BREAKING: INVASION HAS BEGUN..... Putin's "3-day war"... NOW... 1 YEAR 338 DAYS ...WAGNER HEAD SAYS GROUP STANDING DOWN AFTER CLAIMS OF DEAL
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Russians released Ukrainian mayor in exchange for 9 captured soldiers, report says
* * *
www.timesofisrael.com
What you need to know
- Russia continued its attacks on Ukrainian cities including Kyiv, Mykolaiv and Mariupol on Wednesday - In a video address on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said that the positions of Ukraine and Russia at peace talks were becoming "more realistic" - US President Joe Biden prepares to travel to Brussels for a NATO summit meeting next week
- Russia continued its attacks on Ukrainian cities including Kyiv, Mykolaiv and Mariupol on Wednesday - In a video address on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said that the positions of Ukraine and Russia at peace talks were becoming "more realistic" - US President Joe Biden prepares to travel to Brussels for a NATO summit meeting next week
Not McDowellski...
Them comrades ain't shit.
They say the Russians have lost more troops at this point than the U.S. had at Iwo Jima.
That's devastating to hear if you're a Russian commander waiting on Putin's most stealth chess move
They must just match soldiers straight into machine gun fire...
Thanks broRussians released Ukrainian mayor in exchange for 9 captured soldiers, report says
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Russia warns United States: we have the might to put you in your place
www.yahoo.com
Russia warns United States: we have the might to put you in your place
LONDON (Reuters) -Russia warned the United States on Thursday that Moscow had the might to put the world's pre-eminent superpower in its place and accused the West of stoking a wild Russophobic plot to tear Russia apart. Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012 and is now...
Russia warns United States: we have the might to put you in your place
Russia warns United States: we have the might to put you in your place
LONDON (Reuters) -Russia warned the United States on Thursday that Moscow had the might to put the world's pre-eminent superpower in its place and accused the West of stoking a wild Russophobic plot to tear Russia apart. Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012 and is now...
NATO knows exactly where Putin is at all the time.
He’s really flexing like they the old Soviet Union
Dude done showed his military hand too early. Mofo, you running out of spades.
NATO knows exactly where Putin is at all the time.
He’s really flexing like they the old Soviet Union
Dude done showed his military hand too early. Mofo, you running out of spades.
Russia's the mofo who, you just found out can't fight, but you know he gotta gun in his pocket.
NATO knows exactly where Putin is at all the time.
He’s really flexing like they the old Soviet Union
Dude done showed his military hand too early. Mofo, you running out of spades.
Russia has been around for a thousand plus years…
When you back a man in the corner. M.A.D
Mutual assured destruction - Wikipedia
Russia has been around for a thousand plus years…
When you back a man in the corner. M.A.D
Mutual assured destruction - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
I honestly don’t believe he’d be able to get anything off before hand. Those satellites are watching everything.
Of course he would that route. Something I believe the USA would do before they were to fall.
If it were just Russia's ICBMs and bombers, I wouldn't be as concerned, but it's their subs that are the problem.
I honestly believe if they ever fired their nukes, there'd prolly be ALOT that didn't work ...but it only takes one to fuck up alotta folks.
Someone post the US had spy planes circling the area looking for that kind of activity
It’s crazy how subs are a difference maker
They have Coke...we have Voka.Not McDowellski...
Them comrades ain't shit.
They must just match soldiers straight into machine gun fire...
A supposedly modern, professional army that sells its fuel and food
"The soldiers have settled in the surrounding forests. They drink a lot and sell a lot of their diesel fuel. They are living in tents," the resident, who doesn't want to be identified, told the news outlet.
'They Drink A Lot, Sell Their Fuel': Russian Troops Leave Belarusian People Unimpressed
Over 30,000 Russian troops are in Belarus, which the NATO describes "the biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War."
www.ibtimes.com
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For those thinking this is all Biden’s fault…
White House official ordered aid to Ukraine be withheld 91 minutes after Trump call with Ukraine president, documents show
The documents were obtained Friday by the Center for Public Integrity.
ByOlivia Rubin
December 22, 2019, 7:31 PM
abcnews.go.com
White House officials requested that aid to Ukraine be held around 1 1/2 hours after President Donald Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to newly obtained documents.
While the Trump administration has yet to release a single document subpoenaed by Congress during its impeachment inquiry of the president, the administration was forced to hand over a second round of communications between two government offices that helped withhold $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.
According to a rough transcript released by the White House, the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy took place between 9:03 and 9:33 a.m.
At 11:04 a.m., an official with the White House's budget office, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Mike Duffey, sent an email to Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist, the chief of staff to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the Pentagon's chief financial officer telling them to withhold the aid to Ukraine, the documents showed.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration’s plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional DoD obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process," the email from Duffey said, according to the documents.
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute direction," Duffey's email stated.
The first announcement that the White House had decided to withhold the aid, which Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said was at the direction of the president, came at a July 18 meeting between OMB and other officials. The meeting immediately sparked confusion and concerns from National Security Council officials and diplomats. This prompted a series of NSC-led inter-agency meetings, during which officials came to a unanimous conclusion that the security assistance should be resumed, according to several witnesses' testimony in the House impeachment inquiry.
Rachel Semmel, a spokeswoman for OMB, said in a statement on Sunday that it was “reckless to tie the hold of funds to the phone call."
"As has been established and publicly reported, the hold was announced in an interagency meeting on July 18," she continued. "To pull a line out of one email and fail to address the context is misleading and inaccurate.”
The documents, obtained Friday by the Center for Public Integrity via an order by a federal judge as part of a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense (DoD) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB), were heavily redacted, but they are the first pertaining to the aid holdup to be released by the Trump administration. The administration has refused to cooperate with Congress's investigation and has prevented documents from being released and blocked administration officials from testifying.
The details of the July 18 meeting were only known among officials and were not released to Congress or the public until the Washington Post first reported about it in September.
A senior administration official said that the fact that Duffey's email came 91 minutes after the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call concluded was coincidental and that the message was part of a weekslong discussion between OMB and DoD over holding up the aid.
OMB had been waiting on information from DoD about how it planned to distribute the aid, and on July 25, the budget office finally had enough information to finish the process to withhold the aid by placing a footnote on it in OMB's system, according to the official. Duffey was notifying DoD officials that the process had reached that point, the official said.
The official also said that Duffey request the information be "closely held" because of the sensitive nature of foreign assistance and geopolitics in general, accentuated by the fact that just that day Ukraine had seized a Russian ship in the Black Sea.
"This new round of documents isn’t enough," Susan Smith Richardson, CEO of Public Integrity, said in a statement Saturday. "But they do reveal how quickly the White House moved to cut off military aid to Ukraine."
The White House declined to comment on these documents on Sunday.
The documents also show that President Trump first started inquiring about the aid as early as June, one month before the call, though the decision wasn't revealed until a July 18 meeting between the OMB and other officials that the White House had decided to withhold the Ukraine aid. Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said the move was at the direction of the president.
"The president has asked about this funding release," Duffey emailed DoD deputy comptroller Elaine McCusker on June 19, just one day after DoD first publicly announced the funding. Duffey included a link to a news article about the announcement, suggesting it was the source of the president's renewed interest. "I have been tasked to follow-up with someone over there to get more details," Duffey continues. "Do you have insight on this funding?"
In another email chain a week later, titled "POTUS follow up," Eric Chewning, a DoD official, continued the search for more specifics on behalf of the president. "What was the funding used for?....who funded it? What do other NATO members spend to support Ukraine," he asked.
OMB head Mark Sandy had previously recalled a similar exchange in his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. "I heard the president had seen a media report, and he had questions about the assistance," Sandy told the committee. He testified it was Duffey who first communicated the president's concerns to him on June 19.
The almost $400 million of military assistance was ultimately held up before Trump's infamous call with Zelenskiy, the contents of which were used as key evidence in the investigation into whether Trump withheld aid in an attempt to pressure Zelenskiy into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
The possibility of a hold up when it was announced on July 18 immediately sparked confusion and concerns from National Security Council officials and diplomats. This prompted a series of NSC-led inter-agency meetings, during which officials came to a unanimous conclusion that the security assistance should be resumed, according to several witnesses' testimony in the House impeachment inquiry.
The emails released Friday also highlight legal concerns among OMB officials right after the July 25 call and reveal an almost immediate effort to involve legal counsel in the process.
"Please share with your [Office of General Counsel] and advise of any concerns today," Sandy asked McCusker just hours after the call. There is no McCusker response in the documents released, though it is clear that lawyers from both offices corresponded on the topic. "I understand our respective OGC's connected this afternoon," Sandy wrote. "I need to complete the apportionment this afternoon, so please let me know if you want to discuss before I transmit soon."
As the officials involved their lawyers, they also seem to have engaged in an effort to prevent the information from leaking. "Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction," Duffey wrote to several OMB and DoD officials the same day of the call.
This effort could be seen as a violation of the Impoundment Control Act-- a law which states that Congress must be alerted and approve of any shift in funds they have already appropriated-- if the intention was to keep the information "closely held" from Congress, according to Public Integrity.
Ultimately, the officials shared a sense of relief once the funds were released on Sept. 11, which they seemed to have thought would have put an end to the situation entirely.
Duffey told McCusker he was "glad to have this behind [them]" just before he signed the apportionment on Sept. 11.
Edna Falk Curtin, another OMB official, expressed a similar sentiment. "Hope this is good news," she wrote.
White House official ordered aid to Ukraine be withheld 91 minutes after Trump call with Ukraine president, documents show
The documents were obtained Friday by the Center for Public Integrity.
ByOlivia Rubin
December 22, 2019, 7:31 PM
White House official ordered aid to Ukraine be withheld 91 minutes after Trump call with Ukraine president, documents show
The Trump administration has yet to release a single document subpoenaed by Congress during its impeachment inquiry of the President.
White House officials requested that aid to Ukraine be held around 1 1/2 hours after President Donald Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to newly obtained documents.
While the Trump administration has yet to release a single document subpoenaed by Congress during its impeachment inquiry of the president, the administration was forced to hand over a second round of communications between two government offices that helped withhold $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.
According to a rough transcript released by the White House, the July 25 call between Trump and Zelenskiy took place between 9:03 and 9:33 a.m.
At 11:04 a.m., an official with the White House's budget office, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Mike Duffey, sent an email to Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist, the chief of staff to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the Pentagon's chief financial officer telling them to withhold the aid to Ukraine, the documents showed.
"Based on guidance I have received and in light of the Administration’s plan to review assistance to Ukraine, including the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, please hold off on any additional DoD obligations of these funds, pending direction from that process," the email from Duffey said, according to the documents.
"Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute direction," Duffey's email stated.
The first announcement that the White House had decided to withhold the aid, which Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said was at the direction of the president, came at a July 18 meeting between OMB and other officials. The meeting immediately sparked confusion and concerns from National Security Council officials and diplomats. This prompted a series of NSC-led inter-agency meetings, during which officials came to a unanimous conclusion that the security assistance should be resumed, according to several witnesses' testimony in the House impeachment inquiry.
Rachel Semmel, a spokeswoman for OMB, said in a statement on Sunday that it was “reckless to tie the hold of funds to the phone call."
"As has been established and publicly reported, the hold was announced in an interagency meeting on July 18," she continued. "To pull a line out of one email and fail to address the context is misleading and inaccurate.”
The documents, obtained Friday by the Center for Public Integrity via an order by a federal judge as part of a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense (DoD) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB), were heavily redacted, but they are the first pertaining to the aid holdup to be released by the Trump administration. The administration has refused to cooperate with Congress's investigation and has prevented documents from being released and blocked administration officials from testifying.
The details of the July 18 meeting were only known among officials and were not released to Congress or the public until the Washington Post first reported about it in September.
A senior administration official said that the fact that Duffey's email came 91 minutes after the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call concluded was coincidental and that the message was part of a weekslong discussion between OMB and DoD over holding up the aid.
OMB had been waiting on information from DoD about how it planned to distribute the aid, and on July 25, the budget office finally had enough information to finish the process to withhold the aid by placing a footnote on it in OMB's system, according to the official. Duffey was notifying DoD officials that the process had reached that point, the official said.
The official also said that Duffey request the information be "closely held" because of the sensitive nature of foreign assistance and geopolitics in general, accentuated by the fact that just that day Ukraine had seized a Russian ship in the Black Sea.
"This new round of documents isn’t enough," Susan Smith Richardson, CEO of Public Integrity, said in a statement Saturday. "But they do reveal how quickly the White House moved to cut off military aid to Ukraine."
The White House declined to comment on these documents on Sunday.
The documents also show that President Trump first started inquiring about the aid as early as June, one month before the call, though the decision wasn't revealed until a July 18 meeting between the OMB and other officials that the White House had decided to withhold the Ukraine aid. Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said the move was at the direction of the president.
"The president has asked about this funding release," Duffey emailed DoD deputy comptroller Elaine McCusker on June 19, just one day after DoD first publicly announced the funding. Duffey included a link to a news article about the announcement, suggesting it was the source of the president's renewed interest. "I have been tasked to follow-up with someone over there to get more details," Duffey continues. "Do you have insight on this funding?"
In another email chain a week later, titled "POTUS follow up," Eric Chewning, a DoD official, continued the search for more specifics on behalf of the president. "What was the funding used for?....who funded it? What do other NATO members spend to support Ukraine," he asked.
OMB head Mark Sandy had previously recalled a similar exchange in his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. "I heard the president had seen a media report, and he had questions about the assistance," Sandy told the committee. He testified it was Duffey who first communicated the president's concerns to him on June 19.
The almost $400 million of military assistance was ultimately held up before Trump's infamous call with Zelenskiy, the contents of which were used as key evidence in the investigation into whether Trump withheld aid in an attempt to pressure Zelenskiy into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
The possibility of a hold up when it was announced on July 18 immediately sparked confusion and concerns from National Security Council officials and diplomats. This prompted a series of NSC-led inter-agency meetings, during which officials came to a unanimous conclusion that the security assistance should be resumed, according to several witnesses' testimony in the House impeachment inquiry.
The emails released Friday also highlight legal concerns among OMB officials right after the July 25 call and reveal an almost immediate effort to involve legal counsel in the process.
"Please share with your [Office of General Counsel] and advise of any concerns today," Sandy asked McCusker just hours after the call. There is no McCusker response in the documents released, though it is clear that lawyers from both offices corresponded on the topic. "I understand our respective OGC's connected this afternoon," Sandy wrote. "I need to complete the apportionment this afternoon, so please let me know if you want to discuss before I transmit soon."
As the officials involved their lawyers, they also seem to have engaged in an effort to prevent the information from leaking. "Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction," Duffey wrote to several OMB and DoD officials the same day of the call.
This effort could be seen as a violation of the Impoundment Control Act-- a law which states that Congress must be alerted and approve of any shift in funds they have already appropriated-- if the intention was to keep the information "closely held" from Congress, according to Public Integrity.
Ultimately, the officials shared a sense of relief once the funds were released on Sept. 11, which they seemed to have thought would have put an end to the situation entirely.
Duffey told McCusker he was "glad to have this behind [them]" just before he signed the apportionment on Sept. 11.
Edna Falk Curtin, another OMB official, expressed a similar sentiment. "Hope this is good news," she wrote.
This interesting was the resasoning, US pressure, Covid concerns, progression in Ukraine talks….fears of being detainedA supposedly modern, professional army that sells its fuel and food
"The soldiers have settled in the surrounding forests. They drink a lot and sell a lot of their diesel fuel. They are living in tents," the resident, who doesn't want to be identified, told the news outlet.
'They Drink A Lot, Sell Their Fuel': Russian Troops Leave Belarusian People Unimpressed
Over 30,000 Russian troops are in Belarus, which the NATO describes "the biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War."
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Russia says parts of a Ukraine compromise deal are close
www.reuters.com
Russia says parts of a Ukraine compromise deal are close
Russia said on Wednesday that some parts of a possible peace deal with Ukraine were close to being agreed after Kyiv agreed to discuss neutrality, raising hopes of an end to the biggest war in Europe since World War Two.
Why didn't they transport the kids out of the warzone? They knew the Russians were coming and bombing the city. IMO the Ukrainians are just as responsible if in fact there were kids there.
Russia says parts of a Ukraine compromise deal are close
Russia says parts of a Ukraine compromise deal are close
Russia said on Wednesday that some parts of a possible peace deal with Ukraine were close to being agreed after Kyiv agreed to discuss neutrality, raising hopes of an end to the biggest war in Europe since World War Two.
This headline should've read..
Russia says parts of a Ukraine compromise deal are close...or
How to know when to hold em and when to fold em.
If this is true...this is a huge failure on Russia's part.
Russia says parts of a Ukraine compromise deal are close
Russia says parts of a Ukraine compromise deal are close
Russia said on Wednesday that some parts of a possible peace deal with Ukraine were close to being agreed after Kyiv agreed to discuss neutrality, raising hopes of an end to the biggest war in Europe since World War Two.
There’s a strong possibility this will end in a “ceasefire” and the compromise is splitting Ukraine into 2 countries.
During the Bush administration, it came out that Putin wanted a new “Cold War” with the west.
He was a KGB agent in East Berlin for most of his career in the Soviet era. From his POV, those were the Glory Days. The “Good Ol’ Days” from his perspective.
Ukraine is split the way Germany was. A DMZ is created.
Western Ukraine then joins NATO.
And it’s Deja Vu all over again.
And Putin looks like “The Hero”.
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