War in Ukraine

One thing I would bet on is, if there is truth to this, the weaponry that the Trump admin will supply the Ukrainians will be very consequential. In other words, not half-assed. Likely, to make a scenario plausible that Ukraine could do serious damage inside of Russia. With the idea of bringing Russia to the table. It will need to be a significant escalation, in terms of the capabilities of those weapons. Trump wouldn’t want the Kremlin to laugh it off, so as to no longer take him seriously.

 

Indeed. Hope so. Let’s stop pussyfooting around and make the strategic defeat of Russia a national effort.

 

This Trump guy means business! Tariffs on US exports are precisely what Russia would seek to avoid.

From NYT : Ukraine war: President Trump said the United States would impose “very severe tariffs” on Russia if there was no peace deal with Ukraine in 50 days. He said there would be “secondary tariffs” at about 100 percent.

 

Saw on the news this morning Trump said we were going to deliver Patriot missiles / system to Ukraine.

 

I believe they already have them. They are just going to get more of them.

 

That is from a few days ago. The "announcement" is expected to be for more generous weapons deliveries immediately as well as harsh secondary sanctions against the countries keeping Russia afloat economically. These would begin within the next two months. Now that will not have any effect on the behavior of Russia's actual allies (PRC, DPRK, Iran), but it hopefully will change the behaviors of self-interested countries who continue to buy Russia's petroleum products at a discount, such as India. My first thought was, why wait 50 days? Then it occurred to me that we would want to give certain countries, such as India, a fair opportunity to disengage from Russia. We don't care if the PRC hates us (so long as it fears us), but we want India aligned with us in the long run. Personally, I think secondary sanctions are long overdue. We have to make it in neutral countries' interest not to do business with Russia.

 

Sounds like a good deal to me. Ukraine gets advanced weapons, no American personnel and the EU pays for their own defense for once…..and American taxpayers aren’t bilked.

 

You mean, NATO, not the EU.

 

Meant the European countries as a whole including the non nato such as Ukraine. More focused on which countries are footing the actual bill. If that’s exclusively nato then yes nato. In short tired of dumping money into Europe and then seeing articles like this….yes it’s not a new article, but the point is the same. If it’s not important enough for your money then it’s certainly not important enough for my money. Of course all JMHO

UK army is unprepared for war and would run out of ammo quickly, former defense official says

 

I agree but I wonder if even 50 days is enough for a country like India. It’s probably enough that they start looking elsewhere for Russia to take notice.