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great value to the mad men, except for the dead ukronians....

Using Ukraine to fight Russia offers great value – US Senator

Ex-presidential candidate Mitt Romney has claimed that sending weapons to Kiev is Washington’s best defense investment in history

US Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has touted Washington’s strategy of trying to weaken Russia by providing massive military aid to Kiev, allegedly degrading Moscow’s forces while only Ukrainian troops are put in harm’s way.

Romney, who as the Republican Party’s nominee, lost the 2012 presidential election to Barack Obama, made his comments during a visit on Tuesday to Utah-based defense contractor Strider Technologies. He argued that the best way for the US to mitigate the security threat posed by China is to ensure that Russia is defeated in Ukraine.

“Russia being weakened weakens their ally China,” Romney said. “And by the way, being able to take an amount that equals about 5% of our military budget... to help the Ukrainians is about the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

We’re losing no lives in Ukraine. And the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia, that has 1,500 nuclear weapons aimed at us. So, we are diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money.”

While American forces have been spared bloodshed – at least officially – Ukrainian troops haven’t been as fortunate. An estimated 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Kiev began a counteroffensive operation in early June, according to an August 4 estimate by the Russian Defense Ministry. Since the conflict began in February 2022, Ukraine has lost 400,000 troops, former Pentagon senior advisor Douglas Macgregor, a retired US Army colonel, said last week in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

Nevertheless, Romney claimed that the US effort to hurt Moscow through a proxy combatant has been successful, sending a message to Chinese leaders and to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has previously argued that Russia is a “geopolitical adversary” and is the “only real ally” of China.

“A weakened Russia is a good thing,” Romney said. “It tells China to rethink their territorial ambition. It tells Russia, perhaps most importantly, that the Putin vision of re-establishing the Russian empire and grabbing the old former Soviet Republics that that’s not something that’s going to work.”

During his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2012, Romney called Russia “America’s No. 1 geopolitical foe.” Obama responded by quipping that “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Romney claimed to have been vindicated when Russia began its military offensive against Ukraine last year. During his visit to Strider, he said, “It is very much in America’s national interest, in our national interest, to help Ukraine, and the best thing we can do for America is to see people who have nuclear weapons aimed at us getting weaker.”

 

https://www.rt.com/news/581932-romney-says-us-weakens-russia-through-ukraine/

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxiLREYszas

 

MITT ROMNEY IS AN IMBECILE.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.............................

 

make peace....

One of the Ukrainian recruits sent by Kiev to Germany for training in the use of Western weapons is 71 years old, the Financial Times has reported.

The elderly man in question had volunteered to join the Ukrainian military, the British outlet reported on Monday.

NATO instructors working at a military base near Klietz in northeastern Germany told the FT that while they were impressed by the “tremendous motivation” of the Ukrainian trainees, the age and ability of those arriving to learn arms usage “varies widely.”

Ukrainian commanders on the front line often prefer to keep their best soldiers in the trenches with them instead of sending them for training abroad, the instructors complained.

Nick Reynolds, a research fellow in land warfare at British defense and security think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told the FT that on many occasions the military training provided by the West has not met Kiev’s expectations.

https://www.rt.com/news/581965-ukraine-training-nato-germany/

 

As the Western establishment media begrudgingly accepts what many analysts have long predicted – that Kiev’s counteroffensive is a catastrophic failure – it seems that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky hasn’t gotten the memo.

He seems adamant that the mercurial F-16 fighter jet is the missing link required to spur his depleted military to victory against Russia. There is, however, a little problem with his thesis – there’s more than one, actually, but let’s start with the most obvious.

Even as Ukraine’s long-awaited, much-hyped, but now obviously failed counteroffensive grinds to a bloody and costly halt, it seems the pro-war enthusiasts in the West and their proxies in Kiev still believe that the F-16, an American fighter jet that first took to the skies nearly 50 years ago, can somehow save the day for Zelensky and his NATO handlers. But at the same time trouble seems to be brewing in paradise as the Western media, which has thus far played such a pivotal role in overhyping Kiev’s military capabilities, is now less than convinced that this aging American castoff can play anything close to a defining role in NATO’s stalling proxy war against Russia.

https://www.rt.com/news/581828-ukraine-zelensky-f16-west/

 

The air is seeping out of Russia’s sanctions-beleaguered economy, but not fast enough to impede President Vladimir Putin’s calamitous war in Ukraine or to inconvenience most Russians. Longtime visitors to Moscow and other cities report that shelves are full and daily life is visibly unchanged, thanks partly to huge state subsidies. It is now clear that the West’s campaign to weaken Russia’s finances in hopes of dampening Mr. Putin’s resolve and popular support will be a slog, not a sprint.

Still, Washington and its allies retain potent ways to undercut the Kremlin’s war-making capacity over time — if they are honed and intensified. Better coordination and tighter enforcement of existing restrictions hold the key to sharpening the war’s costs for Russian industry and consumers, and to further sapping Russia’s ability to continue manufacturing high-tech weapons. Equally important, the West can double down on its success in squeezing the Russian state’s most important revenue source: energy. 

None of this will be simple. U.S. efforts to broaden the ban of exports to Russia have hit a brick wall in the European Union and Japan, according to a recent report in the Financial Times. And enforcement of multiple rounds of sanctions imposed on Russian entities and individuals has become an increasingly intricate cat-and-mouse game in the 15 months since Russia’s unprovoked invasion last year. As the sanctions have multiplied, so has the sophistication of Russia’s efforts to evade them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/14/russia-economy-sanctions-ukraine-war/

 

THE KEY DECEITFUL WORD IN THIS ARTICLE IS "UNPROVOKED" BECAUSE LET'S FACE IT, RUSSIA WAS PROVOKED BY NATO'S ILLEGAL EXPANSION AND OTHER NAZI NIGGLES WHICH AMOUNTED TO A WESTERN DECLARATION OF WAR ON RUSSIA... YES THE WESTERN MEDIA, INCLUDING WAPO, HAVE BEEN DISHONEST... IT'S TIME FOR MAKING PEACE.... THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY IS STILL ON TRACK TO HIT 2 PER CENT INCREASE IN THE 2023/24 SEASON WHILE GERMANY IS ON TRACK TO HIT ZERO IMPROVEMENTS.... AND THE "UKRONIAN" ARMY IS LOOSING A BIT LESS THAN 5,000 TROOPS A WEEK, PRESENTLY... THAT'S ABOUT 20,000 DEAD SOLDIERS A MONTH... OR SAY ANOTHER 80,000 BY END OF YEAR.... THE WEST IS MAD.

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MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 

on a limb....

 

BY 

With Ukrainian forces reportedly suffering a level of amputations reminiscent of WWI, a New York Times proxy war propagandist is spinning amputees as sex symbols and painting their gruesome injuries as “magical.”

After 18 months of devastating proxy warfare, the scale of the depletion of the Ukrainian military is so extensive that even mainstream sources have been forced to concede the cruel reality. On August 1, The Wall Street Journal reported that “between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians” have “lost one or more limbs since the start of the war.” What’s more, the outlet notes, “the actual figure could be higher” because “it takes time to register patients after they undergo the procedure.”

By comparison, around 67,000 Germans and 41,000 Britons underwent amputations during the entire four-year span of the First World War. The publication quotes the head of a group of former military surgeons who train Ukrainian military medics who maintained that “Western military surgeons haven’t seen injuries on this scale since World War II.”

While the implications of the Journal’s report have largely been studiously ignored by Western media, at least one mainstream journalist has displayed a keen interest in Kiev’s amputees. The New York Times’ columnist and ardent liberal interventionist Nicholas Kristof practically fetishized the mass disfigurement of Ukrainian combat veterans in the name of Washington’s war du jour. 

In a July 8 op-ed titled “They’re Ready to Fight Again, on Artificial Legs,” Kristof insisted that rather than resenting being used as cannon fodder, Ukraine’s newly-disabled veterans “carry their stumps with pride.”

Citing one soldier who expressed hopes of returning to the frontline despite missing three limbs, Kristof framed such “grit and resilience” as a sure sign Kiev is winning the proxy conflict, and will inevitably emerge victorious over Russia.

The gut-wrenching homage to crippled and mangled Ukrainian soldiers even spun amputation as a means of getting laid, quoting the wife of one amputee as saying, “he’s very sexy without a leg.”

Another amputee cited in the op-ed claimed he had never dared ask his hometown crush out on a date before being hospitalized for “mortar injuries that took his leg and mangled his arms.” But after suffering irreparable and life-altering injuries, he and his sweetheart have been together ever since, the disabled soldier claimed.

Kristof quoted the soldier as follows: “It’s magical. Someone can have all his arms and legs and still not be successful in love, but an amputee can win a heart.” 

 Hyping Russian losses, covering up Ukraine’s

Throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western officials and journalists have taken a decidedly asymmetrical approach to reporting combat losses. Since the conflict’s first days, legacy media has dutifully repeated the vast, unverifiable figures that NATO-affiliated analysts insist Moscow suffered on the battlefield. In April 2022, the BBC even went as far as to publish the names and photos of Russian soldiers allegedly killed during the war.

But when reporting on Ukrainian casualties, major news outlets typically refer to the figure as a “closely guarded state secret.” The same senior US intelligence and defense officials who are heavily involved in assisting Kiev on military planning and strategy appear to be genuinely in the dark. On the rare occasion that these sources comment publicly on Kiev’s losses, they invariably caution that they’re merely offering an “estimate.”

From the perspective of Kiev and its foreign backers, the proxy war’s informational component is among its most impactful, and the propaganda utility of concealing losses is clear. Shielding Western audiences from the devastating human cost of the conflict makes the ever-fanciful prospect of Ukrainian victory seem more attainable, and keeps public support for the fight high, arms shipments flowing, and the profits of major weapons manufacturers soaring.

 Ukrainian amputee centers “must be common as dentists”

As the Wall Street Journal explained in early August, Ukraine’s healthcare system “is now overwhelmed…with many patients waiting more than a year for a new limb.” In Zaporizhzhia alone, 40 to 80 wounded veterans reportedly arrive at hospitals with battlefield traumas each day, including amputees from the frontline 25 miles away.

The outlet quoted a Ukrainian medical director who insisted that facilities dedicated to treating and rehabilitating amputees are now needed “in every town across Ukraine,” and, ideally, “must be as common as dentists.”

Unlike recent US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing proxy conflict in Ukraine is a high-intensity battle of attrition between two near-peers. Under such circumstances, the primary sources of amputation injuries are essentially the same as they were during the grinding trench battles of World War One — artillery, missiles, and mines.

According to a 2014 policy brief published by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, “the typical ratio of those wounded to those killed in conflict has historically hovered around the 3:1 mark,” though “with recent medical advances, however, the U.S. wounded-to-killed ratio today ranges anywhere from 10:1 to 17:1.”

But as the proxy war’s most vocal defenders are quick to point out, Ukrainian soldiers do not have access to the same medical technology as Americans. 

Beyond the year-long wait for new limbs, a severe shortage of doctors and technicians to tend to amputees has been reported as well. And despite receiving well over $100 billion in aid from Western nations, Kiev still clearly lacks the technology, infrastructure and expert staff required to match Washington’s contemporary casualty record.

Over the course of two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, around 1,650 US veterans underwent amputation, according to the most recent figures available. And though that relatively small number has often been attributed to improvements in medical technology, American troops were also fighting lopsided skirmishes against poorly equipped adversaries operating without the benefit of air cover.

A January 2008 analysis of data published by the US Army Institute of Surgical Research’s Joint Theater Trauma Registry found that as of June 2006, 423 US soldiers who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan suffered one or more “major limb amputations,” a rate of 5.2% among serious injuries overall.

Eerily, the researchers responsible for the study noted that the percentage of amputees among the Vietnam War’s roughly 96,000 seriously injured casualties was also 5.2% —  the same ratio recorded in Afghanistan and Iraq decades later. The paper’s conclusions were stark:

 

“Amputation rates [in war] have remained at roughly 7% to 8% of major-extremity injuries for the past 50 years. This is despite increasingly rapid evacuation of casualties, dramatic improvements in surgical technique, and far forward deployment of specialist care. However, over the same period, the degree of primary tissue destruction associated with modern weaponry has also increased dramatically. Unfortunately…we believe the rate of amputation following major limb injury is likely to remain unchanged in the current combat environment.”

However, The Wall Street Journal acknowledged that deaths on the Ukrainian side dwarf those suffered by the US military in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere during recent conflicts:

“Out of 100 soldiers wounded within about three miles of the front line, 36% suffered very severe injuries, while between 5% and 10% of all deployed troops were killed, according to Ukrainian military estimates shared with a group of US military surgeons. In comparison, only 1.3% to 2% of U.S. troops deployed in recent conflicts died in action.”

Officially, a total of 22,311 killed and injured were recorded during the US occupation of Afghanistan, and 36,710 in the latter, a total of 59,021. Proportionally, 1,650 amputees represents 2.8% of this figure.

If that volume is transposed to Ukrainian amputees, which reportedly range from 20,000 – 50,000, Kiev’s overall total of killed and injured soldiers since the invasion began could be anywhere between 714,500 and 1.8 million. 

A study this June by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology which found that 78 percent of Ukrainians have had close relatives or friends injured or killed as a result of the conflict suggests the casualty figures are orders of magnitude greater than those publicly admitted by the Ukrainian military.

 Mass death in “an investment trap”

Despite the best offers of liberal interventionists like the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, who attempted to reframe war amputees as an indicator of Ukrainian fearlessness, rather than unambiguously grim symbols of an utterly catastrophic situation, Western citizens are increasingly repelled by the deluge of pro-war propaganda. 

On August 4, a CNN poll found that a majority of Americans opposed Congress authorizing more funding for Ukraine, with 51% of respondents saying Washington had “already done enough.” Markedly, there was “slim backing for US military forces to participate in combat operations” – just 17%.

With US elections rapidly approaching, and Biden administration officials openly worryingtheir Ukraine policy will be a decisive issue on polling day, the conflict’s conclusion could be near. Even Democratic Party loyalists like Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment (a think tank formerly directed by now-CIA director William Burns) are lamenting that the Ukraine proxy war has become a quagmire.

“It’s sad,” Miller wrote. “But [the] US is in an investment trap in Ukraine with no clear way out. Chances of a military breakthrough or a diplomatic solution are slim to none; and slim may have already left town. We’re in deep and lack the ability to do much more than react to events.”

Since publishing its grim survey of Ukraine’s amputation epidemic, The Wall Street Journal has churned out another depressing read for proxy war boosters. On August 13, the WSJ reported that Kiev’s failure to make headway in its vaunted counteroffensive has forced military planners to look ahead to Spring 2024 for another opportunity that “might” tip the balance.

 

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/08/15/western-press-ukrainian-amputees/

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

tomb-toll.....

 

Ukraine doesn't release its number of war casualties — at this cemetery, the real toll is on show


By Europe bureau chief Steve Cannane and West Matteeussen in Dnipro

 

When you walk through the Krasnopilske military cemetery in eastern Ukraine, one of the first things you hear is the sound of weeping.

The cemetery, outside of the city of Dnipro, is the final resting place for many of the soldiers who have died on the eastern front.

Tissues in hand and crippled by grief, Tetiana Sklyarova is sitting beside the grave of her only son Sergii.

"He's gone, and I can't get used to him not being here. This is the pride of Ukraine," she tells the ABC as she looks around the necropolis.

"This was the source of our happiness. Now we have lost it all."

 

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-30/russia-ukraine-war-krasnopilske-cemetery-show-invasion-toll/102734276

 

THE NUMBER OF UKRAINIAN DEAD SOLDIERS HOVERS BETWEEN 400,000 AND 500,000... THIS IS ATTESTED BY REPUTABLE WAR ANALYSTS. THIS CONFLICT WAS NOT "UNPROVOKED". IT WAS PROVOKED BY THE WEST ENCROACHING ON WHAT NATO PROMISED TO NEVER DO: MOVE EAST OF BERLIN. 

AS WELL THE WEST LIED ABOUT THE MINSK AGREEMENTS, WHICH ALLOWED THE RUSSIAN REGIONS OF THE DONBASS TO BE AUTONOMOUS IN UKRAINE. BY EARLY MARCH 2022, THE UKRAINIAN ARMY FED WITH NATO ARSENAL WAS ABOUT TO ATTACK THE AUTONOMOUS REGIONS WITH 60,000 TROOPS. THIS WAS THE MAJOR PROVOCATION THAT LED PUTIN TO LAUNCH THE  MILITARY OPERATION THAT CULMINATED IN A PEACE DEAL IN APRIL 2022. ACCORDING TO THE TERMS OF THIS DEAL, THE MINKS ACCORD WOULD BE RESPECTED BY UKRAINE, NATO WOULD NOT SET FOOT IN UKRAINE, CRIMEA WOULD BE RUSSIAN AS PER PRIOR 1954 AND THE NAZI-LED UKRAINIAN MILITARY WOULD BE DISBANDED.

BY THEN THE AMOUNT OF CASUALTIES WAS NO MORE THAN 5,000. BUT AS USUAL, THE WEST WAS UNHAPPY ABOUT THIS PEACE DEAL WHICH DEPRIVED THE WEST OF ITS ULTIMATE GOAL: THE DESTRUCTION OF RUSSIA (DREAMED OF SINCE 1917). BORIS JOHNSON STOPPED THE PEACE DEAL. HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HUGE NUMBER OF DEAD UKRAINIANS AND THE ONE TO TEN RUSSIAN SOLDIERS (TO WEAKEN RUSSIA). 

 

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MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

(NOTE: DESPITE CLAIMS IN THE WEST, RUSSIA HAS BEEN HOLDING BACK ON ITS MILITARY OPERATION, TRYING HARD TO MINIMISE CASUALTIES — BOTH MILITARY AND CIVILIAN). IT'S TIME TO PUT ZELENSKY IN HIS LITTLE BOX....

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

mitt quits....

 

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) announced on Wednesday that he will not run for reelection.

Romney released a video statement explaining why he has declined to run for reelection, stating that he helped pass reforms such as the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill, the Electoral Count Act reform bill, which was conceived in the wake of the January 6 protests, and emergency coronavirus aid funding.

Now, he said it is time for a “new generation of leaders” to shape public policy. In his statement, he said both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are ready to take on today’s issues:

We face critical challenges — mounting national debt, climate change, and the ambitious authoritarians of Russia and China. Neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their party to confront them. On the deficits and debt, both men refuse to address entitlements even though they represent two thirds of federal spending. Donald Trump calls global warming a hoax and President Biden offers feel-good solutions that will make no difference to the global climate. On China, President Biden underinvests in the military and President Trump underinvests in our alliances. Political motivations too often impede the solutions that these challenges demand. The next generation of leaders must take America to the next stage of global leadership. [Emphasis added]

Romney’s tenure in the Senate has been marked by controversy, which includes his move to help negotiate the controversial so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill.

During Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) reelection campaign, Romney declined to endorse Lee, instead claiming that he would not back Lee while he fought off a bid from the independent and Never Trump candidate Evan McMullin.

Romney infamously announced that he would break ranks with Senate Republicans and vote to convict Trump during his first impeachment trial. His vote to impeach Trump earned him a censure from local county GOP officials and conservative groups.

Now, Utahns move to pick who may replace him in Congress’s upper chamber.

National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman Steve Daines (R-MT) said in a statement, “I join my Republican colleagues in expressing gratitude to Senator Romney for his years of service to our country and the state of Utah. We are going to nominate a candidate who will keep Utah red in 2024.”

Utah Senate Republican candidate and Riverton, Utah, Mayor Trent Staggs trolled Romney for standing in solidarity over the impeachment inquiry against Biden.

“I’m glad to see Mitt Romney crossing party lines and joining the Republicans on this,” Staggs wrote.

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/09/13/mitt-romney-declines-run-reelection/

 

READ FROM TOP.....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............

see also.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv4p2HmvwNw

 

 

READ FROM TOP.....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..............