Let's remember the US has already supplied Ukraine with over $130 billion in armaments, rocket launchers, artillery, Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, missiles,, air defense systems and ammunition.
Where to begin commenting on Blumenthal's assertions. It reads more like the assertions made up by former Senator Joe McCarthy R- Wisconsin who in 1950 alleged so many Communists had infiltrated the State Department.
As to the US "getting our monies worth" or "without diversion or misappropriation of American aid" Blumenthal's assertions are plainly astounding to this writer?
Ukraine is known as the most corrupt country in Europe. As to military hardware sent to Ukraine possibly $millions worth has been stolen and sold on the black market. The US Defense Department knows it and hasn't conducted an audit.
As to Ukraine degrading Russia's military strength by half? This is absurd. Russia has some 300,000 troops in Ukraine. According to the Russian Defense Ministry it has lost nearly 6,000 troops in this war while Ukraine has lost nearly 70,000 troops killed and some 5,000 wounded.
In Ukraine's much heralded counteroffensive it has lost some 43,000 troops and some 5,000 pieces of military hardware-again this according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Of course the coup in Kiev, February 2014, which the US helped to foment, conveniently escapes the memory of Blumenthal which wouldn't jive with what he wrote in the Connecticut Post.
But selective memory by US lawmakers is nothing new. Maybe it should be called selective amnesia.
A little history may be in order here:
The Communist USSR, primarily Russia was a US ally during WWII. After the war anti Communism took hold in the US and the cold war ensued till the USSR disintegrated in 1991. Prior to its demise there was a verbal agreement between the US and the USSR in 1989 that NATO wouldn't move "one inch eastward" if the two Germany's were allowed to reunite. Yet US selective amnesia took hold conveniently forgetting its 1989 promise for NATO not to expand eastward starting with President Clinton in 1997, then "Dubya" Bush, Obama and finally with Trump . The US did this knowing it wouldn't be challenged. Russia in the 1990's under the leadership of a drunken Boris Yeltsin was a barely surviving remnant of the now dead USSR and was in no position to challenge the US. Thus NATO expanded eastward and is now on the doorstep of Russia.
With Russia facing this reality in December 2021 it pleaded with the US and its western allies to take its security demands seriously which were Ukraine remain a neutral country and never to join NATO. It was ignored given the nonsense that NATO was strictly a defensive alliance.
By 2021 Ukraine continued to lobby it be included in NATO even writing it in its constitution. Then it talked of acquiring nuclear weapons while continuing to attack the mostly Russian speaking people in Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukraine was preparing a late February military offensive into these areas when Russia preemptively invaded Ukraine on February 23, 2022.
To the chagrin of Blumenthal and his two Senate cohorts, Ukraine is losing the war with its counteroffensive a failure.
Russia is no longer the prone and threadbare remnant of the defunct USSR . Like it or not Russia has reestablished itself as a world power and has to be taken seriously.
Something Blumenthal and his Senate colleagues ought to recognize and reconcile themselves with.
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