Biden authorizes Ukraine to use long-range US weapons in Russia
Posted by Ed on November 17, 2024, 7:18 pm
Biden authorizes Ukraine to use long-range US weapons in Russia
President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use powerful long-range American weapons inside Russia, according to a senior US official familiar with the decision, as North Korean troops deploy in support of Moscow’s effort.
The decision comes as Russia has deployed nearly 50,000 troops to Kursk, the southern Russian region where Kyiv launched its surprise counteroffensive in the summer, to prepare to take back territory.
Thousands of North Korean troops have deployed to Kursk as part of the offensive, sparking concern from Biden and his advisers that their entry could lead to a dangerous new phase in the war.
The decision to allow use of the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, inside Russia had been under consideration for months. American officials had been divided on the wisdom of allowing the new capability. Some had concerns about escalating the war, while others worried about dwindling stockpiles of the weapons.
The US refused to even provide ATACMS to Ukraine for the first two years of the war, in part because of readiness concerns as the powerful missiles require time and complex components to produce. But Biden secretly approved the transfer of the long-range ATACMS missiles in February for use inside Ukrainian territory, and the US delivered the missiles in April.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky had been pressing Washington to allow use of the weapons inside Russia, too, arguing he needed the capability to gain momentum in his war effort.
When Biden and Zelensky last met at the White House in September, the Ukrainian leader came with a detailed list of targets inside Russia that he wanted to hit with US-provided long-range missiles, according to sources familiar with the meeting...
- Of all the possible reprisals (of which there are very many), perhaps the most effective would be to quietly sink a US nuclear sub if they are trackable. Its clean, out of the way, strategic, and would probably have to be kept largely secret.
The next most effective might be a targeted attack on a US billionaire donor since, frankly, nobody would miss them to the extent of going to war over it - if it leads to tit-for-tat billionaire take-downs, what’s not to like? :-)
- Shyaku
Re: Goodbye world - we're getting there
Posted by John Monro on November 18, 2024, 6:11 am, in reply to "Goodbye world"
Putin / Russia could probably do some action against a US military target in Iraq or Syria via a proxy. Every missile landing in Russia to be answered by one from Russia's own proxies. Would avoid a direct confrontation, but make a point to the US and to Putin's own citizens, who will be demanding action.
Re: Goodbye world
Posted by Ken Waldron on November 18, 2024, 11:12 am, in reply to "Goodbye world"
Reckon the hit will be on the surveillance apparatus. Maybe a no-fly zone declaration first, then take out the drones. The West may up the anti by accompanying the drones with piloted " protection".
That will place US servicemen on the front line as would the intrusion of manned reconnaissance planes.
If the US go that far then it will be because they want the casus belli of dead US servicemen to sell to their media...at this point Russia will need to calculate if the US wants a direct war.
Of course the US has a diminishing ability to wage it even with the aid of NATO Europe, what with all the high-profile high-tech boxes already mangled & rusty now littering the fields of Ukraine alongside the unfortunate corpses of the biggest "NATO-trained" army...outside the US... so do they skip the ground war and go straight for the " first strike" nuclear inferno?
Surely we say, somebody must at some point ask if the existence or not of a bankrupt corrupt failed state is important enough to risk reducing the world to poisonous ashes. Well we all know including them that it's not...so what is? Is it the last chance Salon of winning a US " Unipolar " world? but surely in that world the US would merely be king of a wasteland.
But hey ho...in the context of life and death humans are only as clever as their stupidest action. And on stupid I now habitually look at our UK and European politicians. They are all my age and brought up in the cold war mentality that we were in the " good" side of freedom in a fight against a totalitarian regime in the east.
The programming was early and extensive so unfortunately they have not even got to the stage mentally where the USSR voluntary dissolved thus removing any ideological excuse for hostilities. That was well over thirty years ago but the penny has. still. to. drop...
So...being expendable as well as stupid maybe they will use Europeans in any manned provocation flight?
Now that's a winning idea...
Letter to Nine to Noon, Radio NZ, following interview with British European correspondent in Lyons.
Why not just declare WW3 and mobilise a couple of million NATO soldiers? This is insane
Dear Kathryn and team
Your Europe correspondent is wrong. Russia is not and never has been the sole impediment to stopping this horrible war. This is now and always has been a proxy war fought by Ukraine on NATO’s behalf to bring down Putin and disable Russia. From expanding NATO ever eastward, promising membership disastrously to Russia’s next door neighbour, Ukraine, to organising a coup in that country, installing a puppet government, installing CIA operatives in hideouts and at the centre of government, secret germ warfare laboratories, arming neo-NAZI regiments and spending billions on expanding and modernising the army, Europe committing economic suicide by cutting off Russian gas or blowing up gas pipelines etc.
Our western leaders have crossed every red line they’ve ever had in their desperation to avoid Russia’s inevitable “win” (though no-one actually wins, do they?), as we fight on ever so bravely to the very last standing Ukrainian soldier. And now we suffer the enfeebled Biden’s last escalatory and cynical throw of the dice, almost certainly done to undermine the future President Trump’s own efforts to de-escalate an increasingly dangerous situation and keep the war going until January and then blame Trump for the disaster.
And don’t mention the same murderous, cynical US and western ideology now sustaining the appalling enormity of Israel’s war crimes and plausible genocide so sickeningly playing out in blood and guts and decapitated children in front of our very eyes.
So what will NATO and the US do when Russia does what it promised to do, and arrange for some attack on a US asset somewhere? They will, Putin doesn’t do bluff. The first US missile to land in the territory of Russia will produce a damaging response, likely killing a number of US troops and operatives. What then?
And whatever you do, don’t talk to Putin. Sholtz, the new traitor, like Orban and Fico, except in any rational universe they'd be the only sane leaders in NATO. Totally forget that in Yalta the Allies' lionised leaders, Churchill and Roosevelt, talked to and gave away roughly half of Europe to a truly evil and murderous dictator, Stalin, in comparison to whom Putin is a mere lightweight bovver boy. They talked. They were unhappy, I’m sure, but a horrible war had taught them humane sanity and the willingness to make the best of the inevitable.
But we have forgotten humane sanity. Perhaps New Zealand will miss the missiles, but Europe? Better get prepared to duck.
And, I have never heard in your programme or in RNZ any deviation from the propagandist nature of the western main stream media. Perhaps you have provided such and I’ve missed it, I don’t know, but if not, you are part of the problem.
on November 17, 2024, 7:18 pm