What exactly are western taxpayers getting for the trouble of emptying their treasuries and their own military stores to keep the Ukrainian government afloat? So far, a lot of looting by higher ups in the government. At this rate, how long will it be until western powers feel compelled to directly intervene to direct the course of governance there?
A top adviser, four deputy ministers and five regional governors left their posts on Tuesday. Their departures come as Ukraine launches a broad anti-corruption drive. Recently, authorities have seen bribery claims, reports of officials buying food at inflated prices and one figure accused of living a lavish lifestyle.
Deputy Defence Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov also resigned, following reports he oversaw the purchase of military food supplies at inflated prices from a relatively unknown firm. The department called this a “technical mistake” and claimed no money had changed hands.
Give them each a rifle and send them to the eastern front
So what? Have you been asleep for the past 3 years (more, actually!) They’re just doing what their western counterparts are doing. Covid loans, pelosi investments, paying msm millions to preach their message, all the green warriors suddenly with multiple properties…
I think we’re bleeding vastly more money from corruption at home than abroad. I don’t agree with the flow of cash east, but zelensky is actually doing something about it…
Well said. The libranos are fleecing canaduh blind.
Wait until you hear about what happens in Russia.
“Wait until you hear about what happens in Russia.”
Why? How many BILLIONS of dollars are the western nations (including Canada) pumping into Russia?
Try to keep up, Allan.
I don’t think the point is what the taxpayers are getting for their money. What are the “leaders” getting? Nice donations to the Trudeau Foundation??
Its a club and like the billionaires club you have to stay current with your dues or you’re side lined.
This is what western nations are getting:
NATO’s arch-nemesis — it’s very raison d’être — is being brought to its knees, likely to never rise again as a super power. Russia won’t be a plausible threat to Europe for a very long time.
And at a cost that is a tiny fraction of total military spending of NATO countries. In fact, much of the aid is in the form of outmoded military equipment that the western nations were slowing retiring anyway.
Ukraine is willing to do NATO’s fighting for it. It’s the best deal NATO nations will ever get, and they should grab it with both hands.
You need to find new media to consume, Marmot. The same mainstream media, Pentagon talking heads, and politicians that lie endlessly about everything else didn’t suddenly have a come-to-Jesus moment and decided to start telling us the truth.
Russia won’t lose on it’s border, just like the US wouldn’t have lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan if those countries were where Mexico or Canada is located.
I’m not basing my views on utterances of western politicians or The Pentagon, thanks much.
You haven’t addressed any of my points, so it’s difficult to respond. Precisely which of my original statements do you disagree with?
“NATO’s arch-nemesis — it’s very raison d’être — is being brought to its knees”
The narrative that’s been floated since the beginning of March 2022. It’s just not happening – as you obviously wish. A near autarkic country with a 2022 consolidated (not only federal) budget surplus, trade surplus, current account surplus, negligible debt, an old-school industrial economy, it’s own financial system that’s being integrated into the 75% of the world that’s “not the west” has not collapsed – and on the contrary, won’t collapse.
Just about every ridiculous claim is easily debunked – down to The Economist declaring in October that their economy was back to growth in Q3 just as every other major EU economy started sinking into contraction. This week the BBC published their monthly update on total Russian casualties which includes irregulars like Wagner and volunteer militia and they account for just over 11,000 (and then they add in a 90% “margin” because they must be wrong as their tally is apparently disappointingly low).
And lastly – before Call of Duty people believed that nuclear war must be avoided at all cost. Now the inmates are running the asylum. Many millions more will die in any nuclear war with Russia – a war NATO now apparently is doing all in its power to realize – than there are Ukrainians in the world.
Don’t fall victim to the narrative and propaganda washing over us like a waterfall.
Russia’s conventional military has…
1. Been proven to be woefully inept. There’s no arguing that. The evidence is overwhelming. They’re getting set back on their heals by a poor nation with 30% of Russia’s population. And many of Russia’s tactics and strategies have been jaw-dropping dumb.
2. Has been reduced by at least 40% since the war began. As an example, at the start of the war Russia probably had around 5000 tanks that were either active or could be brought back into service with some work. They’ve lost at least 1600 of those, and very likely over 2000. Further, the tanks they are sending in to replace losses are often from the 1960s, and have no place in a theatre of war. This suggests that the shelves are bare.
Marmot, I agree with all of your points here. So would anyone of any sense. Russia has been resorting to hired mercenaries from the ‘stans for months now, and they are proving thoroughly unreliable and running away in droves. The Russian empire is falling apart with fighting breaking out between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Rete is obviously wrong. “Russia won’t lose on it’s border”
It’s losing now. Putin has had to assassinate so many of his former friends and supporters that he can’t have many left. Actual ethic Russians have been fleeing the country and the draft into neighbors like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The thing to watch for is when Lukashenko in Belarus starts to look like he’s weakening.
Putin needs those mercenaries, but they are also a threat to his power. I’m wondering if he will become so uneasy with the Wagner Group that he moves to assimilate them into the regular army. Of course, he’ll have to lop off the head of the snake (Prigozhin) before he does that.
“You haven’t addressed any of my points, so it’s difficult to respond. ”
You’ll have to make some actual points first. All you did was reiterate your fantasies of impending doom for Russia.
I never used the word “doom.” Russia will probably survive this going forward (I think). But it’s undeniable that things have gone horrifically for them, and that they are putting their military through a meat grinder in Ukraine.
If you want to debate that rather than making your usual vacuous put downs, I can do that.
And every point of Killer Marmot’s is exactly correct.
Putin has played this game time-and-time again, and he – or whoever replaces him – will just keep on playing it. I mean why not? – everytime he rolls the dice, he ends-up with more captured territory and more slaves. Just like Hitler did. And Putin’s eminence grise, Aleksandr Dugin, proclaimed that Russia should rule everything from Dublin to Vladivostok – those cards are easy to read.
And why should we continue to support Ukraine? Simples – here’s a really big chunk of Eurasia that is too big for Putin to swallow, and he’s choking on it. Ukraine is fighting Russia to a standstill, and doing far better at it than the Russians are. Putin’s army is resorting to human-wave attacks because they’re running out of tanks and shells – and Russia is running out of poorly-trained-and-equipped humans to throw at the Ukrainians, and clouds of dismay at the butcher’s bill are seeping into the Russian heartland and putting the lie to Putin’s Soviet-style propaganda of “How GREAT we’re doing denazifying Ukraine!” Ukraine can play this game longer than Putin can, if we keep them supplied – and if Ukraine fails, Putin has already told us what his next targets are: Poland, East Germany, and the Baltic States.
To paraphrase Churchill, we help Ukraine stop Putin here-and-now or we’ll eventually have to do it ourselves later, at far greater cost – likely to include a nuclear exchange, in which case nobody wins. We spent far more on useless masks during the plandemic.
“If you want to debate that rather than making your usual vacuous put downs, I can do that.”
No, you really can’t…
“No, you really can’t…”
Not against you. One can’t debate a wall of abuse lacking any cogent point.
Russia won’t lose on its border
They did in Afghanistan
(looks at map) Afghanistan is not a bordering country of Russia – it’s thousands of kilometers away.
And the Uzbeks + Tajiks that the Soviet Union relied on to fight the war for them were not very – shall we say – motivated.
Afghanistan (looks at map) was 1000s of km away.
Uhm, Not when the Russians invaded it wasn’t.
And so did NATO, in a very humiliating withdrawal,
“In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement on the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by May 2021. In April 2021, NATO Foreign and Defence ministers decided to withdraw all Allied troops from Afghanistan within a few months.
or did you forget that?
Sure, but what’s your point? The issue is whether Russia can lose this war.
And the answer is yes, it’s a very real possibility.
“Russia won’t lose on it’s border, just like the US wouldn’t have lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan if those countries were where Mexico or Canada is located”
LOL, sounds like you never saw Afghanistan on the map.
I’ve got news for you: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed in 1991. NATO’s reason for existing ceased to exist 32 years ago. Everything that the Americans have done since has been to justify their commitment to, and domination of, an organization that rather unexpectedly became obsolete. Everyone would be better off if NATO had be just allowed to fade away in the 1990s, it’s purpose having been served, and with the collective defense of the European states given over to the European Union.
NATO’s reason for existing was reduced between 1991 and 2012, when it looked like Russia might transform into a peaceful liberal democracy. But Russian’s constant wars along its borders and the treatment of Belarus as a vassal state showed that it was still a threat to Eastern Europe. And when Putin came to power, any illusion that Russia was a Teddy Bear vanished.
Prairie Sky
I see little if any difference between USSR and Russia.
Russia expanded energy ties with Europe hoping to be able to use natural gas and oil exports as a weapon when there was a conflict (learning from the Arab embargo of the 1970s).
Putin has said the fall of the Soviet Union was a tragic mistake.
Nothing has changed
And NATO is relevant here only as a mutual-defence network – and Putin has already announced that he need only declare Poland’s, East Germany’s and the Baltic States’s borders are “disputed” and they’re de-facto invalid to be NATO members. Now why do you suppose he’d do something like that?
NATO is maskirovka for Putin – a convenient false-flag to wave in front of Russians and proclaim “They’re trying to steal our historical SSR of Ukraine from us – we HAVE to draw the line somewhere!” In real life, he could care less about NATO if he really tried – he knows NATO will never attack him.
“At this rate, how long will it be until western powers feel compelled to directly intervene to direct the course of governance there?”
Uhm. Hate to break it to you, but the Ukraine government has been under US direction since 2014.
Nuland is on a leaked phone call – in 2014 – saying “f*ck the EU” and discussing with the US ambassador who the next president should be after the Maidan coup.
Biden is on camera at a Council on Foreign Relations event bragging how he got Poroshenko to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor (turns out this prosecutor was investigating corruption involving Burisma and Hunter Biden).
The US Department of Homeland Security’s short-lived “Disinformation Czar” Nina Jankowicz worked for Zelensky’s campaign in Ukraine in 2019.
“who the next president should be after the Maidan coup.”
Oh you mean that guy who got replaced by the guy who got defeated by Zelensky?
Also predictably: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4bftQ4xxFc
So you’re agreeing with me that a US government conversation was leaked to the media discussing who the proxy’s next leader should be.
Your little meme is hopeless – the truth stands on it’s own legs and them-there are facts Colonialist
“So you’re agreeing …”
Cathy Neuman is that you?
You’re just another bot, you’ll comeback with a new name tomorrow and share the same revelations. Meanwhile Orcs are being turned into fertilizer. Here is a nice twitching orc video for you: https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaUkraineWar2022/comments/10jbp2o/for_the_entire_day_a_physically_exhausted_russian/
“You’re just another bot” “orcs are being turned in fertilizer”
Homer, you’re a sad millennial glued to MSNBC, CNN, CBC etc. and reposts on Reddit. Predittor much?
Either way, you’re probably wearing yellow and blue underwear right now. Mail it to Freeland, she’ll mail her red and black panties back to you.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict
Yes, you are another bot or an old bot under new name, and yes, orcs are being turned into fertilizer – that is a definite evolutionary improvement over the pre fertilizer stage:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaUkraineWar2022/comments/10kpe5j/ukraines_109th_separate_mountain_assault_brigade/
– And rete? accusing somebody of being misled by MSNBC, CNN & CBC while quoting an item from the Grauniad, seriously undermines your own credibility.
What – you didn’t know?
The WEF loves China. Zaleski, Trudeau, Biden and many others are members of the WEF. Western leaders are pledging huge amounts of their military weaponry to Ukraine. Canada’s government is pledging 200 military armored vehicles and possibly tanks to Ukraine and trying to confiscate as much rifles from the population as they can. I talked to an individual from Cabalas and he said the government has their sites on high velocity rifles such as the 300 win mag that I myself use for hunting. Is the west(Canada)being set up for a possible Chinese army invasion?
“…claimed no money had changed hands.”
That’s very efficient. Basically write up an invoice for food valued at $### and then stuff the whole amount in your pocket.
Why would anyone filling their pockets there want the war to end?
“Why would anyone filling their pockets there want the war to end?”
Exactly.
Too many people here just can’t seem to wrap their minds around that simple fact. Like most things political, it’s mostly about money.
I’ve come to shout at morons who don’t understand that Russia is fighting for the Liberation of The Nations and Ukraine is the Rabid Rottweiler of the GAE.
Shoot the Dog. Save Humanity.
As for the Ukrainian Nationalists – you are a bunch of blinkered morons. You were never going to get away with forced Ukrainianization and the state violence you’ve been intensifying since 2008. All the more surprising for Canadian Ukrainians not to understand this. We have the example of Quebec Nationalism, Tamil Nationalism, Sikh Nationalism in our own backyard. We know how it doesn’t work. Why can’t you people learn and behave accordingly? Yer all trapped in 1945 and Bandera is still alive and fighting the good fight. That shit died in 1946. Move. On. Wake. Up.
Delusion is expensive, in lives and treasure. Any person in the West who considers himself on the right needs to see things clearly or we will forever be manipulated by our enemies on the left into harming ourselves for nothing.
I don’t know what kind of drugs you’re on, but I have to get me some.
Meh,
My enemies are not on Russian or Ukrainian soil.
The comments on this “war between cousins”,with the fine assistance of the EU and USA,have become entirely predictable.
And consistently odd.
That “Great Ukrainian Victory” is gonna happen any day now.
Seems if you cannot check your own assumptions,you become very easily manipulated.
How one can find truth,in the output of agencies who deliberately lie to us,is quite the conundrum..
We know our State Media is lying to us here at home..
In every western country.
Yet we must believe their talking points on matters abroad?
And yes I mean talking points..google Russia Ukraine Conflict..same words,same memes on all the usual suspects..
“I stand with..the next new thing”
Cause I is smrt.
As for the corruption,that is the feature.
Not a side effect,the main feature.
The acts of war are the side effects,the stealing is the reason.
Politicians love “war condition” they can steal with impunity and accuse any who catch them in these acts,as “Enemies of the State”.
Given the known quality of the fools and bandits who govern us,I doubt their every utterance,to the point of inverting their words,to see if a truth falls out..
And if what Russian Forces have done so far,is not limited warfare..
What is?
How did the civilian casualties in each “American intervention” compare?
“Shock and Awe” in Iraq was grotesque,for the unnecessary death and damage.
And our Presstitutes cheered and celebrated..
Our experts excused.
There is the problem.
We are in an information vacuum.
Because the tale bearers lie.
We know they lie.
They know we know they lie.
Yet they continue lying.
Every thing I have previously consumed,that shapes my “knowledge of” Russia,of the Ukraine,
cannot be trusted.
For I got that information from these same liars..
Before I realized how deceitful they are.
Yet of the two people I know,with direct personal knowledge of Russia,
persons of good judgement and real skills, they tell me a different tale.
Why would anyone take on trust,the narrative of our professional liars?
Que the normal “Experts”.