Trump's public statements on the quagmire are likely a form of negotiation. These people will continue to kill each other until some kind of negotiated peace is achieved. Wearing down the Russians is not exactly a new strategy.

Zelensky Says He'll Push For Trump To Receive 2026 Nobel If Ukraine Gets Tomahawk Missiles

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...ts-tomahawk-missiles

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukraine would nominate President Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize if he provides the country with Tomahawk missiles, a step that would mark a significant escalation of the proxy war and risk a major response from Russia. There's already anticipation for the 2026 prize.

Zelensky told reporters that he and Trump discussed the possibility of the US supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks, which are nuclear-capable and have a range of over 1,000 miles, during their recent meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

https://archive.ph/JHneP

more at links

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
Zelensky Says He'll Push For Trump To Receive 2026 Nobel If Ukraine Gets Tomahawk Missiles

Clown. Just shut up and go away.

quote:

Originally posted by fischtown7:
Ukraine said last week the Russians have recruited 20,000 Cubans and supposedly there are more North Koreans on the way.

Wolverines!

BTW, the thought of Zelensky with USA-made Tomahawks is disturbing.

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
Zelensky Says He'll Push For Trump To Receive 2026 Nobel If Ukraine Gets Tomahawk Missiles

Oh, get fucked.

Here's an idea: You make your own peace deal and ask Trump to push for you to get the 2026 Nobel, you dick.

Will the war in Ukraine end after the Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest?

https://weapons.substack.com/p...rue&utm_medium=email

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a lengthy phone conversation yesterday and agreed to meet in person in Budapest in an effort to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

The American president described the call as “very productive.” This suggests that behind the scenes, they have likely already found several points on which agreement may be possible.

Hungary’s long-standing and consistent diplomatic efforts appear to have come to fruition. The fact that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will negotiate in Budapest over ending the war in Ukraine has made it undeniable that Hungary has become an unavoidable actor in international politics.

In politics, there are rarely coincidences. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the very beginning of the Ukrainian conflict that this war could and should be ended not on the battlefield, but at the negotiating table. Despite the attempts by President Zelensky and his Western European allies to continue the fighting, it is hoped that the upcoming talks in the Hungarian capital will bring the conflict to a close.

As for the Ukrainian position, it should be noted that the Budapest summit will take place after the U.S. president receives his Ukrainian counterpart at the White House. Knowing Zelensky’s persistent and stubborn pro-war stance, it is difficult to predict the outcome of that meeting.

What seems clear, however, is that the strong American’s will to bring the war to an end cannot currently be broken.

The Hungarian daily Magyar Hírlap had already raised a question earlier, after the Sharm el-Sheikh summit — where Viktor Orbán was the sole representative of Central and Eastern Europe: What would be the long-term diplomatic outcome for Hungary of this major event? It was well known that the U.S. president is more of a businessman than a career politician; he never acts without a concrete plan.

It was no coincidence that Trump spoke in superlatives about the Hungarian prime minister before the entire world in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Hungary’s full-scale diplomatic “offensive” gained particular significance when Orbán, during Hungary’s EU presidency, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump, who was then preparing for the U.S. presidential election as the Republican nominee.

The outcome of the Budapest talks is impossible to predict. What is already known is that Moscow has consistently rejected an unconditional ceasefire, arguing that it would only give Kyiv time to strengthen its military position. The Kremlin will not back down from this stance; it seeks guarantees that it will not be attacked from behind again, as happened in late April 2022 after the Istanbul ceasefire agreement had already been signed.

At that time, both sides had agreed to a truce — but in early May, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in Kyiv and reportedly ordered Zelensky to continue the war. Another key topic certain to arise will be the future of the territories currently held by Russian forces.

Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula back in 2014 after a referendum, integrating it as part of its territory. Most of the Donbas region — between 70 and 90 percent — is now under Russian control.

Given the significant proportion of ethnic Russians living there and considering that Ukraine waged war against its own civilian population for years (which reportedly claimed around 14,000 lives),

Moscow is unlikely to make major concessions on this front. On the contrary, Russia will likely seek some form of international recognition for these territories.

If this happens, it will have serious domestic political consequences in Ukraine and will certainly raise questions about President Zelensky’s political future.

It is also worth recalling that despite the 1989 Malta Summit, where U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed that Moscow would not interfere in the social transformations of Eastern Europe in exchange for NATO refraining from expanding eastward, today almost every country in the region — including the three former Soviet Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — has joined NATO. Washington has responded to Russia’s objections by saying that no binding commitments were ever made. That may be true, but Moscow still viewed the outcome as a betrayal.

This issue is seen as a major obstacle to reaching an agreement by Stephen Bryen, a renowned military technology expert and former U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense under the Reagan administration. As he put it: “NATO’s presence poses a challenge for Moscow. Although the war is largely territorial in nature, NATO’s deep involvement — supplying weapons, intelligence, advisors, operators, and military strategy — deeply concerns Russia, which continues to view NATO as a strong hostile force.”

Nonetheless, the very fact that this meeting will take place is grounds for optimism. We do not know what is happening behind the scenes, but one thing is certain: neither side would enter into such talks unless there were already several issues on which some form of agreement could be reached.

I got a good laugh at Hegseth wearing the colors of the Russian flag on his tie. A good reminder and middle finger to Zelensky that our allegiances have changed. Zelensky genuinely thought he could butter up Trump, insulting his intelligence, and Trump would just hand him escalatory weapons.

Zelensky Presses Plan For 25 Patriot Batteries Using Frozen Russian Funds

President Zelensky got rejected on Tomahawks, but is now seeking to finalizing a deal to purchase 25 Patriot air defense systems, which the Ukrainian leader has described as a major step forward in strengthening the country's defenses against Russia's ongoing aerial assaults.

Zelensky has told reporters in fresh remarks that the agreement envisions the delivery of multiple systems each year over a period of several years. Additionally, key European partners are expected to grant Ukraine priority access to Patriot systems when they come off the production line.

What's more is that Zelensky wants to use Russian funds to buy the air defense missiles. "Speaking in Kyiv after talks with Trump and American weapons-makers, Zelenskyy said Ukraine needed 25 US Patriot anti-missile batteries and that Russia's frozen assets in the west should be used to buy them," The Guardian reports.

Ukraine's energy sites and electrical grid are getting pummeled by nightly Russian missile and drone assaults, which have resulted in forced rolling blackouts to keep the lights on as much as possible across the country, and all ahead of winter when resources tend to be at their most strained.

At the moment, President Trump is being widely accused in mainstream media of essentially selling out the Ukrainians and siding with Putin related to potential future terms of a peace settlement:

Behind the scenes, Trump had pushed Zelenskyy to give up swaths of territory to Russia, two people briefed on the discussion told Reuters. “Let it be cut the way it is,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. “It’s cut up right now,” he said, adding that you can “leave it the way it is right now”.

“They can negotiate something later on down the line,” he said. But for now, both sides of the conflict should “stop at the battle line – go home, stop fighting, stop killing people”.

This would indeed give Russia effective control of some 20% of Ukraine, and the idea is that the battle lines would be 'frozen' as a more comprehensive deal is hammered out.

It could be that Trump is finally getting realistic about the conflict - the Russians are not going to pack up and leave the battle lines, and territorial concessions are what will end the war, whether Kiev likes it or not.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...frozen-russian-funds

Flamingo missile sounds gay. Maybe Z is getting ready to go back to playing the piano with his penis. The next model may be the Flaming Flamingo.


Zelensky Touts Successful Test Of 'Flamingo', Homegrown Cruise Missile Which Can Hit Moscow

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...which-can-hit-moscow

Back in August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky boasted that his military no longer needed US 'permission' to conduct long-range strikes on Russian territory with missiles. This was given that Ukraine had been developing its own domestic designed and produced long-range missile. Zelensky at the time unveiled the 'Flamingo' cruise missile.

On Thursday Zelensky has announced a successful test the Flamingo, which can also be described a drone-missile capable of strike as as far as 3,000km (or over 1,860 miles) away.

Ukrainian media has touted that it is capable of delivering a nuclear tip, and that it can carry a warhead almost three times bigger than the US Tomahawk, however it is said to be less accurate in its targeting.

According to new details on the weapon by Ukrainian media:

The first test weapons have already been fired in combat.

According to Kyiv official statements, the missiles will soon be in mass production, and by mid-2026, Ukraine will have amassed a stockpile of weapons capable of hitting practically anything within 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) inside Russia with a half-ton conventional explosive warhead.

The replacement for the Kh-55 cruise missiles given up by Ukraine in the 1990s (Russia actually even fired a few back at Ukraine in 2022), per statements by Ukrainian President Zelensky and his staff, is called the Flamingo missile. (During development, the paint on a test copy reportedly accidentally turned pink. The paint issue was addressed, but the nickname stuck.)

Notably, this kind of range easily brings the Moscow area within striking distance. If Kiev decides to target the Russian capital with cruise missiles - this would likely cause Putin order that Kiev get pounded even harder.

Throughout well over three years of grinding war, the Russian military has still not directly targeted top-level government buildings in Kiev, or military and intelligence HQs there. That could all soon change.

The White House wants to see some kind of peace deal take effect before things escalate to that point - but the process is in shambles especially given Trump has this week pulled the trigger on new sanctions targeting Russian oil - and it remains that neither warring side appears in the mood for compromise. And given Russia has the clear battlefield momentum, it has little reason to back off Putin's maximal conditions, and the goals of his 'special military operation'.

Russia has no battlefield momentum. Everything they charge forward with gets destroyed, on the cheap. His untrained men either die or surrender. Oh sure, Ukraine is not without losses but they fight this considerably smarter than Russia. Putin for the time being launches long range stuff into Ukraine to kill and destroy everything but, let's not overlook the fact that Ukraine will not fight back dirty. They only target military junk, military based manufacturing, fuel storages and power grids. They need to take out the aircrafts which carry the long range missles and glide bombs. That f'n Kerch Straight bridge is still standing after 3 years. Some Russian citizens are starting to talk against Putin and his war. Everyone seems to care nothing of the survival of Ukraine because they ask for help. Here's my take, if we and President Trump are not going to back them, then get the hell out of this mess and let Europe stand up. Trump has waffled way too many times on this war. He is not God and needs not fix all the global problems. You can't fix it Mr. President. Further, there are more Putins to come and therein lies the future global issues. Nut case in N. Korea, Putin of Asia in China. X. I. Ping, that religious whack job in Iran and who the hell else. If we can't fix men like these, how in the hell will we ever fix global conflict ?

Yeah David, So Biden is your guy then. You liked him and him letting Ukraine and Russia get into this dust up on his so called watch and liked him handing over billions of US $ to the crooks in place in Ukraine. And keep it going and while their at let it blossom into an all out world war. Got it.

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Here's my take, if we and President Trump are not going to back them, then get the hell out of this mess and let Europe stand up. Trump has waffled way too many times on this war. He is not God and needs not fix all the global problems. You can't fix it Mr. President. Further, there are more Putins to come and therein lies the future global issues. Nut case in N. Korea, Putin of Asia in China. X. I. Ping, that religious whack job in Iran and who the hell else. If we can't fix men like these, how in the hell will we ever fix global conflict ?

I agree with some of what you said: this part,

"Here's my take, (snip) get the hell out of this mess and let Europe stand up."

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
Yeah David, So Biden is your guy then. You liked him and him letting Ukraine and Russia get into this dust up on his so called watch and liked him handing over billions of US $ to the crooks in place in Ukraine. And keep it going and while their at let it blossom into an all out world war. Got it.

You are allowed to be wrong on all accounts. Biden was dead from the neck up. I had no choice in the 350 billion spent like a kid buying candy, neither did any of us. President Trump just dealt out 40 billion to Argentina which none of us knew of or, had a say in. Just to recall here, it was Cream corn on a kotex from S. Carolina who stated, " We are with you all the way Ukraine, no matter what it takes ", and " As long as we are killing Russians, it's money well spent ". Pretty sure he has an R by his name. Then, Ukraine is not allowed to kill back non combatants in Putins cities ? But that mad man can destroy any populated areas he chooses in Ukraine ?

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Here's my take, if we and President Trump are not going to back them, then get the hell out of this mess and let Europe stand up. Trump has waffled way too many times on this war. He is not God and needs not fix all the global problems. You can't fix it Mr. President.

Yeah, we can't fix it. Get out!

DL, you are fooling no one. You can't have it both ways. It is always simple to smell out those that want Russia destroyed not matter water it cost's. Beating the Ukraine drum ain't gonna happen. Europe is going to get it pretty soon and they can have it. All of it.

I agree wcb, we can't fix it. But can the two little dictators be made to realize that it isn't in the best interest to continue? There is only one man who can do that. And I don't think he is going work at this much longer. Then it is all theirs and Europe's.

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Then, Ukraine is not allowed to kill back non combatants in Putins cities ? But that mad man can destroy any populated areas he chooses in Ukraine ?

Don't much give a slippery shit, Dave. It's not our problem. If Trump can get those two corrupt fucks to put down their guns, hey great. If not? Well, we need to back out of it let them figure it out on their own without giving Ukraine another cent or ounce of military hardware or munitions.

Smudge nails it again.

Those turds are like - and probably are - drug addicts. As we all know, an addict will not change his ways unless and until he wants to change, and neither show any sign of it. Wash our hands of them yesterday.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Then, Ukraine is not allowed to kill back non combatants in Putins cities ? But that mad man can destroy any populated areas he chooses in Ukraine ?

Don't much give a slippery shit, Dave. It's not our problem. If Trump can get those two corrupt fucks to put down their guns, hey great. If not? Well, we need to back out of it let them figure it out on their own without giving Ukraine another cent or ounce of military hardware or munitions.

I actually agree with you on this. However, it is our President who boasts of giving them Javalins. Russia, started this War. They cannot win against Ukraine if someone helps Ukraine to fight back. Russia hasn't won anything in over 3 years. 1.4 million dead and injured Russians alone. The number is likely 2 million total with Ukrainian losses. Now we will be selling weapons to Europe to give to Ukraine. I am fine with this but, Putin is trying to keep us involved. He states Storm Shadow missles which aren't even ours, have US components in them. Therefore we are involved ? Horse shit. That little germ wants nothing but to pop off nukes against someone. He wants a win to stay alive in his country. How is it that this little mad man is worth half the destruction he alone has caused ?

It all Trumps fault, blah, blah, blah. Horseshit.
Follow the money.

Zelensky has wiped out a whole generation of young men. For what? Mostly to enrich himself and his cronies off the backs of Americans.