In short, everything about this story indicates it didn’t happen. There are no images of wrecks despite the crashes allegedly taking place in the suburbs of Kiev. There is virtually no media coverage. The Ukrainians never mention it.

Why did the IC “officials” who fed stuff to Delanian push this story out, and why Delanian and his co-authors didn’t attempt a fact check?

That leads me to how we know the inside-the-beltway folks think the war is going well for Ukraine. If it were going bad, we’d hear stories about the imminent fall of Kiev and how the stupid Ukrainians refused to use all the great intel they were getting. Instead, this story is how the fat-asses-wears-glasses set at Langley or wherever might as well be dispatching Spetsznaz troopers with a Louisville Slugger.

What needs to be investigated is why Delanian’s sources take credit for an event that appears to have been created by the Ukrainian propaganda machine and perpetrate yet another IC fraud on the American people. I suspect Delanian’s sources have nothing at all to do with Ukraine and are just passing along lunchroom gossip and watercooler talk so they can see themselves quoted.

When the Russian Black Sea flagship, the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, sank in a non-existent storm (BREAKING. Russian Flagship Sinks While Being Towed to Port) after being hit by two Neptune anti-ship missiles (BREAKING. Flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Hit by Ukrainian Missiles, Dead in the Water, Crew Evacuated), one unanswered question remained: was the Moskva carrying nuclear weapons? //

Chuck Pfarrer
@ChuckPfarrer
BROKEN ARROW: The Russian navy has deployed a deep diving submersible to the wreck of the cruiser Moskva. The unusual move of conducting a salvage operation in an active war zone adds credence to reports that Moskva carried nuclear weapons.
7:36 PM · Apr 22, 2022 //

The idea that conventional munitions or missile tubes would be worth this level of effort strikes me as ludicrous. Just as silly is the theory that the Russians are trying to recover bodies from the wreckage. The Black Sea is a closed environment; ships entering have to pass through The Straits, and Moskva’s wreck is a very short distance from the major Russian naval base at Sebastopol. Physical monitoring of vessels entering the Black Sea and the wreck site could provide eternal security. There is no danger of a repeat of the Glomar Explorer going after the wreck of the K-129 in the open Pacific.

While one can never rule out bureaucratic stupidity, my opinion is that the totality of the facts and circumstances indicate that one or more nuclear warheads are entombed in the Moskva. BBC has documented how the Soviets have at least two nuclear-powered and armed submarines sunk in Arctic waters. There is the K-27 in the Kara Sea and the K-159 in the Barents Sea. Neither show any sign of radioactive leakage. //

If nuclear weapons are on the bottom of the Black Sea, Russia could be trying to avoid a PR nightmare in case the Moskva is salvaged in the future, but the risks of that, as I outlined above, seem small. The other logical reason is that something about the warhead(s) makes them easier for a third party to arm than one would imagine.

All of this, of course, is speculation except for one thing. There is a marine salvage vessel with a submersible at the site of the Moskva, and there are no logical reasons that don’t involve nuclear weapons.

My professional opinion is that it should take at least six weeks for the units to rebuild, but I don’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin will be up for that (Intelligence Claims Putin Wants a Big Victory in Ukraine Before May 9). Likewise, I’d recommend the Russians try to mass their forces and focus on one objective, but it seems as though units are being fed into the fight as soon as they arrive, and, in my opinion, Russia is trying to do too much with too few forces.

As I see it, the upcoming campaign has three battles that Russia must win to achieve its territorial objectives. I would contend that Putin’s political objectives of deposing the Zelensky government, disbanding the Ukrainian army, and preventing Ukraine from having military alliances with the West are, barring some deus ex machina, out of reach. //

In my view, the Russians are in a very difficult position. The terrain they have to attack across in the north strongly favors the defenders. Their lines of supply will be hard-pressed to support the 70-80 BTGs they are staging there. There is also a race against time. More Ukrainian units are created and move into the battle area every day, and more heavy weapons arrive. Russia has to find that sweet spot where their units have rebuilt back to combat effectiveness, and the Ukrainians haven’t yet begun to field the weaponry sent to them. They also, in my view, have to win all three of these battles–holding Kherson, sealing off Mariupol, and taking positive control of Donbas–to have a chance of gaining their territorial objectives. Ukraine only has one must-win battle: Donbas.

In Poland, which boasts both by far the largest military and economy of the surveyed states, almost two-thirds of the public openly declared their support for a national nuclear weapons program.

The change in attitudes is striking. When Poles were asked the same question in 2018, 83.6% favored abolishing nuclear weapons. However, the newfound realization that a non-nuclear country can be rather helpless in a confrontation with a nuclear-armed enemy has led Poland to request the US to base nuclear weapons in Poland; see Poland Says That if the U.S. Has Some Spare Nukes They’d Be Happy to Take Care of Them. //

Even when Russia loses this war with Ukraine, you can bet Putin will still use threats of using nuclear weapons to try and intimidate anyone who offends him. He will also believe that his possession of these weapons will prevent NATO from taking action under Article 5.

The strategic question is how do we live in a world in which the collapsing Third World kleptocracy that is Russia possesses nuclear weapons but can’t use them to bully other nations or drag us into a nuclear conflict. //

The only way we break the cycle of cringing in fear every time Putin has bad borscht and decides to threaten someone with nukes is to place Russian cities at risk. We can do this by either walking away from the non-proliferation regime that has limited the ownership of nuclear weapons or by providing some allies with nuclear-capable delivery systems and holding the weapons until that nation requests their release. It’s not a wonderful thought to contemplate, but it is better than endless wars in Eastern Europe brought on by Russia’s ability to threaten nuclear attack unless appeased.

Last night we covered the initial reports in BREAKING. The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Hit by Ukrainian Missiles, Dead in the Water, Crew Evacuated. The Moskva came under fire from a Ukrainian Neptune missile launcher that fired two missiles. At least one of the missiles penetrated the missile/gun defensive system, and when it detonated set off explosions of weapons loaded in their firing tubes and ignited propellant. The fire and explosions overwhelmed the damage control effort, evacuating the crew. At some point, the fires were either extinguished or under sufficient control to permit Moskva to be taken into tow. While in transit, Moskva sank.

Some stray thoughts.

Today is the 110th anniversary of the RMS Titanic striking an iceberg.
This is the first loss of a Russian flagship since the Battle of Tsushima Straits.
This is the biggest warship lost since World War II.
The Argentines are able to share the ignominy of being one of the two nations that lost a capital ship since World War II.
The Russians are still blaming Russian incompetence for the loss rather than giving Ukraine credit for the missile strikes. Placing the responsibility for the loss on a non-specific “explosion” is rather lame as the evolutions a cruiser would carry out don’t have the same risk factors as those aboard aircraft carriers (see USS Oriskany and USS Forrestal; the loss of the USS Bonhomme Richard is in a class of its own). //

Michael Weiss 🌻🇺🇸🇮🇪
@michaeldweiss
Strange for an “accident” aboard one ship, as per Russia’s MoD, to cause all the others to sail farther away from shore unless the accident was being hit by Ukrainian missiles.
Raf Sanchez
@rafsanchez
NEW: US defence official says Russian warships have moved away from Ukraine’s southern coast after explosion on the Moskva. They’re now 80 nautical miles or more from the shore.

Possible sign they’re trying to get out of missile range.
11:44 AM · Apr 14, 2022 //

The Moskva figured prominently in an event in the early days of the war when it demanded that Ukrainian troops defending Snake Island surrender. The incident is commemorated in a Ukraine postage stamp. The sinking of that ship will create a huge morale boost. //

the permanent loss of Moskva’s impressive array of missile launchers to the Black Sea Fleet. According to the provisions of the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits, warships of belligerent nations can’t enter the Black Sea unless they are homeported there. Turkey has said that for the purposed of the Convention, the special military operation Russia is flogging away at in Ukraine is a war, and it has turned down requests by three Russian warships to pass through the Straits. The remaining Russian surface combatants are much less capable in a land-attack mode, and they will act, as my old man would say, like a long-tailed tomcat in a room full of rocking chairs. //

She was fatally struck by two homegrown Ukrainian cruise missiles, neither of which, according to any simulation, should have been able to make it through Moskva‘s defenses. The prestige damage to Russia is huge, and it may, in retrospect, be seen as the decisive moment of the whole war.

On April 11, 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 Polish military aircraft slammed into a forest near the runway of a military airfield in Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 passengers and crew. This wasn’t just any airplane crash. This was Poland’s equivalent of Air Force One. Aboard were Poland’s President Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish government officials, and 18 members of the Polish Parliament. They were en route to a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the murder of some 22,000 Polish military officers, intellectuals, clergy, and other influential Poles by Stalin’s NKVD.

The investigation was shrouded in controversy from the beginning. While Polish investigators were allowed on the site, they had to be accompanied by Russian investigators. Both “black boxes” were recovered intact and analyzed, but the Russians refused to let the Poles have custody of the wreckage. To add fuel to that fire was the fact that the deceased president was a staunch anti-communist who put Poland’s interests above Vladimir Putin’s, and there have been persistent rumors of traces of explosive residue found in the wreckage. For a good summary of the issues, this is a good article.

https://news.sky.com/story/smolensk-crash-explosions-on-board-before-plane-hit-ground-investigator-says-11233792

After the initial report, other investigations conducted by the Poles that concluded there was Russian involvement in the crash.

Today another of those reports hit the fan.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-antoni-macierewicz-lech-kaczynski-poland-f3f5a2fddb028ffdb4bc12f369aeafd5

A Polish government special commission has reinforced its earlier allegations that the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in Russia was the result of Moscow’s assassination plan.

The latest of the commission’s reports, released Monday, alleges that an intentional detonation of planted explosives caused the April 10, 2010 crash of Soviet-made Tu-154M plane that killed Kaczynski, the first lady and 94 other government and armed forces figures as well as many prominent Poles.

Their deaths were the result of an “act of unlawful interference by the Russian side,” the commission’s head Antoni Macierewicz told a news conference.

“The main and indisputable proof of the interference was an explosion in the left wing … followed by an explosion in the plane’s center,” said Macierewicz, who in 2015-2018 served as defense minister in Poland’s right-wing government. //

Reintroducing this controversy, especially the high-handed and disrespectful way Poland was treated by Russia during the investigation, at this time is a way of reminding Poles what they are up against and what living under Russian domination means. And it serves as a way of building national unity in the long term struggle to restrain Putin’s cavalier use of military force to get what he wants.

One of the bogus reasons that Vladimir Putin laid out for his incompetently executed invasion of Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Against all evidence and commonsense, he claimed that Ukraine’s membership in a defensive alliance like NATO posed a direct threat to Russia. Putin and his acolytes would have us believe that NATO has just been lying in wait for the chance to bring Ukraine into NATO so NATO can invade Russia or something. Instead, in something of a geopolitical “own goal,” the invasion of Ukraine has created a de facto expansion of NATO to include Ukraine, and a de jure expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden is only months away //

A very insightful statement came from Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, “I think the deal that Ukraine is offering is fair. You give us weapons; we sacrifice our lives, and the war is contained in Ukraine.”

All of the actions taken by NATO countries indicate they have agreed to Mr. Kuleba’s deal.

What is happening in Ukraine is far more than a proxy war; it has turned into a low-key way of bringing Ukraine into NATO. //

Why is the sale of 16 artillery pieces a big deal? Three silly millimeters. Russian artillery uses a 152mm projectile. The NATO standard is 155mm.

When one looks at the atrocities uncovered in Bucha (not for the squeamish here | here), the targeting of civilian buildings, and the indiscriminate bombardment of Ukrainian cities, it isn’t hard to see how and why this is taking place. These are not the actions of rogue commanders or poorly trained troops. Instead, this is a planned program of national eradication. This is Putin’s “Final Solution to the Ukrainian Problem.” The killings, kidnappings, and terrorism are not bugs in a sloppy military operation; they are highly prized features of a plan to absorb Ukraine back into Russia and, over time, eliminate the national and cultural identity of the Ukrainian people.

The implications of this are stark. In the rawest terms, it means that a peace deal is not possible in Ukraine. There can only be an armed truce awaiting the next round of hostilities or until Russia changes leadership, and that change brings a different attitude.

There is slim hope that any of the major perpetrators of this horror will ever be held to account. Even though Putin, Shoigu, and Gerasimov have long since breached the threshold for war crimes using the standard of Nuremberg or the Yamashita trial, they are outside the reach of justice. They can be inconvenienced by travel restrictions and personal sanctions, but they will never stand trial for their crimes.

A second-best solution is to document the units serving in areas like Bucha. Thanks to a massive data breach, we can identify at least 120,000 Russian soldiers and their units of assignment thanks to a hack by “Anonymous.”

Soldiers serving with targeted units should be targeted for arrest if they ever leave Russia. The same applies to Russian commanders serving in Ukraine. They are all liable for any war crime that took place under their command, which they did not investigate and prosecute. As General Yamashita found out, it isn’t even necessary to have been informed about the war crimes to be convicted for committing them.

The Russian Army is not a professional military. We must stop regarding it as such and treat it as the criminal enterprise that it is.

For a month after the invasion of Ukraine, the high-speed Allegro train carried disaffected Russians to Helsinki. On Sunday, that final rail connection to Europe was severed.

Russia threatened “military and political consequences” against Finland and Sweden on Friday if they attempted to join NATO.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned against other countries attempting to join NATO after Russia started a war with Ukraine Thursday.

“Finland and Sweden should not base their security on damaging the security of other countries and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences,” Zakharova said in a viral clip of a press conference.

The ministry later posted the same threat on its Twitter. Finland and Sweden have given significant military and humanitarian support to Ukraine since Russia invaded. //

Two Russian planes that violated Swedish airspace earlier this month were equipped with nuclear weapons, it has emerged.

The flyover near the island of Gotland on March 2 was a deliberate act designed to intimidate Sweden, according to Swedish news channel TV4 Nyheterna.

A total of four planes had taken off from the Russian air base of Kaliningrad.

They consisted of two Sukhoi 24 attack planes, which were escorted by two Sukhoi 27 fighter jets.

It was the two attack planes which were, according to TV4 Nyheter sources, equipped with nuclear weapons.

The violation of Swedish territory lasted for about a minute.

The country’s air force deployed two JAS 39 Gripen which took pictures of the intruders.

It was then, say Swedish media, that it was confirmed the Russian planes were equipped with nuclear warheads.

‘This is a signal to Sweden that we have nuclear weapons and we could also consider using them,’ military strategic expert Stefan Ring told TV4 Nyheter.

‘We assess it as a conscious action. Which is very serious especially as [Russia] is a warring country,’ added Air Force Chief Carl-Johan Edström.

‘I can not rule out incorrect navigation, but everything indicates that it was a deliberate act. That they violated Sweden’s borders.’ //

There are three things of note here. First and foremost, the decision to fly nuclear-armed aircraft into another nation’s airspace cannot be a mistake, and it is probably an event unique in the military history of the world. Second, the fact that the Swedish Chief of the Air Force did not bat down the story confirms its truthfulness. Third, there is only one reason I can think of that would inspire the Swedes to make this information public. //

Both Finland and Sweden have a lot of reasons for joining NATO. A few weeks ago, I posted on the subject in Putin’s Threats to Sweden and Finland Are Much More Real Than They Are Being Given Credit For. That fear has spiked in the wake of Putin’s war in Ukraine.

In that post, I point out that Finland and Sweden, which are not part of any military alliance, have borders with Russia, and they are in an area where Russia is trying to establish dominance. This childish stunt looks like it may do what the USSR could never do, convince Sweden and Finland to join NATO.

Putting aside, for a moment, the fact that the people behind this assessment were the same ones that aided and abetted the Russia Hoax perpetrated against President Trump and who declared Hunter Biden’s laptop to be a Russian provocation is any part of this story plausible were it told by people capable of telling the truth?

Is it plausible that the entire Russian government was terrified to tell the emperor about his new wardrobe? I suppose, but if so, it speaks to an incredible level of self-delusion. I’m willing to credit that he was fed horsecrap on the operational abilities of the Russian Army because armies tend to lie about their readiness unless there is a system to enforce the rules, and there is not an ethic of lying on reports in the officer corps. I’m much less inclined to believe that he hasn’t been intensely monitoring Western sanctions as he whines about them so much. I also find it difficult to believe that Putin, the very “reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter” kind of guy described in the story, could give a public order that conscripts would not be used in combat and someone down the chain-of-command would have the cojones to say, “Igor, I don’t care that you are a conscript and I don’t care what Putin says, I’m telling you to get on the f***ing truck.” That makes no sense to me.

Even if we accept that the Russian military lied through its teeth about its capabilities to its political masters or even the upper ranks, we still have to wrestle with the idea that Putin doesn’t have any idea about what is happening on the ground in Ukraine, especially about casualties. //

Making the story less credible is that his evaluation of the situation was leaked now. Why now? Why not two weeks ago when the same information was available?

All in all, this intel leak seems to have another purpose. It is almost like they are giving Putin a pass for everything because his staff lied to him. Consider it to be an off-ramp to facilitate negotiations. It gives him the ability to purge the senior ranks of the military and bureaucracy by blaming them for both the crap intelligence and the disastrous plan. Then he’s only left with responsibility for the idea.

An urgent concern for the country is the continuing threat to our national security posed by a compromised President Biden. //

On Friday, The Daily Mail reported that emails recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop show he helped an infectious disease research company pursue projects in Ukraine. Those emails confirm portions of charges Russia made the previous day that an investment group run by the now-president’s son had funded a company conducting research at biological laboratories in Ukraine. //

Russia’s ability to point to the Hunter Biden emails as confirmation of its claims of a biolab in Ukraine raises a serious question with huge national security implications: How did Russia know the day before The Daily Mail’s exclusive that the Hunter Biden’s investment fund, Rosemont Seneca, had invested in Metabiota and been involved in Metabiota’s operations in Ukraine?

The timing of events last week suggests Russia has access to the same emails as The Daily Mail or that Vladimir Putin’s agents might well have obtained access to Hunter Biden’s first laptop—the one the president’s son believed Russians had stolen in 2018. In either case, the Biden family corruption documented on the laptops has gone from a potential national security risk to a real one—and in the midst of a war launched by Russia on a country bordering North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.

Together, the Biden family, the intelligence agencies, and the corrupt media—social and legacy—hold full responsibility for the danger Americans now face. Biden knew full well how compromised his family was, and that there were two laptops, not one, with evidence of the corruption floating about. Yet Biden lied to the American public, with an assist from the former high-level members of the intelligence community who signed the letter suggesting the laptop scandal represented Russian disinformation.

Then there is the FBI which, by December 2019, had access to the abandoned laptop and thereby also knew that Hunter believed Russians had stolen his laptop in summer 2018. To date, there has been no indication that the FBI provided Joe Biden a defensive briefing on the national security risk posed by those laptops. Or if FBI agents did brief Biden on the risks in a timely manner, that means he nonetheless lied to the American public and ran for president knowing the propaganda at Putin’s fingertips.

The biggest hack since Russia’s war began knocked thousands of people offline. ///

Bricked modems

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday determined that security products from Kaspersky posed an unacceptable risk to US national security and added the company to a covered list of other firms not eligible for FCC funds.

The move adds Kaspersky to the same covered list that Huawei and ZTE landed on in 2021. Besides its Moscow headquarters, the company’s founder, Eugene Kaspersky, attended a KGB-sponsored technical college and has long been accused of having ties to Russian military and intelligence services.

Kaspersky, which was already banned from all US government networks, was one of three firms added to the covered list on Friday. China Mobile and China Telecom were the other two.

The United States assesses that Russia is suffering failure rates as high as 60% for some of the precision-guided missiles it is using to attack Ukraine, three U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence told Reuters.

The disclosure could help explain why Russia has failed to achieve what most could consider basic objectives since its invasion a month ago, such as neutralizing Ukraine’s air force, despite the apparent strength of its military against Ukraine’s much smaller armed forces. //

One of the staples on social media accounts reporting from Ukraine has been the very high rate of cruise missiles that have failed to detonate.

Russian military secrets could be laid bare after Ukraine captures electronic warfare systems
The Krasukha-4 unit, which was recovered from the battlefield near Kyiv, will be flown to the US for examination

Western spy agencies are getting ready to examine one of Russia’s most potent electronic warfare systems after a unit was captured in Ukraine....

In the years before Moscow invaded Ukraine, Democrats enriched themselves politically and personally from oligarchs and businesses in the region while empowering Vladimir Putin with energy and technology deals. //

Our best-selling book "Fallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties" chronicled how a failed "reset" in U.S.-Russia relations led by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton relied on an appeasement strategy that ultimately backfired with Russia.

Putin's spoils were measured in billions of dollars in uranium contracts with U.S. utilities, expanded oil imports and transfers of sensitive technologies.

The American dynasties counted their victories in millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation, speech fees to Bill Clinton, and lucrative board seats and consulting deals for Hunter Biden. //

By 2013, Putin had taken Americans to the cleaners. He got massive energy supplies that he now uses as a strategic weapon; he got toothless disarmament treaties that history suggests he will not abide by; he compromised American utility companies, getting them hooked on his cheap nuclear fuel supplies; he got his spies freed and sent home to a hero's welcome in Moscow; he got advanced cyber and military technology; and, not least, he compromised key figures in America's political class.

What did Americans get in return? Not much. Here's a simple test: Has your utility bill gotten cheaper since 2009? //

But Obama, Clinton, and Biden got a lot. As just one example, before Obama even left office in 2017, he set up the Obama Foundation. One of his very first donors was Exelon Corporation, which had received billions in cheap Russian nuclear fuel sales thanks to the 123 Agreement. Exelon, which was known as "the President's Utility" pledged a staggering $10 million to Obama's foundation before he was even out of office.

Biden's family and its partners got hooked up with the former mayor of Moscow's family, who sent at least $3.5 million to a company cofounded by Hunter Biden. Thanks to the Hunter Biden laptop, we know that the Russian oligarch behind that $3.5 million may have invested upwards of $200 million in other Biden-linked entities and that Joe Biden personally benefited from his son's business dealings. And this is all before Biden was named Obama's point man in Ukraine.

I think it’s vital for the US and NATO to make the message very clear that the liberal democracies of the West do not wish the Russian Federation or the Russian culture to perish. It’s important to get the message to ordinary Russians that the West knows that even if Mr. Putin’s reign ends, Russia will go on.

We want Russia to get back on the path to flourishing as a member of the international community. We need to make it clear that the West does not believe in the isolated spheres of influence that Mr. Putin wants to carve the world into, not because we are the agents of an evil hegemony, but because we do not want Russia to become a hermit kingdom with its people returning to the levels of poverty that happened when the Soviet Union catastrophically collapsed.

I think it’s also important to get the message to Russians that, given the damage Mr. Putin has inflicted on his own nation militarily and economically, realistically, his country will only get back to where it should be if Mr. Putin passes the baton to someone new.

What Vladimir Putin has proven to the world is that he is an irresponsible caretaker of a nuclear arsenal.

He abused his possession of nuclear weapons threatening NATO and the United States, who are also nuclear powers, to bluff the West into meekly standing by while he invaded Ukraine. This is not the mark of a thoughtful leader. //

We should be making it clear that we want the sanctions to end and the world to mend this terrible rift. But we should also make it clear that the longer Mr. Putin continues his course of destruction, the more difficult it will be for the world to undo the adaptations it is now making to bypass his country. //

But Mr. Putin’s problems won’t end when he tells his troops to cease fire in Ukraine. He will then have to negotiate with what he calls the “Empire of Lies” to lift sanctions.

And I think the price the West should demand is that he needs to dismantle his tactical nuclear arsenal. The west should demand three things.

First, Russia must pledge to abandon the ridiculous doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” that contemplates the first use of a tactical nuclear weapon as an instrument of terror. //

Second, Russia should unilaterally adopt a parity of warheads policy for its tactical nuclear arsenal in order to get sanctions lifted. They should reduce the number of tactical nuclear weapons in the European theater to levels that are at parity with the tactical warheads the US and NATO have in the same region. //

Third, Russia should agree to let the West develop and deploy a shield system that can both intercept and attack ballistic, cruise, hypersonic missile threats as well as aircraft and artillery delivered tactical nuclear weapons.

The US and NATO should proceed to work on this system while economic sanctions are in place. Russia has already proven it abuses the nuclear card. As Mr. Putin put it, “That line has been crossed.” //

We should also announce that the US and NATO intend to share this defense shield technology with countries around the world. Our objective is to make it too risky for any aggressor to believe that their attack could succeed unchallenged.

One last note: The US has neglected its tactical nuclear arsenal for too long. To put it bluntly, the hole we created in our arsenal created a window of power projection vulnerability someone like Mr. Putin would be tempted to exploit.

tobybrut Giab
2 months ago edited
The situation there is a lot more complicated than just an invasion by Russia. There are eastern Ukraine provinces that WANT to be a part of Russia. Europe helped to negotiate the Minsk Protocols between Ukraine and Russia, which essentially gives those provinces autonomy. The Minsk Protocols did not stop the civil war going on in that area, unfortunately. It is not just a case of Russian aggression here. They see it as a defensive move to protect Russians in eastern Ukraine and as defense against yet another NATO front. War is not desired, of course, but the West lead by Brandon has been rather feckless in finding a solution that doesn't involve a Russian invasion.

NATO is another piece of that Ukraine puzzle, and this is where all of our presidents have failed going directly back to Bill Clinton, who treated the newly liberated Russia as a conquered foe rather than trying to get Russia to become a friend or ally. Russia has far more in common with the West than it does with Communist China, yet persistently, Russia has been pushed into the arms of the Chicoms. Yes, Russia has a large nuclear force, but not so much anything else. It has a tiny economy and a far weaker military (except nuclear) that poses no real threat. Russia watched as its former Soviet republics turned into NATO members and feels like it is under siege. They do not want Ukraine brought into NATO creating yet another front that could threaten it. What Clinton and his successors should have done was to concentrate on Russia itself to bring it into NATO or at least to become a friendly nation. Ukraine and its eastern provinces would be a regional problem now instead of a global problem. Is it too late? I don't know, but there's enough bad blood between Putin and Western leaders that there may be no resolution, but this was a failure that goes back three decades. Brandon just makes it worse because he is essentially an empty suit.

NATO is outdated and needs to be repurposed to defending against the real enemy, the Chicoms, and to de-emphasize Russia as its primary opponent.