April 2, 2024
As the world watched in horror at Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion and war against Ukraine in the early months of 2022, Americans rallied firmly behind the embattled eastern European democracy.
Shortly after the start of the full-scale war, 79% of U.S. voters supported sending arms to Ukraine, and 78% supported sending financial aid, according to polling by Ipsos conducted in March 2022.
Two years of grueling fighting later, U.S. support for Ukraine has dropped significantly, but a majority of Americans – 58% – still want their country to send weapons and money to Ukraine to aid it in its war effort.
However, dig into the numbers some more and some troubling trends emerge – and they run along political lines:
While support among Democrats for arming Ukraine has dropped from 83% to 75% in two years, among Republicans it has plunged from 80% in March 2022 to just 45% in February 2024.
Vocal opposition to continued assistance is rising on the right wing of the U.S. political spectrum. Reflecting broader political dynamics unfolding within the U.S. and around the world, a politics of right-wing populism skeptical of Ukraine aid has become increasingly influential among the U.S. Republican Party and its supporters.
Once home to the most aggressive of foreign policy hawks, key members of a populist wing of the Republican Party are now leading a charge to end further aid to Ukraine, despite an authoritarian Russia continuing its attacks.
Under the banner of “America First,” and emboldened by the chance of former U.S. President Donald Trump returning to office, these figures are calling into question the durability of U.S. President Joe Biden’s commitment to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”
Challenges to aid
After allocating $74 billion worth of aid to Ukraine since February 2022, the next package of aid worth $60 billion has stalled in Congress. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has refused to bring the package to a vote amid ongoing partisan negotiations, with some Republicans now pushing for aid in the form of loans.
This stalling of aid comes as Russian forces utilize numerical advantages in soldiers and critical munitions to claw their way forward along sections of the front. Meanwhile, with Ukraine’s stocks of air defense missiles thought to be dwindling, deadly Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities have recently been on the increase.
As Ukraine’s defense is largely reliant on Western-supplied equipment, Kyiv’s supporters in the U.S. – like Doug Klain, a policy analyst at the Ukrainian NGO Razom and a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center – have been attempting to convince Republicans to drop their opposition.
“Earlier today I had a meeting with a Republican member of Congress from the Deep South, and their office told us pretty plainly, ‘Look, our constituents, to put it lightly, are deeply misinformed about Ukraine, and are exposed to this kind of warped media environment where they hear that Ukraine is filled with Nazis, hopelessly corrupt, and isn’t deserving of support,’” Klain told the Kyiv Independent.
Republican voters’ sentiment on Ukraine may not always align with their representatives in Congress, who are often managing competing pressures.
“Even though that’s (what) the constituency of this Republican member of Congress (believes), his staff still said unambiguously that ‘we support Ukraine, we know it’s the right thing to do, and sometimes we just have to signal (that) to our constituents,’” Klain said.
This shift in views among Republican voters has coincided with a growing proliferation of narratives from influential figures on the right that are skeptical of, or plain opposed to assisting Ukraine. Their narratives range from critique to disinformation.
Within Congress, a small minority of Republican representatives have voted to oppose aiding Ukraine at every opportunity. They include Representatives Andy Biggs, Dan Bishop, Warren Davidson, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, Ralph Norman, Scott Perry, and Thomas Tiffany.
These members, with the exception of Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, are all members of the Freedom Caucus, a grouping of 43 Republicans that represent the extreme right of the House of Representatives. Greene is a former member who was expelled after a dispute with Rep. Lauren Boebert, another opponent of assisting Ukraine. Almost all are strong supporters of Trump.
According to a Congressional report card issued by the advocacy organization Republicans for Ukraine, roughly half of the current 219 Republicans in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives have a C or lower ranking, with 81 scoring an F for their opposition to aiding Ukraine.
Opposition to Ukraine is also more concentrated among Republicans who supported Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election: Of the 147 Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election, 139 were members of the House of Representatives and eight were in the Senate.
Of the 139 representatives, only 44 have an A or B rating on the GOP Congressional Report Card. Of the rest, 73 have a C or lower rating, with 56 scoring an F. Three others have since died, 17 were voted out of office, and two former representatives are now senators.
The two senators, Ted Budd of North Carolina and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, were among the 26 Republican senators to vote against the latest attempt to pass Ukraine aid.
Trump and rightwing populism
“Right now the fight over Ukraine is a fight for the soul of the Republican Party, and that soul has been corrupted by Donald Trump,” John Conway, director of strategy at Republicans for Ukraine, told the Kyiv Independent.
“(Trump has) unleashed a wave of isolationism within the party, with his ‘America First’ agenda that has not only taken hold within voters, but within the MAGA (Make America Great Again, a Trump slogan) ecosystem, where the stars of this universe – like Steve Bannon, JD Vance, and Tucker Carlson – have really latched onto ‘America First’ and pumped this into the minds of traditional Republican voters.”
Despite two impeachments and a recent string of court rulings ordering the payment of more than $500 million in legal penalties, former U.S. President Trump has secured the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, easily defeating Nikki Haley, his closest contender in the primary elections.
Haley has been a vocal supporter of aiding Ukraine and has rejected Trump’s false narrative that he won the 2020 election.
Her loss is reflective of a growing divide between a nationalist, populist right associated with Trump, and an establishment conservatism represented by figures such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Ronald Reagan – all proponents of the euphemistically termed “rules-based international order.”
This order, largely built in the aftermath of the Second World War through a system of treaties and international organizations operating on the alleged basis of international law, is increasingly challenged by a strengthening China and revanchist Russia, under its President Vladimir Putin.
These authoritarians often utilize the rhetoric of “multi-polarity” – which can echo 19th-century imperialist notions of “spheres of influence” and “might makes right.”
When it comes to Ukraine, some conservative critics frame their opposition to aid as a strategy for addressing the ostensible rise of “multi-polarity,” reflecting a perspective that seems closer to the positions of China and Russia than the Reagan Republicans of years past.
For instance, Representative Matt Gaetz, who has consistently endorsed Trump’s false narrative regarding the 2020 election, introduced the “Ukraine Fatigue” Resolution in early 2023 in an attempt to cut off all assistance to Ukraine, arguing that “America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war.”
And Ohio Senator JD Vance, a leading figure among the populist right that has earned praise from the influential right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, has consistently opposed aid to Ukraine.
On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Vance famously told former Trump advisor and self-described “Leninist” Steve Bannon, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”
Since then, Vance has argued that managing the southern border of the U.S. should be the highest priority while echoing white nationalist claims that Democrats are attempting to bring in immigrants to counter Republican voters – a common theme among the far right.
In December, Trump stated at a rally that “immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country,” while Ukraine aid opponent Chip Roy, a representative from Texas, described the Biden administration’s immigration policies as “a purposeful effort to dilute our society, and to undermine our way of life – to destroy Western civilization.”
Illiberal growth
Messaging that ties aid to Ukraine with addressing issues closer to home can resonate with segments of the population that are already expressing deep disaffection with establishment politics.
Wealth inequality remains a defining feature of life in the U.S., with the top 10% wealthiest households controlling 66.6% of all wealth and the bottom 50% of households controlling only 2.6%, according to Federal Reserve data.
Nearly 40% of households earn less than $50,000 per year. Credit card, student, and medical debt remain persistent burdens for much of the population.
This reality creates fertile ground for populist challenges to the status quo, opening up space for an increasingly “illiberal” style of politics that challenges the legitimacy of dominant institutions and media.
“Here in this country, we only have two parties,” John Feffer, the director of progressive international affairs think tank Foreign Policy in Focus, and an expert on rightwing movements, told the Kyiv Independent.
“So great is the rage against these two main parties that have collaborated in the impoverishment of so many in so little time, that it seems as if the checks and balances of a liberal system, a liberal democracy, are not functioning effectively, are not getting things done,” Feffer said.
This disillusionment leads some to support illiberal “strongmen” politics, such as those of Trump, as a vehicle to overcome perceived stasis, according to Feffer.
He articulates the thinking of some on the right wing:
“So now we need to have a strong executive, that is unconstrained, unhampered by a feeble legislative branch, and certainly should not be constrained by a judicial branch. We need a judicial branch that basically just rubber stamps the executive’s decisions, and we need someone who says he’s going to be dictator on the first day, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”
Trump recently told supporters he would be a dictator for one day only, where he would act to close the border entirely.
However, the Heritage Foundation recently outlined more sweeping objectives for a future Trump administration in Project 2025. They include pushing for a greater concentration of power within the presidency through the application of “unitary executive theory.”
In addition to arguing against aiding Ukraine, the influential think tank also admires Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has led efforts to block aid to Ukraine within the European Union, opposed sanctions on Russia, and delayed Sweden’s ascension to NATO.
Despite widespread criticism of his undemocratic practices, Orban has become a darling of the U.S. right wing for his outspoken opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigration, and “globalism.”
He maintains close ties with Trump and is considered Putin’s closest ally within the EU. In 2014, Orban coined the term “illiberal democracy.”
After recently meeting with Trump, Orban alleged that Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine involved withholding aid to Ukraine, thereby forcing a settlement that will almost certainly favor Putin. Exchanging land for “peace” is also a position Senator Vance has argued for while omitting to acknowledge the violence of Russian occupation.
If Trump wins the U.S. presidency next November and carries out his purported plan to kill off all aid to Kyiv, the lookout for Ukraine is grim. However, even now, with sentiment in the U.S. already shifting, the defenders of Ukraine in Washington have their work cut out for them.
“If we don’t change what we’re doing right now, Ukraine will not be set up for success,” warned Klain.
“Going forward, we have to change course, and American policymakers especially need to understand that – and they need to act with urgency.”
The far-right have always been a bit nutty at best, but otherwise quite dangerous. Since Trump has wrapped those dangerous nuts around his fat finger, they will do anything he asks them to. January 6th was just such a situation. Cutting off aid to Ukraine is another.
It’s clear that they don’t care about righteousness, they don’t care about innocent people getting slaughtered in Ukraine, and they certainly don’t mind if mafia land wins. They are sick in the head and have no morals or integrity. Some of them are semi-fascists and others are downright Nazis. The most important thing for them at this point is to get the orange jerk back into the White House. I hope enough American people will see the danger and vote for Biden. The lesser evil.
Biden? Isn’t he the same Biden that let putin invade the Crimea and Donbas in 2014? Isn’t that the same Biden that did nothing when putin staged 300,000 soldiers around Ukraine in December of 2021? Isn’t that the same Biden that still won’t allow weapons and ammo to Ukraine without placing orders to replace the weapons and ammo? Oh, ignore all that and worry about Trump, lol…
I see that I am still unwelcomed here since I don’t ignore reality for what the media shoves down your throats. I welcome being wrong if it should come to pass, enlighten me bro, who has more Ukrainian blood on their hands? Trump or Biden?
“Isn’t that the same Biden that did nothing when putin staged 300,000 soldiers around Ukraine”
Utter nonsense.
Inside Biden’s last-ditch attempts to stop Putin in Ukraine
[published February 25, 2022]
In the early evening of Thursday, Feb. 10, President Biden’s national security team — a group that included Cabinet secretaries and other senior advisers — got an urgent message: They were needed in the Situation Room for a hastily convened meeting on the escalating crisis between Russia and Ukraine.
There were ultimately two meetings that night — one at 6:15 and another at 8:30 — prompting officials to scrap their existing plans, including a birthday dinner.
The group discussed two new pieces of intelligence: one suggesting that Russia was planning to stage a “false flag” operation pegged to a specific date, blaming the fake attack on Ukraine and using it as justification to invade the country; and the second that the timeline for a Russian invasion had accelerated.
Based on the heightened assessment, the next morning Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the world that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could occur “at any time” — including during the Olympics — and national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared in the White House briefing room with a similarly pointed message.
“It could begin any day now,” Sullivan told reporters, adding moments later, “Russia has all the forces it needs to conduct a major military action.”
The 13 days that followed those impromptu Situation Room huddles provide a revealing window into the Biden administration’s unsuccessful scramble to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin from launching a full-scale invasion, as explosions now echo across Ukraine and Russian forces close in on the capital, Kyiv. The attack has plunged the NATO alliance and global markets into crisis, and leaves the United States with limited options as Americans remain broadly opposed to direct military intervention.
For months, Biden and his team operated on two tracks: one of open diplomacy and one of grim realpolitik — working to counter an unpredictable geopolitical foe who many suspected had already made up his mind to invade Russia’s neighbor to the west.
In November, for instance, the administration stood up an elite “Tiger Team” to game out how the United States would respond to a range of scenarios, from a limited incursion to a colossal, mass-casualty invasion. And in December, following Biden’s sign-off, the national security team deployed a novel strategy of declassifying and sharing intelligence — both with allies and the public — in an attempt to broadcast Putin’s plans as a way of heading them off.
President Biden on Feb. 24 said Russian sanctions were not meant to prevent conflict in Ukraine after his administration previously said the opposite.
The multi-pronged approach also highlighted a recognition inside the administration that Putin was unlikely to be dissuaded by any countermeasures and that Biden and his team were trying to prevent an invasion that seemed inevitable.
And while Washington successfully united Western nations against Russia, Biden and his team fell short in persuading Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help pressure his regional ally to hold back from attacking Ukraine — but not for a lack of trying.
Beginning in November, U.S. officials started private discussions with Beijing and other countries in a position to influence Russia to alert them to Putin’s plans and explain Washington’s strenuous opposition, said a senior State Department official. But China, already embroiled in disputes with the United States across economic, political and security fronts, was unmoved by U.S. overtures.
“The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine, without provocation, without justification, without necessity,” Biden said Thursday in the East Room of the White House, in a speech that was as much an explanation of a fait accompli as an address to the nation. “This is a premeditated attack. Vladimir Putin has been planning this for months as I’ve — we’ve been saying all along.”
This portrait of Biden working to avert Russia’s aggression is the result of interviews with 30 senior Biden advisers, administration officials, diplomats, European officials and former officials still in touch with the White House, many of whom requested anonymity to share candid details of a still-unfolding conflict.
The challenges facing the administration in trying to pressure Putin were evident in a steady stream of statements from Biden and other top administration officials throughout the past two weeks — many of which were contradictory at best.
In his remarks in the briefing room the day after the Feb. 10 Situation Room meetings, Sullivan touted the administration’s threat of crippling economic measures should Russia move forward: “The president believes that sanctions are intended to deter,” he said.
But on Thursday, nearly two weeks later, Biden found himself addressing the world as the Russian attack on Ukraine accelerated, saying publicly what many officials had long been saying privately: “No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden said.
‘Not a crazy spy novel’
In early December, the Biden administration unveiled a new, unorthodox strategy in its international game of chicken with Russia: declassifying and sharing intelligence with allies, the media and the broader world.
On Dec. 3, The Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence had found the Kremlin planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early 2022, involving as many as 175,000 troops. The assessment relied principally on a map that included satellite images, which officials said showed that 50 battlefield tactical groups were deployed, along with “newly arrived” tanks and artillery.
The declassified information was strategically timed, just four days before Biden and Putin were scheduled to have a secure video call to discuss the escalating situation in Ukraine.
“Biden wanted that information out in the world before he spoke with Putin, and he wanted Putin to know that we knew and we were going to make sure the world knew,” a senior administration official said. “It was the start of a new phase where we were talking about what we were seeing. This is a very different way to do diplomacy.”
This initial declassification was the first in an unusual series of coordinated public disclosures, from December through this month, in which U.S. officials declassified intelligence from sensitive sources to expose Putin’s planning. They used satellite imagery to reveal his massing of troops along the Ukraine border; released details of a scheme to install a puppet regime in Kyiv; and reported that Russia was planning an elaborate false-flag attack — staging a video that would accuse Ukrainian forces of attacking Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, complete with corpses to stand in for victims and a cast of actors posing as mourners.
The approach grew out of intensified intelligence-sharing with allies and partners, including Ukraine, that began in the fall.
But the calculation was a complex one. The U.S. intelligence community historically has been reluctant to share classified information publicly for fear of compromising the sources and methods used to acquire it, including human spies and technology for covertly intercepting communications.
And the officials released the information not so much to deter Putin from invading; U.S. intelligence analysts and their British counterparts already had high levels of confidence that the Russian president ultimately would order his forces across the border.
Rather, they were attempting to shape the public debate and disclose enough information about Putin’s plans so that he could not operate with impunity or attempt to blame Ukraine for a war that he started, according to officials in multiple countries involved in the effort. If he tried to stage a false-flag attack, for example, the world would have been warned that it was a ruse.
Biden ultimately approved the strategy, which was advocated by Sullivan, principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer and National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne.
When analyzing Russia’s recent moves against Ukraine, the United States and its allies have relied mainly on satellite imagery, intercepted communications and social media posts, including by deployed Russian soldiers, who may have carelessly helped to reveal details about their locations and movements.
“We learned collectively from Russia’s disinformation campaigns in the past,” said William Klein, an associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a consulting partner with Finsbury Glover Hering, a global strategic-communications firm. “This time, the United States was very, very proactive in calling out Vladimir Putin before he could act, and the United States was pretty accurate about its forecasts.”
The decision was born, in part, out of previous Russian aggression, when Putin’s forces invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. At the time, some U.S. officials were frustrated that the Obama administration didn’t call out Putin using classified information about his plans and operations that the U.S. government possessed.
The information environment has changed since then, as well — with more open-source analysis, commercially available satellite imagery, social media live-streaming of wars and invasions, and a public more likely to understand terms like “disinformation.”
Some national security officials who worked in the Obama administration are now in senior positions with Biden, and they think the savvier strategy is to publicize some of what the intelligence community has collected.
At times, the approach frustrated the Ukrainians. A close aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky complained that the Biden administration delivered dire warnings about a Russian attack — including calling it “imminent” — but didn’t share many details, particularly about how the Americans knew what they claimed to know.
The senior administration official said Biden administration officials did share downgraded information with the Ukrainians in real time, but were also aware that the Russians had deeply penetrated the Ukrainian security infrastructure and so were cautious to not reveal sources or methods.
Ultimately, however, the robust information-sharing paid dividends, including helping to unite the United States and its Western allies against Putin.
Biden, a second senior administration official said, wanted to “ensure that everybody had a common picture of the facts, and that was driven by his recognition that to pull together the greatest possible deterrent to stop Russian aggression, he needed all allies and partners on board.”
Even some European NATO allies who were initially dismissive of the reports that Russia had started to amass troops along its border with Ukraine soon came around, as Biden and his national security team conducted more than 400 calls and meetings with their various counterparts since December.
“Excellent transatlantic consultation and cooperation,” said a senior NATO diplomat who took part in high-level briefings at NATO headquarters in Brussels in December.
Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a global risk consultancy, said that while the NATO alliance “was ultimately incapable of preventing the destruction of Ukraine,” the months-long coordination between the countries still proved valuable.
“The alliance is a lot stronger today than it was three months ago, six months, and I think that’s a big problem for Putin going forward,” he said.
And in the final days before Putin made his move, administration officials watched — with a combination of interest and satisfaction — as Russian disinformation was greeted warily by a public that had been primed to be skeptical.
“Seeing people greet these rumors and these streams of disinformation with initial skepticism and then to go to work at debunking them quickly exposed how effectively amateurish a lot of them were,” said the first senior administration official. “For a lot of people who had been wondering if we were crying wolf or if we were being too aggressive in our strategy, it was a wake-up call saying: ‘Oh, no, this is happening. Everything that we have been warning about is not a crazy spy novel. They’re actually going to do that.’ ”
The days leading up to the Feb. 10 Situation Room meetings had been tense in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, as well. By the end of that week, U.S. officials briefed allies that Russia’s military preparations were complete, and the embassy began making plans to evacuate.
The final days were “surreal,” according to one of the last U.S. diplomats to leave. The time was filled with collecting documents for destruction even as the crucial mission of the embassy — talking to Ukrainian leaders and other missions in Kyiv — continued.
“It was like something out of ‘Argo,’ ” the diplomat said, referring to the Ben Affleck thriller about the rescue of six U.S. diplomats amid the 1979 hostage crisis in Tehran.
Looming large for Biden, too, was the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer. A suicide bombing at a gate of the country’s largest airport had killed 13 U.S. troops, and chaotic images from the final days of the American drawdown had hurt Biden politically, undermining his image as a competent leader.
The evacuation of Kabul was historically unique, and administration officials worried that Americans now would expect a similar U.S. evacuation, although the situation in Ukraine was quite different. Biden several times urged Americans to leave the country while they still could.
“American citizens should leave now,” Biden said in a Feb. 10 interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt. “It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation, and things could go crazy quickly.”
A handful of U.S. diplomats, meanwhile, pulled back to Lviv, in the far west of the country. But most lifted off from a chilly Kyiv airfield and evacuated back to Washington on Sunday, Feb. 13.
On Presidents’ Day, European Union foreign ministers descended on Paris in advance of previously planned discussions — unrelated to the Russia-Ukraine crisis — scheduled for the following morning. They arrived late, and many were put up for the night in the opulent InterContinental Paris Le Grand, across the street from the Palais Garnier.
This coincidence of timing and location meant that about a half-dozen of them and their entourages were dining separately in the hotel’s 1862 Café de la Paix — or Cafe of Peace — when Putin began delivering a snarling speech about how Ukraine wasn’t a state. The surroundings proved a jarring contrast to the violence of Putin’s address, which a Biden administration official later described as intended to “justify a war.”
Oysters, chestnut-cream-topped foie gras and cardamom-scented pollock were on the menu. Underneath cloud-painted ceilings and gilded chandeliers, one of the diplomats watched as foreign ministers and their aides — sprinkled across the restaurant — pulled out their phones and cued up a live stream of Putin’s speech.
The diplomats watched the Russian president and swiped through live reactions on Twitter, shifting on their green velvet banquettes as Putin grew angrier and angrier.
“The more Putin spoke, the more shock my colleagues had,” the senior diplomat said of the other ministers and aides. “It was visible. … Even the best friends of Russia in Europe were quite taken aback.”
By the end of the day Monday, Putin had recognized the independence of two Moscow-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine and ordered Russian forces onto their territory for alleged “peacekeeping” purposes — his most provocative moves to date.
Now, Biden faced a key challenge: unifying Europe behind a tough sanctions policy, which his administration had long been promising.
For months, Blinken had been shuttling back and forth to Europe to coordinate with U.S. allies on a variety of doomsday scenarios. His problem was that Europeans might splinter apart if Putin mounted an attack that fell short of a full-scale invasion — a reality Biden candidly acknowledged last month, when he admitted that a “minor incursion” might not prompt the full buffet of a response from the West.
That feared moment of ambiguity came Monday as Putin ordered troops into Donetsk and Luhansk — separatist areas Russian forces had already occupied for eight years, albeit without official Kremlin acknowledgment.
From the Oval Office, Biden — who had already announced limited sanctions narrowly focused on the separatist regions — convened a three-way phone call Tuesday with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to devise a response.
Macron, according to officials familiar with the call, noted that Putin’s recognition of the two territories had just eviscerated the Minsk Agreement, a diplomatic accord designed to resolve the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and keep Donetsk and Luhansk within the country’s borders.
Yet what surprised both U.S. and French officials was the reaction from Scholz, who had long hoped to preserve a controversial $11 billion Russian gas pipeline to Germany known as Nord Stream 2. U.S. and German officials kept in close touch through the night, and the next day, Scholz announced that he was halting certification of the pipeline — a major pivot for Germany, which had cultivated a reputation for accommodating Russia.
“Scholz realized Putin had crossed the Rubicon,” said a French official. “The French and the Americans did not even have to strong-arm him on that.”
That same day, the Biden administration began referring to the crisis as “an invasion,” and the American president, speaking from the East Room, outlined additional sanctions against Russia, including against two big banks and several individual oligarchs and their families.
And while the halting of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline made for a powerful opening salvo, Putin’s decision Wednesday to move tanks, troops and warplanes beyond Ukraine’s separatist regions placed new pressure on Biden and his team to respond even more forcefully.
The multipronged attack did not surprise the administration, after months of Russia encircling Ukraine by land and sea. A senior U.S. defense official described Russia’s actions as a likely “initial phase” of a campaign that could unfold for some time.
As missile strikes boomed across Ukraine, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stayed at the Pentagon into the night Wednesday, “monitoring all of this in real time,” the senior defense official said.
U.S. targets major Russian banks and tech sector with sweeping sanctions and export controls following Ukraine invasion
The defense secretary returned to the Pentagon before dawn Thursday, meeting with Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before convening a 6 a.m. meeting that included Milley, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and other top defense officials. Milley also led a meeting of the Joint Chiefs at 5 a.m., a second defense official said. The general and Austin visited the White House later in the morning, huddling with the commander in chief about the crisis.
Biden, for his part, spent Wednesday evening mostly in the White House residence, watching the situation unfold on television and receiving regular updates from his national security team — a group that included Austin, Blinken, Milley and Sullivan.
“The basic truth is that Vladimir Putin was prepared to go to war to advance his interests in Ukraine, whereas the Western countries, including the United States — as much as they attempted to deter and disincentivize Russia from going to war — did not have an interest in going to war with Russia themselves over Ukraine,” said Klein, the CSIS associate. “That’s a basic imbalance in the interests.”
Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, similarly said he did not fault the Biden administration for the current conflagration.
“Basically, they had weak cards to play — they played them well,” McFaul said.
On Thursday, Biden found himself addressing the nation yet again on the war between Russia and Ukraine, offering yet another bleak assessment.
“Putin is the aggressor,” Biden said, standing in the East Room of the White House. “Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/25/inside-biden-putin-ukraine/
I think this guy is hopeless and has Trump’s dick glued in his mouth.
We can spend time trying to remove it, but I think it is near impossible.
This man is completely delusional.
^bert
“The basic truth is that Vladimir Putin was prepared to go to war to advance his interests in Ukraine, whereas the Western countries, including the United States — as much as they attempted to deter and disincentivize Russia from going to war — did not have an interest in going to war with Russia themselves over Ukraine,” said Klein, the CSIS associate. “That’s a basic imbalance in the interests.”
A disingenuous claim. It wouldn’t be “over Ukraine”, it would be to maintain peace in Europe, which is very much in America’s interests.
It highlights an absurd paradox: the US would go to the defence of putler lackeys like Hungary and Slovakia, but not Ukraine, with which it has signed security assurances?
Entering Russia with the intention of overthrowing its ruler and enforcing democracy would be war.
Simply sending three divisions of mechanized troops with air and sea support into Ukraine in 2021 would have been a deterrent. Troops would have been in defensive postures; ready to attack only if themselves attacked.
The party of Bill Clinton does indeed have an obligation to defend Ukraine to the best of its capabilities.
Why has no one acknowledged this? Either the Budapest Memorandum was real, or it was a con-job.
Larry, Biden is a loser, too. A very big one.
You either forgot or purposefully omitted Biden’s biggest mistake even before the war started, when the old goofball said, “These are totally defensive moves on our part. We have no intention of fighting Russia.”
You simply NEVER EVER let an enemy look into your cards. A clever president would have either told the rat a blatant lie – we WILL get involved, or be serious about this (a POTUS with big brass ones), or let the rat guess what we would do or not do. But, no, the stupid old fart blathered out exactly what the rat wanted to hear. I bet they were popping champagne corks all night long in the kremlin after the above statement.
It’s a fact that Biden screwed up in Afghanistan, and he screwed up in Ukraine, despite the billions he sent. If he had the foresight and courage to act like a superpower should act, this war would already be over in Ukraine’s favor, and this last year already.
“You either forgot or purposefully omitted”
I was just addressing RSM’s egregiously wrong claim that “Biden did nothing”. I’ve never claimed that Biden was perfect or hasn’t made mistakes.
I find it deeply ironic that RSM wrote, “I don’t ignore reality” while ignoring the reality that Biden wasn’t President in 2014, and that there’s wide-spread agreement that President Biden did an excellent job in the lead-up to the invasion – passing along intel to Ukraine; exposing Russia’s plans to stage a “false flag” operation, and uniting Western nations against Russia.
Was the job really so excellent, to announce mafia land’s intend? What good did it do?
I believe that after Biden announced Putin’s plans for the “false flag” operation, Russia didn’t follow through because their plan had been exposed.
I doubt this, Larry. Putler didn’t place 150,000+ roaches with equipment around Ukraine on three sides for nothing.
Sorry if I was unclear. putler certainly did invade (I didn’t suggest otherwise). But the “false flag” operation that was planned which he would have used as an excuse for the invasion didn’t occur (because it was exposed).
Sorry, I don’t recall exactly what that was, and I’m too busy with work now to go back and dig that up.
Okay, Larry. I understand.
I can answer your questions, but I think you are just here to show that you like sucking Trump’s tiny dick.
Also, I shouldn’t encourage whataboutism, which is the most common strategy of Russian propaganda and trolls. And exactly what you are doing right now.
Yes, you are sucking Russian dick, noted.
Yes, you watch Fox News and copy its narratives here and then pretend we are sheep blindly following the media, I understand.
^bert
Why do you add your two-cents worth whenever there is criticism over these neo-Nazis, Red? Where are you when I trounce all over Biden?
The Alt Right really isn’t much different from the left: same desire for America to retreat from the world and become insignificant, same covert support by Ruzzian and Chinese oligarchs, (slightly) less socialism.
Of course, the far left are also complete jerks.
“While support among Democrats for arming Ukraine has dropped from 83% to 75% in two years, among Republicans it has plunged from 80% in March 2022 to just 45% in February 2024.”
And there you have it. Trump, the magaputler shitheads in Congress, the Senate, media and social media have achieved all this in double quick time.
Ivan Muskovy, Fucker Karlsonov, Gateway Pundit and Steve Bannon’s putler ass-kissing site Breitbart are the key criminals.
Just to consolidate his blatant putlerism, Trumpkov is adding convicts Stone and Manafort to his team. The latter, to quote Lev Parnas, is a “direct link to the kremlin.”
Trumpkov and magaputlerism must be crushed. They are just extensions of shit countries like Orbanistan.
The MSM and the Biden administration are also guilty of this development. They have never been good at educating the people and are always exemplary at leaving the trash faction have the stage.
The MSM can only educate people who actually follow the MSM. But a lot of the right decries legitimate news source and only watches things like Faux News. And then when Faux News dared to tell the truth about the election, they move to even less legitimate sources, such as NewsMax.
Here in this group, we see people posting articles from trash sites like The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, and The Epoch Times.
“leaving the trash faction have the stage.”
More like, the trash faction have built their own stage in a garbage dump, and some people left the theater for that trash stage because they weren’t interested in reality.
Good points, Larry.
But, the numbers suggest that the MSM and the administration are still doing a piss poor job in this regard.
Fuck you fag
Do the world a favor and die, asshole.