WASHINGTON — Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s
troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.
Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.
U.S. Officials Repeatedly Urged China to Help Avert War in Ukraine
So, again, just what did Russia learn from what was shared? What intelligence sources were damaged? Are you suggesting that Russia did not know they had put so many troops around Ukraine?
No I would expect the president to place some value on American lives and not needlessly get people killed.
He did, he warned them well before the US left that they needed to get out of the country immediately. These Americans should have already known the US was leaving, that the original agreement was that the US had agreed to leave by May.
Poland wants the migs replace with f-15's and that is waiting on Biden
The US had, in principle,
agreed to replace the MiGs, though Poland would not agree to give the planes to Ukraine. "Although Secretary of State
Antony Blinken says the U.S. would give the go-ahead to the transfer of the planes to Ukraine and is already talking with Poland about backfilling its aircraft inventory, Poland has not yet decided to move ahead with the transfers. In a
tweet over the weekend, the chancellery of the Polish prime minister called a story stating that Poland would give Ukraine MiG-29s in exchange for U.S.-made F-16s was "fake news.""
The issue, as I stated before, was the transfer of planes. Poland's issue, per Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Colonel and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "It's a political issue in the sense that, if you have a Polish aircraft and you put a Ukrainian pilot in there, and that pilot then flies the aircraft into Ukraine to fight the Russians, the Russians can plausibly argue that Poland has now become a co-belligerent, since it's launching aircraft from its soil into Ukraine. "So the Poles are very, very nervous about that and want to be very careful that this does not make them vulnerable to Russian counter-actions.""
So, a couple of days later,
Poland comes up with the "bright" idea that they'll give the MiGs to the US, in Germany; though they give no advance notice to the US about this "plan."
Russia would have wanted the sanctions removed immediately which would have given the incentive to not proceed with the invasion. All Biden did was make vague threats instead of taking real action. Putin was not impressed.
So if we tried what you wanted, that likely means that the next time the US military does military exercises in Germany/Western Europe, Russia is free to put "sanctions" (such as cutting off oil to Europe) since they feel the US might attack Russia. You do not punish a country (or a person) for things it looks like they might do, you have to wait until the "crime" is committed.
Beyond that, sanctions at that point are just as likely to have pushed Russia into the invasion, or even an invasion of NATO, as putting those sanctions on for what Russia "might be planning" would be legitimately seen as an act of economic warfare by the US (particularly since our NATO allies would likely not have agreed and joined us in those sanctions).
Putin is also likely to have still attacked, particularly since Russia would have already been damaged by the sanctions, which if they came off quickly, would still cause serious damage to Russia's economy. Particularly since Putin likely would have seen it as an attack against Russian sovereignty.
The President of Ukraine say otherwise.
Citation? The major complaints I've seen from Zelensky are that the US didn't do enough to help Ukraine before the war stated -- though technically that would also apply to Pres. Trump -- as
Biden had sent military aid to Ukraine before the war, and that was on top of two aid packages for Ukraine sent in 2021.
The second is that Biden would not agree to a "no-fly zone." While I fully understand why Zelensky's complaint, it would put the US in a position where we would have to "attack" (through bombings) Russian troops on Russian soil; when Russian air defense batteries located on the border, but in Russia, shoot missiles at US aircraft, there to enforce the no fly zone, over Ukrainian territory.
Zelensky is in a tough position, in trying to be thankful for the aid sent, while at the same time trying to push NATO leaders -- particularly Biden -- to do more, such as the no fly zone. What I have not seen from Zelensky over the last few weeks is complaints that the aid approved is not reaching him, just a request for even more support.
Yes he did and he would not have taken action if congress and the American public opinion had not forced him to do so He is not consulting, he is waiting to find out what the other nations are going to do and what public opinion is before he leads from behind.
And yet, Biden's leadership has been praised by sources such as
Forbes,
the Hill, the
Japan Times, the
Economist, etc. -- publications that aren't slanted toward Democrats, with a couple non-US sources. The complaints about Biden's leadership seems to largely be a Republican politically fueled complaint and not one shared by most of the world.
And for all the complaints about his leadership, if Biden had been more "forceful" (what Zelensky was calling for) -- such as setting up a no fly zone -- then Republicans would be criticizing him for putting US troops in a foreign war. Biden cannot win with the Republican spin machine. If he is more of a "leader", more forceful, then he is a warmonger but if he acts in a measured and determined fashion, as he has, then he is "weak," at least per the Republican spin machine.
