Following a meeting with Ukrainian members of parliament (MPs) this week, members of Congress issued a plea for Kiev to receive a much larger war chest to continue fruitlessly fighting back against Russia.
There is no way the Zelensky regime can win the war, of course, but that does not mean Western backers are planning to stop pouring your tax dollars into trying. After all, what do they have to lose? It's your cash they're stealing.
The grouping of congressmen is pushing Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to not only expand Ukraine's war chest but also give the green light for Ukraine to start striking Russian territory with American weapons.
The main request in the above-linked letter is what could become the trigger for WWIII. Russia has repeatedly made it clear that other countries that get directly involved in striking Russian territory are open game for an attack.
Even so, the congressmen want Austin to authorize "the use of U.S.-provided weapons to strike strategic targets within Russian territory under certain circumstances."
It is hard to say if the Biden regime will grant the request or not, seeing as how last week Defense Department spokeswoman Sabrina Singh reiterated the Pentagon's stance that American weapons can and will only be deployed in order to "take back Ukrainian sovereign territory," and not to target Russia directly.
Kiev is currently banned from attacking Russian forces like those amassing near Kharkiv Oblast for an offensive using advanced American weapons such as ATACMS missiles.
However, official sources told the New York Timesthat this could be about to change at the behest of Blinken, and the State Department is currently engaged in a “vigorous debate” about this policy.
The paper reports that the Kharkiv situation is what changed Blinken’s mind. Russian forces have placed weapons just across the border from northeastern Ukraine, aiming them directly at Kharkiv while knowing that Ukrainian soldiers won’t be allowed to use American weaponry to respond. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that this gives Russia a “huge advantage.”
The head of the Ukrainian parliamentary commission on arms and ammunition, Oleksandra Ustinova, said: "(T)hey (Russia) know there is a restriction for Ukrainians to shoot at the Russian territory. And we saw all of their military equipment sitting one or two kilometers from the border (near Kharkiv), and there was nothing we could do."
Blinken recently returned from a two-day visit to Kiev and was asked about the recent complaints from Ukraine that they cannot attack Russian forces thanks to the ban.
"We've not enabled or encouraged strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately, Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it's going to conduct this war," which would seem to imply that if Ukraine decided to do so, they would not stop them.
No comments:
Post a Comment