Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko agrees with Ukraine's military commander in chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi against Zelensky that the war with Russia is at a stalemate

 But despite his litany of grievances, the mayor stopped short of calling for Zelensky’s immediate ouster. “The president has an important function today, and we have to support him until the end of the war,” Klitschko said. “But at the end of this war, every politician will pay for his successes or failures.”

More.

Saturday, September 30, 2023

US House passes 45-day government funding bill 335-91 minus Ukraine aid

 The House measure would fund government at current 2023 levels for 45 days, through Nov. 17, setting up another potential crisis if they fail to more fully fund government by then. The package was approved by the House 335-91, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats supporting.

More.



Saturday, June 24, 2023

IRS team investigating Hunter Biden's alleged crimes never investigated the Ukraine-Burisma bribes allegations

Jerry Dunleavy, here:

Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian owner of Burisma, was the "foreign national" involved in the alleged "criminal bribery scheme" aimed at shaking an alleged investigation into Burisma by then-Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, according to sources familiar with the FBI record who described its contents to the Washington Examiner.

The sources said Zlochevsky said he believed it would be difficult to unravel the alleged bribery scheme for at least 10 years because of the number of bank accounts involved.

Amid the threat of being held in contempt of Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray allowed members of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee to review an FD-1023 form this month that contained redacted versions of the allegations from the paid FBI informant.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, repeatedly claimed following a late May FBI briefing that Barr and his “hand-picked prosecutor” — Scott Brady, then the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania — ended the investigation into the bribery claims in 2020. But Barr quickly said that is false.

“It’s not true,” Barr soon told multiple outlets in early June. “It wasn’t closed down. On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also revealed this month that a less redacted version of the form he has viewed says Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings of his conversations with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden (two of the former and 15 of the latter) as an "insurance policy." 

Zlochevsky’s alleged reference to Joe Biden as the “big guy” appears independent of the apparent reference to the now-president as the “big guy” by a Hunter Biden business associate during negotiations with Chinese intelligence-linked businessmen. The China-related reference occurred in a May 2017 email not made public until October 2020.

Shapley said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf instructed FBI and IRS investigators not to ask witnesses about “dad” (Joe Biden) or about “the big guy.”

Hunter Biden reached a plea deal on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun, Weiss’s office revealed in a court filing on Tuesday.

The IRS whistleblower claims detailing the politicization and slow-walking of the Justice Department investigation were made public on Thursday, including allegations that Weiss had sought special counsel status from the DOJ and sought to file charges in California and in the nation’s capital but was repeatedly denied. The whistleblowers also pointed to new apparent links between Joe Biden and his son’s China deals and that the FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop by November 2019.

 

Thursday, March 23, 2023

Ron DeSantis missteps, tries to weasel out of his characterization of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "territorial dispute"

One message for Tucker Carlson viewers, another for "neocons".

But trying to thread that needle is a fool's errand.

Ron DeSantis obviously isn't ready for this yet. No one thinks any part of Ukraine is Russian territory, especially since Russia agreed to the new borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

DeSantis could elevate himself by pointing out that Ukraine also pledged itself to neutrality in that agreement, and that Ukraine should return to that position instead of seeking EU and NATO membership.

Unfortunately, it appears that DeSantis, and the rest of the field, needs to let Trump become the candidate and lose again in order to cleanse the GOP of Trump once and for all. 

DeSantis would be better positioned for 2028 anyway, when the Russia-Ukraine conflict enters its sixth year, at which time he can better Monday morning quarterback the whole thing. He will turn 50 in 2028. He has time. He needs time.


'Well, I think it's been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong,' DeSantis told Piers Morgan in an interview more than a week after his initial comments. ...

'What I'm referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don't think legitimately but they had,' he said.

More.

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

GOP candidate positions on Ukraine demonstrate nothing but groveling to the anti-war right

 And the kernel there is pretending things that are not true, the mark of an unserious country.

Nikki Haley is simply incoherent. She says we have to win this war, but without more financial assistance. 

“I don’t think we need to put money in Ukraine,” Haley said last week before an audience in Iowa. ... “This is not a war about Ukraine, this is a war about freedom—and it’s one that we have to win,” Haley said. “If we win this war, this will send a message to China, it will send a message to Iran, it will send a message to North Korea, it will send a message to Russia. If we lose this war… they said Poland and the Baltics are next, and you’re looking at a world war.”

Ron DeSantis pretends Russia never invaded and simply has a territorial dispute with Ukraine.

“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 told Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week.

And The Daily Beast isn't wrong about Donald Trump's position, who to this day touts the myth that he is some great deal-maker who can untie the Gordian Knot:

Former President Donald Trump has said he would have let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine if he were still in the White House.

It is also the case that there is plenty of pretending on the other side, that the West wasn't responsible for the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 which ultimately provoked the current conflict.

Statesmen tell hard truths to their people. But none of ours seem capable of telling even the simple ones, including Joe Biden.

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Biden's daring visit to Kiev had more to do with repairing his own image at home as a bungler than with helping Ukraine

The visit, combined with VP Harris' labeling of Russia guilty of crimes against humanity, has resulted today in Russian suspension of the last nuclear arms treaty remaining.

The Democrats are playing a very dangerous, impetuous, self-serving, unnecessary, game. 

Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris said the U.S. has determined Russian forces have committed “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine.

Putin pulls back from last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the US

"Talk softly and carry a big stick" would be a much better policy right now than this.

Monday, July 4, 2022

All it took was Russia invading Ukraine for countries to junk the Paris climate agreement and begin a desperate frenzy for coal

  Coal Makes Comeback as World Thirsts for Energy...

Countries are rejiggering distribution channels to obtain more coal from other big suppliers such as Australia and the U.S., but that takes time and money, said Gerben Hieminga, senior energy-sector economist for Dutch bank ING Groep.
“The whole world is doing this,” Mr. Hieminga said.

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard gives the microphone on Ukraine to the weak sisters and has-beens Henry Kissinger and Eric Cantor

Dr Kissinger said the war must not be allowed to drag on for much longer, and came close to calling on the West to bully Ukraine into accepting negotiations on terms that fall very far short of its current war aims. “Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome. Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante. Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,” he said. ... Mr Cantor said the US was in danger of overplaying its hand. “We have got to have multilateral support. We are already being accused of weaponising the world’s reserve currency. Even allies and friends are starting to ask, if you are using it in this way, we too could one day be subject to these sanctions,” he said.
A return to the status quo ante would mean pretending Russia's war crimes against Ukrainian civilians never happened. Kissinger only vainly imagines that that clock can be turned back now. Putin must go, and Russia must pay. Anything less means the West stands for nothing important.
As for Eric Cantor, the clock ticks on but only money continues to matter to him. He was never serious about repealing Obamacare and stopping illegal immigration or amnesty for illegals while he was in office. He was wisely toppled while at the height of his powers in the US House by his fellow Republicans in a primary (VA-7), for crying out loud.
It's characteristic of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to showcase Cantor's hand-wringing. He's done a lot of that in his own writing over the years. He ends this one worried about a European oil shock later this year.
Things like that happen when the false promise of libertarian cooperation with despots for energy comes a cropper. Europe has only itself to blame.


Tuesday, March 22, 2022

LOL Wall Street Journal: "The S-300 from Belarus wasn’t among the systems that are being sent to Ukraine, one U.S. official said"

 That right there is an unnamed US source quoted for plausible deniability, primarily for Russian consumption. The link is free to read at Drudge.

USA Sending Soviet Air Defense Systems...
 

The story is an example of US disinformation involving a shell game of transfers of maybe this, maybe that, maybe here, maybe there.

Happy to see it!

WASHINGTON—The U.S. is sending some of the Soviet-made air defense equipment it secretly acquired decades ago to bolster the Ukrainian military as it seeks to fend off Russian air and missile attacks, U.S. officials said. ... in 1994 ... a Soviet-made transport plane was observed at the Huntsville, Ala., airport within sight of a major highway. It was later disclosed that the plane was carrying an S-300 air defense system that the U.S. had acquired in Belarus ... The S-300—called the SA-10 by NATO—is a long-range, advanced air defense system intended to protect large areas over a much wider radius. ... At least some of what the U.S. sent was from that base, said officials, who added that C-17s recently flew to a nearby airfield at Huntsville. ... [SECDEF] Austin last week visited Slovakia to explore if the country would send an S-300 from its arsenal. Slovakia has said that it would do so if the U.S. would provide it with a replacement . . ..

Thursday, March 17, 2022

It probably never occurred to Volodymyr Zelensky that the deaths of 100 Ukrainian children wouldn't mean much to a country which has aborted 63 million of its own babies since 1973


 “Now I’m almost 45 years old. Today, my age stopped when the hearts of more than 100 children stopped beating. I see no sense in life if it cannot stop the deaths.”

Some of us have seen no sense in life, either, for a very long, long time.

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Friday, March 11, 2022

I have seen many examples of Russian military vehicles abandoned in Ukraine in recent days increasingly due to MUD: Here's two tanks in Chernihiv

 Or are they in Sumy? The locations are quite distant from each other.

Verifying this stuff is driving some of these guys crazy.





Monday, March 7, 2022

Rush Limbaugh's hero Angelo Codevilla was quite mistaken about Russia's ambitions in Ukraine

In "What is Russia to Us?" here Codevilla vainly imagined Russia to be self-limited by the sobering lessons it has learned from its history: 

Today, [John Quincy Adams] would be confident that Russia realizes it cannot control Ukraine except for its Russian part, or the Baltics, never mind the states of Eastern Europe. ...

Adams would not hide the fact that U.S. policy, implemented by ordinary diplomacy, is to foster the Baltic States’, and especially Ukraine’s, independence. But he would know and sincerely convey to Russia that their independence depends on themselves, and that he regards it as counterproductive to try making them into American pawns or even to give the impression that they may be. He would trust in a Ukraine that had stopped longing for the borders that Stalin had fixed for it in 1927 and Khrushchev augmented in 1954, in a Ukraine retrenching into its Western identity (as, for example, by asserting its Orthodox church’s independence from Russia’s), and that is standing firmly on its own feet. He would trust in Russia’s actual acceptance of its inability ever again to control this Ukraine. This would be Adams’s Ukraine policy.