sombear said:
Redbrickbear said:
sombear said:
Redbrickbear said:
sombear said:
Redbrickbear said:
sombear said:
KaiBear said:
trey3216 said:
Doc Holliday said:
whiterock said:
historian said:
Catturd misses on that one.
Biden and Trump met a couple of days ago. Do we think Ukraine was discussed? Did Trump comment on any of that about Ukraine? One could reasonably read between the lines that Trump wanted all the aid delivered so he would not have to spend his own political capital to get it done.....to give him time to work his own plan.
Trump is in a little bit of a bind here. He pandered to anti-war sentiment to get elected, knowing full well that abandoning Ukraine would be an unfathomably stupid thing to do. i don't blame him at all for the pander. Pandering is an essential part of politics and those who think they're too good to do it aren't worth the proverbial bucket of warm spit. But now he has to figure out a way to avoid doing what a really big and noisy chunk of his base wants him to do - cut & run from Ukraine. For sure he has a plan for how to walk the tightrope, and pushing all that aid into Ukraine before he takes over will give him some room to maneuver.
Keep your eye on the ball here:
Trump does not want Ukraine to become Afghanistan 2.0
Trump wants to win so much that America gets tired of winning.
So Ukraine should use the long range missiles that would be launched from Ukraine and are targeted and controlled by NATO?
As far as I know, they did just that today and fired them at a military facility in the Bryansk border region.
Ukraine shouldn't be allowed to attack military targets that used to target Ukrainian military and civilian targets??? Interesting angle....
Good grief dude……exactly what do you think any US administration would do if Russia was openly supplying long range missiles to Mexican Drug cartels and they were actively using them to attack targets in various US cities and states ?
Just once at least attempt to provide an honest / specific answer and not just some generic Rambo bull*****
it is a free sovereign nation aligned with the free world.
Russia invaded it, knowing Ukraine had the support of the free world and knowing we would supply weapons.
1. It was not aligned to the West until a political coup in 2014 overthrew the old government.
Very strong evidence the CIA and State Department were involved in that coup.
2. Why would Moscow know that DC would spend billions to help Ukraine fight a proxy war?
Did Moscow send billions in weaponry to Iraq & Afghanistan after DC sent in troops in 2001 and 2003
Maybe they expected that DC would act like they did and largely stay out of it.
All of Ukraine, including Crimea, voted for independence in 1991..
Sure
But those regions (Crimea and Donbas) were always the least supportive and the most supportive of the Party of regions (the pro-Moscow party)
Ukraine is a country that has always been pulled between East and West
But the coup in 2014 is what was decisive in setting off this decades long conflict (the purpose of which is to pull Ukriane forget into the Western orbit)
Russia was always going to oppose that and if necessary try and bite off parts (Crimea/Donbas)
Right, but Yanukovych ran on an even closer economic alliance with the west and on more freedoms in general. He did not run on any kind of pro-Russia platform.
All the more reason not to have supported a coup that over threw him and his party from power
(And technically he and his party supported closer economic ties to both EU and Russia
They were pretty moderate on that front)
10 years of conflict, trillions in war damage, hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded....seems like a disaster looking back
No, he ran specifically on the EU agreement, more economic freedom, more citizen freedom, and anti-corruption. He did a complete and abrupt 180 on all of these once in office. We did not make him do that.
I don't see where ever campaigned on promising to join the EU
[in 1997 became head (governor) of the Donetsk oblast state administration. He retained this post until 2002. From then until January 2005 he served as prime minister under President Leonid Kuchma. With the latter's half-hearted support he contested the presidential election of 2004 against Viktor Yushchenko, but lost out on account of vote fraud exposed in the course of the Orange Revolution.
In April 2003, Yanukovych had become head of the Party of Regions on whose list he was elected to the Supreme Council of Ukraine in the general election of 2006. Later that year, because his party had won a plurality of seats in the Supreme Council, and together with the Communist Party of Ukraine and socialists was able to form a majority, he resigned his seat to become prime minister under President Viktor Yushchenko. A power struggle ensued between the latter two, and Yanukovych resigned in December 2007, being replaced by Yuliia Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko negotiated an unfavourable agreement for Russian gas, which provided the basis for later being charged with 'abuse of power' and sentenced to seven years in prison. Yanukovych bided his time as his popularity outstripped that of Tymoshenko. In the wake of the 2008 market crash…
In 2010 he again contested the presidency winning this time by a plurality of votes over his opponent, Yuliia Tymoshenko. It was a victory brought on not so much by his personal electoral appeal as by the self-defeating policies of Viktor Yushchenko whose record of incompetence and infighting while in office disappointed many former supporters of the Orange Revolution. In the decisive second round of presidential elections Yushchenko himself pleaded with voters not to elect Tymoshenko, his supposed ally. In both the 2010 and 2004 elections, Yanukovych ran as candidate of the Russian-speaking electorate in eastern and southern Ukraine as well as of the country's leading business tycoons such as Rinat Akhmetov, Dmytro Firtash, and Andrii Kliuiev, all of whom backed him.
Yanukovych's term as president was notable for reinstating the 1996 Constitution, reversing much of his predecessor's policies….
In foreign policy Yanukovych oscillated between the European Union (EU) and the Russian Federation. He paid his first official visit abroad to Brussels, but followed this up by signing the Kharkiv Agreement with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. That document extended the Russian Federation's naval base lease in Sevastopol to 2042, and lowered the price of Russian gas by $100 per 1000 m3. This was followed by a law proclaiming Ukraine's non-aligned status (oddly incompatible with the Russian Federation's Black Sea Fleet being permanently in the Crimea), and rejection of Viktor Yushchenko's aspiration towards a NATO Membership Action Plan. Both of these developments were meant to mollify the Russian Federation.]
[The Party of Regions
It advocated a moderate pro-Russian political course, opposing itself to the Ukrainian national democratic camp. It held dominant positions in power in Crimea and in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine. During the Revolution of Dignity, it launched the Antimaidan movement.]
https://www.encyclopediao***raine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CY%5CA%5CYanukovychViktor.htm
