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Post by Admin on Mar 5, 2022 18:47:18 GMT
A closer look at Ukraine first lady Olena Zelenska l GMA 215,403 views • Mar 2, 2022 • While President Volodymyr Zelenskyy inspires his country in the fight against Russia, his wife is also helping to rally the nation's resistance.
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Post by Admin on Mar 6, 2022 2:36:34 GMT
The U.S. remains in discussions with Poland to potentially backfill their fleet of fighter planes if Warsaw decides to transfer its used MiG-29s to Ukraine, four U.S. officials tell POLITICO.
The ongoing talks, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleads with Congress for help, underscore the frantic push to find weapons to equip Ukrainian forces as they continue to fight off the massive Russian invasion.
As Poland weighed sending its warplanes to Ukraine last week, Warsaw asked the White House if the Biden administration could guarantee it would provide them with U.S.-made fighter jets to fill the gap. The White House said it would look into the matter. The Biden administration didn’t oppose the Polish government giving Kyiv the MiGs, which could potentially escalate tensions between NATO and Moscow. Poland, for now, has held on to its fighter jets.
Discussions between Warsaw and Washington are still underway, though authorization for new, replacement fighter jets to Poland could take a long time.
“We are working with the Poles on this issue and consulting with the rest of our NATO allies,” a White House spokesperson told POLITICO. “We are also working on the capabilities we could provide to backfill Poland if it decided to transfer planes to Ukraine.”
Several Eastern European countries like Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia retain dozens of Russian-made aircraft in their inventories and have been hesitant to give up those planes without guarantees from the U.S. that they could replace them.
Poland has been modernizing its aircraft fleet since 2006, when it first started flying F-16s, and in 2020 signed a $4.6 billion deal for 32 F-35s, the first of which will arrive in 2024, making those older Russian-made planes expendable.
The issue of sending aircraft into the fight is more complex than the effort underway by over two dozen European countries to send anti-armor and anti-air defensive weapons to Ukraine. A steady stream of U.S. and British military planes have been landing in Poland in recent days filled with those missiles, along with other munitions, rations, and small arms and ammunition.
Over the past several weeks the U.S. has sent 12,000 troops to Europe to backstop nervous allies along NATO’s Eastern front, the majority of which went to Poland to join the 4,000 U.S. troops already stationed there. The troops are conducting training missions with the Polish military, and could be called on to assist with a humanitarian emergency if the flood of war refugees overwhelms Polish and E.U. authorities.
The White House has “in no way opposed Poland transferring planes to Ukraine,” the spokesperson added, pointing out how difficult an operation it would be to get the planes into Ukraine. Russian officials have pledged to attack any convoys carrying weapons entering the country.
The issue of transferring American F-16s to Poland is a complex one, given the sensitive avionics on American planes that may not always be legal to transfer overseas.
After Zelenskyy’s impassioned Zoom call with senators on Saturday, during which he urged the U.S. to send planes, drones and Stinger missiles to Ukraine and impose oil sanctions on Russia, Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) sent a letter to President Joe Biden throwing their full support behind backfilling Poland with F-16s if they were to hand over their Russian planes, saying they would work to ensure there was funding to finance the transfer.
The on-again, off-again effort to get MiGs into Ukraine started last weekend, when European Union security chief Josep Borrell made the startling announcement that several countries would soon ship fighter jets to the border for transfer to Ukraine’s armed forces.
Ukrainian officials told POLITICO at the time that several of their pilots had already arrived in Poland for the handoff, but the deal stalled out. Bulgaria and Slovakia also rejected the idea, and the Ukrainian pilots left empty-handed.
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Post by Admin on Mar 6, 2022 19:34:40 GMT
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that he chose to attack Ukraine beyond the borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) to prevent the West from “endlessly” supplying “nationalists and radicals” with various resources, such as weapons and money. He added that the Russian forces were “practically done” destroying Ukrainian military sites, such as air defenses and weapons depots. The president stated that he had ordered Russian troops to invade Ukraine last week in order to neutralize the “real threat” coming from Kiev and NATO. Moscow has long protested the Western military infrastructure along its borders and Ukraine’s aspirations to join the US-led bloc. “They began to say more actively that they will admit [Ukraine] to NATO. What will this lead to? All other members of the alliance must back Ukraine in the case of a military conflict,” Putin said. “They will [attack] Crimea, and we will be forced to go to war with NATO. Do you understand the consequences?” The president stated that he wanted Ukraine to become a neutral country. “Let’s acquire nuclear weapons, they say [in Ukraine]. We can’t simply ignore it,” Putin said, referring to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s remark last month that Kiev might be forced to reconsider its status as a non-nuclear-weapons state. Russia invaded its neighbor on February 24, arguing that it was defending the DPR and LPR. Putin also claimed he was seeking the “demilitarization and denazification” of the country.
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Post by Admin on Mar 9, 2022 1:14:53 GMT
Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks exclusively to ABC News 1,633,463 views • Mar 8, 2022 • During an exclusive interview with ABC News' David Muir, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke directly to the American people and discussed Vladimir Putin and his conditions to end the war.
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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2022 21:58:07 GMT
"Don't want to beg for NATO membership", says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky | World News 534,598 views Mar 9, 2022 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he does not want to be the leader of a country which is begging for something on its knees. Zelensky also said that he is no longer pressing for membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), membership for his country.
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