Corruption is everywhere. If anyone thinks that some of that money isn't siphoned off into the pockets of corrupt politicians they're delusional. That's not the point.
The bottom line is the USA and NATO created the Ukraine conflict. That is to say the USA, UK, France, and Nato block countries. This was an Obama-era brain child. The Maidan revolution in 2014 was CIA/State Department funded. That entire big protest in Kyiv square? Funded, supplied, and supported by USA NGO's with interests in Lockheed Martin, GD, etc. The Azarov government (president's name too hard to spell) was on the verge of signing an agreement with Russia. The guy wasn't a Putin proxy like Akhmad Kadyrov. He just played the game he needed for the Ukraine. Wasn't a good guy, wasn't a bad guy, just another marginally corrupt politician that played both sides for the country's benefit.
USA/Nato didn't like the proposition of Ukraine cozying up to Russia? Fund a color revolution that ultimately led the installation of a new government, in line with OURS AND NATO'S INTERESTS, which resulted in Zelensky. Zelensky is not a bad a guy (I don't think). It's just that this was us "nudging Ukraine off the edge of the diving board into the deep end" which we all knew what was going to happen. We dangled the carrot on the stick of "join the EU...you almost have it!"
End result? Convenient proxy war to weaken one of the world's sinister superpowers while enrichening the boards of the US NGO's who also have interests in major defense companies. The real results: Probably close to a million dead now with no end in sight. Send those javelins, M982s, and other goodies.
How does Trump tie in: Well, he's not stupid. Where is this going? Trillions of dollars of arms, funded by taxpayer dollars, enrichening board members of major defense companies. Putin is going to fight and fight until every last native Russian man is dead. He will continue to funnel in conquered conscripts. There is no "winning." People like to sit on their ideal that we will eventually defeat Russia! It's not happening. Exactly what Trump proposed is exactly what is going on: This is a war to see how bad it can get before Putin says "Fine, I'll settle on just taking Crimea" or some other geographic region. The unfair aspect is he's dealing with Obama-era politics.
No one is saying just give up Ukraine for them. Trump is just realistic. If he was in office when this went down, I don't think it would have happened.
And before anyone calls me cold, or uncompassionate...I feel for both the Ukrainians and the poor Russian men who are getting sent into a meat grinder. They've become pawns for bureaucrats 1000's of miles away.
Obviously, the dollar amount spent is off, but the overall message is correct.
The CIA definitely provoked Russia to come across the border.
An explosive new NYT report shows how Washington needlessly fed into Russia’s worst fears and precipitated the invasion, justified or not
responsiblestatecraft.org
Oh 1000%. I can't even talk much about it but know of one "advisor" that was "advising" there in 2014.
Not like we haven't done this before...
Not that I disagree with it, in other cases. We knew what we were doing here.
Syria, Bolivia, etc.
EDIT: And I should have said, trillions in the future. Because that's where we are headed.
Let me quote what I think is almost certainly unwittingly the most relevant paragraph in the supposed expose'
@Altitude sickness has provided us on Ukraine and its relationship with the West; a relationship it rather desperately sought to strengthen in the face of the threats from the dictatorship to its immediate east.
"The New York Times’ exposé offers no shortage of disturbing implications. Ukraine is, needless to say, a sovereign state in charge of determining its own security arrangements. The underlying issue is not whether Ukraine is within its rights to enter into this kind of relationship with the CIA, as it obviously is, nor is it whether the Maidan Revolution put Ukraine on a certain path toward political cooperation with Western entities."
I think everything after that paragraph in that piece is pretty much irrelevant.
After all, what were these dangerous bases that Ukraine and NATO were supposedly establishing on the borders of Russia? Were they airbases for strike aircraft? Were they missile batteries loaded with nuclear weapons capable of reducing the Russian strategic strike force with a surprise attack? Perhaps they hosted brigades of mechanized infantry poised to march on Moscow? Of course not. What there was were non-uniformed US and allied training teams there providing cooperative training assistance to the Ukrainian military and intelligence services. I would suggest that I am at least as well informed on this topic as someone you know.
But let's take it a step farther. Ukrainian intelligence services were indeed cooperating with the US bilaterally just as were the Swedes and the Finns prior to 2022. Moreover, there was nothing a CIA on the ground post in Ukraine could have discovered about the Soviet Union that a host of technical means were not already providing.
The only thing Ukraine's cooperation with the West represented to the dictator in Moscow was a useful excuse to attempt to expand the borders of his empire, and recreate the population and resource underpinnings of the Soviet Union. It is absolutely in our national interests to prevent that from happening.
I particularly love right world media assessments of the CIA. One moment they are bumbling incompetents and the next they are capable of causing the vast majority of a whole nation to depose a Putin puppet who would have turned a Ukraine with aspirations for eventual EU membership into another state like Belarus or Georgia. To their everlasting credit, the Ukrainian people and not the CIA, voted in the streets for a different future. Were most governments and anyone with a modicum of understanding of Russian ambitions pleased? Of course they were. But to blame Ukraine's fight for self-determination or excuse Russian brutality as somehow the fault of the CIA or the United States is simply embracing a politically convenient falsehood.
Secondly, you need to work on your math. To date, the US has appropriated approximately $175 billion for Ukraine. Our government spent six trillion dollars last year. Even if it were all real money, that isn't even a round-off. But it isn't all actual money. What most handringers scrolling the pages of the more right wing reporting on the web or listening to Tucker Carlson don't read or hear is that most of the actual military aid has been Presidential drawdown materiel from US stocks.
For instance, the US has a couple of thousand older model Bradley infantry fighting vehicles in storage. They will never ever be used by US forces again. They do have "value" because they were purchased to fight the Soviet Union with US taxpayer dollars. When we provide a couple of hundred to Ukraine that budget value is deducted from the allocation. In other words money did not change hands.
We have indeed increased munition production. That is a Godsend to the US military. We have so reduced the nation's capacity to produce artillery ammunition and guided air, sea, and ground munitions that it had been a strategic worry since well before I left the Pentagon in 2003 or the defense industry in 2014. That new capability increases the deterrence factor of our military as China weighs its options in the Pacific.
What we have allocated is .35% of our GDP in real and materiel dollars to support of Ukraine. That is about equal to NATO in actual dollars and significantly less in GDP than the majority of our partners. I think even you would agree if you gave a million dollars to your favorite charity it isn't the same thing as Elon Musk doing the same thing. For instance Poland is providing 4.00 % of its GDP to Ukraine compared to our .35 - or proportionally - over ten times as much. Sadly, you won't get that over on Newsmax.
What the US is faced with is the brutal attempt by the ex-KGB thug in the Kremlin and his apathetic enabling state to brutally conquer a nation that had been independent for thirty years and had such aspirations for a thousand. Its history is not unlike Poland, and I don't see anyone suggesting Poland should again be under the bootheel of a Russian tyrant. To not aid Ukraine in its fight to remain independent is to by default to aid Russia in achieving his goals of recreating a powerful military state astride the Eurasian continent closely allied to China. In what world would that be in our national interests?
One additional thought. Putin has proven such an offended strategic genius that he has managed to drive Sweden and Finland into NATO turning the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake and putting NATO strike aircraft and troops all along an 800 mile mutual border. NATO ground forces could hike to St. Petersburg if they so desired, and NATO intelligence assets are now looking directly into the harbor holding Russia's nuclear capable submarines.
