Wednesday, June 7, 2023

The Dallas Express 6/7/2023



Ukraine Counteroffensive May Have Begun
By Andrew Afifian - Staff Writer


Ukraine may have begun its much-anticipated counteroffensive just in time, as cracks are beginning to show in the Republican and Democrat united front backing Ukraine in its war with Russia.

In a foreshadowing of the counterattack and what its proponents hope it will accomplish, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told Fareed Zakaria on CNN this weekend, “We do believe that this counteroffensive will allow Ukraine to take strategically significant territory back from Russia.”

Heavy Ukrainian artillery strikes and military maneuvers have been taking place across the Russian front in an effort to make advances where the battle lines have been static for months, reported The New York Times.

The Dallas Express spoke with Douglas Macgregor, retired Army colonel and former senior advisor to the secretary of defense under former President Trump, about his impressions of this latest Ukranian military activity. Macgregor said that if this is the heralded counteroffensive, it is “a very weak counteroffensive.”

Macgregor speculated that these maneuvers could instead be “probing operations” intended to reveal weak points within the Russian defenses in preparation for a larger offensive. He warned that Russian defensive units have been known to pull back from advancing Ukrainian forces to lure them into “mass precision fire” traps.

In a sign that conservative support for the U.S.’s continued involvement in the conflict may be waning, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy unveiled a plan last week to end the war to prevent Russia and China from forming an alliance that the tech-entrepreneur-turned-politician believes would “outmatch the U.S. in every area of great power competition.”

A poll taken in May indicates that popular support for U.S. sanctions against Russia fell from 71% a year ago to 58%, which may be caused by the public increasingly associating the economic war with Russia with inflation on the homefront, reported PBS News Hour. The poll, conducted by the NORC at the University of Chicago, found Democrats are much more supportive of the U.S. taking a major role in the war than Republicans (38% vs 19%).

According to Ramaswamy’s plan, the U.S. would stop supporting Ukraine with military assistance and would cease efforts to bring the country into NATO. In exchange for the cease-fire and normalized relations, Russia would be expected to withdraw all forces from Ukraine, stop military cooperation with China, and withdraw its nuclear weapons away from areas where they would be a “threat to the U.S. and Europe.”

During a CNN-moderated town hall in May, Republican front-runner former President Donald Trump refused to pledge his steadfast allegiance to a Ukraine victory, unlike other Republican leaders including Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Instead, he made bringing the conflict to an end his focus.

“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

Steak for Breakfast Podcast 6/6/2023 Audio Only


Ukraine-Russia Update with Colonel Macgregor

Monday, June 5, 2023

The Dallas Express 6/4/2023





Kosovo Flashpoint Portends Expanded Wars
By Andrew Afifian - Staff Writer
Jun 4, 2023



The smoldering embers of the all-out war that spelled the end of Yugoslavia in the 1990s are threatening to erupt once again as the Kosovo government makes dangerous moves to consolidate power in areas where ethnic Serbs predominate.

The U.S. State Department released a statement that appeared to lay initial blame on Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti for using force to place ethnic Albanian mayors in Serb majority areas after ethnic Serbs boycotted elections. International observers also questioned the legitimacy of those elections, per The Wall Street Journal.

As a result of the move by Kurti, there have been violent clashes between Serb protesters and local police in northern Kosovo. Serbs have borne the brunt of the casualties, with more than 50 reported injured and several arrests.

The clashes have pulled NATO-led peacekeepers into the fray, resulting in injuries to some NATO troops and prompting the State Department to warn President Vucic of Serbia to lower tensions by standing down his own armed forces.

French President Emmanuel Macron also laid the blame for the clashes on Kosovo, stating on Wednesday, “It is very clear that Kosovar authorities bear responsibility for the current situation, and there is noncompliance with an agreement that was nevertheless important, and which was secured just a couple of weeks ago,” per the WSJ.

Retired Army Colonel and former senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Trump, Douglas Macgregor, spoke with The Dallas Express and provided his insight into the situation. Col. Macgregor believes that the part of Kosovo that is populated by ethnic Serbs and is the current flashpoint should have been partitioned and united with Serbia years ago, but this outcome was prevented by U.S. intervention. Macgregor noted that the U.S. flew bombers over Bosnia Tuesday, which he believes was a “signal to the Serbs, ‘get on board or we will bomb you again,’ effectively.”

The breakup of Yugoslavia culminated with a 1999 war for the territory making up modern Kosovo between ethnic Serbs, most of whom identify as Christian, and ethnic Albanians who are Muslim. NATO backed Kosovo in the war and bombed Serbia into capitulation. However, Serbia, Russia, China, and some other nations still do not recognize Kosovo’s independence.

Though Colonel Macgregor was critical of U.S. policy towards Serbia, he had a positive response to the State Department’s statement for “frankly telling the truth” and called it an “intelligent statement.”

The clash comes at a time when the United States and Europe have concerns that tensions from the Ukraine war could spill over into neighboring countries and possibly the rest of Europe. The crisis in Kosovo is validating such fears.


Sunday, June 4, 2023

Glenn Diesen 6/2/2023

 
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Russia is going on the offensive





The Charlie Kirk Show 6/1/2023



Douglas Macgregor describes the many, many parts of the defense budgets Americans could cut to help achieve fiscal sanity.