They are going to gaslight Ukraine, i guarantee it.
Lets see. Ukraine would have a hard time without the US but its not impossible
I don’t like Trump, at all. However it does seem valid to wonder what the plan is behind the Dems strategy which for the last 3 years seems to be give you brave guys and girls just enough to kind of defend yourselves but no more and certainly not the stuff to proactively damage Putin beyond the front lines.
Plus there doesn’t seem to be any real penalty for breaking sanctions and no real effort to stop the ‘mysterious’ rise in parts to neighbouring countries.
Have to say as just as a random bloke living in the UK I am ashamed about the lack of assistance we’ve given you. Lots of words and just enough to show we kind of care but not really. The lack of a unified Western plan has sadly helped embolden Trump.
Ukraine has done its best to hold off Russia as long as it can with limited supplies and some restrictions on where Ukraine can use them, but if the west allows Russia to carry on making money from selling oil & gas then Russia will happily spend it on its war machine, the Russian people will support putin as long as it’s not affecting the vast majority of them in Moscow & St Petersburg. If the money runs out, the war machine crumbles and it’s the end for Putin and probably the end of Russia as we know it !
He has a point on the Biden administration that they said they wanted Ukraine to win but didn’t really give the tools to do that. He is right that we need to ask the question of what will it take to win. At the current rate we aren’t doing enough to win.
He has a good point.
But Trump’s plan will only work if all of these conditions are met:
1) we assume Trump is not a Russian asset and will actually hold russia accountable
2) Russia agrees to stop the war PERMANENTLY and give up occupied territories/exchange for kursk (russia has already stated they will never give up crimea and donetsk)
3) Ukraine agrees to give up occupied territories and PERMANENTLY stop offensive to retake lost territories (ukraine has stated neither their constitution nor their people/military would allow this) – see the complete conflict with number 2
4) Ukraine gets an invitation to NATO/EU (countries like US with Trump and Hungary have already stated they will veto it).
Ukraine has stated their intent to build nukes as this is the only guarantee to peace in Ukraine outside an EU/NATO membership
5) Russian war criminals be prosecuted under the ICC on which neither the US nor Russia are signatories
6) Kidnapped Ukranian children to be given back to Ukraine, on which Russia does not even acknowledge it’s been happening.
Basically the probably of even half these being met is close to 0%.
So in reality the likely outcome is the US is going to be gaslighting ukraine for not agreeing with Trump and then pulling all funding and support for Ukraine.
I would like to be optimistic thought and see if Trump flips the script and pressures Putin first (instead of Zelensky) to stop the war and exchange territory (which he wouldn’t do), upon which he would give exponential weapons to Ukraine and let them take their gloves off like what Waltz is implying.
Waltz also made a good point regarding the sanctions and European support.
He missed the point, US is the leader of NATO and many foreign countries hold lots of US debts and financial assets because they trust US gonna act as a leader and maintain international order. If now US is start thinking not to be the leader, why doesn’t US allies put so much money to you ? if EU and Asia allies sell their US assets, US will immediately go broke like Argentina.
He misses the most important point: what is the value of an agreement with the US? 1994 nuclear agreement with Ukraine?
What other country dare venture into an agreement with USA unless they have a garanteed upper hand all the time?
He has the point about Biden Admins “not dead not live” attitude to the problem. What exactly Biden and Co expected to happen? Seems that they were betting on unrests in Russia that would lead to the type of 1918 dismantling of the German Empire, that following led to the end of WWI. This current situation cannot continue for ages. Russians have millions more by vodka degraded rural men to throw in the fire. Some solution must be found – either provide guns and ammo in volume that Ukr can beat Rus on front line, or strong-arm Rus different way, but get the Peace!
So far, at least it doesn’t look like Trump will abandon Ukraine completely, which is a cautious positive.
To be fair, it’s a hell of a less worse take than I imagined. We’ll have to see.
He’s right as fuck about the U.S. making clear what ITS war goals are. Quit stringing Ukraine along. If the U.S. isn’t committed to getting everything back, then it should make that clear. If it is, then it needs to give Ukraine the tools for the job.
And fuck, yeah, Europe needs to step up or shut up, particularly wrt sanctions.
Empty words from a liar
1. It is true that the Biden administration has failed to define victory conditions and fully commit. But at least their plans didn’t entail rewarding Russia for their aggression by giving away Ukrainian territory. Citing that one time Wagner assholes were blown up by a completely superior US force as “Trump being tough on the Russians” is a joke. It’s not like he was involved in that decision making process during that incident in any way.
2. Only an idiot would expect a government to make concrete prognoses about how long the war will take or how much exactly it will cost, basically setting themselves an absolute deadline. Wars can’t be calculated like that. If you want to win, you pile on materiel until it’s finished. As the vastly richer nation, it’s simple: You set an amount you need to spend per year to outspend your opponent comfortably and that you can keep up for longer than them.
3. Most of the important European allies already doing more than the US, spending a larger share of their GDP on Ukraine. The US comes in 17th on that list.
4. Lowering the oil price might do some good, but it won’t be enough to get Putler to the negotiating table. It’s also very doubtful that western oil corporations would play the game, now that they can supply the west at higher prices thanks to sanctions against Russia.
You get the price below $50 and the U.S. will also stop drilling.
Ban Russian dams and put them on a skiff! 🙄😂
I hope I’m wrong about this maroon… I really do. Slava Ukraini!
[removed]
Interesting….
These are the right words. Though if he doesn’t intend to sell Ukraine out, that’s a different matter. In for a penny, in for a pound.
[removed]
Actually there’s a lot of good sense here. I am no fan of DJT but I agree with most of this. His point about strategy is sound, Zelensky has been complaining about the same thing. And his point about flooding the oil and gas market is potentially brilliant, that WOULD hurt Russia BADLY, and it would also hurt a key Russian ally (Iran) nearly as badly.
Churchill when he was in need of US assistance said it this way: Give us the tools, and we will finish the job. We’re giving them tools, but not enough, and not enough freedom to use them, to get the job done. as a result we’re stranding hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in combat zones, and millions in zones of occupation, with no real plan for how we’re going to help those people.
He worded part of it unfortunately. His point about what victory looks like isn’t so much about what the goal is, but about how we get there. He’s right that the one thing that has infuriated me about Biden and the West right now is their decision to trap Ukraine in limbo with half measures that keep men dying, but deny them the best shot at victory.
We need to be either all in or all out, because prolonging this war helps nobody, least of all Ukraine. We need to decide if we’re willing to risk nuclear war by opposing Russia directly. With Ukraine unable to clear its territory on its own, which is what the Biden Administration was hoping would happen, the only alternatives are to put US boots on the ground and join the brinksmanship game Putin is already playing or to back off and give Putin whatever he wants, which at this point would be an admission of defeat by the entire democratic West.
Biden was trying for the third option of Ukraine winning victory with allied support, but that doesn’t appear to be a thing Ukraine can actually do and in year 3 of the war, it’s about time we recognize this.
At this point fewer Ukrainians would be dead if Biden had made one call or the other in 2022, than are dead today, so we have to accept responisiblity for that.
It sounds like some adults are about to enter the building. What the Biden administration has done to Ukraine is shameful. Giving just enough to creep along, get a shit-pile of its kids/citizens killed, and no path to victory/closure.
Watch his actions, not what he says before he has any power.
We’ll see how this goes. I am not hopeful, though.
The allies of the USA do not have the industrial capacity to “exceed” the USA. Even at its imperial height, the British empire acknowledged that the US military and industrial complex would vastly outstrip Britains. By the end of WW2 the U.K. military was a shadow of its previous dominance, whilst the USA moved to become the largest military industrial power in history.
By the time we get to the Russian invasion, the U.K. could not afford to maintain more than a couple of infantry corps in man power terms. Even the once mighty Royal Navy is a husk. We can’t sustain the manufacturing industry in a small island to match a continental superpower (and that’s to say nothing of aggressive USA moves to stamp out competition to its military supply companies).
In Europe only France and Germany have ever had a comparable military to the U.K. and they have also had to deal with massive collapses in their military industrial complexes.
Sure we can produce a good level of export quality luxury arms, but that’s not the same as having the wide and deep arms industry being talked about.
It would take decades of sustained investment to re industrialise our arms industries to a level that is self sustaining and that would require the USA not forcing us to basically use their equipment for NATO purposes.
The first steps have to be
1. Closer and more powerful EU government and a move up a United States of Europe
2. A started goal that we will have an industrial strategy that recreates a mass EU arms industry with the mittelstrand that needs to go with it.
3. The return of the U.K. to the EU and EU funding for the Royal Navy as the basis for an EU navy mostly based in the U.K. to support the Baltics and Italy/Malta to control the Mediterranean.
4. The creation of a single EU army.
But that’s fantasy land stuff. In reality a disunited Europe will continue to bicker.
‘Clean’ oil and gas?
So this guy is on the payroll of the fossil fuel industries and wants to use the war as an excuse to roll back green power production and flood the market with dinofuels.
That’s all it is to him.
And his ‘just asking questions’ sounds like prejustifications for pulling out altogether. “If Europe doesn’t pay their share, I’m out.” “If you can’t give me a rock solid plan for complete ukranian victory by next month, I’m out”
But the war will drag on and he can still sell hydrocarbons, so that’s all fine for him. Maybe he’ll help the Ukrainians make a few hits on Russian refineries and pipeline, just to weaken the competition and drive the price up, but that’s about all the help you can expect from this guy.
He’s trying to appear reasonable, but he’s making some questionable claims:
He parrots russian propaganda that sanctions don’t work, and thus should be lifted (LNG ban removal), and says that flooding the market with american gas and oil would drop the price. Why can’t that be done already, and the market be flooded already, why is there a need to lift the sanctions? If sanctions don’t work why is Russia campaigning to have them lifted, and why are their shills in the west pushing the same narrative?
What makes American oil and gas clean? Or is that just the Trumpism where if you say it enough it must be true like clean coal?
It is less bad than I expected. Then again, Trump in his first term did have a habit of putting at least somewhat reasonable people in charge, like James Mattis, only to fire them later.
Honestly he’s right in that the easiest path to victory is through oil and if opening americas taps to crash the price of oil and LNG is the move, then let it flow. Grind Russia’s war machine to a halt.
A gas station with nukes is a new hilarious way of saying Russia
the LNG thing is a good idea. But this will not be the complete solution that will stop russia. He’s making exactly the same mistake the Biden admin with their sanctions. They severely underestimate the russian people’s ability to happily suffer the degradation to their quality of life for the sake of russia’s and putin’s “greatness”. Yes, it will make things slightly more uncomfortable for russia, and they will absolutely continue to be able to afford to build their missiles and buy NK shells
You are all coping.
J. D. Vance called Trump Hitler. How did that turn out? Trump is chosing these people for the same reason, ebcause they’ll do what he says instead what they think.
34 comments
They are going to gaslight Ukraine, i guarantee it.
Lets see. Ukraine would have a hard time without the US but its not impossible
I don’t like Trump, at all. However it does seem valid to wonder what the plan is behind the Dems strategy which for the last 3 years seems to be give you brave guys and girls just enough to kind of defend yourselves but no more and certainly not the stuff to proactively damage Putin beyond the front lines.
Plus there doesn’t seem to be any real penalty for breaking sanctions and no real effort to stop the ‘mysterious’ rise in parts to neighbouring countries.
[https://www.kyivpost.com/post/40383](https://www.kyivpost.com/post/40383)
Have to say as just as a random bloke living in the UK I am ashamed about the lack of assistance we’ve given you. Lots of words and just enough to show we kind of care but not really. The lack of a unified Western plan has sadly helped embolden Trump.
Ukraine has done its best to hold off Russia as long as it can with limited supplies and some restrictions on where Ukraine can use them, but if the west allows Russia to carry on making money from selling oil & gas then Russia will happily spend it on its war machine, the Russian people will support putin as long as it’s not affecting the vast majority of them in Moscow & St Petersburg. If the money runs out, the war machine crumbles and it’s the end for Putin and probably the end of Russia as we know it !
He has a point on the Biden administration that they said they wanted Ukraine to win but didn’t really give the tools to do that. He is right that we need to ask the question of what will it take to win. At the current rate we aren’t doing enough to win.
He has a good point.
But Trump’s plan will only work if all of these conditions are met:
1) we assume Trump is not a Russian asset and will actually hold russia accountable
2) Russia agrees to stop the war PERMANENTLY and give up occupied territories/exchange for kursk (russia has already stated they will never give up crimea and donetsk)
3) Ukraine agrees to give up occupied territories and PERMANENTLY stop offensive to retake lost territories (ukraine has stated neither their constitution nor their people/military would allow this) – see the complete conflict with number 2
4) Ukraine gets an invitation to NATO/EU (countries like US with Trump and Hungary have already stated they will veto it).
Ukraine has stated their intent to build nukes as this is the only guarantee to peace in Ukraine outside an EU/NATO membership
5) Russian war criminals be prosecuted under the ICC on which neither the US nor Russia are signatories
6) Kidnapped Ukranian children to be given back to Ukraine, on which Russia does not even acknowledge it’s been happening.
Basically the probably of even half these being met is close to 0%.
So in reality the likely outcome is the US is going to be gaslighting ukraine for not agreeing with Trump and then pulling all funding and support for Ukraine.
I would like to be optimistic thought and see if Trump flips the script and pressures Putin first (instead of Zelensky) to stop the war and exchange territory (which he wouldn’t do), upon which he would give exponential weapons to Ukraine and let them take their gloves off like what Waltz is implying.
Waltz also made a good point regarding the sanctions and European support.
He missed the point, US is the leader of NATO and many foreign countries hold lots of US debts and financial assets because they trust US gonna act as a leader and maintain international order. If now US is start thinking not to be the leader, why doesn’t US allies put so much money to you ? if EU and Asia allies sell their US assets, US will immediately go broke like Argentina.
He misses the most important point: what is the value of an agreement with the US? 1994 nuclear agreement with Ukraine?
What other country dare venture into an agreement with USA unless they have a garanteed upper hand all the time?
He has the point about Biden Admins “not dead not live” attitude to the problem. What exactly Biden and Co expected to happen? Seems that they were betting on unrests in Russia that would lead to the type of 1918 dismantling of the German Empire, that following led to the end of WWI. This current situation cannot continue for ages. Russians have millions more by vodka degraded rural men to throw in the fire. Some solution must be found – either provide guns and ammo in volume that Ukr can beat Rus on front line, or strong-arm Rus different way, but get the Peace!
So far, at least it doesn’t look like Trump will abandon Ukraine completely, which is a cautious positive.
To be fair, it’s a hell of a less worse take than I imagined. We’ll have to see.
He’s right as fuck about the U.S. making clear what ITS war goals are. Quit stringing Ukraine along. If the U.S. isn’t committed to getting everything back, then it should make that clear. If it is, then it needs to give Ukraine the tools for the job.
And fuck, yeah, Europe needs to step up or shut up, particularly wrt sanctions.
Empty words from a liar
1. It is true that the Biden administration has failed to define victory conditions and fully commit. But at least their plans didn’t entail rewarding Russia for their aggression by giving away Ukrainian territory. Citing that one time Wagner assholes were blown up by a completely superior US force as “Trump being tough on the Russians” is a joke. It’s not like he was involved in that decision making process during that incident in any way.
2. Only an idiot would expect a government to make concrete prognoses about how long the war will take or how much exactly it will cost, basically setting themselves an absolute deadline. Wars can’t be calculated like that. If you want to win, you pile on materiel until it’s finished. As the vastly richer nation, it’s simple: You set an amount you need to spend per year to outspend your opponent comfortably and that you can keep up for longer than them.
3. Most of the important European allies already doing more than the US, spending a larger share of their GDP on Ukraine. The US comes in 17th on that list.
4. Lowering the oil price might do some good, but it won’t be enough to get Putler to the negotiating table. It’s also very doubtful that western oil corporations would play the game, now that they can supply the west at higher prices thanks to sanctions against Russia.
You get the price below $50 and the U.S. will also stop drilling.
Ban Russian dams and put them on a skiff! 🙄😂
I hope I’m wrong about this maroon… I really do. Slava Ukraini!
[removed]
Interesting….
These are the right words. Though if he doesn’t intend to sell Ukraine out, that’s a different matter. In for a penny, in for a pound.
[removed]
Actually there’s a lot of good sense here. I am no fan of DJT but I agree with most of this. His point about strategy is sound, Zelensky has been complaining about the same thing. And his point about flooding the oil and gas market is potentially brilliant, that WOULD hurt Russia BADLY, and it would also hurt a key Russian ally (Iran) nearly as badly.
Churchill when he was in need of US assistance said it this way: Give us the tools, and we will finish the job. We’re giving them tools, but not enough, and not enough freedom to use them, to get the job done. as a result we’re stranding hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in combat zones, and millions in zones of occupation, with no real plan for how we’re going to help those people.
He worded part of it unfortunately. His point about what victory looks like isn’t so much about what the goal is, but about how we get there. He’s right that the one thing that has infuriated me about Biden and the West right now is their decision to trap Ukraine in limbo with half measures that keep men dying, but deny them the best shot at victory.
We need to be either all in or all out, because prolonging this war helps nobody, least of all Ukraine. We need to decide if we’re willing to risk nuclear war by opposing Russia directly. With Ukraine unable to clear its territory on its own, which is what the Biden Administration was hoping would happen, the only alternatives are to put US boots on the ground and join the brinksmanship game Putin is already playing or to back off and give Putin whatever he wants, which at this point would be an admission of defeat by the entire democratic West.
Biden was trying for the third option of Ukraine winning victory with allied support, but that doesn’t appear to be a thing Ukraine can actually do and in year 3 of the war, it’s about time we recognize this.
At this point fewer Ukrainians would be dead if Biden had made one call or the other in 2022, than are dead today, so we have to accept responisiblity for that.
It sounds like some adults are about to enter the building. What the Biden administration has done to Ukraine is shameful. Giving just enough to creep along, get a shit-pile of its kids/citizens killed, and no path to victory/closure.
Watch his actions, not what he says before he has any power.
[The LNG ban was already lifted as of July 1](https://www.louisianalawblog.com/energy/federal-court-halts-ban-on-liquefied-natural-gas-lng-exports/)
“Це ж було вже!”
We’ll see how this goes. I am not hopeful, though.
The allies of the USA do not have the industrial capacity to “exceed” the USA. Even at its imperial height, the British empire acknowledged that the US military and industrial complex would vastly outstrip Britains. By the end of WW2 the U.K. military was a shadow of its previous dominance, whilst the USA moved to become the largest military industrial power in history.
By the time we get to the Russian invasion, the U.K. could not afford to maintain more than a couple of infantry corps in man power terms. Even the once mighty Royal Navy is a husk. We can’t sustain the manufacturing industry in a small island to match a continental superpower (and that’s to say nothing of aggressive USA moves to stamp out competition to its military supply companies).
In Europe only France and Germany have ever had a comparable military to the U.K. and they have also had to deal with massive collapses in their military industrial complexes.
Sure we can produce a good level of export quality luxury arms, but that’s not the same as having the wide and deep arms industry being talked about.
It would take decades of sustained investment to re industrialise our arms industries to a level that is self sustaining and that would require the USA not forcing us to basically use their equipment for NATO purposes.
The first steps have to be
1. Closer and more powerful EU government and a move up a United States of Europe
2. A started goal that we will have an industrial strategy that recreates a mass EU arms industry with the mittelstrand that needs to go with it.
3. The return of the U.K. to the EU and EU funding for the Royal Navy as the basis for an EU navy mostly based in the U.K. to support the Baltics and Italy/Malta to control the Mediterranean.
4. The creation of a single EU army.
But that’s fantasy land stuff. In reality a disunited Europe will continue to bicker.
‘Clean’ oil and gas?
So this guy is on the payroll of the fossil fuel industries and wants to use the war as an excuse to roll back green power production and flood the market with dinofuels.
That’s all it is to him.
And his ‘just asking questions’ sounds like prejustifications for pulling out altogether. “If Europe doesn’t pay their share, I’m out.” “If you can’t give me a rock solid plan for complete ukranian victory by next month, I’m out”
But the war will drag on and he can still sell hydrocarbons, so that’s all fine for him. Maybe he’ll help the Ukrainians make a few hits on Russian refineries and pipeline, just to weaken the competition and drive the price up, but that’s about all the help you can expect from this guy.
He’s trying to appear reasonable, but he’s making some questionable claims:
He parrots russian propaganda that sanctions don’t work, and thus should be lifted (LNG ban removal), and says that flooding the market with american gas and oil would drop the price. Why can’t that be done already, and the market be flooded already, why is there a need to lift the sanctions? If sanctions don’t work why is Russia campaigning to have them lifted, and why are their shills in the west pushing the same narrative?
What makes American oil and gas clean? Or is that just the Trumpism where if you say it enough it must be true like clean coal?
It is less bad than I expected. Then again, Trump in his first term did have a habit of putting at least somewhat reasonable people in charge, like James Mattis, only to fire them later.
Honestly he’s right in that the easiest path to victory is through oil and if opening americas taps to crash the price of oil and LNG is the move, then let it flow. Grind Russia’s war machine to a halt.
A gas station with nukes is a new hilarious way of saying Russia
It is “[SCIF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_information_facility)”, not “skiff,” for those wondering why he was talking about a boat.
the LNG thing is a good idea. But this will not be the complete solution that will stop russia. He’s making exactly the same mistake the Biden admin with their sanctions. They severely underestimate the russian people’s ability to happily suffer the degradation to their quality of life for the sake of russia’s and putin’s “greatness”. Yes, it will make things slightly more uncomfortable for russia, and they will absolutely continue to be able to afford to build their missiles and buy NK shells
You are all coping.
J. D. Vance called Trump Hitler. How did that turn out? Trump is chosing these people for the same reason, ebcause they’ll do what he says instead what they think.
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