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The U.S. Is Supporting a Policy of Brutal Attrition in Ukraine Based on Incomplete and Skewed Western Coverage

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“Ukraine will win.” Some variation of this has become the unofficial mantra of U.S. policy toward the Ukraine war, asserted in countless columns, interviews and speeches, ones often pledging open-ended U.S. commitment to the Ukrainian war effort and chiding policymakers for not sending greater quantities and more escalatory types of weapons.

It was partly on this basis, in fact — that with enough support, Ukraine could militarily defeat a Russia weaker than many thought — that then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson [stupidly] urged against peace talks early in the war. . .

Yet this central claim of an almost certain Ukrainian military victory over chastened Russian forces is asserted in the absence of one key measure of the military situation: verifiable battlefield losses. From the beginning of the war until now, Ukraine has, like Russia, treated its casualties as a state secret, one so closely guarded that not even U.S. intelligence and officials, who advise the country’s leadership on military strategy and assist in war planning, know exactly how many Ukrainians have been killed and wounded over the past year. This is even though, as one Ukrainian officer told the Wall Street Journal in a recent piece about the grinding battle for the city of Bakhmut, “the war is won not by the party that gains territory, but by the party that destroys the armed forces of the adversary” . . .

The lack of public awareness of Ukrainian casualty levels raises a number of thorny questions: Are frequent predictions of certain Ukrainian military victory more fanciful than grounded in reality? Is the American public being misled into backing an escalating military commitment on false pretenses? Has Ukrainian leadership itself, as a result, been incentivized to set unrealistic military objectives that have helped to prolong the death and destruction ordinary Ukrainians have suffered? And has it helped create a political climate in the United States opposed to diplomatic solutions?

We may soon find out. According to the Washington Post, even Ukrainian officials are now questioning their forces’ ability to launch a successful counteroffensive after the losses they’ve taken, with many of the most experienced fighters taken permanently off the battlefield. (Read more from “The U.S. Is Supporting a Policy of Brutal Attrition in Ukraine Based on Incomplete and Skewed Western Coverage” HERE)

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Trump, Desantis, and Others Answer Ukraine Questionnaire From Tucker Carlson — Here’s What They Said (VIDEO)

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By The Blaze. As the 2024 presidential election cycle gets underway, several Republican figures have responded to a questionnaire from Tucker Carlson on the issue of Ukraine. . .

Trump asserted that Russia would not have attacked Ukraine if he were still president.

“Start by telling Europe that they must pay at least equal to what the U.S. is paying to help Ukraine. They must also pay us, retroactively, the difference,” Trump said. “Next, tell Ukraine that there will be little more money coming from us, UNLESS RUSSIA CONTINUES TO PROSECUTE THE WAR. The President must meet with each side, then both sides together, and quickly work out a deal.” . . .

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis said.

“The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank check’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes,’ without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges,” the governor declared. “The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.” (Read more from “Trump, DeSantis, and Others Answer Ukraine Questionnaire From Tucker Carlson — Here’s What They Said” HERE)

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Ron DeSantis Says Protecting Ukraine Is Not a Key U.S. Interest

By The New York Times. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has sharply broken with Republicans who are determined to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, saying in a statement made public on Monday night that protecting the European nation’s borders is not a vital U.S. interest and that policymakers should instead focus attention at home.

The statement from Mr. DeSantis, who is seen as an all but declared presidential candidate for the 2024 campaign, puts him in line with the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination, former President Donald J. Trump. . .

On Mr. Carlson’s show, Mr. DeSantis separated himself from Republicans who say the problem with Mr. Biden’s Ukraine policy is that he’s not doing enough. Mr. DeSantis made clear he thinks Mr. Biden is doing too much, without a clearly defined objective, and taking actions that risk provoking war between the U.S. and Russia.

Mr. Carlson is one of the most ardent opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine. He has called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a corrupt “antihero” and mocked him for dressing “like the manager of a strip club.” (Read more form “Ron DeSantis Says Protecting Ukraine Is Not a Key U.S. Interest” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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American Drone Taken Down by Russian Fighter Jet Over Black Sea

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The United States European Command said on Tuesday afternoon that a Russian jet had collided with an unmanned U.S. Air Force drone in international airspace over the Black Sea west of Crimea, a new twist in Russia’s bloody war against Ukraine that has seen significant aid from the United States but no direct contact between American and Russian forces.

According to EUCOM, “two Russian Su-27 aircraft conducted an unsafe and unprofessional intercept with a U.S. Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance unmanned MQ-9 aircraft that was operating within international airspace over the Black Sea” on Tuesday, causing “complete loss of the MQ-9.”

During the intercept, “one of the Russian Su-27 aircraft struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters,” EUCOM described. “Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner. This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional,” the military added.

(Read more from “American Drone Taken Down by Russian Fighter Jet Over Black Sea” HERE)

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Russia Launches ‘Massive’ Barrage Across Ukraine

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Dozens of Russian missiles rained down over several Ukrainian cities early Thursday in a massive attack.

The Ukrainian military said Russia launched more than 80 missiles of various types overnight and into the morning as far west as Lviv, which has largely been outside the confines of the war. The strikes targeted 10 of Ukraine’s 27 regions, Ukrainian President Volydmyr Zelensky said, and many hit residential buildings.

In Lviv, reports indicated at least five people were killed, while three others died in the Kherson region, another person was killed in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and two were killed in Donetsk. Strikes were also reported in Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernihiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhya, Kirovohrad, and Vinnytsia, according to CNN. Some regions lost electricity temporarily following the strikes.

Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said the attacks consisted of 28 X-101/X-555 air-launched cruise missiles, 20 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles, six X-22 air-launched cruise missiles, six X-47 Kinzhal air-launched cruise missiles, eight guided aircraft missiles, including two X-31P and two X-59, 13 S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles, and eight Iranian-made Shahed 136/131 drones. Ukraine was able to destroy 42 missiles and four drones. (Read more from “Russia Launches ‘Massive’ Barrage Across Ukraine” HERE)

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Remnants of Russian Platoon Refuse to Fight After ‘Bulls–t’ Mobilization to Donbas

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A Russian officer fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine released a defiant video saying that he and whatever was left of his decimated platoon were refusing to follow orders after being forced to attack settlements without any training.

The recording, which spread on Telegram channels this week, shed light on the purported chaos within the ranks of Vladimir Putin’s draftees mobilized in Ukraine.

In the brief video, a man in a baseball cap who introduces himself as a senior lieutenant stands in front of a group of about 10 soldiers assembled in a bare room with a single light bulb hanging overhead and reads a statement from a sheet of paper.

“We were herded to attack villages absolutely without any training,” he says, adding that conscripts in their 40s were forced to fight “without reconnaissance, without communications, without scouting, without anything.”

The Post could not independently verify the video’s authenticity, and it’s unclear when or where it was recorded. (Read more from “Remnants of Russian Platoon Refuse to Fight After ‘Bulls–t’ Mobilization to Donbas” HERE)

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NBC Reporter Goes to Crimea, Shockingly Tells the Truth; Ukraine Puts Him on Kill List (VIDEO)

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Mainstream media correspondents for major US networks rarely, if ever, report from inside Crimea and certainly are nowhere near Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine. However, this week NBC News chief international correspondent Keir Simmons went to Sevastopol, surrounded by a significant Russian military presence given it is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, and in a live segment admitted that it’s not at all realistic Zelensky and Ukrainian forces can ever hope to take Crimea.

This is especially as the “the people there… view themselves as Russian.” Simmons noted that “This is the closest that any US news crew has got to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in many many years.” He explained that “Vladimir Putin will be determined to defend that port – to not have it take it away from him – he may well do pretty much anything to try to achieve that.”

“It is a very, very dangerous standoff.. it’s hard to see how you reach a negotiation over that. There’s military absolutely everywhere, it is a military town,” he continued, before saying…

“When for example Victoria Nuland talks about that at the very least we [the US] want Crimea to be demilitarized, I find myself standing there and wondering, how on earth does that happen?” . . .

But it appears that the NBC correspondent, once he was on the ground in a place that few Western reporters ever venture, couldn’t deny the plain truth he was seeing all around him.

(Read more from “NBC Reporter Goes to Crimea, Shocks Viewers by Telling the Truth (VIDEO)” HERE)

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‘Urban Warfare Is Unavoidable,’ US General Fears

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Russia’s war in Ukraine suggests that “urban warfare is unavoidable,” according to a senior U.S. general tasked with prepare the U.S. Army for potential future wars.

“I think the enemy is going to move to the cities to avoid classification as a target,” Gen. James E. Rainey, who leads the U.S. Army Futures Command, said Friday at the Center for a New American Security. “We need to wrap our head around that.” . . .

“You never want to get into clearing and the attrition that comes with that,” he said. “Why do you need forces? You know, again, not to clear an urban area but to be able to penetrate into an urban area for purpose — stay there, kill from there.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has devolved into the kind of war of attrition that has provoked international outrage toward Russia and spurred Western powers to increase military aid to Ukraine. The conflict has strained the arsenals of Moscow as well as the U.S. and its allies, but Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s team maintained that “we have a lot of capacity” to continue aiding Ukraine.

“When we put our mind to it, our $25 trillion economy, you don’t want to take us on,” said Defense Department assistant secretary Douglas R. Bush, the Pentagon’s lead acquisitions bureau official. “We are, for example, rapidly expanding that capacity to meet some of the replenishment needs for Ukraine — maybe not as fast as some people think is possible, but I can assure you, it’s happening quickly and American industry is showing what it can do. So I’m pretty confident about it.” (Read more from “‘Urban Warfare Is Unavoidable,’ US General Fears” HERE)

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Germany’s Scholz Says China ‘Declared It Will Not Deliver’ Weapons to Russia

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday said China had declared it won’t supply Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine, suggesting that Berlin has received bilateral assurances from Beijing on the issue.

Scholz was speaking at a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who told reporters that the EU has received “no evidence” so far from the U.S. that Beijing is considering supplying lethal support to Moscow.

Senior U.S. officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken have expressed deep concern in recent weeks that China could provide weapons such as kamikaze drones to Russia, which in turn triggered warnings to Beijing from EU politicians. Scholz himself urged Beijing last week to refrain from such actions and instead use its influence to convince Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine. . .

“We all agree that there should be no arms deliveries, and the Chinese government has declared that it will not deliver any either,” the chancellor said in response to a question by POLITICO. “We insist on this and we are monitoring it,” he added. (Read more from “Germany’s Scholz Says China ‘Declared It Will Not Deliver’ Weapons to Russia” HERE)

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Trump Refuses to Lay Out Russia-Ukraine Peace Plan Until He’s President

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Former President Donald Trump refused to say what he would do to broker a peace negotiation between Ukraine and Russia, telling the Daily Caller he would have to be president to do it.

Trump has maintained that he would end Russia’s war on Ukraine in “24 hours,” making him the only presidential candidate to endorse peaceful negotiations between the two countries.

“What specifically will you do to end the war in 24 hours?” Daily Caller’s White House Correspondent Diana Glebova asked Trump at Saturday’s CPAC event.

“I’m not going to tell you that because if I told you that, I probably wouldn’t be able to do it,” Trump responded.

“We’re playing a giant chess game here… It would be so easy, to settle that war. I could do it in 24 hours,” Trump said, reiterating a claim he has made repeatedly. (Read more from “Trump Refuses to Lay Out Russia-Ukraine Peace Plan Until He’s President” HERE)

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Sen. Dan Sullivan: White House Should Send F-16S to Ukraine Now

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Senior Defense Department officials were leaning toward supplying Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets until President Biden quashed the idea this year, Sen. Dan Sullivan said Sunday.

The Alaska Republican sent a letter about Ukraine’s urgent need for fighter jets to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, after hosting a delegation of Ukrainian pilots last summer on Capitol Hill.

“It looked like it was moving well through the bureaucracy of the Pentagon,” Mr. Sullivan said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

But that momentum came to a grinding halt in January after Mr. Biden responded with a terse “no” to a reporter’s question about providing Kyiv with fighter jets.

“And then, last week the national security adviser [Jake Sullivan] says, ‘Well, we’re not going to do F-16s for now,’” said Mr. Sullivan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “That’s exactly the wrong approach.” (Read more from “Sen. Dan Sullivan: White House Should Send F-16S to Ukraine Now” HERE)

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