Page 72 - Proxy War News Today

Ukrainian officials announced on Monday that the first batch of the 31 promised M1 Abrams main battle tanks had arrived in the country. What tools does Russia have at its disposal to dispatch with the American-made armor? Sputnik has details you’re unlikely to find anywhere else.

Ukraine’s NATO-backed armed forces have faced overwhelming Russian air superiority across the 1,000 km frontline of the special operation zone. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, some 473 Ukrainian fixed wing aircraft and 249 helicopters have been knocked out to date, with the country’s pre-escalation air force almost completely destroyed.

The escalation of the Donbass crisis into a full-blown NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine last year has turned much of the country into a lawless battleground, with thousands of foreigners flooding into Ukraine looking for a payday, out of a misplaced desire to “fight for freedom,” or simply seeking to “kill Russians.”

The United States approved some $113 billion toward military, economic and humanitarian aid to Ukraine in 2022 alone, with total Western support approaching $175 billion by May of 2023. Some analysts expect reconstruction expenditures to top $600 billion even if the fighting stopped immediately.

Ignoring repeated Russian warnings about the escalatory dangers linked with the delivery of more and more advanced weapons to Ukraine, Washington and its allies have moved in recent months to provide Kiev with long-range cruise missiles, cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions.

The Biden administration is reportedly on the verge of approving the delivery of ultra-long-range ATACMS or GMLRS missiles to Ukraine, with their deployment expected to enable to Kiev to strike deep into the Russian hinterland. Scott Ritter has a simple theory about why the White House is pursuing such a dangerous march up the escalation ladder.

The sanctions heaped on Moscow in the wake of the Wests orchestrated proxy war in Ukraine have morphed into repression of the individual freedoms of innocent Russians traveling to the EU.

All thirty-one NATO countries plus Sweden are reportedly gearing up to conduct the bloc’s biggest military drills since the Cold War in early 2024. Sputnik reached out to Michael Maloof, a former security policy analyst with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to get a sense of the risks posed by the drills.

After training up reserves and taking delivery of tens of billions of dollars in advanced NATO hardware, Ukraine began a massive summer counteroffensive aimed at dislodging Russian forces from the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye. The counteroffensive has bogged down, with Russia reporting staggering Ukrainian losses in manpower and equipment.

Britain sparked an international outcry earlier this year when officials revealed that the Challenger 2 tanks sent to Ukraine would be equipped with depleted uranium (DU) shells. The US is now expected to follow suit with DU rounds for Ukraine’s Abrams. A Russian military observer explains why the toxic arms won’t change the situation at the front.