A NATO Country is Getting Serious About Boots-on-Ground!
is a NATO country seriously planning on sending soldiers boots on ground to Ukraine just why are they considering it now and what does the United States think I’m Paul US Army Combat veteran let’s talk about it okay so the overall Contours of the story that I thought were really interesting are comments from the Estonian prime minister right so this isn’t like the rumor mill uh saying and she has said that some unspecified countries presumably NATO States since those seem to be Ukraine’s largest backers have already sent Personnel to train Ukrainian soldiers quote on the ground this is in an interview with the financial times um right and they’ve said some countries have assumed the risk of sending Personnel to train Ukrainian soldiers in a risk Zone during the war that NATO States shouldn’t fear the risk of escalation from such deployments K statements is of course part of a back and forth that Estonian officials have been very publicly making about sending their troops into Ukraine so I thought this logic was interesting for a couple of reasons um one is that so okay let’s get some some additional context almost every country on Earth has at least some military members um stationed in them from other countries um they’re usually Embassy staff fulfilling a unique uh what in the US we call them defense attaches or foreign area officer ERS and these are the military’s diplomatic core these are guys who will interface with the militaries of other countries uh in order to coordinate say a training exercise right let’s say the Colombian military says hey we are going to purchase these Blackhawks but we need instructors to help us uh operate them and teach our guys how to repair them um the US Military and its defense atache will sit there and say okay I’m going to be the link that that coordinates the US uh the Department of Defense and the Colombian Ministry of Defense in order to make this happen uh or if you want to do a joint exercise a joint Naval exercise with Thailand for example uh again a defense atache is going to fulfill that function they’re also going to provide the dod some diplomatic Insight let’s say a general says hey I’m going to be uh going to uh Japan to meet with the Japanese minister of defense well that defense atache is going to Sayre let’s take a couple of months uh I’m going to put together some documents I’m going to put together some information so that you General know what the defense Minister’s biggest concerns are what their controversies they’ve been dealing with what are sensitive topics to avoid right the things that a good diplomatic core does so every country is going to have that and in somewhere like Ukraine which is a major focus is going to have not just one defense attache they’re going to have a team there we also know that US military personnel uh have had a really large and outsized role in helping Ukrainian forces plan and process their intelligence and while some of this publicly they say this happens outside of Ukraine itself uh some I strongly think based on the number of official visits and things like that I strongly think there are some attached Personnel again who are officially probably attached to the Embassy who are fulfilling this kind of liaison work again it it’s just a physical reality that uh someone in the US military has to do the coordinating function especially given that Ukraine receives a billions and billions of dollars of us equipment uh you can’t just drop it on their border in pallets and be like good luck guys figuring out how to work that Patriot you know you so for context it is technically true this is technically true also of China right like NATO troops are in China yes technically correct they are in their embassies in Beijing likely liaisoning coordinating and gathering information about uh the Chinese military and the Chinese troops are in the United States right doing the same fun function uh so again in that context right we should we should couch some of these statements um but this is not the thing to say that there’s also troops out there who are doing some of these training functions is itself also very very interesting because it’s the most explicit that we’ve seen and I I I believe I have seen no I have no special information I believe there are some trainers uh from NATO countries in fact I know there are trainers from NATO countries are they there on formal military orders uh it’s not clear but almost certainly because again if you follow guys like civd you know that he spent several months with a uh a volunteer training group who trains Ukrainian soldiers uh often conscripts in basic infantry tactics they’ll teach them operating their weapon system they’ll teach them PS they’ll teach them using a drone and they will train them up and have them head to the front lines and this is good but what these kind of volunteer organizations can’t do is highly technical work uh for example they cannot train a Ukrainian um uh F-16 maintainer right to keep the avionics systems running uh you can’t train them to uh you know load and maintain uh an arm Patriot missile batteries right the highly technical stuff has to be done by their own country R in some cases it’s not even legal so there’s almost no doubt that there are um trainers there uh it Russia and Russia almost certainly knows this um but estonia’s argument is to say hey this is not going to be an escalation and this is probably true um the reason is because again the functions are happening whether they’re 100t east of the 100t west of the Border or 100t east of the Border they’re happening and Russia almost certainly knows they’re happening as well in fact Russia probably believes that it’s a given that there are extensive NATO trainers in Ukraine um the because you have to remember okay so for Russia this is just business as usual remember they annexed sorry officially Russia claimed that um the luans and Donis uh and detet people’s republics were independent countries that in 2014 had a spontaneous popular Uprising and declared themselves independent of Ukraine um the fact that the uh members the military Wing that did that were Russian equipment had Russian gear uh including their top tier at the time uh armored vehicles the fact that they uh had many of the same personnel Russian airborne troops uh Russia their official stances it was a popular Uprising and only and Russia only provided political recognition um obviously in the 10 years since that happened the Russian military basically would rotate through uh the Donas region um particularly some of their Specialists like artillery and ISR Specialists and so Russia just takes as a given that when you say you’re politically supporting a country in Conflict what you’re really doing is having your own military do the fighting Russia Pride believes in fact that a lot of those Western volunteers were sent there uh by um uh by NATO countries sort of like the way Vagner right which is not a part of the Russian military or wasn’t uh Vagner was sent to Ukraine uh on under orders from Putin so uh given this right what is Estonia talking about Estonia what they’re doing is starting to by publicly saying these things Estonia is starting to open the discussion among estonia’s allies about what it would look like if Estonia were to have its military perform non-c combat roles and this I think is interesting because training is a big one but so is uh maintaining right uh training maintenance Logistics uh anything kind of in the back end of the front line and that would open up Ukraine to focus its troops on combat roles and so it would end up being a sort of force multiplier um now if before we talk about the other countries or the US’s response to this I want to just recognize that you guys know combat news.com if you want to see the uncensored combat footage uh from this past weekend that video is dropping on combat vet news today it’s for members only you guys know that YouTube routinely demonetizes my content I have very few sponsors I think in the last month I’ve had like zero sponsors um and so I depend on you guys to support me uh and the team right to keep me keep us doing this every month um and any one of these tiers will get you access to the twice weekly uncensored combat footage but if you want to really support the channel and pick it up at the lieutenant tier or the colonel tier you get the shout outs at the end of the video and the exclusive room on the ORD so uh again a huge thank you to all you guys that support us and check us out over there because the new video is dropping today now for the United States’s part they’ve actually ruled out sending military instructors to Ukraine officially right uh they said the US has currently no plans to send instructors to Ukraine um right Brown acknowledged that while the US military instructors may have been in Ukraine before the fullscale Russian invasion that is not the case now um and I suspect we’ll have the opportunity to to do that after the war is over but currently the US has no plans to return military instructors to Ukraine this is true actually I uh went to um uh my uh Captain’s career course with a few Reserve officers uh who were training Ukrainian military police um and I believe we’re training them primarily in Lviv so this the fact this is a pretty decisive statement um sometimes you get stuff that’s couched uh off often times you’ll sit there so sometimes what you’ll do is is um politicians or generals will give kind of non answers and this is what I thought was interesting he’s like US military instructors were Ukraine before The Invasion he says that is not the case now so it says hey there’s not really a uh there’s not any these instructors aren’t there now so that’s a pretty explicit denial because sometimes they’ll say things like well we don’t have plans to send any instructors um which is what he says here um but that can imply that you don’t have plans to send instructors uh you know to to send Ukraine additional instructors right uh which would imply the existence of instructors at Baseline does that make sense um again they may sit there or it may be something where they’re not instructors they’re technical advisers sometimes the US military can do stuff like that we don’t have instructors instructors are their own thing but technical ad visors we absolutely have right so I’m I actually put some credibility in the statement I think what he says is what he means um I don’t think there’s some hidden car Val again but I think it’s possible that um Ukrainian forces right we know that they leave Ukraine for training they train outside of Ukraine a lot of brigades whole brigades were trained in Poland so I don’t think that has necessarily led up so it may be a case of like hey the US is like listen there’s no reason for us to have substantive numbers of instructors there uh maybe we do all our training uh in on the other side of the Polish border anyway guys that’s all I had thank you to the colonel tier members thanks to our Lieutenant tier members um I really could not do this without you guys and be sure to check out the video dropping later today cheers
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https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates
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https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates
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46 comments
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Kallas is prone to making (or allowing others to make) bellicose statements which annoy other Baltic states and especially the Finns. Estonia's high standard of living and thriving tech industries is based on Finnish investment, not only in economic progress but supplies of staples. With a population of only 1.4 million and geography not conducive to agricultural self-sufficiency, any observer of the state needs to analyze the everyday needs of its society and its supply lines. Although its largest home industry outside the service sector is shale oil Estonia imports 100% of gas (2021 figures) from Russia. Oil refineries for the shale have tended to be in Russia and Finland, partly to protect the country's amazing biodiversity. However, having such a small human population is related to that.
The service sector is very large, with investors from Nordic, German and Dutch co-traders but also a lot of established foundation Russian funding which would be difficult to remove. There are dangers in an economy based too much on services [note some Gulf small states which exist because of financial activity but make noting] and increasing dependence on the Netherlands for foodstuffs is unbalanced when one considers how 'forced' growing affects nutritional quality. More recent agricultural links with Lithuania aid balance but agrichemicals are mainly from Russia and northern Finland. Fertilizer damage to lakes, which are also mined for special clays and types of cement is only likely to worsen with population growth. This, though, is very slow and Estonia's demographic patterns are skewed. It could become an ageing society too easily.
Despite compulsory military service and 1.5% of GDP being military, Estonia is heavily dependent on neighbors from the Nordic mainstream and its merchant fleet is largely Finnish.
So why the belligerent noises? Ms Kallas has ambitions to head NATO but is unlikely to succeed for numerous legal and personality reasons besides being from too small a country.
Much can be put down to a type of 'virtue signalling', if prodding the bear is virtue. There also happens to be a large Russian ethnic population in Estonia forming a large part of the merchant marine.
On a larger and direct military level, Russia has always been fully aware that the Baltic States do not exist as a bloc. Nordic/Baltic Sea/German/Russian interaction is much more complex than meets the eye and Ukraine really does not matter to Latvia or Estonia.
There are no current members of the MILITARY doing training in Ukraine. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t ANY US instructors there!
Why not escalate ?
If the Russians were as bad as you claim they were you wouldn't need to do this
Canada has been there since before 2014 training Ukraining military!
Whoever Ukraine invites into Ukraine are there legally. Anybody else is there illegally. So it's only russia that's in Ukraine illegally.
Even so it doesnt mean that NATO is taking part in the conflict
The truth. The US response to this has been a colossal disappointment and has shown the world how much the US will really do if it has to face anything resembling a peer to peer adversary. The US hasn't lived up to its security guarantees after taking their nukes and will let them be ground to dust. Georgia should expect the same treatment if they choose to escalate into a revolution. Only the Baltics, Finland, Poland and Sweden will end up knowing that the US will fail them.
Fay-O
Chinese, belarus, cubans, all have soldiers fighting for russia. How is this any different?
dawg why your voice so soft
Biden is positive on Rhetoric supporting Ukraine- but his action of Slow Walking does not natch his Rhetoric😢
Russian shovels are OP if Nato needs to intervene. Who would've thought?
You mean usa plan to send troops from other country to die for interes usa elite. great
We already have special forces in Ukraine
In exchange for supplying weapons and training how to use the weapons, Ukraine should send thier experts to train us on how to fight a modern war because at this point, they have a lot of experience to share.
If they send troops the nato Partners should cover the airspace above the trainers
Girkin was there from 2014 shot down these plane (mhl )
We have to stop Putin at all cost. No, one wants a Russian imperium in Europa with Putin and his maffia as boss. No, new Hitler in Europa. Russia go home. You are not welcom.
Half a milion dead is "natural"?
Noo,…..only in Russia….
Boots on the groud during "De-Escalation", explain to me ,how that would work?
I wouldn't be shocked if British SAS and US Special ops have operated in Ukraine for a while doing recon work.
Do it already ffs. We are ready. We said never again. The horde is on the march and it needs to be stopped.
sent troops and call it a special operation
sent troops and call it a special operation
sent troops and call it a special operation
This period will be known in history (if there's anyone left to write it) as the European Powder Keg)
NATO is all talk.
if boycot china it will be over for poetin
This was Kennedy's first step into the Vietnamese Civil War. Hopefully this gambit will go better.
https://youtu.be/qimLMkJFzHY?si=trrrUU3YuzpW_6w3
You know things about to get serious when Estonia throws its hat on the ring
As I remember west "invested" billions into ukr so rus will collapse. Now west got to bring troops into ukr even though rus is incompetent, most of them are dead and with economy on it's knees. Anyone else sees a problem with this?
Russia hates Kaja Kallas now.
It's to be noted that har mother was deported to Siberia for ten years. With such a background, one can understand her and many Balts position on the matter.
Our estonian PM is the most unpopular PM in our history, latest polls show 70% wants her to resignt after media found out her family is doing business in russia. Dont believe everything she says.
NATO countries train Ukrainian soldiers within NATO countries. Especially the USA and Germany train them in Grafenwoehr and Munster. But maybe this reflects the intercepted WebEx communication of German Generals, who said that UK and French soldiers are in Ukraine.
I’m 🇬🇧& part 🇺🇦& I still have family there. One of my cousins there is in the AFU, I think this is what it needed from the beginning.
My cousin has been taught by soldiers from all over the world, including one who lived in the town here in 🇬🇧we live in & he’s visited. Bizarre they could have passed in the street here
Before ally’s boots on the ground, I’d like to know:
1) Is Ukraine fully mobilized?
2) Will troops from NATO countries function without at least air competence if not air superiority?
3) There are many things that Ukraine urgently needs and allies can provide WITHOUT “boots on the ground”, for example, close the sky over west Ukraine and Odesa. Shouldn’t these be done before “boots on the ground” ? At least logically it makes senses to me.
Interesting & informative
For Russia, the total loss of any legitimacy by pseudo-Führer Zelenskyy of former Ukrainistan will not change anything about the outcome of the Special Military Operation. He already heads a Nazi-regime hostile to Russia, Uncle Shmuel & Führer Zelenskyy are waging a war against Russia. The leaders of countries waging war will be considered as legitimate military targets. For the Russians FührerZelenskyy is a war criminal, and the loss of his official status does not change anything about that…
Thanks Paul for your work 👍👍👍
European officials believe that after the assassination attempt, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who opposed arms supplies to Ukraine and the country's membership in NATO, “may become embittered,” the Financial Times reports, citing sources.
According to the publication, the EU fears that Robert Fico will become the “new Viktor Orban” and interfere with the work of the alliance. He will become even more embittered when it all turns out that the Ukrainian secret services have tried to eliminate him…
👎👎👎🤣😂😂🤣🤣😂🤣
If Ukraine continues to lose ground in spite of renewed spending and the ineffectiveness of the new military command, involvement of NATO troops is inevitable. We are already in too deep tp back out now if Russia continues to advance. Case in point…every military conflict the U.S. has been in for the past 50 years.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂