional Record to be sure.
In the absence of official scrutiny of Biden’s endless spending spree on Ukraine,
The Grayzone conducted an independent audit of US funding for the country.
They discovered a series of wasteful, highly unusual expenditures
the Biden administration has yet to explain.
ALL ABOARD the Zelensky/Biden gravy train:
an independent audit of US tax dollar funding for Ukraine
BY HEATHER KAISER, ANYA PARAMPIL AND MAX BLUMENTHAL
thegrayzone.com
JUNE 27, 2023
During a recent discussion with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, touted her organization’s push to guarantee transparency for US taxpayer funds sent to Ukraine.
“We are involved in funding efforts at ensuring judicial integrity, which is intrinsically important to building Ukraine’s democracy and its integration plans to get into Europe,” Power declared, adding USAID’s work in Ukraine was “also really important in terms of assuring the taxpayer, the American taxpayer, that they’re resources are well spent.”
While innocuous on the surface, Power’s comments revealed a great deception the US government is currently waging against the American public. In the roughly 16 months since Russia’s February 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict, the US government has approved several multi-billion dollar spending packages to sustain the Kiev military’s fight against Moscow.
Though many Americans likely believe that US dollars allocated for Ukraine are spent directly on supplies for the war effort, the lead author of this report, Heather Kaiser, conducted a thorough review of Washington’s budget for the 2022 and 2023 fiscal year and discovered that is far from the case.
US taxpayers may be shocked to learn that as their families grappled with fears of Social Security’s looming insolvency, the Social Security Administration in Washington sent $4.48 million to the Kiev government in 2022 and 2023 alone. In another example of bizarre spending, USAID paid off $4.5 billion worth of Ukraine’s sovereign debt through payments made to the World Bank — all while Congress went to loggerheads over America’s ballooning national debt. (Western financial interests including BlackRock Inc. are among the largest holders of Ukrainian government bonds.)
Though it is nearly impossible to calculate the total sum of US tax dollars sent to Kiev, Kaiser was able to perform an independent audit of Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine through a careful search of open source data available on the US government’s official spending tracker.
Kaiser reviewed all the funding allocations in which Ukraine was listed as the “Place of Performance” for fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Additionally, she discovered supplementary funds were sent to Kiev by listing Ukraine as the “justification” for spending, rather than the location where the money was physically sent.
Calculating the total dollar amount that the US has given to Ukraine is incredibly challenging for multitude of reasons: there is a lag in reporting expenditures; covert money given by the CIA (Title 50 Covert Action) won’t be publicly disclosed; and direct military assistance in the form of military equipment is not calculated in the same manner as raw cash. The Pentagon recently admitted to an accounting error revised up to 6.2 billion dollars. Despite this, Kaiser submitted a request to the Department of Treasury asking them to disclose the total dollar amount of US taxpayer support for Ukraine. Treasury has not responded at the time of publication.
Though Kaiser was able to search through pages of reported spending, the US government has yet to conduct an official audit of its funding for Ukraine. What’s more, there is currently no limit to how much Washington can send to Kiev.
In the absence of dedicated official scrutiny of Washington’s spending in Ukraine, The Grayzone has produced an independent audit of US tax dollar allocation in the country.
Among the many troubling contracts we discovered was a $4.25 million payment from the Pentagon to a military diving contractor that a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has described as a “fraudulent company.” The US government asserts the payment covered the company’s delivery of explosives equipment to Ukraine.
So how exactly was that money put to use? And why has Congress so far refused to implement any program to track these shady weapons deals?
Unfortunately, the “justification” for contracts like these often consists of just a brief paragraph — or worse, a single sentence. Little little information is available that documents precisely how the funds were spent down to the dollar and item.
Beneficiaries of USAID’s Ukraine aid: Polish NATO lobbyists, a private equity firm, rural Kenyans, a TV station in Toronto
snip.....rest on grayzone.com
That's absurd contention after the Obama regime and Victoria Nuland orchestrated the Maiden revolution in 2014, which made Ukraine a puppet state and turned it into a weapon against Russia.
The Russians has next to no influence in either election.
“covert money given by the CIA (Title 50 Covert Action) won’t be publicly disclosed; ”
But to be fair, that doesn’t come out of the US treasury. The CIA earns that money by smuggling drugs.
So you believe all the anti-Trump nonsense. Russia has ALWAYS sided with Democrats in the U.S., including in 2016 and 2020.
I stand corrected........thanks.
NATO and the UN should have been disbanded years ago.
NATO had no constructive mission the moment the USSR collapsed.
The UN should never have been formed in the first place
It was a gigantic mistake from the start and has created more turmoil and damage than even NATO.
Samantha Power?
British born ultra-left, America bashing Obama tool.
A war-mongering, globalist, nit-witted libtard.
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