Free Republic

'Weren't a lot of weapons for the USSR developed and built in industrial Ukraine? Those factories and experts remained after the breakup of the USSR.'

Yes, Ukraine made several of the USSR's best ICBMs. Including the R-36M (SS-18 'Satan') and the silo and rail-based RT-23 (SS-24 'Scalpel'). After the USSR collapsed and Ukraine left, Russia lacked the necessary spare parts and technical personnel to service these missiles effectively. This spurred them to develop replacement systems, such as the RS-28 Sarmat (SS-18 'Satan' II).

In 2010 the Obama administration (at the behest of the Kremlin) convinced Ukraine to give up all of their SRBMs (Tochka and Scud missiles) in exchange for economic assistance. I believe the line Putin gave them at the time was that if Ukraine's ability to destroy Moscow was removed then Putin would no longer be opposed to them joining NATO.

Of course, once their deterrent against invasion was gone it was only four years until Russia started invading. The salt in the wound is that half of those missiles weren't even destroyed, they were given to Russia and have doubtless been used against Ukraine!

'With a US goal of 100K rounds of artillery (not yet clearly met), this 1.8 million from Czech source looks . . . absurd?'

The vast majority of those 1.8 million 155 mm artillery shells were not made in the Czech Republic. The Czechs have set up a network to buy them from all around the world. For example, they bought a large number of them from the stockpiles maintained by South Africa and South Korea.

"What you’ve said is false boilerplate propaganda. Not only have they dragged teenagers, disabled elderly and Downs syndrome males, they don’t have enough bullets or time to train them."

What evidence do you have for your assertions? Some dodgy videos on Telegram etc? How do you know who filmed them, where they were filmed, or the true circumstances of the people in them?

Ukraine has better rule-of-law and its government has stronger morality than Russia. In Russia they really have been recruiting old men, disabled men and HIV+ men and sending them to Ukraine for use as cannon fodder. To hear a Kremlin shill complaining that Ukraine has been doing the things Russia routinely does is rich!

"When the war ends we can compare the truth of whatever was offered to Ukraine by Putin, and the scraps the Ukraine ends up with, before being divided among neighboring nations."

"Offered to Ukraine by Putin" Are you crazy? Putin has given Ukraine nothing but death and offered them nothing but slavery.

You ought to change your tagline from: (IN GOD WE TRUST) to: (IN SATAN WE TRUST) if you think Putin can ever be trusted.

Boris Johnson and others convinced Zelensky the peace deal was ‘bad’.

I assume you're referring to the time Putin offered Ukraine a chance to capitulate and called it a "peace deal" and Zelensky told him no thanks and the next day Boris Johnson arrived in Kyiv and when informed what happened told Zelensky he made the right decision. (There were only draft agreements, none of the negotiators present were authorised to agree on the terms.) The Kremlin propagandists then said Johnson sabotaged an agreed peace plan.

Russia had offered to pull back a bit if Ukraine would let them keep the areas they had annexed in the Donbass and Crimea, if it agreed to never join NATO and to cut the size of its military. But this was never going to be accepted as it was an obvious attempt by Russia to try and stall the war in order to regroup and attack again later. Also, the discussions were cut short when the Ukrainian side left following the discovery of the Russian mass-murder scene at Bucha.

Sure, Ukraine could capitulate but if that were to happen then all the surrounding European nations would need to ramp-up defence spending to record levels. Unless they also wanted to risk living under Russian domination. The worst case scenario for NATO is Ukraine falling into Putin’s hands (as it will encourage him to continue throwing his weight around in the region). It’s also the worst case for Ukraine and the USA.

All the people see is men (and teens) grabbed off the street and after an hour or two of training, sent to the front.

Utter nonsense! They aren't even conscripting men aged 18 to 24-years-old in Ukraine. They have shown incredible restraint given that they were invaded by an army of brutal orcs. In the UK men aged 18 to 41-years-old became liable to military conscription on the day World War 2 started.

*****And, of course, no sane person would support the spin the Daily Mail or the Brits put on this war given how much insane propaganda both have put out for the past three years.*****

Britain is a country that will always oppose evil. Just as we opposed NAZI Germany and the Soviet Union, we now oppose Russian imperialism. Because that is the right thing to do.

*****The war pigs in Britain want this war to continue at all costs, no matter how many more Ukrainians die or how much more territory Ukraine loses.******

What absolute nonsense! Britain has put forward a proposal for a mechanism to give Ukraine robust security guarantees so it can sign a peace treaty with Russia. Of course, Britain wants the war to end in a sustainable way. If you want to blame someone for Ukraine losing people and territory blame Russia for invading it.

*****Oh, and about funding. If people have persuaded themselves that the aid the US sends is an insignificant amount, then no one will suffer if it is cut off.******

It’s an insignificant amount compared to the USA’s national debt, but it obviously isn’t insignificant to the Ukrainians.

*****You’re not getting it. It’s not about acquiring fossil fuels. The focus is not acquiring. It is 1000X more serious than that. It’s about the day oil can’t be acquired. Period.*****

There are other sources of energy than oil and gas. As I said before, one reason to stop using fossil fuels is so that we don’t have to buy them from greedy murderous dictators like Putin.

***** The US must persuade the entire UN to create an army for the sole and express purpose of invading Russia to take the oil. It has to be overt. It has to be explicit. It will never happen.*****

Since that will never happen, maybe you should start to support moving away from the use of fossil fuels. Then we won’t need to buy oil and gas from Russia and they will become poor and irrelevant.

The bottom line is that by weakening Ukraine Trump is strengthening Russia’s position, which gives Putin the incentive to continue and escalate the war. You need to put pressure on Russia to make them stop invading Ukraine (by making it too costly for them to continue). The Ukrainians want peace and the Russians don’t, instead, the latter want to control Ukraine.

*****ONE TRILLION Dollars ARE BEING PAID OUT EVERY YEAR TO SERVICE NATIONAL DEBT. Whatever money was sent Ukraine added to national debt since we have chronic budget deficits every year.*****

So? The money given to Ukraine by the US was mostly in the form of end-of-life weapons, obsolete mothballed MBTs/IFVs/APCs, explosives and ammunition etc. The US has actually contributed about $119 billion to Ukraine (not $350 billion as repeatedly shouted by Trump), which is less than Europe has given them.

The US is also on the verge of securing an agreement to acquire $500 billion of Ukrainian rare earth metals and other natural resources. The money given/lent to Ukraine is a tiny fraction of your national debt.

*****The assumption that there are only two choices in a complex world is silly.*****

Who said there are only two choices? The US has chosen to appease Russia and undermine Ukraine. That shows weakness and a lack of moral clarity. If you think your enemies will be deterred by that then you are deluded.

Big Russian air attacks happened all around Ukraine last night with lots of drones and missiles. Kyiv was hit very hard, lots of civilian buildings hit and people killed. It was reported months ago that without additional Patriot supplies from the US Ukraine would start running out of Patriot interceptor missiles in Q1 2025, and we're now in Q2. Civilians are going to be at huge risk without Patriots and will need to be evacuated.

The EU recently offered to pay the US $50 billion to buy more Patriot missiles for Ukraine but Trump refused to supply them.

Sadly, Patriot is currently Ukraine's only reliable defence against ballistic missiles. Their S-300P+, Tor and Kubs can't do it. Their S-300V can, but they're out of missiles and Russia is the only manufacturer. Their Buks are too old to use the newer missile that can (and even if they could Russia is the only manufacturer). Their HAWK-Bs can stop non-hypersonic ones but less reliably than Patriots and again they use US supplied missiles. The models of SAMP/T and IRIS-T they have are not designed to stop them and neither are their NASAMS, and while that doesn't rule out the possibility they haven't scored a hit yet.

*****Biden's war. You want it? Go for it. Push to the head of the line and march. Maybe alongside Macron. Or Merz. Or von der Leyen.*****

It's not Biden's war. It's Putin's war! He invaded Ukraine and Biden/US was never an active party in the war. All the Ukrainians have asked for is to be allowed to buy the weapons they need to resist Russian aggression. They have not asked for foreign forces to come and fight their war for them.

*****Go for it. Wave the Union Jack. Maybe you and some in Europe will further "threaten Putin with real consequences for that."*****

For your information, it's called the Union Flag. It's only called the "Union Jack" when it's flown on a ship.

Trump doesn't seem to understand that even if Ukraine agreed to his proposed peace plan by conceding the stolen land, giving up on NATO membership, accepting no robust security guarantees and cutting down the size of its armed forces (as Putin wants), there still won't be a lasting peace.

Russia are not going to stop sending missiles and drones and they will continue to try and take other areas of Ukraine. Putin just doesn't want peace. He wants to fulfil his war objectives. Why would he stop when his modus operandi has been to opportunistically grab parts of Ukraine and violate numerous ceasefires going back to 2014?

The weaker Trump makes Ukraine the more aggressive Putin will become and the more Ukrainian territory he will take. Putin now knows that all he has to do is wait and the Ukrainians will run out of ammunition and then their resistance will collapse, so why would he agree to a lasting peace deal with them at this point? Trump is effectively weakening the good guys (who want the war to end) and thus strengthening the bad guys (who want to continue the war and win it).

*****Another angry, rude, obnoxious Eurozeeper spreading a bunch of Zelensky all over this forum.*****

If you think someone is being angry, rude and obnoxious just for disagreeing with you and stating facts then you probably have narcissistic personality disorder.

*****I guess some deep-staters are waving 100 pound notes through motorhome parks to increase zeeper traffic on conservative forums.*****

What absolute nonsense. The conspiracy theories you pro-Russian Freepers subscribe to are beyond ludicrous. For your information, I have been a member here for 23 years (anniversary today), so there’s zero chance of me having being sent here by anyone.

*****United States is more in debt than Putin+Zelensky+all EU combined. Get it through your brain that we are broke.*****

You are not broke. Don’t be silly. You have the largest economy on the planet and the International Reserve Currency. You can basically print money without suffering any inflation.

Furthermore, a large chunk of the US national debt is due to all the tax cuts passed since 2016. You have been cutting taxes at the same time as increasing state expenditure.

*****Putin is not sending drones to United States. His fight is with Ukraine.*****

Putin won’t stop with Ukraine if he gets what he wants there. Also, what do you think the Chinese government is thinking while watching this spectacle unfold? They are likely to decide that invading Taiwan would be easy because the US has gone soft and would stay out of it.

*****There was never any way an anti Russian government could be allowed in Kiev to be that close to the only thing in the world that matters — oil.*****

By “anti Russian government” you mean a government that wants to be left alone by Russia and control its own territory without having to take orders from the Kremlin? The Ukrainians were never going to invade Russia. Don’t be preposterous!

*****View all things through the prism of civilization’s lifeblood — oil. Understand it*****

That’s just another argument for pursuing nuclear/green generation technologies. If the acquisition of oil requires us to give brutal dictators, like Putin, our money and hence put weapons into their hands then it is a major strategic liability.

*****I say silly, but it’s hard for anyone to accept it when shown they are worthless.*****

No. People who unquestionably serve (and defend) a wicked greedy dictator are worthless.

Your obsession with acquiring fossil fuels simply empowers the most evil scumbags in the world.

*****Cool story, bro. Most of us don’t care. We just want it to stop and we don’t want any more of our money going to that corrupt money pit. Let Zelensky milk the EU. Leave us out of it.*****

Yes, you don't care. We get that. For your information, Ukraine helped the US in Afghanistan (even though it wasn't in NATO). Ukraine helped in Iraq too, deploying troops ostensibly as peacekeepers after the initial invasion and then finding themselves sucked into some pretty heavy fighting with the Mahdi army and other Iranian proxies on the US’s behalf. They had zero obligation to you, yet were still willing to commit over 6,000 troops over the years they deployed there.

If you really want the war to stop then put pressure on Russia. They are the ones who invaded, continue to cease territory and have frustrated ceasefire negotiations for the last month and yet Trump gives Putin a free pass.

The US has actually contributed $119 billon to Ukraine which is less than Europe (not $350 billion as repeatedly shouted by Trump) and MOST of that was in end-of-life weapons, ammunition and vehicles, not cash. They have provided obsolete mothballed MBTs/IFVs/vehicles, weapons, explosives and ammunition. That ammunition would need to be stripped down and made safe which carries significant costs; giving it to Ukraine to use before it passes its expiry dates actually saved them some money.

*****Only thing the president Trump needs to do is cutoff all money and weapons to erotic dancer & comedian Zelenski.*****

So your solution is to force the victims of Putin’s unprovoked aggression to capitulate and give Putin exactly what he wants? What could possibly go wrong with that strategy?

The West foolishly hoped Putin would be content with Crimea, DPR and LPR and decided they were a price worth paying for peace, which is why nothing was done to help Ukraine last time Russia engaged in naked aggression against it in 2014. Then it turned out this was completely wrong, and here we are with Putin’s forces deeply embedded in an invasion of the south and east of Ukraine, while the West refuses to help kick them out even though we’re the ones responsible because we effectively rolled out the red carpet to him by encouraging Ukraine to disarm.

You have absolutely no answers for the problem of Ukraine, every response boils down to some version of “Well, we can’t afford to annoy Putin, it’s best to let him do what he wants”. If you were in charge during the Cold War, we would have lost two thirds of Europe overnight. Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave listening to all you pro-Russian sell-out Republicans.

*****It’s a country of 140 million people very sparsely populated not because of a scarcity of people, but a vast expanse of geography. It is a country with nukes. It is also a country with the largest NatGas reserves in the world. It is the largest exporter of oil in the world...*****

How about Russia doesn’t occupy anything and begins to appreciate the huge landmass they permanently own? Perhaps they could even begin to try to improve the dreadful living conditions for the population outside the big cities there, instead of sending young men to kill and die in foreign lands to satisfy their greedy dictator’s imperial ambitions.

As you say, Russia has vast natural resources and a mostly educated population, so they should be at least as rich as Canada - so why aren’t they? Because no one outside the country wants to invest there. It’s a gangster state with no guaranteed rule-of-law, stable legal and financial institutions or certainty of keeping your assets there or the profits you make there.

I doubt the Russians will be very happy with these occupied territories in the long run anyway. In the end, it will all go the way of the Soviet Union again. It’s not easy keeping control of countries where most of the population absolutely hates you. Costs a lot of money too. It’s all very short-sighted.

If Putin was smart, he will go for peace now and not push on into Ukraine and Moldova even though he could. But I doubt he thinks that way and just sees an opportunity for a victorius outcome for his master plan.

It’s true. Trump just looks like Putin’s poodle. He even blames Zelensky for starting the war, which also makes him look psychotic.

The Russians have held up the ceasefire negotiations for the last month, but Trump has made no attempt to threaten Putin with real consequences for that.

What Zelensky needs are security guarantees for any peace deal with Russia. Without them Putin will just take a break, rearm and attack again later at his convenience.

Comparing Zelensky to Hamas is utterly ludicrous. I suppose you think Putin is equivalent to George Washington?

*****We owe Zelensky and Ukraine ABSOLUTELY NOTHING….and we OWE THEM OUR ATTENTION LEAST OF ALL.*****

Sure. Encouraging them to give up their nukes, strategic bombers and SRBMs and then hanging them out to dry is just fine.

*****Maybe the Telegraph UK is just really, really missing Slow Joe these days. Seems like that’s the verdict.....*****

For your information, the Telegraph is a right-wing Conservative newspaper.

But I suppose wanting to resist Russian aggression makes you a left-winger in the US nowadays!