Thanks to the fact-checkers at @USATODAY who have pointed out that this story is satire. We would like to retract it, as we now realize it is false and was entirely made up. pic.twitter.com/8sNv3aocqe
I don’t think that means what they seem to think it means.
🚨Pentagon nixes Polish plan to give MiG’s to Ukraine via Ramstein:
“departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance…simply not clear there is substantive rationale.” pic.twitter.com/DQv5MlUcvX
There is no, “we are controlling the airspace so don’t fly over Ukraine right now,” while sitting chatting about finding oil somewhere? You don’t think they would listen? What? Even if we asked nicely?
Vice President Kamala Harris has been criticized for breaking into laughter Thursday after she was asked whether the US will take in Ukrainian refugees……USA Today
Putin doesn’t even have to smell weakness …. It smacks everyone with half a brain right in the face. This behavior from our “leaders” only acts to embolden the enemy further and betray those in harms way 😢
But they can arm them, they already are sending some stuff, and could have maybe not cut off the aid and weapons Trump was sending them when Biden took over.
But they did cut aid and weapons, and here we are.
“As Russia mounted 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border in March, the White House and the Department of Defense readied a $100 million military assistance package that was frozen once President Joe Biden announced a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to reports.
The Russian troop buildup, allegedly for unannounced military exercises, coincided with smaller American exercises in the Black Sea region. A previous buildup in eastern Ukraine led to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and a protracted war that simmers seven years later. As Putin massed attack helicopters and aircraft on the eastern Ukrainian border, Biden and NATO leaders condemned Russia and called for a drawdown but made no public offers of military assistance. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urgently called for entry into NATO and the military weaponry his country lacks.
“Russia is not the entity that takes words seriously,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Washington Examiner at a June 3 meeting in Kyiv.
“If they see that the only reaction the West can offer is words, they will understand that their hands are untied to that,” he added when asked if he was disappointed that Biden had not offered military assistance in the face of Putin’s aggression. “They can do fairly aggressive actions against Ukraine and against other countries as well.”
OAN- Joe Biden is withholding military aid from Ukraine that had already been approved by Congress in the face of Russian military maneuvers at its borders.
Biden will reportedly provide only $125 million to Ukraine this year, although Congress has already approved a $275 million package. White House officials said $150 million of that aid will be withheld until Ukraine conducts the reforms that Biden is asking for.”
—
“President Trump gave Ukraine $415 million in 2019, which included lethal weapons that arguably deterred Russian forces from waging war at the time.”
Biden played with the safety of Ukraine before he was even elected. He did so as a Senator too. His playing games allowed what is going on now.
“In this clip from a January 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, former Vice President Joe Biden seems to brag about threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine as a pressure tactic to force the firing of a prosecutor he did not like.”
“So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him.
(Laughter.)
I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
“TUCKER CARLSON: If you had told us just four days ago that the Biden administration was funding secret bio labs in Ukraine of all places, we would not have believed you. Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to put that on TV. No thanks.
Then, if you told us that not only did the administration fund these secret bio labs in Ukraine, but that they then failed to secure the deadly contents of those labs before the Russian invasion—an invasion they knew was coming, an invasion they helped encourage—if you had told us that four days ago, we would have dismissed you as a nut. It was just too preposterous. We will not want anything to do with a story like that. There was no way it could be true. It was too far out. In any case, we already knew for a fact that that story was false. How do we know that? Because we read USA Today, America’s newspaper.
Within hours of the Russian invasion, USA Today published a rebuttal to all those crazies who were yammering on about secret Ukrainian bio labs. Here was the headline: “Fact check: False claim of US biolabs in Ukraine tied to Russian disinformation campaign.”
So, if you look carefully at the story—and we did because we were interested—you notice that this fact check was sourced to Ukrainian government unnamed officials and then Biden State Department officials. These were not exactly objective sources on this subject, but still the story seemed definitive. It was totally emphatic. “Russia has teamed up with China to further amplify the false claim of U.S. labs in Ukraine.”
OK. USA Today says it’s Russian disinformation. Maybe it is. On to the next story, but the fact checks didn’t stop. That was weird. We kept seeing the same check again and again. It was almost like despite endless official clarification, some people refused to believe the Biden administration. They preferred Russian propaganda instead and we assume they must be QAnon members. We assume that because Foreign Policy Magazine told us that. According to Foreign Policy, QAnon, whatever that is, was frantically disseminating “false claims of U.S. bio warfare labs in Ukraine.”
Those labs obviously didn’t exist. It was all just another lie from the Russians who lie for a living. Then the European Union… weighed in, throwing its credibility behind the same claim. These are conspiracy theories, the EU told us, they’re lies spread by Putin. An EU spokesmen then reminded us that, “the credibility of information provided by the Kremlin is in general, very doubtful and low.” That was good to know.
“Russian disinformation has a track record of promoting manipulative narratives about biological weapons and alleged secret labs.”
Yeah. We’re not going to do a segment about secret labs in Ukraine. Last thing we want to do on this show is traffic in Russian disinformation spread by QAnon, so we took a pass on that story. And that’s where things stood until yesterday when we happened to tune in to a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Toria Nuland was testifying so we were interested. Nuland was one of the people who brought us the Iraq War, never apologized for that and kept getting promoted because that’s how DC works. Toria Nuland is now Joe Biden’s Under Secretary of State in charge of Ukraine and she knows a lot about Ukraine.
In 2014, Toria Nuland engineered a coup in Ukraine in the name of democracy, of course. So, she is a highly informed source about Ukraine. So, she was having this colloquy with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida during her testimony, and at one point, Rubio took a tack that we were not expecting at all. He asked Nuland if Ukraine had biological weapons.
We never imagined Ukraine would have biological weapons. Why would Ukraine have bioweapons? So, it seemed like a pretty strange question, but it wasn’t half as shocking as the answer he got. Here’s what Toria Nuland said.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?
VICTORIA NULAND: Ukraine has a biological research facilities, which, In fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of. So, we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.
Does Ukraine have biological weapons? Ugh, Ukraine has biological research facilities. What? You mean secret bio labs like the secret bio labs that Ukraine definitely doesn’t have? Ukraine has those? Yes, it does. And not only does Ukraine have secret bio labs, Toria Nuland said, whatever they’re doing in those labs is so dangerous and so scary that she is, “quite concerned” that the so-called research material inside those bio labs might fall into the hands of Russian forces.
Try not to use profanity on the air to describe our reaction. Our jaws dropped, let’s leave it there. Under oath in an open committee hearing, Toria Nuland just confirmed that the Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.”
“As President Joe Biden’s administration finalizes the nuclear deal with Iran, Russia is pushing to use the agreement’s provisions to bypass U.S. and Western sections placed in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia is “insisting that its trade with Tehran be exempt from the destructive Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in response for invading its neighbor,” the U.S. journal Foreign Policy noted on Wednesday. “Moscow is seeking to use the Iran deal to shield itself from the full effect of Western sanctions,” the magazine added.
The fact that the deal negotiated by the Biden administration will allow Russians to use Iran as a “sanctions evasion hub” was confirmed by the chief Russian negotiator, Michael Ulyanov.
On Saturday, Richard Goldberg, senior advisor for the DC-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), said to Ulyanov on Twitter: “The deal you put together already guarantees Russia will have a sanctions evasion hub in Iran. You just want written assurances that the US will not impede that hub to embarrass the Biden administration and show Russia is not actually isolated.”
The top Russian negotiator agreed with the description of Iran as a future “sanctions evasion hub” for Kremlin, saying that this “interpretation of events is accurate.””
The Biden Administration is negotiating alongside Putin’s Russia and the Chinese Communist Party to revive the Iran Nuclear Deal. No deal is better than a very, very bad deal. pic.twitter.com/eIbFD44Flo
Wandering Views 
The most interesting news of all is on the WV front page.
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And the picture introduces the atmosphere.
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Just point and laugh.
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But no mean tweets….
That’s what’s important.
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Ally?
I don’t think that means what they seem to think it means.
-####
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You all understand, don’t you, that the US cannot control the airspace above Ukraine without joining a war?
LikeLiked by 1 person
There is no, “we are controlling the airspace so don’t fly over Ukraine right now,” while sitting chatting about finding oil somewhere? You don’t think they would listen? What? Even if we asked nicely?
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Maybe Ukraine should ask the Taliban for some of our old equipment.
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Vice President Kamala Harris has been criticized for breaking into laughter Thursday after she was asked whether the US will take in Ukrainian refugees……USA Today
Putin doesn’t even have to smell weakness …. It smacks everyone with half a brain right in the face. This behavior from our “leaders” only acts to embolden the enemy further and betray those in harms way 😢
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes Michelle, a no fly zone is not happening.
But they can arm them, they already are sending some stuff, and could have maybe not cut off the aid and weapons Trump was sending them when Biden took over.
But they did cut aid and weapons, and here we are.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Zelensky warned of all this when Biden cut aid in June 2021.
https://news.yahoo.com/biden-freezes-military-aid-ukraine-213600430.html
“As Russia mounted 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border in March, the White House and the Department of Defense readied a $100 million military assistance package that was frozen once President Joe Biden announced a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to reports.
The Russian troop buildup, allegedly for unannounced military exercises, coincided with smaller American exercises in the Black Sea region. A previous buildup in eastern Ukraine led to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and a protracted war that simmers seven years later. As Putin massed attack helicopters and aircraft on the eastern Ukrainian border, Biden and NATO leaders condemned Russia and called for a drawdown but made no public offers of military assistance. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urgently called for entry into NATO and the military weaponry his country lacks.
“Russia is not the entity that takes words seriously,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Washington Examiner at a June 3 meeting in Kyiv.
“If they see that the only reaction the West can offer is words, they will understand that their hands are untied to that,” he added when asked if he was disappointed that Biden had not offered military assistance in the face of Putin’s aggression. “They can do fairly aggressive actions against Ukraine and against other countries as well.”
——-
https://iotwreport.com/report-biden-withholds-150m-of-ukraine-aid-amid-tensions/
“This seems oddly familiar…
OAN- Joe Biden is withholding military aid from Ukraine that had already been approved by Congress in the face of Russian military maneuvers at its borders.
Biden will reportedly provide only $125 million to Ukraine this year, although Congress has already approved a $275 million package. White House officials said $150 million of that aid will be withheld until Ukraine conducts the reforms that Biden is asking for.”
—
“President Trump gave Ukraine $415 million in 2019, which included lethal weapons that arguably deterred Russian forces from waging war at the time.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Biden played with the safety of Ukraine before he was even elected. He did so as a Senator too. His playing games allowed what is going on now.
“In this clip from a January 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, former Vice President Joe Biden seems to brag about threatening to withhold military aid to Ukraine as a pressure tactic to force the firing of a prosecutor he did not like.”
“So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him.
(Laughter.)
I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
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Of course….
LikeLiked by 1 person
They learned nothing from Covid.
Once again those so-called crazy conspiracy theorists are correct.
—–
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/03/10/tucker_carlson_why_is_the_united_states_funding_biological_labs_in_ukraine_what_is_victoria_nuland_hiding.html
“TUCKER CARLSON: If you had told us just four days ago that the Biden administration was funding secret bio labs in Ukraine of all places, we would not have believed you. Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to put that on TV. No thanks.
Then, if you told us that not only did the administration fund these secret bio labs in Ukraine, but that they then failed to secure the deadly contents of those labs before the Russian invasion—an invasion they knew was coming, an invasion they helped encourage—if you had told us that four days ago, we would have dismissed you as a nut. It was just too preposterous. We will not want anything to do with a story like that. There was no way it could be true. It was too far out. In any case, we already knew for a fact that that story was false. How do we know that? Because we read USA Today, America’s newspaper.
Within hours of the Russian invasion, USA Today published a rebuttal to all those crazies who were yammering on about secret Ukrainian bio labs. Here was the headline: “Fact check: False claim of US biolabs in Ukraine tied to Russian disinformation campaign.”
So, if you look carefully at the story—and we did because we were interested—you notice that this fact check was sourced to Ukrainian government unnamed officials and then Biden State Department officials. These were not exactly objective sources on this subject, but still the story seemed definitive. It was totally emphatic. “Russia has teamed up with China to further amplify the false claim of U.S. labs in Ukraine.”
OK. USA Today says it’s Russian disinformation. Maybe it is. On to the next story, but the fact checks didn’t stop. That was weird. We kept seeing the same check again and again. It was almost like despite endless official clarification, some people refused to believe the Biden administration. They preferred Russian propaganda instead and we assume they must be QAnon members. We assume that because Foreign Policy Magazine told us that. According to Foreign Policy, QAnon, whatever that is, was frantically disseminating “false claims of U.S. bio warfare labs in Ukraine.”
Those labs obviously didn’t exist. It was all just another lie from the Russians who lie for a living. Then the European Union… weighed in, throwing its credibility behind the same claim. These are conspiracy theories, the EU told us, they’re lies spread by Putin. An EU spokesmen then reminded us that, “the credibility of information provided by the Kremlin is in general, very doubtful and low.” That was good to know.
“Russian disinformation has a track record of promoting manipulative narratives about biological weapons and alleged secret labs.”
Yeah. We’re not going to do a segment about secret labs in Ukraine. Last thing we want to do on this show is traffic in Russian disinformation spread by QAnon, so we took a pass on that story. And that’s where things stood until yesterday when we happened to tune in to a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Toria Nuland was testifying so we were interested. Nuland was one of the people who brought us the Iraq War, never apologized for that and kept getting promoted because that’s how DC works. Toria Nuland is now Joe Biden’s Under Secretary of State in charge of Ukraine and she knows a lot about Ukraine.
In 2014, Toria Nuland engineered a coup in Ukraine in the name of democracy, of course. So, she is a highly informed source about Ukraine. So, she was having this colloquy with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida during her testimony, and at one point, Rubio took a tack that we were not expecting at all. He asked Nuland if Ukraine had biological weapons.
We never imagined Ukraine would have biological weapons. Why would Ukraine have bioweapons? So, it seemed like a pretty strange question, but it wasn’t half as shocking as the answer he got. Here’s what Toria Nuland said.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO: Does Ukraine have chemical or biological weapons?
VICTORIA NULAND: Ukraine has a biological research facilities, which, In fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of. So, we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.
Does Ukraine have biological weapons? Ugh, Ukraine has biological research facilities. What? You mean secret bio labs like the secret bio labs that Ukraine definitely doesn’t have? Ukraine has those? Yes, it does. And not only does Ukraine have secret bio labs, Toria Nuland said, whatever they’re doing in those labs is so dangerous and so scary that she is, “quite concerned” that the so-called research material inside those bio labs might fall into the hands of Russian forces.
Try not to use profanity on the air to describe our reaction. Our jaws dropped, let’s leave it there. Under oath in an open committee hearing, Toria Nuland just confirmed that the Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
As was mentioned by Nancy above….
What is wrong with this woman?
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He’s so desperate to make a deal with Iran that he won’t dare upset Russia.
Pathetic.
“Russia Plans to Use Biden’s Iran Nuclear Deal as Shield Against Ukraine Sanctions
Biden’s nuke deal “guarantees Russia will have a sanctions evasion hub in Iran.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/russia-plans-to-use-bidens-iran-nuclear-deal-as-shield-against-ukraine-sanctions/
“As President Joe Biden’s administration finalizes the nuclear deal with Iran, Russia is pushing to use the agreement’s provisions to bypass U.S. and Western sections placed in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia is “insisting that its trade with Tehran be exempt from the destructive Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in response for invading its neighbor,” the U.S. journal Foreign Policy noted on Wednesday. “Moscow is seeking to use the Iran deal to shield itself from the full effect of Western sanctions,” the magazine added.
The fact that the deal negotiated by the Biden administration will allow Russians to use Iran as a “sanctions evasion hub” was confirmed by the chief Russian negotiator, Michael Ulyanov.
On Saturday, Richard Goldberg, senior advisor for the DC-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), said to Ulyanov on Twitter: “The deal you put together already guarantees Russia will have a sanctions evasion hub in Iran. You just want written assurances that the US will not impede that hub to embarrass the Biden administration and show Russia is not actually isolated.”
The top Russian negotiator agreed with the description of Iran as a future “sanctions evasion hub” for Kremlin, saying that this “interpretation of events is accurate.””
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