Oh I should end on a positive note. I was so focused on fact checking the false claims, I didn't think to do that.
Zelensky isn't just talking to us, he is talking to his allies too. And they are responding. From what he said, it's much more to do with bureaucracy than funding.
Hopefully in the US's final funding push some of Ukraine's problems with its underequipped brigades get solved.
It also has its European partners. Sweden is providing 250 armoured personnel carriers
Biden is moving as much as he can of his $9 billion to Ukraine before he leaves office.
He is also making sure Ukraine gets the $50 billion in frozen Russian assets. That is mainly from Europe but US is playing a part to make sure it gets them.
Also Blinken mentions armoured vehicles specifically in his latest funding announcement.
And Biden is committed to spend every cent of the $61 billion Ukraine bill before he leaves office.
QUOTE STARTS
We’ve provided, through NATO, critical non-lethal support. We created the NATO-Ukraine Council, which met just again here in Brussels. We’ve launched a new command, the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine command, to coordinate future efforts and to help speed Ukraine’s path to membership. The United States has been surging our own resources and security assistance to continue to help build up Ukraine’s air defenses, its artillery, its armored vehicles. We are determined – and it’s fully my intent and the President’s intent – to spend every cent that we have available from the $61 billion that were authorized by Congress in the supplemental appropriation.
With the G7, we’re finalizing moving out the door $50 billion secured by frozen Russian assets. At the same time, NATO Allies and partners of NATO are sharing the burden and shouldering even more of the responsibility. Germany, for example, just made a pledge of $680 million in new military aid. Bulgaria, Czechia, Sweden, others providing personnel to this new NATO command. All told, the United States has provided $102 billion in assistance to Ukraine, our allies and partners $158 billion. And as I said many times before, this may be the best example of burden sharing that I’ve seen in the 32 years that I’ve been doing this.
And of course when it comes to our own investment, most of it has been invested in our own defense industrial base to produce weapons that Ukraine needs, but those investments are strengthening our defense industrial base and they’re providing good jobs in the United States. We welcomed the Ukrainian foreign minister here to NATO, along with the EU’s new High Representative Kaja Kallas, and in doing that, we reaffirmed the commitment to Ukraine’s defense and to its irreversible path to NATO and EU membership. We continue coordinating to ensure that Ukraine has the money, the munitions, and the mobilized forces to fight as necessary through next year – or to be able to negotiate, but from a position of strength.
BLOG: How Europe is Trump-proofing NATO - it can defend itself from Russia and ALSO support Ukraine without the USA - Biden is helping Europe transition to a Trump term where the US no longer leads NATO
What is your opinion on this answer on Quora? Part of me is afraid that he is right, that at least how world currently is, wars will keep happening, sooner or later and Europe or other Western countries are not immune to it, as we seen with Ukraine, but then another part of me is absolutely terrified and wants to hold hope that although there are idiots and warmongerers in positons of power, there are also those that try their best to uphold peace.
Oh that is just arguing by analogy with WW2. But after WW2 we put many precautions in place to prevent anything like that happening again - which were NOT in place before the war started. Like the United Nation and UN charter. The Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice etc. People often claim these are ineffective - but we can't compare the world with what it would be like without them. They likely make a huge difference.
Imagine the recent crises but in a world without the Geneva Conventions and without the UN Security council AT ALL, and without the UN Charter, without even recognition of national borders under that charter. That is what the world was like before WW2.
Also much less global awareness, much less communication. There was enough globalization to fight a global war but not enough to communicate anything like as effectively as we can today.
I have a couple of sections in my draft article about how we don't risk a world war which I hope to finish soon:
See SECTION: Situation is very different from the world of WW1 or WW2 - because any modern country that tried to fight a world war knows it will lose - and if you take a longer term prespective - we are well on our way to becoming a fully civilized species without wars
See also SECTION: Some of the measures taken to prevent a world war 3 - UN is new, the Geneva conventions, deconfliction lines, International Court of Justice …
Oh it's not just MSN - that particular story was the Associated Press which is one of the more reliable of the Western media. Yet even they get it wrong.
It seems to be pervasive in the Western media, this idea that Ukraine is short of soldiers and that their problems are due to Zelensky resisting calls to enlist young men aged 18+ or lack of morale of Ukrainian soldiers.
Which then leads to these silly suggestions that it just needs NATO soldiers in Ukraine to solve their problems when they need NATO equipment not soldiers.
I think it has another effect too.
Because they try to claim the problem is the soldiers rather than the equipment they underestimate what a difference it would make to supply extra F-16s and other equipment to Ukraine.
They underestimate the huge advantage NATO would have relative to Russia if it was to attack NATO because of their vastly superior equipment that they don't give to Ukraine such as more Patriot air defences, more fighter jets and the F-35s and Tomahawks.
Which then leads to this idea that they have to vastly increase the numbers of NATO soldiers and be prepared for NATO to fight a conventional war that lasts for months when it seems pretty clear any conventional conflict with Russia would be over in days.
I think there is a tendency amongst Ukraine's allies to overestimate Russia's ability to attack NATO as a flip side of underestimating the effect of supplying Ukraine with more equipment.
I mean they know that their equipment and training is better but I think perhaps they may underestimate the amount of the difference it makes.
Which then also explains why they keep getting surprised by things Ukraine achieves with their equipment.
And keep thinking that e.g. supplying extra F-16s or Patriots or more howitzers etc couldn't make a difference because they don't really understand quite how effective these systems are.
Like they think what Ukraine has is good enough, not realizing how vastly better what they can supply is relative to what Ukraine has of its own.
Well that is what I see based on listening to Ukrainian assessments of what's going on such as what Zelensky says which do seem to stand up to fact check better than the assessments of their allies of what is going on.
Will they get weapons though?
Oh I should end on a positive note. I was so focused on fact checking the false claims, I didn't think to do that.
Zelensky isn't just talking to us, he is talking to his allies too. And they are responding. From what he said, it's much more to do with bureaucracy than funding.
Hopefully in the US's final funding push some of Ukraine's problems with its underequipped brigades get solved.
It also has its European partners. Sweden is providing 250 armoured personnel carriers
https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/army-news-2024/breaking-news-swedish-pbv-302-armored-personnel-carriers-on-their-way-to-ukraine-spotted-in-germany
Also 50 infantry fighting vehicles.
https://www.technology.org/2024/12/03/swedens-infantry-fighting-vehicles-are-on-their-way-to-ukraine/
Netherlands sent 28 tracked amphibious armoured vehicles.
https://thedefensepost.com/2024/09/03/ukraine-viking-amphibious-vehicles-netherlands/
Ukraine itself has bought 200 armoured fighting vehicles from a local partner
https://thedefensepost.com/2024/11/26/ukraine-armored-vehicles-local-partner/
Biden is moving as much as he can of his $9 billion to Ukraine before he leaves office.
He is also making sure Ukraine gets the $50 billion in frozen Russian assets. That is mainly from Europe but US is playing a part to make sure it gets them.
Also Blinken mentions armoured vehicles specifically in his latest funding announcement.
And Biden is committed to spend every cent of the $61 billion Ukraine bill before he leaves office.
QUOTE STARTS
We’ve provided, through NATO, critical non-lethal support. We created the NATO-Ukraine Council, which met just again here in Brussels. We’ve launched a new command, the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine command, to coordinate future efforts and to help speed Ukraine’s path to membership. The United States has been surging our own resources and security assistance to continue to help build up Ukraine’s air defenses, its artillery, its armored vehicles. We are determined – and it’s fully my intent and the President’s intent – to spend every cent that we have available from the $61 billion that were authorized by Congress in the supplemental appropriation.
With the G7, we’re finalizing moving out the door $50 billion secured by frozen Russian assets. At the same time, NATO Allies and partners of NATO are sharing the burden and shouldering even more of the responsibility. Germany, for example, just made a pledge of $680 million in new military aid. Bulgaria, Czechia, Sweden, others providing personnel to this new NATO command. All told, the United States has provided $102 billion in assistance to Ukraine, our allies and partners $158 billion. And as I said many times before, this may be the best example of burden sharing that I’ve seen in the 32 years that I’ve been doing this.
And of course when it comes to our own investment, most of it has been invested in our own defense industrial base to produce weapons that Ukraine needs, but those investments are strengthening our defense industrial base and they’re providing good jobs in the United States. We welcomed the Ukrainian foreign minister here to NATO, along with the EU’s new High Representative Kaja Kallas, and in doing that, we reaffirmed the commitment to Ukraine’s defense and to its irreversible path to NATO and EU membership. We continue coordinating to ensure that Ukraine has the money, the munitions, and the mobilized forces to fight as necessary through next year – or to be able to negotiate, but from a position of strength.
https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-press-availability-55/
See also my:
BLOG: How Europe is Trump-proofing NATO - it can defend itself from Russia and ALSO support Ukraine without the USA - Biden is helping Europe transition to a Trump term where the US no longer leads NATO
https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/how-europe-is-trump-proofing-nato
I will add this as a new section at the end.
Right now Ukraine's problem is an equipment shortage but Zelensky is drawing attention to that and hopefully on the way to solving it.
What is your opinion on this answer on Quora? Part of me is afraid that he is right, that at least how world currently is, wars will keep happening, sooner or later and Europe or other Western countries are not immune to it, as we seen with Ukraine, but then another part of me is absolutely terrified and wants to hold hope that although there are idiots and warmongerers in positons of power, there are also those that try their best to uphold peace.
https://www.quora.com/What-measures-are-being-taken-to-prevent-a-potential-World-War-III-given-the-current-tensions-between-countries-and-leaders/answer/Mike-Chang-47
Oh that is just arguing by analogy with WW2. But after WW2 we put many precautions in place to prevent anything like that happening again - which were NOT in place before the war started. Like the United Nation and UN charter. The Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice etc. People often claim these are ineffective - but we can't compare the world with what it would be like without them. They likely make a huge difference.
Imagine the recent crises but in a world without the Geneva Conventions and without the UN Security council AT ALL, and without the UN Charter, without even recognition of national borders under that charter. That is what the world was like before WW2.
Also much less global awareness, much less communication. There was enough globalization to fight a global war but not enough to communicate anything like as effectively as we can today.
I have a couple of sections in my draft article about how we don't risk a world war which I hope to finish soon:
See SECTION: Situation is very different from the world of WW1 or WW2 - because any modern country that tried to fight a world war knows it will lose - and if you take a longer term prespective - we are well on our way to becoming a fully civilized species without wars
https://dddrafts.substack.com/p/draft-why-we-do-not-risk-a-world#%C2%A7situation-is-very-different-from-the-world-of-ww-or-ww-because-any-modern-country-that-tried-to-fight-a-world-war-knows-it-will-lose-and-if-you-take-a-longer-term-prespective-we-are-well-on-our-way-to-becoming-a-fully-civilized-species-without-wars
See also SECTION: Some of the measures taken to prevent a world war 3 - UN is new, the Geneva conventions, deconfliction lines, International Court of Justice …
https://dddrafts.substack.com/p/draft-why-we-do-not-risk-a-world#%C2%A7some-of-the-measures-taken-to-prevent-a-world-war-un-is-new-the-geneva-conventions-deconfliction-lines-international-court-of-justice
It's like they want people to think Ukraine is a lost cause and want people to lose hope for them Just another example of how MSM has fallen.
Oh it's not just MSN - that particular story was the Associated Press which is one of the more reliable of the Western media. Yet even they get it wrong.
It seems to be pervasive in the Western media, this idea that Ukraine is short of soldiers and that their problems are due to Zelensky resisting calls to enlist young men aged 18+ or lack of morale of Ukrainian soldiers.
Which then leads to these silly suggestions that it just needs NATO soldiers in Ukraine to solve their problems when they need NATO equipment not soldiers.
I think it has another effect too.
Because they try to claim the problem is the soldiers rather than the equipment they underestimate what a difference it would make to supply extra F-16s and other equipment to Ukraine.
They underestimate the huge advantage NATO would have relative to Russia if it was to attack NATO because of their vastly superior equipment that they don't give to Ukraine such as more Patriot air defences, more fighter jets and the F-35s and Tomahawks.
Which then leads to this idea that they have to vastly increase the numbers of NATO soldiers and be prepared for NATO to fight a conventional war that lasts for months when it seems pretty clear any conventional conflict with Russia would be over in days.
I think there is a tendency amongst Ukraine's allies to overestimate Russia's ability to attack NATO as a flip side of underestimating the effect of supplying Ukraine with more equipment.
I mean they know that their equipment and training is better but I think perhaps they may underestimate the amount of the difference it makes.
Which then also explains why they keep getting surprised by things Ukraine achieves with their equipment.
And keep thinking that e.g. supplying extra F-16s or Patriots or more howitzers etc couldn't make a difference because they don't really understand quite how effective these systems are.
Like they think what Ukraine has is good enough, not realizing how vastly better what they can supply is relative to what Ukraine has of its own.
Well that is what I see based on listening to Ukrainian assessments of what's going on such as what Zelensky says which do seem to stand up to fact check better than the assessments of their allies of what is going on.