Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently offered some matter-of-fact observations about the immense human suffering and death caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and placed the responsibility for ending the war squarely on Moscow’s shoulders. “There’s one guy that can stop it — and his name is Vladimir Putin,” Milley said. “He needs to stop it.”
But then Milley crossed what he most certainly never imagined to be a tripwire when he said, “And they need to get to the negotiating table.”
War Industry Looking Forward to “Multiyear Authority” in Ukraine
Tag: Bill LaPlante
US military trained Ukrainians days before they sank two Russian ships
U.S.-trained Ukrainian soldiers sank two Russian ships in June, according to Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top acquisitions official. The incident came just two months after Washington gave Ukraine intelligence that helped it sink the Moskva, then Russia’s most powerful warship in the Black Sea.
US military trained Ukrainians days before they sank two Russian ships
US preparing to approve advanced long-range rocket system for Ukraine
US preparing to approve advanced long-range rocket system for Ukraine
Senior Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have pleaded in recent weeks for the US and its allies to provide the Multiple Launch Rocket System, or MLRS. The US-made weapon systems can fire a barrage of rockets hundreds of kilometers — much farther than any of the systems Ukraine already has — which the Ukrainians argue could be a gamechanger in their war against Russia.
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The Biden administration waivered for weeks, however, on whether to send the systems, amid concerns raised within the National Security Council that Ukraine could use the systems to carry out offensive attacks inside Russia, officials said.
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The issue was at the top of the agenda at last week’s two meetings at the White House where deputy Cabinet members convened to discuss national security policy, officials said. At the heart of the matter was the same concern the administration has grappled with since the start of the war– whether sending increasingly heavy weaponry to Ukraine will be viewed by Russia as a provocation that could trigger some kind of retaliation against the US.
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Ukraine is already believed to have carried out numerous cross-border strikes inside Russia, which Ukrainian officials neither confirm nor deny. Russian officials have said publicly that any threat to their homeland would constitute a major escalation and have said that western countries are making themselves a legitimate target in the war by continuing to arm the Ukrainians.
Another major concern inside the Biden administration had been whether the US could afford to give away so many high-end weapons drawn from the military’s stockpiles, the sources said.
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