Russlands invasjon av Ukraina [Ny tråd, les førstepost]

[JK22]

torbjornen skrev (5 minutter siden):

Storbritannia har gitt sterk støtte til Ukraina sidan Boris Johnson som den fyrste vestlege statsleiaren dukka opp i Kiev i dress og slips. Ein kan sikkert seie mykje om toryane, men støtta har vore viktig for Ukraina.

Sant; men toriene har mer eller mindre brukt opp bankkontoen for all politisk kredibilitet etter noe som minnet om akutt vanskjøtsel siden Camerons stupiditetsregimet som munnet ut i Brexit som fulgt til at britene trakk seg ut av EU, mye av partiet har rett og slett blitt dummere etter hvert som man så hvordan kompetansen skylles ut i løpet av de siste årene - nå er tilstandene i Storbritannia noe av det verste i flere generasjoner. Det er et voksende folkekrav om å ha valg tidligst mulig i høsten 2024, det er nærmest garantert at toriene vil forsvinne fra Downing Street for en god stund. Spørsmålet blir da hvem som vil overta, men Labour har bokstavelig talt overtatt torienes plass fra for tre år siden. Klovn-Boris var en Churchill-wannabe. 

Toriene fremdeles nektet å gi avkall på markedsliberalisme og nyliberalistiske idealer - selv om det går sterkt utover landet, nå teller de på knappene om videre kutt i militærbudsjettet og har ikke planer om å styrke forsvarsindustrien fordi de er kommet i en alvorlig økonomisk krisetilstand. 

[Simen1]

@JK22 Trump har helt klare autoritære idealer. Men kan kan umulig lykkes fult ut i et land som USA. Han har rett og slett ikke noe land å være fullverdig diktator i. Man kan jo fantasere om at han farger håret sort, tar ansiktsløft og tar plass som diktator-lærling ved Kim Jong-Un sin side i Nord-Korea. De hadde passet godt sammen, som tvillinger. Trump kunne levd ut drømmen sin fullt ut. Kim måtte begynt med rødt slips og gre håret sitt mot siden. Som to dråper vann.

Ja, det er en gøyal fantasi / illusjon. I virkeligheten vil aldri to så enerådende personer klare å dele på noe.

Endret 25. januar av Simen1

[torbjornen]

JK22 skrev (22 minutter siden):

Toriene fremdeles nektet å gi avkall på markedsliberalisme og nyliberalistiske idealer - selv om det går sterkt utover landet, nå teller de på knappene om videre kutt i militærbudsjettet og har ikke planer om å styrke forsvarsindustrien fordi de er kommet i en alvorlig økonomisk krisetilstand. 

Korleis vil eit skifte kunne påverke støtta til Ukraina? Vil Labour likne på sosialistar andre stader, som historisk sett føretrekkjer nedrusting og forhandlingar framfor opprusting og avskrekking? Vil Labour kunne finne pengar til både opprusting, militær støtte til Ukraina og til å betre vilkåra for vanlege folk på same tid?

[JK22]

Republican Plan to Link Ukraine Aid to Border Fails for Extremely Obvious Reason (msn.com)

Mitch McConnell announced last night that his plan to advance a combination of aid to Ukraine and border security has failed, due to the shocking discovery that Donald Trump, far from being the public-spirited citizen they apparently took him for, is a cynical, power-hungry demagogue and his allies are gutless sycophants.

You might wonder why this revelation struck him so late, and at a point where it has come at such immense cost. Let me explain the series of rather obvious miscalculations that led to this fiasco.

Basically every Democrat in Congress, along with many Republicans, wants to continue giving military aid to Ukraine so it can defend itself against Russia’s ongoing invasion. But because the issue splits the GOP, and Republicans control the House, passing this aid isn’t easy. House Speaker Mike Johnson can block Ukraine aid from coming to the floor, even though a majority in both chambers favors this aid.

When anti-Ukraine Republicans articulated their opposition to helping Ukraine, they usually framed it as having something to do with the American border. “Critics asked how Biden could justify rushing thousands of troops to assist Ukraine and defend the borders of NATO, yet stubbornly neglect the chaos at our border,” wrote the Heritage Foundation in 2022. “We should be protecting our border, not the border of Ukraine,” said Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In reality, not even Marjorie Taylor Greene is stupid enough to think there is a direct trade-off between helping Ukraine and reducing the surge of asylum claims in the United States. It is simply a rhetorical conceit to avoid admitting that anti-Ukraine Republicans either don’t care about or actively support Russia’s goal of crushing Ukraine, using a facile rhetorical conceit that both issues can be described with the word “border” to create a false choice.

Nonetheless, pro-Ukraine Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, decided to take these “arguments” at face value. Their clever-sounding plan was to hold up aid to Ukraine — aid they themselves support — unless Democrats agreed to secure the border.

The pro-Ukraine Republicans understood that the conceit that helping Ukraine came at the cost of American border security was nonsensical. But they decided to indulge it anyway, on the calculation that only securing the border would pacify anti-Ukraine Republicans. “Let’s be clear: This is a false choice. America is a superpower,” wrote Republican Russia hawk Marc Thiessen last fall, “We can secure our borders and also lead on the world stage. But Biden’s failure to do the former is feeding the forces of both nativism and isolationism on the right — giving them ammunition to argue against continued U.S. leadership in support of Ukraine.”

What was supposed to be the magic of the deal is that this border agreement would not be a traditional immigration compromise, in which Republicans get more enforcement in return for Democrats getting humane treatment for Dreamers or other immigrant groups. It would be a one-way deal, ratcheting up border security. Immigrant-rights groups would complain, but Democrats would have to go along in order to get Ukraine aid.

And the Democrats did go along, despite complaints from immigration activists, resulting in a moderately conservative border security deal that Democrats could just barely swallow. Instead, opposition came from conservatives.

It wasn’t just that the conservatives didn’t think the border security was good enough to justify passing Ukraine aid. They decided they didn’t want to pass a border-security deal at all.

The reason, of course, is that Trump is running on border chaos as one of his biggest campaign issues. If President Biden signs a bipartisan bill to restrict asylum claims, then Trump won’t have this issue. Trump has been urging Republicans in Congress to tank the bill so he can keep the issue alive.

A Senate Republican aid tells Politico’s Playbook, “It’s very clear that a large group of Republicans in the Senate and the House no longer want to do border security … Trump wouldn’t have his issue to run on. That’s what’s going on here: They don’t want to give up that issue.”

McConnell reacted to this adverse development by explaining to his caucus at a Wednesday-night meeting that the border deal he negotiated was actually good for conservatives. It had provisions Democrats would never accept without the lever of Ukraine aid. He even quoted Donald Trump saying in the past that Democrats would never vote for border enforcement.

See! It was a great deal for conservatives who are upset about border security! Even Trump’s own words proved it!

The wee flaw in this calculation, however, is that Trump doesn’t actually care about border security. Alleviating the border problem is much worse for Trump than doing nothing about it. Border security for Ukraine aid turned out to attach one thing Trump fans hated to another thing Trump fans hated.

For that matter, the Republicans who claim to oppose aiding Ukraine on account of border security didn’t actually mean what they said, either. When somebody provides a made-up excuse for their position, satisfying the made-up excuse will just cause them to make up a different excuse.

It was totally predictable that Trump would come out publicly against any deal that either made the immigration problem better or made Biden appear effective. Trump has been very clear all along that he wants conditions in the country to be as horrible as possible in every way when he is out of power. It was equally predictable that, when he did, most Republicans would go along with him.

The pro-Ukraine wing of the Republican party wasted months dithering on a doomed plan. Meanwhile Ukrainians are dying and desperately conserving ammunition, without being able to know when or even if they will receive more supplies.

So now that this doomed plan has wasted time and lives, pro-Ukraine Republicans face the choice that they were trying to weasel their way out of. They can split their party and jam through aid to Ukraine. Or they can let Russia win the war.

Det er nå en katastrofe; Johnson er blitt Trumps løpegutt og han er ikke villig til å akseptere noe som helst "deal" selv om McConnell som mener å ha oppnådd meget, har fått seriøse problemer med flere senatorer som har blitt sprøytende gal som Ted Cruz, som skrek ut om massevoldtekt av immigranter på "uskyldige jenter" uten at dette har dekning, mens de moderate som hadde stemt for Johnson, nå sitter i en krise. Nomineringsseirene i Iowa og New Hampshire - selv om det har kommet ut at Trump i virkeligheten har bare 100 % fanatiske republikanerne med seg - har fulgt til et hamskifte i det republikanske partiet som ser at mange nå åpent støttet Trumps terrorisering av partimedlemmer og andre - som artikkelforfatteren sa; "gutless sycophants". 

Biden har nå meget gode grunner for å være sint på hans venn McConnell som hadde lenge vært altfor vaklende og upålitelig, nå har de begge kommet ut i en meget alvorlig global krise som er i ferd med å skyte i senk den amerikanske anseelsen i en forverret verdenssituasjon. Demokratene kommer ikke til å støtte Israel, noensinne; mens republikanerne kommer ikke til å støtte Ukraina så lenge Trump er i livet.

Og de ser overalt at de mister venner, allierte tviler på dem, deres makt er truet; Kina, Iran og Russland er på fremmarsj, og gulfaraberne har stort sett vendt seg bort. Det er nå bare EU/EØS og Sør-Korea/Japan som er trofast på USAs side, men disse rygger nå vekk i stigende hastighet; det er krisestemning i EU-hovedstedene da man innså at de er nødt til å klare seg uten USA i møte med Russland som ruster opp mye raskere enn ventet.

De amerikanske republikanerne innser ikke (ennå) at de har mistet alliansemaktenes tillit mens demokratene sliter svært kraftig fordi det amerikanske folket har blitt utilregnelig. 

Putin har vunnet en viktig seier, Ukraina kan ikke vinne krigen.

[JK22]

torbjornen skrev (8 minutter siden):

Korleis vil eit skifte kunne påverke støtta til Ukraina? Vil Labour likne på sosialistar andre stader, som historisk sett føretrekkjer nedrusting og forhandlingar framfor opprusting og avskrekking? Vil Labour kunne finne pengar til både opprusting, militær støtte til Ukraina og til å betre vilkåra for vanlege folk på same tid?

Det er ikke mye penger fra før; dessuten er Labour ikke Ukrainafiendtlig, har du glemt at vår regjering er sosialdemokratisk? Eller at det var konservative som stort sett hadde stått for nedrustningen i Europa fremfor sosialistene? 

[Brother Ursus]

https://kyivindependent.com/military-intelligence-senior-russian-officials-were-supposed-to-be-on-il-76-flight/

Military intelligence: Senior Russian officials were supposed to be on Il-76 flight but did not board

High-ranking Russian officials were supposed to be on board the Il-76 aircraft that crashed in Belogorod Oblast on Jan. 24, but the Federal Security Service (FSB) did not allow them to board at "the last moment," Andrii Yusov, Ukraine's military intelligence spokesperson, told RFE/RL on Jan. 25.

Det er ingen tegn til døde ukrainske krigsfanger på videoer eller bilder heller. Dette kan forklare hvorfor flyet så ut til å være tomt når det forlot Belgorod, etter antagelig å ha levert missiler.

[Brother Ursus]

https://news.liga.net/en/politics/news/vsu-rf-usilivaet-primenenie-himoruzhiya-i-ispolzuet-novye-granaty-s-zapreshtennym-gazom

Kills in five minutes: Russia begins using new grenades with poisonous substances

As of January 2024, 626 attacks using chemical substances have been recorded since the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion, as stated by Captain Andriy Rudyk, a representative of the Center for the Research of Trophy and Prospective Weapons and Military Equipment.

 

Dette må selvsagt dokumenteres enda bedre. Men det er på det rene at russerne bruker CS-gass og andre ting som er "lavere" på rangen av kjemiske våpen. Men det virker som om de stadig eskalerer.

[Brother Ursus]

https://www.businessinsider.com/air-superiority-only-possible-short-bursts-us-air-force-officer-2024-1?r=US&IR=T

War in Ukraine shows a need to rethink air superiority, as it may only be possible in short bursts, top US Air Force officer says

"Gen. David Allvin, the Air Force chief of staff, said the US needs to understand that it might not be able to enjoy "ubiquitous air supremacy for days and weeks on end" when it conceptualizes the idea of air superiority. Instead, multiple lines of effort will likely need to be "synchronized" for a specific time, place, and location."

"When asked how the US would operate if it found itself fighting without air superiority, a real possibility in a near-peer conflict against an adversary like China or Russia, and how to find windows of opportunity, Allvin said it would likely be necessary to synchronize different capabilities, like electronic warfare, cyber operations, and other kinetic effects."

"An adversary that is denying air superiority can't necessarily do so around-the-clock. They react to whatever capabilities are put forward, he said. If capabilities are synchronized effectively for a specific purpose, "then you do have air superiority for that period of time."

"But it needs to be integrated with a joint scheme of maneuver, otherwise it's just air superiority for fun," Allvin said on the podcast. He emphasized that if this method is executed in short bursts, an air force can be "very effective" during that timeframe."

[Brother Ursus]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahemerson/2024/01/23/eric-schmidts-secret-white-stork-project-aims-to-build-ai-combat-drones/

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Secret Military Project Revealed

Billionaire technologist Eric Schmidt has been quietly building a new drone startup in the U.S. and Ukraine within a nesting doll of LLCs that have helped to conceal its operations and team members. Forbes first reported the project’s existence this month and has since learned that it is called White Stork, a reference to the national bird and sacred totem of Ukraine, where Schmidt has assumed the role of defense tech advisor and financier.

[torbjornen]

JK22 skrev (9 minutter siden):

Det er ikke mye penger fra før; dessuten er Labour ikke Ukrainafiendtlig, har du glemt at vår regjering er sosialdemokratisk? Eller at det var konservative som stort sett hadde stått for nedrustningen i Europa fremfor sosialistene? 

Eg har meir tru på handlekraft frå Erna Solberg og Guri Melby enn frå Støre for å seie det slik. Det var også Ap som stod for det brotne geværs politikk, og som ikkje mobiliserte før det var for seint då Tyskland gjekk til krig 9/4 1940. Eg er klar over at det er skilnad på sosialistar i 1940 og 2024, men likevel.

I Norge har vi fleirpartisystem der ein er vant til å samarbeide. Ein har stor grad av konsensus, og då særleg om utanrikspolitikk og forsvar. UK har elles i praksis eit topartisystem, og ein skulle då kanskje forvente sterkare politiske skiljelinjer, slik som i USA? Difor stiller eg spørsmålet.

[Kahuna]

torbjornen skrev (10 minutter siden):

Det var også Ap som stod for det brotne geværs politikk,

Nope. Nedrustningen i mellomkrigstiden hadde tverrpolitisk støtte. Det ble antatt at 'en forutseende utenriksledelse' ville oppdage tegn på trøbbel og reagere i tide. Det var Ap som satt med makten da og de gjorde faktisk et forsøk på å ruste opp når de så trøbbel men da så alle andre det også og da køene i våpenbutikken for lange..

[Entern]

torbjornen skrev (1 time siden):

Storbritannia har gitt sterk støtte til Ukraina sidan Boris Johnson som den fyrste vestlege statsleiaren dukka opp i Kiev i dress og slips. Ein kan sikkert seie mykje om toryane, men støtta har vore viktig for Ukraina.

Ja vi skal være glade det ikke er Corbyn som er statsleder i UK..

[torbjornen]

Kva statsministeren heiter speler vel ikkje så stor rolle. Det store spørsmålet er korleis Labour sin politikk vil skilje seg frå toryane.

[JK22]

Kahuna skrev (6 minutter siden):

Nope. Nedrustningen i mellomkrigstiden hadde tverrpolitisk støtte. Det ble antatt at 'en forutseende utenriksledelse' ville oppdage tegn på trøbbel og reagere i tide. Det var Ap som satt med makten da og de gjorde faktisk et forsøk på å ruste opp når de så trøbbel men da så alle andre det også og da køene i våpenbutikken for lange..

Det er sant; akkurat som Høyre hadde hovedansvaret i Bondeviks andre regjering da de startet nedturen, var det også konservative som sto bak nedrustningen i mellomkrigstiden; dette skyldes tre faktorer; for det første var den norske økonomien sterkt svekket, for det andre hadde det norske militæret i 1905-1917 blitt for stor til slutt; for det tredje var det en skarp borgerlig-sosialistisk konflikt hvor det norske borgerskapet mistro resten av det norske folket, og dermed ikke ønske et sterkt forsvar som kan falle under sosialistenes kontroll. Dette er presist hvorfor de mobiliserte fant ikke sluttstykker de måtte ha for å bruke sine riflene da 9. april hendt, og mange av offiserene var i tillegg illojalt. Det norske offiserskorpset og den norske statsledelsen hadde vært i meget seriøs utakt fram til etterkrigstiden. I dag er offiserene lojal; kanskje litt for lojal. 

Nå må Europa ruster opp så raskt som mulig for å være beredt på åpen krig med Russland i 2025-2030, så lenge Putin lever eller putinismen er i livet, er Russland en eksistenstrussel for det europeiske fellessamfunnet som i tillegg trues fra innsiden av høyrepopulistene (Klovn-Boris var en høyrepopulist) og høyreekstremistene pga. vanskjøtsel omkring økonomi, energi og immigrasjon. Dessuten vil et ukrainsk nederlag bli et ragnarok fordi titalls millioner kommer til å flykte og mye av den europeiske økonomien vil ta sterk skade, samtidig som det vil lede til destabiliserte tilstander i Baltikum, Balkan og Kaukasus - og det er mulig at Polen kommer til å gripe inn for å hindre en russisk erobring av Ukraina. EU risikere å forsvinne fordi et nederlag i øst vil da følge til at mange vil heller kapitulere og dermed stemme inn Putins venner, som kan bryte opp EU fra innsiden, og kastet kontinentet ut i kaos. 

Trump vil trekke ut de amerikanske styrkene om han bli president, som vil da lede til krig i Kosovo og Bosnia, folkemord i Armenia, folkemord på syriskkurderne i Syria, folkemord på palestinerne, Irans hegemonimakt i Midtøsten gjennom Irak, Syria, Libanon, Jemen etc. - og ikke minst en kinesisk krig mot Taiwan, som kan overgi seg fremfor å slåss når de ikke kan få støtte fra USA. Hele det vestlige hegemoniet som har eksistert i 500 år, vil da kollapse - og hvis Trump skulle isolere USA fra resten av verden, vil den amerikanske nasjonaløkonomien og deretter den globale økonomien forsvinne like over natta. Det er mulig at Trump kommer til å nekte å betale gjeld og deretter slette bort gjelda, slik at Oljefondet i Norge kan bli helt borte. 

Republikanerne har blitt for innadvendt, de nektet å realisere at de har blitt en vaklende makt. 

[Mannen med ljåen]

Erdogan har signert ratfiseringen av Sveriges Nato-søknad

https://www.dagbladet.no/studio/nyhetsstudio/687?post=155847

[Entern]

torbjornen skrev (3 minutter siden):

Kva statsministeren heiter speler vel ikkje så stor rolle. Det store spørsmålet er korleis Labour sin politikk vil skilje seg frå toryane.

Corbyn hadde vel tvilsomme forbindelser hvis jeg husker riktig. Hadde nok ikke vært veldig hauk mot Russland. Rent ved siden av antisemittismen.

[Entern]

Mannen med ljåen skrev (1 minutt siden):

Erdogan har signert ratfiseringen av Sveriges Nato-søknad

https://www.dagbladet.no/studio/nyhetsstudio/687?post=155847

Gode nyheter 👍

[JK22]

Senate Republicans are wracked with confusion about the status of a potential deal that would strengthen border policies and unlock aid for Ukraine after Mitch McConnell acknowledged the increasingly tough politics behind it.

The GOP leader's private admission of uncertainty on Wednesday about talks he had supported came at a critical time. Negotiators are struggling to lock down an agreement after months of back-and-forth, with former President Donald Trump and conservatives ramping up pressure to kill any deal ahead of the November election.

ut McConnell later clarified during a private party meeting on Thursday that he still supports pursuing a border security deal linked to Ukraine funding, according to two GOP senators who attended — dispelling doubts about his commitment to the talks. He had caused a stir on Wednesday by outlining to fellow Republicans the challenges posed by former President Donald Trump’s dominance in the presidential primary, given Trump's desire to avoid any dealmaking on the border before the election.

During the earlier closed-door GOP meeting, McConnell told colleagues that Trump does not want a deal on immigration restrictions so he can use the issue in the presidential campaign — remarks that left some Senate Republicans paralyzed Thursday over where to go next. Conservatives argued that the tide had shifted against linking the Ukraine and border. Some McConnell allies said they are still seeking a deal, and others said they are waiting for McConnell’s next move.

"I don’t know: Where is the leader leading? I’m all ears, as Ross Perot used to say,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a reliable McConnell ally, said before the leader clarified his comments. “Support for Ukraine is stronger than I anticipated, but then reading the confusion coming from the leader from the border bill puts a lot of question marks in my mind about where we’re going from here.”

McConnell said Thursday morning that negotiations about a border-Ukraine deal are still going, somewhat quelling speculation that his comments — first reported by Punchbowl News — amounted to a death knell. The GOP leader told reporters that “we’re trying to get an outcome.”

Senate Republicans will meet one more time on Thursday before breaking for the weekend, and Romney said he was eager to hear more from McConnell.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said it’s “yet to be decided” where the party goes: Whether to keep seeking a combined border-Ukraine deal or to change up strategies.

“We’re at a critical moment and we’ve got to drive hard to get this done. If we can’t get there, then we’ll go to plan B. But I think, for now at least, there’s still an attempt being made to try and reach a conclusion that would satisfy a lot of Republicans,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters on Thursday.

Senate Republicans met for more than an hour on Wednesday to discuss Ukraine aid. But instead of helping them solidify a position, the closed-door confab has only sowed further disarray about whether party leaders are weighing whether to back away from linking border security to a package of foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Some of McConnell’s closest allies downplayed that the GOP leader was trying to decouple the two components of talks, arguing that the tight-lipped Kentuckian had been misinterpreted. 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who ran the meeting, said it was “very clear” border restrictions are still linked with Ukraine funding.

“What he was talking about was what he saw as sort of the political challenges of moving forward. He wasn’t waving a white flag on border security at all,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Nonetheless, opponents of a deal said that McConnell’s remarks amounted to an acknowledgement of how difficult it would be to pass a bill through the Senate with strong GOP support, then convince Speaker Mike Johnson to take it up while avoiding a takedown effort from Trump.

To say that sentiment among the Senate GOP is shifting is “an understatement,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio).“There's a chance that [McConnell is] signaling to Democrats that they have to budge a whole lot more than they have so far,” Vance said. “There's a chance that he sees the political writing on the wall, that the package just doesn't have a great future. It's hard to say what leadership is thinking.”

Senate GOP torn up with confusion after McConnell clarifies border-Ukraine comments - Live Updates - POLITICO

Krisen fortsetter. 

McConnell floats splitting Ukraine and border security amid GOP infighting | The Hill

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Wednesday floated the possibility to Senate Republicans of splitting Ukraine funding from border security reforms that are coming under heavy criticism from Senate conservatives.

McConnell acknowledged to GOP senators at a Wednesday afternoon meeting that the politics of U.S. border security have turned out to be a lot more complicated than he and other Senate Republicans anticipated when they insisted months ago on linking Ukraine funding to border security, according to Senate GOP sources familiar with his comments. 

“I think the border portion is dead,” said one Republican senator, who cited McConnell’s remarks to the GOP conference at the meeting. 

The lawmaker said McConnell told GOP senators, “This has gotten to be a lot more politically difficult than he thought it would be.” 

“That sounded to me like the first step toward saying, ‘We just can’t get this done,’” the source said. “I predict the border part falls off.”

Ukraine funding has long been a priority for McConnell, however, and he didn’t back down from his push to provide tens of billions of more dollars in military aid to Kyiv.

A second Senate GOP source familiar with McConnell’s comments said he was “laying out the options” to Republican senators now that it’s become clear that Senate conservatives strongly oppose the border security reforms that were negotiated with Democrats to go along with Ukraine funding.

While McConnell and other Senate Republicans believe the concessions extracted from Democrats would be “huge wins,” the source said, it appears that former President Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, will oppose the package.  

The source, however, emphasized that McConnell was not “definitive” about removing border security reforms from Ukraine funding and was only laying out the options for the emergency defense supplemental spending package, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will eventually bring to the Senate floor.

Senate Republicans who support the emerging package say it’s becoming clear that Trump will oppose it, which means it has little to no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House.  

“The Trump people want to kill it and run on the issue,” said the Senate source familiar with the internal Republican discussion.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters at a press conference Wednesday afternoon that a Senate package linking Ukraine funding and border security has “zero point zero, zero, zero percent” chance of passing the House, a sentiment expressed by other GOP senators.

Cruz said under the deal negotiated by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who was tapped by McConnell to lead the border security talks, the number of migrants coming into the country on a daily basis would be twice as high as during the Obama era.  

“It ain’t going to pass. … We had a vigorous discussion at lunch yesterday — I asked leadership, ‘Why on earth would you be teeing up a vote with every Democrat and 10 or 12 Republicans that has no chance of passing the House?” Cruz said, recounting a tense moment in the Tuesday Senate GOP lunch.  

Dropping border security language that has been painstakingly negotiated with Senate Democrats and the White House over the past six weeks from Ukraine funding would be quite a shift in strategy. 

But that may be the only option for saving Ukraine funding, given how much opposition the border security reforms are now facing from Republican conservatives. 

Trump weighed in last week when he wrote on Truth Social: “I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people.”

McConnell may also be willing to reduce economic assistance for Ukraine from the package in order to attract more Republican votes for the proposal if it’s stripped of the border security measure. Such a package would keep military aid and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), McConnell’s top deputy, has floated the idea of cutting some economic assistance to Ukraine out of the package to improve the chances of getting the military aid passed.  

“Personally speaking, I’d like to see portions [of economic assistance] pared down. I think the number is really high, and there a lot of things funded in there. I think a lot of our members are very much for military aid, for lethal aid, particularly given the fact it’s … restocking our arsenals here in this country,” Thune said.

Nå er det alvorlig. 

[Markiii]

torbjornen skrev (1 time siden):

Korleis vil eit skifte kunne påverke støtta til Ukraina? Vil Labour likne på sosialistar andre stader, som historisk sett føretrekkjer nedrusting og forhandlingar framfor opprusting og avskrekking? Vil Labour kunne finne pengar til både opprusting, militær støtte til Ukraina og til å betre vilkåra for vanlege folk på same tid?

Det er kanskje litt sjansespill. Jeremy Corbyn som ledet partiet før støtter russisk nazisme og imperialisme, mens han som leder det i dag støtter Ukraina og er ikke nazist.

[JK22]

Entern skrev (3 minutter siden):

Gode nyheter 👍

Dermed har Tyrkia gitt sin godkjennelse av Sverige som medlem i NATO. 

Bare Ungarn gjenstår; og Orban er i hardt uvær fordi han ikke lenge har mange allierte, Fico har blitt svekket fordi han irritert på seg sterke krefter i egne hjemland og i EU. Hvis Orban fortsetter med dette, kommer EU-ledelsen til å frata Ungarn stemmeretten og representantretten i den siste halvdelen av 2024 - og NATO kan dytte Ungarn ut i kulden, muligens satt et halt på våpenleveranser og assistanse.