Austin Elliot writes, “Gonzalo Lira is a Chilean-American living in the Ukraine for years now, with a Ukrainian wife and with their children. His businesses took him all over the Ukraine, as well as equipping him with a wide array of contacts.
He had been in Kyiv on the first two days of the Special Military Operation, and his reports then and since have been insightful, accurate, and unmatched, nearly all other Ukrainian commentators (Heh! “Operator Starsky,” for example) have fallen somewhere between enthusiastic puppydogs to flagrant creators and promulgators of patently false, staged “news” videos.
Here, the facts that he cites seem consistent with what I have been able to learn from a number of different sources, and his conclusions–such as that Minister of Defense Shoigu has proof of a radioactively dirty bomb having been made–seem spot-on.
His surmise that the 101st Airborne Division (4,700 soldiers + their light-infantry gear) will hop on over into Odessa and set up a defensive perimeter against the Russian Army is highly plausible, as the 101st is by no means capable of fighting Russia peer-to-peer, especially not across the Ukraine’s open steppe land.
The emotional Lira (I am also emotional, and hope that you are also indignant) heavily slags America, but I construe this to address the Neocons and all of their ilk who continually agitate for nuclear war, not thee and mee.
After minute 13:30, Lira makes a ghastly but I fear prescient point: Russia has air superiority in and around the Ukraine because its air defense systems are highly lethal. The Ukrainian Air Force has been limited to a picayune schedule of sorties, and continues to be attritted every time it gets airborne.
As soon as the air transports carrying our 101st Airborne soldiers cross the border over into the Ukraine, they are almost certainly going to be blown to smithereens, with total loss of life. To date, the Ukrainian Army has used its soldiers as cannon fodder, and this at the encouragement (and I believe insistence) of U.S. “advisors”). Is it now time to send America’s own sons to be slaughtered like helpless lambs with no chance of defending themselves?”