Europe is at War With Russia, German Foreign Minister Baerbock Says
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Europe is at War With Russia, German Foreign Minister Baerbock Says
Gerald Celente has said for months that the world is at war, it is just not "official" until the first nuclear strike
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock admitted Wednesday that Europe is “at war with Russia” shortly after the U.S. announced it will provide Ukraine with its M1 Abrams tanks.
She made the comments during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. She said the EU must to more to defend Ukraine against Russia.
She said it was “crucial” that the countries are united and that there is no blame-game because “we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, after being accused of dragging his feet by Ukraine, officially announced that Berlin will send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and gave the green light to other countries to also send their German-made tanks.
Dmitry Kuleba, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and pitchman for more weapons, took aim at Scholz and suggested that he is a bashful dance partner.
“It’s always a similar pattern: first they say ‘no,’ then they fiercely defend their decision, only to say ‘yes,’ in the end,” he said. “We are still trying to understand why the German government is doing this to itself.”
Ukraine has said it will need 300 Western tanks to win the war and force Russian troops out of the country. Western officials noted that Ukrainian fighters have been using a fleet of Soviet-designed tanks.
Oleksii Reznikov, the Ukrainian defense minister, told Voice of America that Ukrainian forces will begin training in Europe on these tanks, which could take months. The U.S. could also take months to build these tanks, according to a report in The New York Times.
The paper wrote: Mr. Biden often says he has two goals: to liberate Ukraine and to avoid direct conflict between American and Russian forces. Increasingly, those two goals are in tension.
Biden told reporters that the tank shipment should not be viewed by Moscow as an “offensive threat.”
“This is not an offensive threat to Russia. There is no offensive threat to Russia if Russian troops return to Russia, where they belong,” he said, according to CNN.
Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, posted on Telegram: "If the United States decides to supply tanks, then justifying such a step with arguments about 'defensive weapons' will definitely not work.
"This would be another blatant provocation against the Russian Federation," he said, according to the BBC.
TRENDPOST: Two days before Russia launched its military campaign against Ukraine, as the 22 February Trends Journal cover illustrated, WWIII had begun.
President Joe Biden’s White House has been consistent with its public messaging: it will support Ukraine’s war effort as long as there are Ukrainians willing to fight, just don’t ask for U.S. or NATO troops to fight on Ukrainian soil.
However, there are U.S. personnel inside the country already. As we reported in The Trends Journal, the Pentagon has confirmed that U.S. troops are on the ground in Kyiv to conduct “on-site inspections to assess weapon stocks” and advise troops on how to use the weapons the U.S. sent to Ukraine.
An unknown number of CIA officers and special forces troops from the West are also there, according to reports.
Washington has tried to find workarounds in its support of Ukraine by providing intelligence, weapons training, firepower, and billions to keep Kyiv functioning.
Just weeks after the war broke out, Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, said it was Washington’s hope that Russia emerges “weaker” from the conflict. Biden also called for regime change inside the Kremlin, which was quickly walked back by his aides.
The Kremlin has said Washington is perfectly content with using Ukrainians as cannon-fodder to achieve its goals.
Moscow has warned Western countries that they will not be able to provide Ukraine with weapons to destroy Russian troops while sitting the conflict out. Russia has said it is willing to negotiate for peace, but will not consider ceding any territory it gained.
The West’s position has been that Russia has failed in its objectives since the beginning of the war—despite Moscow now controlling 20 percent of the country and an estimated 70 percent of Ukraine’s electric/water and other key infrastructure having been destroyed.
David Petraeus, the retired U.S. general, said in a recent interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried everything “that would be domestically palatable,” but “it’s not going well.”
Col. (ret.) Douglas MacGregor said Petraeus seems to be “divorced from reality.”
He said it seems Petraeus is “sort of punching his ticket as a member of the in-club with the status quo. And that’s the status quo that’s ruling us in Washington.”