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DEFENCE AND SECURITY, ECONOMY, MEDIA, POLITICS, WORLD Ukraine: Is it almost over? By Scott Burchill Mar 1, 2023 Joint press conference President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy December 21, 2022 Despite celebrating 12 months of surviving the Russian onslaught, promises of more money and military equipment (including tanks) from the West, and a chorus of support for the courage and resilience of the people, the war appears almost over for Ukraine. There are four reasons for thinking this. First, as the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal explains, public rhetoric [about Ukraine’s heroic resistance] masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the...

According to US President Joe Biden, America’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is “sacred.” To be fair, NATO has proved to be one of the most enduring multilateral military alliances in history. Yet the mission it was designed for, to defend Western Europe from a Soviet invasion during the Cold War, has been over for decades. Like most bureaucracies, however, NATO did not go away when it had helped to achieve an astonishingly bloodless victory in the Cold War. Instead, like most bureaucracies, it mutated and expanded. The Soviet threat was gone after the Cold War, yet the...

Belarusian anti-government activists have claimed responsibility for what they said was a drone attack on a Russian A-50 surveillance aircraft at an airfield near the Belarus capital of Minsk on Sunday. "Those were drones. The participants of the operation are Belarusian," Aliaksandr Azarov, leader of Belarusian anti-government organization BYPOL, was quoted as saying on the organisation's Telegram messaging app and on the Poland-based Belsat news channel. "They are now safe, outside the country."

PRESS STATEMENT Nine years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea – a clear violation of international law and of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The United States welcomes the efforts of Ukraine’s Crimea Platform to focus global attention on Russia’s continued occupation. The United States does not and never will recognize Russia’s purported annexation of the peninsula. Crimea is Ukraine.

Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told Newsmax Saturday that the United States must give Ukraine the tools to go on the offensive in the next year to bring the war with Russia to a close...He said the military equipment being sent to Ukraine as part of America's more than $100 billion in military and humanitarian aid is being fully accounted for with as many as four separate audits to ensure the aid is going where it is supposed to. He said, however, he is "less certain about the cash" being sent.

China is considering sending Russia lethal military aid in the form of artillery shells as President Vladimir Putin’s army rapidly depletes its supply of ammunition a year into his invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials said, a prospect that has alarmed those in the Biden administration who believe Beijing has the ability to transform the war’s trajectory. There is no evidence that any weapons transfers have occurred, these officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. government’s assessment. But if China does move ahead, it would mark the first time Beijing has provided lethal aid in the...

https://youtu.be/O7I5mrWipls

*US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro voiced concern in remarks on Wednesday *Said China has 340 active warships, compared to about 280 for the US Navy *Claimed US naval shipyards can't match the output of Chinese ones The US Secretary of the Navy has raised the alarm that China's naval fleet surpasses America's in number of ships, and is growing faster than the US has current capacity to match. 'It is no secret that the People's Republic of China seeks to upend our dominance on the oceans across the globe,' said Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro in remarks at the...

The longer this preview war goes on, the sooner will follow the nightmarish main attraction. The Ukraine mess is daily looking more like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, a meat grinder that took 500,000 lives. That three-year conflict became a savage proxy war and prelude for the belligerents of World War II. The Ukraine battlefield is proving a similar laboratory of death. New lethal weaponry and tactics are introduced, modified—and always improved—from drones to guided missiles to internet-fed artillery. Likewise, a similar pre-global war lineup of the eventual adversaries is emerging in preview of a much larger,...

The Biden Administration is dangerous. After nearly a year of fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against a nuclear power, Biden has driven Russia and China closer together and the world is now facing a nuclear WWIII. President Trump has a plan to stop this madness.Steve Cortes discussed how Biden has pushed Russia and China together with his feckless actions in Ukraine. The world hasn’t been closer to a World War since World War II.Cortes explained how Nixon went to China in the 1970’s to build a relationship with China, not to help China’s communist party but to prevent Russia...

President Biden on Tuesday declared that Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia in a speech from Warsaw in which he marked one year since the start of the war. “Autocrats only understand one word: no, no. no. No you will not take my country, no you will not take my freedom, no you will not take my future,” Biden said in his remarks. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, never.” Biden’s speech came a day after he made a surprise visit to Ukraine in which he made a historic stop into the war-torn capital city of...

“We talked primarily about what [Zelensky’s] needs are when it comes to winning this war,” McCaul said, noting Zelensky would provide the Republicans with HIS LIST of desired items. We have strong bipartisan support to give Ukraine everything that it needs to win. The congressmen’s visit comes one day after Biden also made an unannounced appearance in Ukraine… .

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO)— Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is calling on the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with F-16 Fighter Jets as soon as possible. Sunday, Graham said that includes training Ukrainian pilots as soon as possible. Graham also urged the Biden administration to not be cautious or fearful of aggravating Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying: “Don’t worry about provoking Putin, worry about beating him.” ...

U.S. President Joe Biden promised new military aid for Ukraine worth $500 million during a surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday, almost a year to the day since Russia's invasion. In a trip showing solidarity with Kyiv, Biden also said additional sanctions would be announced this week against the Russian elite and companies trying to evade sanctions to "back the Russian war machine". The military aid package will include artillery ammunition, anti-armour systems and air surveillance radars "to help protect the Ukrainian people from aerial bombardments," he said. "Freedom is priceless. It is worth fighting for as long as it...

Russia's mounting offensive in eastern Ukraine has left the West in panic. EU foreign affairs chief Joseph Borrell warned member nations that the war in Ukraine will be over unless the bloc finds a way to speed up provision of ammunition to Ukraine within weeks. The EU defence minister will hold a special meeting next month to discuss further military aid to Ukraine from their existing stocks. Borrell said "much more has to be done much quicker'. ...

"No matter what the Ukrainians decide about Crimea in terms of where they choose to fight etcetera, Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum, at a minimum, demilitarised," Nuland told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Asked about the dangers of escalation in the Ukraine war, Nuland said Russia had a host of military installations crucial for the conflict. "Those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them and we are supporting that," Nuland said.

A long but thorough observation of the facts: from Odessa, to Lvov, to Vlad’s defined strategy to the collective West’s strategy, to the Ukies recent “ Volksturm” mobilization ( 16 year olds forced registration)…. The Western war cheerleaders will not like this dose of reality. ————————— “ Recently, there is a lot of talk about where the escalating spiral will end. Will it conclude in World War III? Will there be a nuclear war? What are the determining factors? And what would indicate World War III is imminent? I’ll go through these questions in detail from a strategic perspective. But,...

Now, in terms of the military impact, an F-16 is still a very capable platform: It has a good radar, it can fly well above the majority of the Russian sound systems in the area apart from the very, very specialized ones. It has a weapons system tied to that radar that can engage the vast majority of Russian aircraft long before they can attack it. The F-16 doesn't have quite the same stealth characteristics of something like an F-35 and an F-22. But I've fought against the F-16. I've had the odd trip in one, but I've also fought...

The former commanding US general in Europe, Ben Hodges, has told DW that the West should provide Kyiv with fighter jets. He said that providing Ukraine with the planes could lead to a victory for Kyiv within the year. The former commanding general of the United States Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, said that Ukraine could achieve a quick victory if the West provided swift help with fighter jets. He predicted that the defeat of Russia could otherwise take three to five years, given the current level of Western support. What the former general said "The sooner we deliver them...