Posted on 04/30/2025 3:46:59 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
There is a tendency these days to conflate successful diplomacy with garnering favourable headlines. Negotiating powder is rarely kept dry. Keeping an opponent guessing about one’s intentions and capabilities is secondary to issuing punchy soundbites that play well with the media. Politicians, feeling the hand of history on their shoulder, fall victim to grandiosity — until grim reality taps them on the other one. This is now happening to Sir Keir Starmer as he watches his vaunted “coalition of the willing” for a muscular European peacekeeping force in Ukraine evaporate.
As reported in this newspaper, appeals from Britain and France for other European countries to contribute to a substantial “reassurance” force in a postwar Ukraine are falling on stony ground. Leading Nato powers like Italy, Spain and Poland have offered zero soldiers and it is likely that the plan will be ditched in favour of a mere training mission. All a far cry from early March when, in the febrile atmosphere created by Donald Trump’s seeming abandonment of Ukraine, the talk was of Europe going it alone with a force possibly in the region of 60,000 combat-ready ground troops.
The infeasibility of this proposal was rapidly identified by everyone, including this newspaper. Years of underspending on defence has saddled Europe with forces that, though sometimes impressive on paper, lack essential assets and are incapable of deploying abroad in strength for protracted periods. Britain itself, together with France, the continent’s primary military power, would be hard put to field more than a single brigade of some 6,000 soldiers in Ukraine for an extended period. Given a similar French contribution, it would make even a modified proposal of 30,000 peacekeepers difficult to fulfil.
(Excerpt) Read more at thetimes.com ...
Bkmrk
coalition of the willing
Ha!
Good! The Ukies need to sue for peace.
Get this over with.
It’s the U.K. that’s evaporating.
It’s always been A or B:
A: Americans are tired of funding Ukraine, so Zelensky can either get money/troops from elsewhere or agree to terms, and since Putin won’t quit funding his side of the war, either cede territory to get him to stop (as he won’t attack a NATO nation outside of Ukraine but will keep attacking Ukraine unless land is ceded), or it’s:
B: Zelensky can get Western Europe to fund the war and send troops to help him.
Since half of B will soon be evaporated, and Western Europe doesn’t want to shift funding from their social welfare programs to fund Ukraine, it’s Zelensky and Ukrainian’s fight alone or Zel agrees to A.
It seems that he got slapped upside the head with a dose of reality. The UK could only field a full division and a few brigades, the Royal Air Force wouldn’t last for long, etc.
So the Europeans financial contribution to the war in Ukraine is far less than ours and is also backed by Russian assets that the Euros control. In addition, they do not choose to send their young men to a meat grinder unwinnable war.
I wish that Trump could find a way to say very briefly and frequently that Biden publicly stated that a “minor incursion” might be OK. In addition, Kamala gave a speech in Ukraine almost immediately before the invasion hinting that Ukraine might be admitted to NATO. That was Russia’s line in the sand after it had been promised that Ukraine would never be in NATO.
When Trump just makes the generalization that the war would have never started if he had been president, people think there’s no reasoning behind it and it’s just another instance of his braggadocio.
Which is why Putin has leverage over Zelensky. Starmer is not going to stop funding the NHS just to give Zelensky more money he needs to keep his army equipped.
At this point, Putin can demand Zelensky to give up Odessa and the war will end.
Coalition of the silly.
He puts natural Brits in prisons for speaking their minds or praying. Things like that. All he will have to send is a bunch of illegal muzzards and Africans. None of them want any part of Ukraine.
“A bloke was telling me, if you’re in the army and there’s a war, you have to go and fight.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz0_r4PDyCs
Correct. Good points.
With the US putting in $0 into the kitty, it’s Western Europe funding it all on their own (not gonna happen) by handing the money over to Ukraine or sending in their own troops with the paltry land forces that the UK has, while keeping the money for themselves and building up their forces to send into Ukraine, both of which would have the end result of having to shift money from their generous social welfare programs to the military plus the addition of having to draft people to go to war, which could lead to riots.
Karmer has publicly identified himself as a European. There is evidence he didn’t even return to Canada until a couple of weeks before the election. He is a globalist puppet must like Justine, but unlike Justine, he’s not stupid. He is going to align Canada with China even more that it already is. He is dangerous.
It’s a bad time for Zelensky to negotiate with Putin. He should have started a conversation two years ago at least. That time, Biden was still arming Zelensky and the Ukrainian army looked stronger. Putin would have given Zelensky a better deal than he’s going to get now.
Old Monty and Lord Nelson are rolling about in their graves as we speak. The spine of the British empire seems have rather bad case of scoliosis but thankfully they still have a stiff upper lip!
Turns out those ammo depots are actually wine cellars.
All hat and no cattle.
France had 200 Divisions in 1938, which took Hitler about a month to totally destroy.
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