“US State Secretary arrives in Kyiv for two-day visit, brings US$1 billion”, Ukrainska Pravda writes. Russia claims to have destroyed the first British Challenger tank ever on the battlefield.
.@SecBlinken will meet with Ukrainian officials, including President @ZelenskyyUa, Prime Minister @Denys_Shmyhal, and Foreign Minister @DmytroKuleba to address Ukraine’s energy, security, and humanitarian needs. We remain united with Ukraine. https://t.co/pvmhrj2YN1
— Matthew Miller (@StateDeptSpox) September 6, 2023
“During his two-day visit, which will see Blinken stay overnight in Ukraine for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, he is likely to announce a new US aid package worth over US$1 billion, a senior State Department official said during a press briefing on the trip”, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
Returned to Kyiv today to meet with our Ukrainian partners to discuss their ongoing counteroffensive, future assistance and reconstruction efforts, and above all, to reinforce the unwavering U.S. commitment to Ukraine.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) September 6, 2023
Blinken will meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba, and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, The Guardian reports.
Today I completed my tenure as the Minister of Defense of Ukraine.
I’m grateful to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy @ZelenskyyUa, who proposed my candidacy for this office, and to our Parliament, @verkhovna_rada which confirmed it 22 months ago.
I’m grateful to my colleagues in the… pic.twitter.com/48Yli1vhlG— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) September 5, 2023
On the weekend, Zelensky fired Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov over corruption charges, replacing him with Crimean Tartar Rustem Umerov, in a move Jack Posobiec interpreted as designed to justify an attack on primarily Russian-speaking Crimea: “Noticed yesterday an astroturfed ‘Crimean Tatar/Ukrainian activist’ popped up on Twitter, now Zelensky appoints a Crimean Tatar as the new head of the Ukrainian MOD. NATO has found the token ‘oppressed group’ to ‘liberate’ in the upcoming ‘intervention’”, Posobiec wrote.
Noticed yesterday an astroturfed ‘Crimean Tatar/Ukrainian activist’ popped up on Twitter, now Zelensky appoints a Crimean Tatar as the new head of the Ukrainian MOD
NATO has found the token ‘oppressed group’ to ‘liberate’ in the upcoming ‘intervention’
Wash, rinse, repeat
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 5, 2023
By sacking Reznikov, “Zelensky is showing paranoia and desperation,” writes Egyptian observer Ahmed Adel, “as reports emerge that Ukraine is preparing for another counteroffensive using students, factory workers and overage men. Ukraine has suffered from corruption scandals in the military, recruitment problems, failures at the front, and doubts about sustained Western military support,” Adel writes.
A video on Twitter seemed to show the first British Challenger 2 tank destroyed in combat. The tank was filmed from a car trying to flee the fighting, presumably on the southern Zaporizhzhia front outside of Robotyne, which has seen the most intense fighting in recent days. The video source claimed the destroyed Challenger 2 tank most likely belonged to the elite Ukrainian 82nd Air Assault Brigade.
Destroyed Ukrainian Challenger 2 outside of Robotyne, most likely from the 82nd Air Assault Brigade. pic.twitter.com/KInjnmfs4F
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 5, 2023
‼️🚨 Journalist: “Will you send another one?”
Shapps: “No”-> Secretary of State for Defence confirms the loss of a Challenger 2.
PS: Crew of 6? pic.twitter.com/FKidQcgFWu
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) September 6, 2023
UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed on Wednesday that a Challenger 2 had been destroyed by Russian forces, saying that London is not going to send a new tank as a replacement. “We gifted 14 of these Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. We accept that in the war zone, there can be material losses,” Shapps said.
On Sept. 3, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense posted a video of a soldier lauding the Challenger 2, saying that “We could use a few more companies in Ukraine… Russian tanks would be too scared to come out.”
“A sniper rifle among tanks” – A Ukrainian tanker shares impressions of using a British Challenger 2 tank in battle. – “We could use a few more companies in Ukraine… russian tanks would be too scared to come out.” pic.twitter.com/18tcMMIRuj
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 3, 2023
According to Forbes, five of Ukraine’s Leopard 2 tanks have been destroyed during the ongoing counteroffensive. Russia has claimed as many as 25 Leopard 2 tanks destroyed, but many may have been damaged and repaired, as Ukraine claims.
The Law of Leopard Conservation.
The number of destroyed Leopards in the russian ministry of defense’s daily reports does is not correlated in any way to the number of Leopard 2A4 tanks in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.🎥 33rd Mechanized Brigade pic.twitter.com/HCUIOii7Nj
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 2, 2023
Writing on Russia Today, Russian military analyst Ilya Kramnik criticized that “the Ukrainian counteroffensive was launched with a clear lack of artillery, tanks, and particularly engineering equipment, despite the fact that NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Christopher Cavoli declared that Ukrainian troops were fully equipped.“
How US-made Bradley Fighting Vehicles are helping #Ukraine‘s southern offensive & its advance down “the road to hell”. “I’ve been serving since 2014 and I’ve never encountered such minefields anywhere. Just hectares of them, to the left and to the right.” https://t.co/RCMl9l4DBD pic.twitter.com/nEJQ60q4qf
— Glasnost Gone (@GlasnostGone) September 6, 2023
In the face of $100 billion in Western arms for Ukraine, Kramnik claims that “Soviet-made military equipment, or Eastern European equipment produced under a Soviet license, has turned out to be the most effective for Ukraine’s army. Soviet tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and other equipment that does not require special training, maintenance, infrastructure, and ammunition can be put into battle immediately, and its combat readiness level is higher compared to Western models that need to be incorporated into the new environment.“
The ball is now “in Russia’s court,“ Kramnik believes. “It depends on Russia how well this opportunity is used. It is quite likely that the initiative to transfer Western fighter jets to Ukraine will be quietly abandoned, since the AFU (Ukrainian Army) will no longer be able to use them. Russia knows full well that this is the case. In theory, this state of affairs should increase the willingness of the US to negotiate, although the upcoming election season will greatly complicate any potential talks. So, unless something extraordinary happens, the West will most likely continue to support the Ukrainian armed forces to the extent necessary to continue resistance. This means Ukraine will not have enough equipment and weapons to launch a large-scale new counteroffensive unless the US decides to share its weapons arsenals.”
Real heroes defend our country.
Let us always remember their daily sacrifice. pic.twitter.com/gq574UuPKZ— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) September 5, 2023
US Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy believes the Biden Regime’s claims that all aid to Ukraine is being carefully tracked are false:
“Zelensky’s veiled threat to forgo democratic elections in Ukraine unless the American people foot the bill and cough up another $135 million in funding represents a new level of extortion of the United States. Our nation is being duped by a leader in Ukraine willing to sacrifice his own nation’s credibility as a “democracy” in a gambit to secure even more money from U.S. taxpayers. This is wrong,” Ramaswamy wrote on Twitter.
Zelensky’s veiled threat to forgo democratic elections in Ukraine unless the American people foot the bill and cough up another $135 million in funding represents a new level of extortion of the United States. Our nation is being duped by a leader in Ukraine willing to sacrifice…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) September 5, 2023
“Vladimir Putin has acted in a craven manner, but that shouldn’t trick the U.S. establishment into adopting the false narrative that Zelensky is a paragon of democratic leadership. He is not. In a span of just two years, Zelensky has made moves that bear a striking resemblance to the tactics employed by Vladimir Putin: Zelensky’s actions include the banning of 11 opposition parties and the consolidation of all state media into a single entity. These actions not only mirror Putin’s refusal to register opposition parties but also extensive government control over the media landscape.
We have more than fulfilled U.S. commitments to Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, even as we have badly violated James Baker’s February 1990 “Not One Inch” commitment to the Soviet Union’s then-President Mikhail Gorbachev about limiting NATO expansion.
We will be Uncle Sucker no more. With over $135 billion in funding already provided, Ukraine should easily be able to allocate 0.1 percent of that to pay for their election. Of course, the mainstream media and the establishment will say that any money the U.S. sends to support Ukraine is strictly “itemized and audited” so that it can’t be used that way. This is a joke funnier than any Zelensky could have written in his prior career as a comedian. Don’t forget that in June, the Pentagon itself discovered an “accounting error” that artificially created an extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine without Congressional approval. The notion that all money and military equipment being sent to Ukraine is being carefully tracked is deeply dishonest. Americans deserve the TRUTH,” Ramaswamy wrote.
Ramaswamy blasts Zelenskyy’s ‘ballot box shakedown’ amid request for US to help fund Ukraine’s election https://t.co/LrzyT97fiT
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) September 5, 2023
Speaking at the Kiev Security Forum with former CIA Director General David Petraeus onTuesday, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council head Aleksey Danilov argued that “World War III has already begun”.
“If somebody thinks that World War III hasn’t started then it’s a huge mistake. It has already begun. It had been underway in a hybrid period for some time and has now entered an active phase,” Danilov said.
