Ukraine President (and Europe) have a problem….
US President Joe Biden…..
Biden IS still dead set against military power ….
He gave his view and action in Afghanistan…
He has had to be dragged into supplying more and more military help to the Ukraine.…
The issue now is tanks.….
The problem is the conflict CANNOT keep going on….
There could be NO Ukraine left except rubble…..
Zekensky is NOT gonna just settle with that….
And Europe has to be afraid of any gains that the Russians might hope to keep……
The Russian’s are reportily trying to get Belarus to allow a second front to be opended against the Ukraine….
Here’s what we know:
After a meeting of Ukraine’s allies, the U.S. secretary of defense said Germany had not yet made a decision on sending the Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
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A meeting of Ukraine allies ends with no consensus on sending German tanks.
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What is the Leopard 2 tank, and how could it help Ukraine?
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A Russian missile lands outside a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine.
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A European security organization calls on Russia to explain how its vehicles showed up in occupied Ukraine.
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The Biden administration is warming to helping Ukraine target Crimea.
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The C.I.A. director visited Kyiv last week for a meeting with Zelensky, a U.S. official says….
Ukraine’s allies have been stuck in a rift over who will supply Kyiv with battle tanks ahead of an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive, with Germany under pressure to send tanks to Ukraine. At a new conference on Friday, Germany’s new defense minister Boris Pistorius dashed hopes of a quick decision, saying that Berlin was still weighing the pros and cons of supplying the tanks. The idea that Germany is “standing in the way” of allies who are ready to do so, he said, is “wrong.”
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- “None of us can yet say when a decision will be made and what the decision will look like,” Pistorius said at Friday’s press conference, during which he announced that he had ordered an audit of Leopard tank stocks. Germany has so far declined to provide its powerful Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, saying it will only do so only if the United States sends tanks as well. Berlin is required to greenlight Leopard 2 deliveries from any country as the tanks are made in Germany, but Poland has said it would consider sending German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine without Germany’s approval and Lithuania’s defense minister told Reuters that some of the countries at Friday’s defense group meeting intended to announce plans to send the tanks to Ukraine.
- “We will support Ukraine’s self-defense for as long as it takes,” Austin said, as he urged allies to “dig even deeper.” The United States on Thursday announced a new $2.5 billion military aid package for Ukraine, including hundreds of armored vehicles — including Stryker personnel carriers — as well as ammunition and Avenger air defense systems. However, the package did not include the main American battle tank, the M1 Abrams, that Ukraine has requested.
- Ukraine is “truly grateful” for the support it has received so far, but “hundreds of thank you[s] are not hundreds of tanks,” Zelensky told the Ukraine Defense Contact group in a virtual address Friday. He has previously said he expects “strong decisions” from the group.
- Russia dismissed the significance of any tank deliveries to Ukraine. “Such supplies cannot change anything in principle. They will just add problems for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday, adding that the conflict in Ukraine has been “spiraling up.”
- CIA Director William J. Burns secretly traveled to Kyiv at the end of last week, The Post reported. Burns made the trip to brief Zelensky on his expectations for Russia’s military plans in the coming weeks and months, according to a U.S. official and other people familiar with the visit.
- Mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group have become “a key component of the Ukraine campaign,”the British Defense Ministry said Friday. In its daily update, the ministry echoed U.S. estimates of up to 50,000 Wagner fighters in Ukraine. While private military companies remain illegal in Russia, the group’s owner has “likely partially funded the organization via inflated government contracts awarded to his other companies,” it said. Washington has said that 40,000 of Wagner’s fighters were directly recruited from Russian prisons.
- Officials from 11 European nations announced a separate aid package for Ukraine, including a squadron of Challenger 2 tanks from Britain, on Thursday. “We recognise that equipping Ukraine to push Russia out of its territory is as important as equipping them to defend what they already have,” they said in a joint statement.
- High-ranking Kremlin officials have been holding meetings with Belarusian national leadership,potentially “setting conditions” for a Russian attack on Ukraine from Belarus, the Institute for the Study of War reported. The think tank said such an attack is “unlikely but more plausible” in late 2023.
- The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that a nuclear disaster at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant could happen “any day.” After a visit to Ukraine, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he was “very worried” about Zaporizhzhia,” noting “a dramatic reduction in the number of staff” since Russia took control of the site in March.
- The United Nations Development Program will allocate $4 million to demining areas of Mykolaiv, one of the regions in Ukraine that is most contaminated with mines and ammunition. The money will go toward mechanized demining equipment and training individuals to operate it, Ukraine’s Ministry of Reintegration said….