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‘What’s The Problem?’: Zelenskyy Says NATO Needs To ‘Shoot Down’ Russian Missiles In Ukraine’s Airspace

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By JAKE SMITH

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday in an interview with The New York Times that member states of the NATO alliance need to step up their involvement in Kyiv’s ongoing war against Russia.

NATO, a transatlantic defense alliance comprised of European Union (EU) nations and the United States, has provided military aid to Ukraine’s ongoing fight against Russia but has thus far refrained from getting directly involved in the conflict. Zelenskyy bemoaned during his interview on Tuesday NATO’s resistance to providing more direct support in the conflict and said the alliance needs to start shooting down Russian missiles flying inside Ukrainian airspace.

Zelenskyy claimed that NATO wouldn’t be at risk of getting into a combat scenario with Russia, because any alliance involvement would be purely defensive, according to the Times.

“What’s the problem? Why can’t we shoot them down? Is it defense? Yes. Is it an attack on Russia? No. Are you shooting down Russian planes and killing Russian pilots? No. So what’s the issue with involving NATO countries in the war? There is no such issue,” Zelenskyy told the Times on Tuesday. “Shoot down what’s in the sky over Ukraine. And give us the weapons to use against Russian forces on the borders.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed that he does not wish for conflict with NATO but is ready for it, should the alliance choose to intervene directly in the war.

“Everything is possible in the modern world,” Putin told reporters in March, when asked about the possibility of a conflict between NATO and Russia. “It is clear to everyone, that this will be one step away from a full-scale World War Three. I think hardly anyone is interested in this.”

Moscow has gone as far as to raise the specter of nuclear war if NATO members choose to send troops into Ukraine to fight on Kyiv’s behalf, a possibility previously raised by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Zelenskyy also urged NATO Tuesday to send more military aid to bolster Ukraine’s defense against Russian advances. Russia has gained ground in recent months in key locations along the northeastern theater of the war, including the city of Avdiivka and regions near Donetsk and Kharkiv.

“Can we get seven?” Zelenskyy said, referring to Patriot air defense systems, telling the Times that Ukraine needed more than that number but would make do with what was available to protect key regions. He suggested an agreement might be reached during the NATO summit in July.

“Do you think it is too much for the NATO anniversary summit in Washington? For a country that is fighting for freedom and democracy around the world today?” Zelenskyy told the Times.

The U.S. recently approved a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine, including $14 billion for the direct purchase of weapons and munitions and $23 billion for replenishing the U.S.’ weapons stockpile, which can be transferred to foreign allies through the presidential drawdown authority.

Defense experts and former U.S. officials previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that even with additional aid, Ukraine may not be any closer to achieving victory. Ukraine has suffered heavy manpower and armament losses as Russia’s military has resurged to full capacity.

“I think there’s not enough money available, either in this bill or in a much larger one, to help Ukraine achieve their goals of retaking all their territory or even go on offense in a sustained way,” Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, previously told the DCNF. “So in a sense, moving forward is beyond their grasp, even if we give them a lot more weapons.”

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Boris Johnson lobbies Trump at RNC to back down from peace talks on Ukraine

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From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

The former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a flying visit to the Republican National Conference this week, in a mission to persuade Donald Trump to continue the war in Ukraine.

Pictured with Trump on Tuesday, Johnson said he had spoken to Trump about Ukraine, adding, “I have no doubt that he [Trump] will be strong and decisive in supporting that country and defending democracy.”

With Trump, his vice president pick JD Vance, and even Senator Lindsey Graham calling for an end to the proxy war against Russia, Johnson is making a second attempt to sabotage a realistic peace in Ukraine.

Johnson’s war record

Boris Johnson has used the war in Ukraine to cement a legacy for himself as a sort of latter-day Winston Churchill. Mere weeks after Russia’s invasion, he made another flying visit – this time to Kiev.

The reason for his unscheduled arrival in the office of the then-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky was that a peace deal had been agreed between Ukraine and Russia.

Brokered in Istanbul, Turkey, its existence was confirmed by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was party to the negotiations.

It was Johnson who urged Zelensky to throw this peace deal in the garbage, giving assurances that the U.K., U.S., NATO, and the EU would back Ukraine to victory in the war instead.

That would have completely ended the credibility of Ukrainian and Western propaganda that Russia was planning to conquer Ukraine and then further expand its empire into more of the former Soviet Empire slave states.

However peace comes now, it is unlikely to be agreed on the generous terms rejected by the sudden, last-minute intervention by Boris Johnson, who hosted the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in the U.K. Parliament in May. It is a strange “Churchill” indeed who waves a flag inspired by the Waffen-SS.

Ukraine – ‘functionally destroyed’

Johnson is responsible instead for a policy which has seen Ukraine “functionally destroyed as a country,” as JD Vance said in December 2023. The likely future U.S. vice president noted the terrible losses and declining population of Ukraine, saying, “The average age of a soldier in the Ukrainian army right now is 43.”

Pointing out the futility of continuing to send money to Ukraine, Vance sensibly asked, “What is 61 billion dollars [more] going to accomplish that a hundred billion hasn’t?”

His announcement as Trump’s VP pick, along with Trump’s miraculous survival of Saturday’s assassination attempt, has proven doubly alarming to all those whose futures are staked on that of Project Ukraine.

The end times

There can be no surer sign of the end times – whether for Ukraine or more generally – than career warmonger Lindsey Graham calling for peace.

In remarks which will likely ruin Boris Johnson’s day, Politico reported on July 17 that the childless senator had begun to echo the Trump/Vance line to stop the war in Ukraine.

“I want to end this war in Ukraine, and it’s going to be a diplomatic solution,” said Graham, adding “it’s going to take a guy like President Trump to bring this war to an end honorably.”

Graham echoed the emerging, if limited, realist viewpoint of Trump and Vance, repeating the charge that neither NATO nor Europe have been meeting the costs of their own security arrangement.

That has been paid for by the U.S., and according to Graham, that too must end. “NATO needs to pay more,” he said, recalling Vance’s speech in April in which he charged Europe of “failing to stand on its own two feet.”

The massive cost of providing the security umbrella through NATO to Europe is one reason for a revision of U.S.-European security policy. Downstream of this is the urgent need for Europe – including the U.K. – to rediscover the art of diplomacy.

Politicians such as Boris Johnson face humiliation in any peace deal with the Russians. The German and French leadership, and that of the EU itself together with many member nations, have all been totally committed to humiliating, weakening, and breaking up Russia, the regime change removal of its president, and the total victory of Ukraine. None of these goals were ever remotely realistic.

The German government has sought to criminalize the anti-war AfD, which was the second most popular party in Germany in the recent EU elections.

READ: Germany’s vice chancellor refuses to rule out criminalizing anti-globalist AfD party

Its finance minister Robert Habeck admitted, amidst a domestic financial crisis, that he had sent all the money to Ukraine.

France’s Emmanuel Macron has made reckless statements promising to send French troops to fight Russia, and the outgoing foreign minister of the U.K. David Cameron privately admitted in late June that the British pro-Ukraine war position was “fixed” and would not change with the election of a Labour government.

Cameron was right. It has not changed. On July 10 it was reported that the new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised Ukraine £3 billion a year ($3.88 billion) “for as long as it takes.”

EU Chief Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen has consistently called for the ousting of Valdimir Putin and for the war to continue. She famously stated in September 2022 that “Putin will fail and Ukraine and Europe will prevail.”

Staking the political future of Europe on the impossible goal of Ukrainian victory was a reckless and unforced error, which lent an air of gravitas to a political class bereft of sane initiative.

The EU has recently selected a second pantsuited militant as its chief diplomat. Kaja Kallas, former leader of the tiny Baltic state of Estonia, called for the breakup of Russia mere weeks ago, and pledged support for “Ukraine’s victory” at last week’s NATO summit.

Kallas’ statement of 2022, reported in the U.K.’s pro-war Daily Telegraph

Europe has lost the art of diplomacy, and its leaders stand to lose all credibility as their Ukrainian war ends. This war made them appear serious, albeit serious about a delusion which promised only more death, and the dangerous potential of escalation to all out nuclear war.

To be faced with reality for these people is to be faced with political extinction. Relations with Russia will be normalized, as in the real world neither Russia nor Europe can hope for much of a future in the absence of resumed diplomatic and energy links.

It seems strange to say it, but these are strange times. The political leadership of pro-Ukraine Europe is fighting for its life to prolong a war that will risk the lives of everyone else. It is implacably opposed to peace, as this means political suicide.

Like their counterpart in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, these are politicians for whom peace spells doom. It is for this reason they will do anything in their power to prevent peace breaking out.

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Israel Dropped 8 Tons Of Explosives, Killing Dozens Of Civilians In Bid To Kill Hamas Leader

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Palestinians react at the site of a damaged house that was hit in Israeli bombardment on Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 16, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By ROBERT SCHMAD

 

After years of hunting a top Hamas terrorist, Israeli forces dropped a massive payload of bombs on his suspected location Saturday and killed a large number of civilians in the process, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Israeli air force dropped the eight 2,000-pound bombs on a compound in southern Gaza in an attempt to kill Hamas’ top military leader, Mohammed Deif, killing dozens of civilians in the process, according to the WSJ. Israel had tried and failed seven times to kill Deif prior to its most recent attack, and, though military officials are still investigating the bomb site, they are confident Deif is dead.

“I witnessed some of the most horrific scenes I have seen in my nine months in Gaza,” Scott Anderson, Gaza-based director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, told the WSJ. Gaza health authorities, which are controlled by Hamas and typically don’t distinguish between civilian and military casualties, say that more than 90 people were killed and 300 were wounded in the bombing, including women and children.

Israeli officials claim they killed several Hamas members in the strike, the WSJ reported. Hamas denies that Dief died in the bombing. (RELATED: IDF Claims Over 100 Hamas Fighters Killed After Wrapping Up Operation In Terrorist Stronghold)

Israeli officials believe Deif was a major player in orchestrating the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that killed 1,200 people in Israel, according to the WSJ.

The area surrounding the compound was home to a market, a water source and a soup kitchen serving refugees, according to the WSJ. Israeli forces acknowledged that the area they bombed was inhabited by civilians, though they blamed the casualties on Hamas for hiding among the people.

President Joe Biden froze the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May over concerns about the collateral damage they can cause, though the United States is still sending 500-pound bombs, The Times of Israel reported. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN in an interview, referring to the 2,000-pound munitions.

Mahmoud Abu Amer, who was roughly 100 yards away from the bomb site, described the explosion as “like a fiery belt” and said that he “saw people falling in front of me,” according to the WSJ.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. The Israeli Defense Forces referred the DCNF to the nation’s public diplomacy desk, which also did not return a request for comment.

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