The U.S. is preparing to provide Ukraine with a new package of military assistance worth $1 billion. According to Reuters, it will include ammunition for HIMARS, NASAMS surface-to-air missile systems and as many as 50 M113 armored medical vehicles. It is expected to be one of the largest tranches given to Ukraine since February this year, with the total approaching $10 billion.
Why are the U.S. and other NATO countries spending billions on Ukraine?
Back in early May, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order for simplified arms deliveries to Ukraine under the lend-lease act, and a month later the process was launched.
This aid is already turning out to be a disservice: multibillion-dollar bids do not guarantee Kiev military or political success, and paying for U.S. and Western European aid will take a very long time. In addition, the lend-lease program has tied the U.S. and other NATO countries firmly and permanently to Ukraine and is dragging Americans and Europeans deeper and deeper into the conflict.
The essence of the lend-lease bill, approved by the U.S. Congress and signed by Biden, is to give the president greater authority to make aid agreements with the Ukrainian government easier.
This is the second time in history that the U.S. has decided to supply lend-lease aid – the first time it was done during World War II to help the European allies and the USSR. Although it is not a question of repeating the terms of the past lend-lease.
Kiev proudly declares that it was Zelensky who managed to persuade Biden to agree to the lend-lease deal, just as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once persuaded U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt…
So lend-lease, though without sending regular military personnel into Ukraine, is essentially participation in this war.
It would be useful for those who like historical parallels to know that Britain paid its multi-billion dollar debt to its American partners only in 2006, 61 years after the anti-Hitler coalition victory.
Lend-lease is a commodity credit, and besides it is not a cheap one: all ammunition, equipment and food supplied by the USA will be paid for by many future generations of Ukrainian citizens.
When the U.S. authorities talk about Ukraine’s war until the victorious end, they assume that tens or even hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians will be killed, millions more will become refugees, and the Ukrainian economy will be completely destroyed. They do not hide their desire to destroy Russia, and they do not care about Ukraine and its salvation, it is just a collateral damage.
This is well understood by a number of American experts and politicians, who do not want the Ukrainian conflict to become a global one. According to Ipsos polls, most Americans (62%) fear that “excessive” support for Ukraine could drag the U.S. into conflict with Russia. They suggest that only limited aid should be provided to Kiev so that it does not affect Americans themselves.
Another concern of U.S. residents is the impact of the conflict on inflation, which is becoming the biggest concern of Americans. Already after the start of deliveries it became known that the annual inflation in the U.S. in June was the highest since 1981. Consumer prices in the country rose by 8.6% in per year terms.
Senator Rand Paul also talked about this, explaining his decision to block the next tranche of aid to Ukraine worth almost 40 billion dollars. “I took an oath to the Constitution of the USA and not to another country… We can’t save Ukraine while dooming the US economy,” – said R. Paul, reminding that inflation reached a maximum for 40 years, prices for electricity rose by 32% and prices for petrol – by 49%!
It is known that in addition to arms supplies, the U.S. provides Kiev with intelligence data on the location of Russian troops. At the same time, according to its official position, the White House has forbidden its intelligence service to share information with Kiev that might give Moscow “an excuse to draw the U.S. into the conflict”. However, as New York Times reported, although U.S. intelligence provides data to the AFU, Kiev does not reciprocate. The Ukrainians are deliberately hiding the real situation from Washington, so that they don’t recognize the situation as hopeless and deprive them of weapons and money.
Another problem with arms deliveries to Ukraine is their uncontrolled distribution. Even the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, admitted this at a Senate Committee on Appropriations hearing. The weapons, which are not limited in quantity or range, can fall into the hands not only of Ukrainian radicals, but also of terrorists around the world. According to the British newspaper The Times, Western weapons often do not reach Ukraine at all.
Still, the U.S. and its European allies continue to increase military assistance to Ukraine. According to The American Thinker magazine, while billions of dollars and euros are flowing into the Ukrainian treasury, Kiev has not the slightest incentive to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. Everyone profits from this conflict – both Ukrainian corrupt officials and the US and European defense industry tycoons.
“Zelensky and his cabinet are not motivated by the stability and integrity of Ukraine. Instead, they are motivated by billions in financial aid. Between 2014 and 2020, Ukraine received more than $51.3 billion in and economic aid. Much of this enormous financial assistance was simply stolen by the commercial, military, and political elites. Zelensky and the ruling elite’s moral code is to be, in some sense, the Palestinians of Europe. Defeated by superior force, they want the EU to adopt them and make Ukraine a black hole for billions of dollars and euros, with no end.”
It is simply astounding the murderous generosity with which the West sponsors the Kiev regime to continue the war. It begs the question, do they really believe that all these loans given to Ukraine in recent months will be returned to them, and with interest as well?
It looks like they do. That is why they are actively buying up unsold Ukrainian assets, including land. According to the Australian edition of the National Review, three big American multinational consortiums have bought 17 million hectares of Ukrainian farmland, compared to 16.7 million hectares of farmland in Italy. So it turns out that three American companies have bought more usable agricultural land in Ukraine than there is in all of Italy. The entire area of Ukraine is 600,000 square kilometers, and 170,000 square kilometers have been bought. Who are these companies? Cargill, Dupont and Monsanto – the last one is officially German-Australian, but with American capital. Their main shareholders are American Vanguard, BlackRock and Blackstone. BlackRock is a fund that manages $10 trillion in assets, Vanguard manages $6 trillion, and Blackstone manages $881 billion.
They seem to be convinced that Russia does not have the strength or determination to liberate all of Ukraine and much of it will remain under Western control anyway. Therefore, they see the current loans and military supplies as an investment in winning the battle to preserve the current economic and geopolitical world order, through which they can compensate for all their investments, while continuing to shamelessly rob the rest of the world.
