American support for Ukraine seems to be coming after all

“This is good news,” says defense specialist Peter Wijninga of the The Hague Center for Strategic Studies. According to Wijninga, the fact that no solution has been found so far has everything to do with the battle between Democrats and Republicans in view of the presidential elections, but now a ‘bipartisan’ alternative appears to have been found.

Hypocritical

Wijninga also calls withholding the funds hypocritical because 80 percent of those 61 billion euros flow back to the Americans. ‘That doesn’t even go to Ukraine. That is simply used to buy ammunition in American factories, so that money goes to American employers, to American workers and the American tax also receives a nice penny from it.’

Lend-Lease

Wijninga points out that taking money from the oligarchs is legally difficult, but that skimming the interest on those frozen assets is an option. There is also talk of a kind of Lend-Lease construction in which money and goods are lent to allies, similar to the US loans to Great Britain and Russia during World War II to fight the Germans.

Remission

These are loan structures that were subsequently canceled by the United States, but it is unlikely that Johnson will bring up that element of the deal now. ‘It may be a trick that Johnson is trying to use. In doing so, he can make it palatable for Trumpist Republicans to support this – because there is the prospect of repayment.’

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That 61 billion dollars is more than welcome in Ukraine, after all, things are difficult for Ukraine. The Russians have a numerical superiority, but this has been compensated in the past year by strong support from the West. That qualitative superiority has now disappeared somewhat, ‘and now that Russian quantitative advantage is starting to speak again’.

Defense in depth

Wijninga points out that Ukraine is anticipating this and is now diligently building defenses in depth that the Ukrainian armed forces can fall back on if they have to give up ground due to the acute lack of artillery ammunition. ‘Everything is being prepared for a long battle. If they cannot hold on due to the lack of foreign support, they will probably withdraw from those positions. That means they’re going to give up some land.”

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Havana syndrome

In the meantime, it is becoming increasingly clear that the so-called Havana syndrome that American and Canadian embassy staff in Cuba have been experiencing since 2016 is probably the result of ultrasonic warfare by the Russians. That year, a remarkably large number of employees at the American and Canadian embassies in the Cuban capital Havana reported illness with symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, hearing damage and, as it turned out, brain damage.

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The American secret service CIA then stated that this was not the result of the actions of a foreign power, but that the symptoms were stress-related. The term ‘Havana syndrome’ was coined and that seemed to be the end of the matter, research by a journalist collective now sheds a different light on the matter.

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Ultrasonic Warfare

‘Those journalists obtained documents from Russia, spoke to people, compared travel details of all kinds of figures involved. And guess what? Each time during these attacks in various places around the world, at the American and other Western embassies, members of the Russian secret service GRU were present. That was actually too coincidental.’

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It is therefore suspected that these Russians have experimented with ultrasonic equipment on foreign diplomats. “It’s scary,” says Wijninga, who points out that this took place in 2016, when there was no open war between the West and the Russians.