Further below is a nice summary from Eugene (the gentleman who has been on my show a couple of times to talk about Ukraine and we will do another episode on that on May 24th). He posted it on Facebook and I am copying the whole thing in a completely unadulterated form.
To clarify a couple of things first though:
1) use of a russian term "лох". It basically means "sucker" and not in a fun "Hollywood after party" kind of way.
2) I keep on seeing all this indignation on the right about "we are sending $40B to Ukraine while we are suffering here in the US from "fill in the blank" Donald Trump Jr is all over social media with this stuff as are a bunch of other people. It is basically the populist right learning how to do world class sloganeering from the communist left. The basic idea is that if you say something stupid yet catchy often enough, noone is going to look into the details. Well, some of the details are below and, generally, by the US government standards, $40B is pocket change (which is a separate problem in its own right). Also, before you rush to blame the military industrial complex, evil Jews, neocons or whatever else is the enemy du jour on the alt-right, take a long hard look at your elected political leaders. Think long and hard about how any semblance of a moral compass ended up disqualifying you from being elected into office.
Here is Eugene's summary of the military aid situation:
I think what we are witnessing with respect to the Western help to Ukraine, using a technical term, can be best described as "развод лохов". Лохи in this case are not the Ukrainians, but 65% of Americans who support more sanctions and/or military aid to Ukraine.
Let’s start with unprecedented economic sanctions. They exist, but with many critical caveats. As everyone knows, the Russian government makes money selling oil and gas. Gas specifically is still being purchased and at record prices, so that Russia is actually running an unprecedented currency surplus. Most European countries made promises to stop or curtail purchasing by the end of the year. Which does not impact the situation today, and gives ample time to see how war plays out.
Frozen $640bn Russian funds offshore were still, until recently, accessible for the purposes of paying Russian debt. Which was yet another loophole allowing Russia and the West to make some money while pretending to be very decisive. After that loophole closed, in the beginning of May Russia was allowed to make a payment using its currency reserves. Next payment is coming-up on May 25th and the US treasury did not say if they will allow the next payment to happen or force Russia to go into a default.
Though sanctions do bite, by no means are those the “nuclear bomb of economic sanctions” on the Russian government. With oil and gas being the main sources of revenue for the government, sanctions on everything else has more impact on the Russian citizens than of the Russian state.
But what about billions of dollars of military aid that we have sent to Ukraine? According to the White House website close to $3.5 billion dollars in aid were disbursed and another $40 billion is on the way! Yee-haw!
First of all, is “almost $3.5 billion dollars” a lot or a little? To put this in perspective, over 20 years of war in Afghanistan the US was spending $290 million per day. This was a highly uneven conflict in terms of intensity, ranging from 710 KIA in 2010 to 0 in the latter years. However it is safe to say that at its worst, the conflict in Afghanistan was an order of magnitude less intensive than that we are seeing in Ukraine. So 75 days in Ukraine cost as much as 12 days of “kinda war” in Afghanistan.
Now, it is not fair to have to compare expenses 1-1. While I do not believe soldier salaries are included in the $290 million estimate, the cost of maintenance and other expenses are. Clearly, Ukrainian mechanics charge less for their maintenance. But still, US funding towards the war in Ukraine is more in line with our recent funding towards the operation in the Philippines ($2.6bn), which most of you have never heard of.
But wait, didn’t we deliver 90 M777 howitzers and 200 M113 APCs? That is something, but out of all of those numbers, perhaps a handful of M777 are currently in the theater. 90 M777s seem to have been delivered but need to undergo maintenance first (more about it later) and M113s are still “in the mail”.
It so happened that yesterday I was hanging out at Stanford with a bunch of former and current military officers. We had a good representation from all of the branches, ranks and specialties, including senior artillery officers. Subject of M777s came up. Based on the accounts of those present, M777 we sent were not the top shelf items – I was told that specifically the shipment from the National Guard “were all brown” (rusty) and would take significant maintenance to get into a working order and not clear how long they would last after. I imagine this is the same story with M113s, since those were not even used by the US military for the past 15 years.
Canada even sent a few thousand GPS guided Excalibur rounds for M777. The problem is that M777 come in two modifications – M777A1 and M777A2. The A1s are most of the ones that went to Ukraine and they cannot fire Excalibur rounds. Good job Canada!
So far $40bn allocated have been used by DoD to send to Ukraine equipment that they were planning to get rid of, and now can sell for a premium price to US congress.
The situation is further corroborated by Ukrainian servicemen and people who visited them that I had a chance to speak to; it is also seconded by USMC Col. Andy Milburn, former special operations command, who is actively working in Ukraine – Ukrainian soldiers are short of everything, and aside from Javelines, no presence of the US equipment is felt in Ukraine.
Not bad, but a little more width would help. The tripod is Field Optics Research's Dome Top Hunter 32.
Rather amazingly, the balance on this thing is just right as is.
