US-NATO’s Response to the Istanbul Ukraine-Russia Peace Initiative: “Escalate the Conflict” through Weapons Deliveries
In order to scuttle the Ukraine-Russia peace initiative to Ukraine announced at the Istanbul talks on March 29, halting Russian military campaign north of the capital and focusing on liberating the Russian-majority Donbas in east Ukraine, practically spelling an end to Russia’s month-long offensive in the embattled country, NATO powers have announced transferring heavy weapons, including tanks and S-300 air defense system, to Ukraine to further escalate the conflict.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, April 7, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley revealed that US and NATO countries have collectively provided roughly 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.
“The Russian air force has not even today established air superiority let alone air supremacy, which is one of the reasons why they are having great difficulty on the ground,” the ambitious four-star general, who appears to have sights set on the presidential office after retirement, like Dwight Eisenhower, boasted before the committee:
“So the air superiority mission over Ukraine’s airspace has not been achieved, why is that? It’s because of the survival of the air defense systems, both the MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) that we have been providing – stingers and the like from other NATO countries – plus the longer range SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) that have been provided and that they already had.”
“We are providing Ukrainians intelligence to conduct operations in the Donbas, that’s correct,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confessed publicly for the first time that the US is providing intelligence to Ukrainian forces in response to the question from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
“We continue to provide useful information and intelligence to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in their fight,” a senior defense official acknowledged after Austin’s remarks. “As that fight migrates more to the Donbas region, we will adjust our information content and flow as required.”
In most cases, two sources familiar with the intelligence-sharing system told CNN, the intelligence being shared involved information about Russian force movements and locations, as well as intercepted communications about their military plans. And it is typically provided to Ukrainian officials as quickly as within 30 minutes to an hour of the US receiving it, making it nearly real-time intelligence sharing.
Literally fawning over the top Pentagon officials, Sen. Roger Wicker, an establishment Republican, asked Austin on why all of $3 billion in congressional authorization for US arms to Ukraine previously pledged by the Biden administration has yet to be provided. “We’ve only used $900 million of this – less than a third of the amount authorized. Why hasn’t the administration provided the full $3 billion?”
US security assistance is flowing into Ukraine “faster than most people would have ever believed conceivable,” Austin told the committee on Thursday – at times arriving in Ukraine within days of receiving authorization, he said. “From the time authorization is provided, four or five days later we see real capability begin to show up,” Austin said during the hearing on the Defense Department’s whopping $773 billion budget request.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-natos-response-to-the-istanbul-ukraine-russia-peace-initiative-escalate-the-conflict-through-weapons-deliveries/5776991