Biden Team Says US Wants to See Russia ‘Weakened,’ Proof of Proxy War?
Biden Team Says US Wants to See Russia ‘Weakened,’ Proof of Proxy War?
Top officials in the Biden administration seemed to make clear that a Ukrainian victory is not their top bucket-list item
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday that the U.S. hopes Russia will emerge from the Ukraine War as a “weakened” country that seems to give new weight to claims that Washington is fighting a proxy war with Moscow at the expense of Ukrainians.
The Trends Journal has reported extensively on the Russian invasion and the West’s decision to flood Ukraine with a record amount of weapons. Just last week, President Joe Biden announced another $800 million in military aid of Ukraine that will include a menu of heavy artillery weapons, dozens of howitzers, 144,000 rounds of ammunition, and tactical drones.
Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday and told reporters Monday that the U.S. wants to see “Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
He continued, "So it [Russia] has already lost a lot of military capability. And a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability."
He later tried to clarify his remarks on Twitter.
The Wall Street Journal wrote: While U.S. officials said Mr. Austin’s remarks didn’t reflect an administration policy shift, the comments demonstrated the evolution of the U.S. government’s thinking on what it ultimately sees as its endgame in the war.
PROXY WAR?
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said NATO is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine by providing the historic amount of weapons.
PUTIN ONCE WANTED TO JOIN NATO
“Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war,” he said, according to The Guardian. The paper said the top diplomat was asked about the possibility of WWIII and said, “I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.”
Fiona Edwards, a journalist, took to Twitter and posted about Austin’s comment.
“The US admits that its goal is to use the war in Ukraine to weaken Russia. This is a US-led proxy war - using the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder,” she wrote. “The war in Ukraine was not "unprovoked." It was deliberately provoked by the US’s aggression to expand NATO to Russia’s border.”
Video from March emerged that showed a Bloomberg interview with Leon Panetta, the former CIA head and defense secretary under President Obama.
Panetta said, “We are engaged in a conflict here. It’s a proxy war with Russia, whether we say so or not. I think the only way to basically deal with Putin right now is to double down on ourselves, which means to provide as much military aid as necessary.”
The Intercept wrote on 1 April: The White House smells Putin’s blood in the waters of his disastrous invasion. The flow of weapons, the sweeping sanctions, and other acts of economic warfare are ultimately aimed not just at defending Ukraine and making the regime pay for the invasion in the immediate present, but also setting in motion its downfall. “For god’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said during his recent visit to Poland. The White House sought to walk back the line and clarify that it did not constitute a change in policy but was merely an expression of the president’s righteous anger. The kerfuffle over what Biden really meant is less important than the very public actions of the U.S. and its allies.
WHO BLINKENS FIRST?
Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken meet in Poland to discuss the war.
Although Team Biden insists that Ukrainian forces are winning, there’s growing evidence against the claim. Even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, an outspoken critic of Putin’s, slipped last week and admitted that Russia could very well win the war.
Blinken apparently disagrees and said Moscow’s attempts to "subjugate Ukraine and take its independence" has "failed."
He said the world may not know what happens next in Ukraine, but “we do know that a sovereign independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.”
PUTIN SPEAKS
Russian President Vladimir Putin told a conference Monday that Western officials are coming to the realization that Moscow will not be defeated, so they are attempting to “achieve a different objective instead – to split Russian society, to destroy Russia from within. But here, too, there is a hitch; this hasn’t worked either,” according to RT.
TREND FORECAST: While President Biden bragged that the sanctions mean “Russian oil will no longer be acceptable at U.S. ports and the American people will deal another powerful blow to Putin’s war machine,” he did not mention that it is also dealing a powerful blow to the American people. The price for premium gas at a Los Angeles gas station hit $7.29 a gallon while regular-grade gas across the U.S. hit $4.17 per gallon.
Again, as we continue to note, the general public is only getting a one-sided view of the sanctions and mandates imposed against Russia, which we forecast will do nothing to alter Moscow’s military posture, but will cause great hardship for the people of the world.
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