Lend/Lease was a WWII program. 1941-45. Dumping un-accounted for $billions$ into Ukraine without any control, checks, or balances in place and then ex post facto calling it a program from 1941 is stupid. Lipstick on a pig.fatman wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 8:18 pmAre you concerned about US and Russian soldiers actively engaging in direct conflict or are you concerned about lend/lease operating in Ukraine?RiverguyVT wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 7:30 pmYay, WWIII!!!!!!fatman wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2023 7:19 pm
I'm not sure if I know your friend. Let's just call her Majorie. You can tell Majorie that Turkey is a weapons exporter, like the US, France, England, and up-until-2022 Russia.
Turkey has been playing both sides to an extent, but made a hard break away from Russia once Wagner marched on Moscow in a sign of Putin's weakness. They approved NATO expansion as we picked up Sweeden from free agency.
One key detail is that this isn't just arms delivery, but turkey is co-operating a plant in Ukraine.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine ... ar-1811895
This is really important, because the US has thus far insisted that weapons provided via lend/lease only be used in temporarily occupied Ukraine, e.g. Crimea, Donbas, etc. Ukraine wants to be able to strike inside Russia-proper to avenge attacks from Russia. They will be able to do this with their own weapons. So when Russia uses Iranian drones to attack Kiev, they get incoming drone attacks in Moscow. When Putin bombs Odessa, Zelensky will be able to bomb St Petersburg. The goal is to arm Ukraine in the same way that the west has armed Israel to protect it from its neighbors at least until we get Ukraine in NATO and all this stops for good.
Not sure if you saw, but Ukrainian manufactured drones blew up the Russian<->Crimea bridge again last night. Putin and his spokespeople promised armageddon to Ukraine if any harm were to come of this bridge, but it's been blown up twice now and all Putin can do is commit his daily warm crimes of bombing Ukrainian apartment buildings, etc.
Putin said today he is ending the grain deal that Turkey brokered, so Turkey's offer to protect Ukrainian grain shipments with Turkish navy vessels may be put into practice in the near future. Expect some empty threats from Putin that he will attack Turkish naval vessels...a risk putin will not take as he knows the reaction would be devastating.
Pure insanity.
Yes, a 2022 act took on the name of the old one. It is not the same.
I'm concerned about escalation. I'm concerned that the people currently running the US are idiots. No. Strike that. Idiots that hate their own country so much that protecting this country is the last thing on their minds. I'm concerned (see other link) that the corrupt CIA is lost. I'm concerned that our weekend at Bernie's president is completely compromised by past deeds in Ukraine, and so cannot act in good faith for our nation. Ditto China. I'm concerned with the modern Pentagon leadership, which has proven to be incompetent at just about everything they've done in the last decade. Milley especially.
I'm concerned that Russia has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world and if Putin is indeed as deranged as you claim he is, he might just use them.
Biden's handlers already have him sending 3000 of our soldiers to Europe to support this nonsense.
It isn't our war.
We are not the world's policeman.
The huge number of today's democrats are essentially marxists/leninists....so there's your "friendlies". I attended the UofR speech with Gorbachev and the leftists (democrats) were all googly-eyed in love. LOL.
