I stand with the Ukraine...

[Rideback]

Yo Ken, Trump hasn't sent anything to Ukraine. Zip. But here's the fact sheet of what the Biden admin supplied and yes there were javelins
https://www.state.gov/bureau-of-politic ... th-ukraine

[dorankj]

That was Biden who offered a ride to Zelensky! Obummer gave bedding and Trump delivered Javlins which hammered the Russian tanks. We’re far beyond winnable now thanks to Biden/dem incompetence.

[mister_coffee]

I think it is important to remember that the same people who say this war is "unwinnable" are the same people who said that Russia would conquer Ukraine within a few weeks.

[PAL]

For the war to end, all that would have to happen is that Russia lays down it's arms and give back what they took in 2014. Then there would be peace. But Putin wants more. Talk about WWIII. He wants Poland and all the other countries back to create the old USSR.

[Rideback]

The War Trump Chooses - Timothy Snyer
The Americans claim that their attempt to humiliate the Ukrainian president in the White House yesterday was about peace. On that premise, nothing they said makes any sense.

The attempted mugging of a visiting president was about the world war that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and JD Vance have chosen. If we attend to what Vance and Trump said yesterday, we can work our way to the unreason of American policy, and to the chaos that will follow.

JD Vance opened hostilities against Volodymr Zelens'kyi with a claim about negotiations with Russia, treating them as a formula that will magically end the war. Zelens'kyi had said, calmly and correctly, that negotiations with Russia have been tried before and have not worked. The Russians have betrayed every truce and every ceasefire since their first invasion in 2014. And that first invasion of course violated a number of treaties between Ukraine and Russia, as well as the basic principles of international law. Zelens'kyi ran for president in 2019 as the peace candidate, promising to negotiate with Putin to end what was then a war that had been ongoing for five years. Russia did not respond to these overtures, except with contempt, and then with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

During and after the Oval Office meeting yesterday, Americans suggested that all that had happen was a unilateral Ukrainian ceasefire, and that then the end of the war would automatically follow. Americans indicated that Zelens'kyi was too stupid to understand this. Zelens'kyi's quite reasonable point was that a ceasefire would have to be followed by efforts to strengthen Ukraine, or the war would simply start again. The evidence is on his side. Even during Trump's ostensible peace campaign these last six weeks, Russian authorities have never said that they would end the war. The Russians keep committing war crimes every day. Yesterday Russia was attacking hospitals in Kharkiv. The Russians have only said that they would talk to Americans, which is not the same thing as agreeing to take part in a peace process. From the Russian perspective, a ceasefire is an opportunity to halt external support for Ukraine and demobilize the Ukrainian army, preparatory to the next attack. Even were this not obvious from Russian statements and actions, no responsible Ukrainian leader could simply accept the American premise that a ceasefire itself is all that is necessary, or simply take Americans at their word that all would be well afterwards.

After yesterday's confrontation in the Oval Office, Trump made clear just how unstrategic the American approach had been. He claimed that the real problem had been that Zelens'kyi had wanted to speak about Putin. Russia, of course, is the aggressor. It does not make sense to demand that the country under attack cease to defend itself, and to pretend that this in itself will bring peace. Had the United States under Trump been interested in peace in Ukraine, American power would have been engaged to deter Russia from continuing the war. There was never any meaningful sign of a willingness to do this, and certainly no new American policy, under Trump, to do this. On the contrary, the United States lifted Russia from its international isolation and accepted in advance most Russian demands. But even had that not been the case, the American position would have been illogical. During an ongoing war of aggression, the aggressor cannot simply be humored, as Trump proposes, during a process that aims at peace.

In the emotion of the White House, however, it was evident that the situation was psychological rather than strategic. In Zelens'kyi's presence, Trump confessed his fundamental sympathy for Putin. In Trump's view, he and Putin "had gone through a lot together." The grievance on display here was so capacious that not everyone could grasp what Trump meant. Trump said that he had been the victim of a "hoax," because people thought that Putin assisted Trump's presidential campaigns. But Putin, Trump claimed, rather extraordinarily, was also the victim of the "hoax." And indeed, according to Trump, this had been a very meaningful bonding experience between the two men. This casts some light on the one of the regular conversations between Putin and Trump these last few years. It reflects, though, an emotional commitment based upon a carefully curated unreality. There was, of course, no hoax. Putin supported Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns, right down to Russian bomb threats against predominantly Democratic districts last election day. But the emotional connection between the two men, as Trump revealed, real. For Trump, the imagined wound of ego to his friend Putin was the pertinent reality. The real wounds that real Russians have inflicted on real Ukrainians are not.

In the White House, Zelens'kyi asked Vance whether he had ever been to Ukraine, which is a reasonable question. Vance had issued one of his typically ex cathedra pronouncements. He speaks with great confidence about the war, telling security experts and Ukrainians alike that he is "right" and they are "wrong." Indeed, one of the most striking moments yesterday was Vance yelling at Zelens'kyi that Zelens'kyi is "wrong." Vance makes judgements on the basis of numbers, without any knowledge of how the battlefield looks or works. He also ignores the human factor, treating war as a math problem in which big numbers always win -- which, as a historical matter, is mistaken. Did the numerically stronger side win the Revolutionary War? Since 1945, it has been normal for the smaller, colonized country to defeat the larger, colonizing power. Vance's analysis also evades responsibility, as though it does not matter which side the United States took. Where his arrogance leads is the path he has in fact taken: the country that he personally thinks is stronger should win the war because that is what he thinks; if this is not happening, American power should be added to the side that he believes should be winning: Russia. His actions yesterday certainly furthered such a goal.

Also telling was the way Vance responded to Zelens'kyi's question. Vance took the position that it was better to look at the internet than to learn things in person. He started with the weird idea that Zelens'kyi was to blame for Vance's failure to visit Ukraine, because Zelens'kyi just took people on "propaganda tours." This is very illogical. It is true that Ukrainian governments accompany foreign visitors to killing sites, especially Bucha. No doubt those visits have an effect on people. But the mass killing at Bucha did in fact take place. When Vance attaches "propaganda" to the custom of visiting it, he falls painfully close to the Russian claim that the mass killing did not happen at all, and that the signs of it were staged. Because Bucha is a Kyiv suburb, and so relatively accessible for foreign delegations, it serves as a representative example of what are, sadly, many similar cases of the mass shootings of civilians. And that war crime, the mass killing of civilians, has in its turn to stand for many others, including torture, rape, and the kidnaping of children. Had Vance decided to go to Ukraine, he could have visited Bucha with or without Ukrainians, as he preferred. He could also have talked to people in Kyiv, or indeed ventured beyond, to other cities. He could have spoken to soldiers and officers in the Ukrainian armed forces. Nothing stopped him from doing so. He was, after all, a United States Senator, and then the Vice-President of the United States. He could have planned the journey as he liked, and others would have made the arrangements for him.

There is a reason that Vance will not go to Ukraine. He is an online person. Last year at the Munich Security Conference, he refused to meet Zelens'kyi, on the justification that he knew everything he needed to know already. Then he spent time on the internet in his hotel room and posted about certain adolescent concerns. This year at the Munich Security Conference it was made known that Vance would only see Zelens'kyi if the Ukrainians first signed a deed ceding much of the Ukrainian economy to the United States in exchange for nothing. When did meet Zelens'kyi, he did so surrounded by others. In the White House, yesterday, he broadcast the same fear of confronting something real. Yelling across the room to a visiting guest that "you're wrong, you're wrong" is not a sign of confidence or wisdom. Vance takes the safe course of dismissing other people rather than admitting that he might have something to learn. More important than visiting Ukraine, said Vance in the White House, was "seeing stories." It is better to take in information, as he has said, from his own "sources," those that confirm what he already thinks, than actually engaging with another country or with its people. Vance's "sources" have led him to repeat claims that originated very specifically as Russian propaganda and have been documented as such, for example the an entirely untrue claim that American aid goes to pay for yachts. Vance helped to spread this lie.

[THL]

The Orange Clown and his sycophants... how embarrassing! Elect a clown, get a circus.

[PAL]

Wow, great news.

[Rideback]

Newhouse has already put out a statement in support of Ukraine after yesterday's meeting.

[PAL]

Let's call Newhouse and see if he supports Putin.

[Rideback]

https://www.tiktok.com/@coachmox8/video ... 9098253599

[mister_coffee]

I suspect that whatever Ukraine does in response is not going to be enjoyed by Russians...

[pasayten]

“Generations of American patriots, from our revolution onward, have fought for the principles Zelenskyy is risking his life to defend. But today, Donald Trump and JD Vance attacked Zelenskyy and pressured him to surrender the freedom of his people to the KGB war criminal who invaded Ukraine,” Cheney wrote in a post on social platform X.

“History will remember this day— when an American President and Vice President abandoned all we stand for.”

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