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Desperate Ukraine tells U.S. ‘bureaucracy' is no excuse for failing to provide critical weapons and ammunition
[CNBC] WASHINGTON — A Ukrainian delegation warned U.S. officials in Washington this week that security assistance packages are not arriving quick enough in the besieged country, a plea that comes amid Western security claims that the Kremlin will soon intensify its military campaign.Over the past week, the delegation of Ukrainian civil society advocates, military veterans and former government officials met with 45 lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, officials at the departments of State and Defense and the National Security Council at the White House. "It’s the 44th day of the war that we were supposed to lose on the third day," began Daria Kaleniuk, who runs Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, a national organization that assists Ukraine’s parliament and prosecutor’s office. "What we need now is to arm our military and our territorial defense units to be able to prevent more graves in the backyards of innocent people," she said on Friday. Kaleniuk added that U.S. lawmakers and Biden administration officials outlined a number of justifications for why certain weapons systems cannot be delivered, citing logistics issues, lack of inventory and bureaucratic limitations. "The six-year-old boy who is visiting his mother’s grave in his backyard does not want to hear about bureaucracy as an excuse for not delivering weapons to Ukraine," Kaleniuk said. "This is an extraordinary situation where extraordinary measures have to be done. Lift your bureaucracy, lift it now. The president of the United States has huge power, Congress has huge power. We know it’s possible," she added. Earlier in the week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also made a plea to NATO allies to catalyze the delivery of their arms commitments. "Either you help us now, and I’m speaking about days not weeks, or your help will come too late," Kuleba told reporters at NATO’s headquarters on April 7. "I have no doubt that Ukraine will have the weapons necessary to fight. The question is the timeline. This discussion is not about the list of weapons. The discussion is about the timeline when do we get them and this is crucial," he said, adding "people are dying today, the offensive is unfolding today." When asked about Kuleba’s comments, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken downplayed concerns that allies were withholding weapons explicitly requested by Ukraine. "They’re coming forward with new systems that they think would be helpful and effective," Blinken said from NATO’s headquarters. "We put our own expertise to bear, especially the Pentagon to help determine what indeed we think could be effective. What Ukrainians will be ready to use as soon as they get it, and what we actually have access to and can get to them in real-time," he said, adding that the U.S. is working expeditiously to get appropriate weapons to Ukraine. Blinken’s comments echo those of U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley. Austin and Milley told lawmakers last week that some weapons systems on Ukraine’s wish list require months of training in order to operate. This was another piece linked to at FR by Zhang Fei, who wrote the following in the comments: Ukraine ping During the Yom Kippur War, Nixon ordered direct airlifts of late model weaponry from US stocks in Europe to Israel, and raised the readiness level of US nuclear forces to DEFCON 3, in response to the possibility of Russian intervention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War. Whereas currently, Moscow Joe is slow-walking the aid. Ukrainians are fighting a high-intensity war with a major power, and Moscow Joe is allocating aid to be provided at leisure. Meanwhile, we funded the Afghans lavishly to fight a two-bit enemy (the Taliban) engaged in desultory guerilla warfare that killed maybe a thousand combatants on both sides a month. The Ukrainians have killed over 15,000 Russians in a month. That takes a lot of ammo and equipment which gets used up or destroyed by the enemy. Modern warfare isn’t like its ancient counterpart - the weapons aren’t swords and spears that merely have to be cleaned off and sharpened to get more use out of them. Moscow Joe was paid by Putin through Burisma, which is owned by one of Putin’s cronies, Zlochevsky, who left Ukraine along with Putin’s puppet, Yanukovich, after the Maidan Revolution. I gotta hand it to Putin - he might not be the greatest war planner, but he made sure Trump was up to his eyeballs in alligators for the entire length of his tenure. Igor Danchenko, the guy who was arrested over his role in fabricating the Steele dossier, is Russian. He appears to be a Russian agent planted by Putin inside the Democratic party. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Danchenko One of the ways you discredit your enemy is by planting evidence that suggests he is your paid agent. That was Danchenko’s assignment within the Democratic party - to help stick it to Trump. Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2022-04-11 |
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