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| viagris | | 11. Oct 2024, 14:12 |
#9941
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|  Kopš: 06. Jul 2004
Ziņojumi: 4744
Braucu ar:
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11 Oct 2024, 13:39:01 @uldens1 rakstīja:
Tagad jau visādas kartes uzpeld ar jaunām krievijas robežām,kas jau bij sadrukātas kā mācību meteriāli
Ķipa paraška bez Kurskas?  |  Offline | | |
| kaprons2 | | 11. Oct 2024, 14:54 |
#9942
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| Kopš: 04. Jun 2019
Ziņojumi: 1095
Braucu ar:
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10 Oct 2024, 23:36:03 @elbruss rakstīja:
Tikai nesaceraties, ka poļi skries mums palīgā. Primāri viņu mērķis (tāpat kā visu citu) ir savas valsts intereses. Stundā X visi drošības līgumi un miera laiku vienošanās būs sekundāras. Vienīgais reālais iemesls braukt mums palīgā būs frontes līnijas pavirzīšana prom no viņu robežas (lai netiek nolīdzinātas viņu pilsētas, bet viss kipišs notiek pie mums baltijā). Savukārt, ja te visu nedēļas laikā okupētu, tad viņi nostātos pie savas robežas netālu no Suvalku koridora un to sargātu. Cik labi, ka krievi pagaidām aizņemti citur....
Vēsturi neesi mācījies.
Polija 1920 gadā uzvarēja sarkano mēri savā teritorijā un vēlāk palīdzēja no tā mēra- atbrīvot Latgali.
Ņemot vērā, ka Baltija ļoti palīdzēja Ukrainai, tad nešaubos, ka satriekt RU- viņi gribētu jau Baltijā, ne savā teritorijā!
39 gads atkal citas lietas- mīkstā demokrātija no Rietumu puses un mīkstie diktatori Baltijā- no otras puses.
Poļi bruņojās, jo saprot, ka viņi ir šī reģiona sargs.[ Šo ziņu laboja kaprons2, 11 Oct 2024, 14:56:23 ] | | Offline | | |
| Mizx | | 11. Oct 2024, 15:55 |
#9943
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|  Kopš: 26. Apr 2004
No: Rīga
Ziņojumi: 6946
Braucu ar:
| Visi vislabprātāk šauj ne savā teritorijā, bet aizstāvot savas intereses. Jo šaujot savā teritorijā to gribot negribot posti, pēc tam lādiņi jāvāc, drupas, viss pārējais. Loģiski, ka poļi priecājas, ka karš notiek ne pie viņiem un ir gatavi karot tuvējās valstīs. Šajā ziņā labs piemērs abu pasaules karu gadījumā ir Portugāle — nevienā no abiem kariem karadarbība nenotika Portugālē, bet vienā karā viņi karoja citās zemēs. Tā ka viņiem ir reāla pieredze un reāls novērtējums, ka labāk savas intereses aizstavēt ne uz savas zemes. Pats tak arī labprātāk ar teorētisku laupītāju kautos ārā / kāpņutelpā, nevis jau iekšā savā viesistabā. Gaidīt līdz pēdējam un tad sākt risināt ir stulbi. | | Offline | | |
| Samsasi | | 11. Oct 2024, 19:26 |
#9944
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|  Kopš: 01. Nov 2014
Ziņojumi: 5133
Braucu ar:
| https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/11/glava-gen...ibaltiku-a144714 | | Offline | | |
| mrCage | | 11. Oct 2024, 19:50 |
#9945
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| Kopš: 03. Apr 2021
Ziņojumi: 2052
Braucu ar:
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10 Oct 2024, 23:49:36 @Locis rakstīja:
Ukraina jau krieviem gards kumosiņš,kopš 2014. gada.
Ukraina bija krieviem gards kumosiņš jau tūlīt pēc PSRS sabrukuma .
Visi tie trakie dugini ,žirinovski un citi ''krievu pasaules'' ideologi jau sen runāja par karu ar UKR un UKR okupāciju.Tāpat ''Doņeckas republiku '' ideja un simbolika tika izplatīta jau krietni pirms 2014 gada .
Tikai tad tie bija marginalizēti grupējumi ar vāju valsts atbalstu ,savukārt Rietumos politiķi izlikās neredzam tādu Krievijas imperiālisma centienus.,jo mēs taču esam ''virzīti uz sadarbību''.
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| mrCage | | 11. Oct 2024, 19:53 |
#9946
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| Kopš: 03. Apr 2021
Ziņojumi: 2052
Braucu ar:
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11 Oct 2024, 19:26:21 @Samsasi rakstīja:
https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/11/glava-gen...ibaltiku-a144714
обещать не значит жениться  | | Offline | | |
| fxquadro | | 11. Oct 2024, 19:57 |
#9947
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| Kopš: 09. Dec 2018
Ziņojumi: 178
Braucu ar: Honda Accord X USA ver. / Tesla M3 Performance, USA ver.
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11 Oct 2024, 19:50:46 @mrCage rakstīja:
10 Oct 2024, 23:49:36 @Locis rakstīja:
Ukraina jau krieviem gards kumosiņš,kopš 2014. gada.
Ukraina bija krieviem gards kumosiņš jau tūlīt pēc PSRS sabrukuma .
Visi tie trakie dugini ,žirinovski un citi ''krievu pasaules'' ideologi jau sen runāja par karu ar UKR un UKR okupāciju.Tāpat ''Doņeckas republiku '' ideja un simbolika tika izplatīta jau krietni pirms 2014 gada .
Tikai tad tie bija marginalizēti grupējumi ar vāju valsts atbalstu ,savukārt Rietumos politiķi izlikās neredzam tādu Krievijas imperiālisma centienus.,jo mēs taču esam ''virzīti uz sadarbību''.
Polija tiešam ar saviem tehnikas pasūtījiem būs 2-3 vasts EU. F35, Apache, tanki: K2, Abrams + paši ražo. Kāmēr Vācija ir korumpēta un kaut ko tur tēlo.. Poli zin ko darīt | | Offline | | |
RSAWorkshop  | | 11. Oct 2024, 20:05 |
#9948
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|  Kopš: 13. Dec 2014
No: Rīga
Ziņojumi: 7593
Braucu ar: G31/E53/E46/E39/E36/F31
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11 Oct 2024, 19:50:46 @mrCage rakstīja:
10 Oct 2024, 23:49:36 @Locis rakstīja:
Ukraina jau krieviem gards kumosiņš,kopš 2014. gada.
Ukraina bija krieviem gards kumosiņš jau tūlīt pēc PSRS sabrukuma .
Visi tie trakie dugini ,žirinovski un citi ''krievu pasaules'' ideologi jau sen runāja par karu ar UKR un UKR okupāciju.Tāpat ''Doņeckas republiku '' ideja un simbolika tika izplatīta jau krietni pirms 2014 gada .
Tikai tad tie bija marginalizēti grupējumi ar vāju valsts atbalstu ,savukārt Rietumos politiķi izlikās neredzam tādu Krievijas imperiālisma centienus.,jo mēs taču esam ''virzīti uz sadarbību''.
Baltija, Somija, Čehija un Poļi zin ko nozīme vatastāna atšķirībā no valstīm tālāk uz Rietumiem, kuri sapņo, ka tur kādreiz kaut kas būs ok
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RSAWorkshop-BMW remonts un apkope
24400993 | | Offline | | |
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Lafter  | | 11. Oct 2024, 20:29 |
#9949
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|  Kopš: 23. Sep 2007
Ziņojumi: 28686
Braucu ar: wv
| Behind Trump’s Views on Ukraine: Putin’s Gambit and a Political Grudge The roots of Donald Trump’s animus toward Ukraine — an issue with profound consequences should he be elected again — can be found in a yearlong series of events spanning 2016 and 2017.
On July 7, 2017, after President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shook hands in Hamburg, Germany, to conclude their first face-to-face meeting, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson walked out of the sterile conference room, removed notes from his pocket and gave anxious White House aides a summary.
“We’ve got work to do to change the president’s mind on Ukraine,” Mr. Tillerson said.
The secretary of state had just watched Mr. Putin, the former K.G.B. spymaster, put on a master class in seeking to shape the thinking of the new American president.
The Russian leader disparaged Ukraine, a former Soviet republic with aspirations of joining the European Union and NATO. Ukraine, he told Mr. Trump, was a corrupt, fabricated country. Russia, which had seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine three years earlier and backed pro-Russia separatists in a border region, had every right to exert its influence over the country, he insisted.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Putin that his administration was considering giving weapons to Ukraine. “What do you think?” Mr. Trump asked, to which Mr. Putin said it would be “a mistake.” Whatever America gave the Ukrainians, he said, they would ask for more.
Mr. Trump, who came to the meeting armed with hawkish talking points drawn up by his advisers, never pushed back, according to three American officials who were in Hamburg for the summit.
The meeting is something of a historical footnote to the Trump presidency. It has long been overshadowed by the summit with Mr. Putin the next year in Helsinki, when Mr. Trump famously said he took the word of Mr. Putin over his own intelligence agencies on the question of whether Russia had interfered with the 2016 presidential election.
Yet a close examination of the Hamburg summit, and the months that led up to it, help explain the roots of Mr. Trump’s often-disdainful attitude toward Ukraine.
The meeting in Hamburg fit into a yearlong pattern in which an escalating political grudge against Ukraine on Mr. Trump’s part became an opening for Mr. Putin to pursue his own aim of tempering American support for Kyiv, according to interviews with American and European officials and allies of Mr. Trump, as well as accounts in memoirs.
That animus toward Ukraine remains front and center in the final weeks of the 2024 campaign. Mr. Trump has left unclear whether, if elected, he would cut off or reduce American military and diplomatic support for Ukraine as it battles the Russian invasion, at a time when he has pushed the Republican Party toward his vision of a less interventionist foreign policy open to dealing with authoritarian leaders like Mr. Putin.
The views that Mr. Trump was developing in 2016 and 2017 could, if he returns to the White House, shape policies with profound consequences for the stability of Europe, the future of NATO and America’s relations with Russia.
Mr. Trump came into office with suspicions that officials in Ukraine not so secretly favored Democrats. Then, during their initial contacts, Mr. Putin worked to cement in Mr. Trump’s head the idea that Ukraine was less a feisty young democracy eager for deeper ties to the West than an unruly Russian-speaking neighbor run by shadowy oligarchs and corrupt officials who had sought to help elect Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Trump’s dim view of Ukraine did not initially lead to any fundamental change in American policy, as establishment aides and advisers steered a reluctant Mr. Trump toward a relatively hawkish stance on Russia.
But those suspicions would surface in the events that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, triggered by a 2019 phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, then Ukraine’s newly elected president. During the call, Mr. Trump implied that American military support to Ukraine was conditioned on whether Mr. Zelensky helped investigate his political rivals.
Mr. Trump’s skepticism about Ukraine and his suspicions that the country’s leaders favor Democrats continue to play out in the current presidential campaign. During his debate last month with Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump sidestepped a direct question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war.
Last week, he accused Mr. Zelensky of using his recent trip to the United States to bolster Ms. Harris’s campaign through an appearance at a munitions factory in Pennsylvania, a key electoral battleground state, with Gov. Josh Shapiro and Senator Bob Casey, both Democrats.
“I think Zelensky is the greatest salesman in history,” Mr. Trump said at a Pennsylvania rally the day after Mr. Zelensky’s visit to the state, referring to the Biden administration’s continued support of Ukraine. “Every time he comes into the country, he walks away with $60 billion.”
Putting a new emphasis on his longstanding belief that Ukrainian leaders favor Democrats, Mr. Trump added, “He wants them to win this election so badly.”
While Mr. Trump’s foreign policy team during his presidency included Russia hawks, it is not clear that he would populate a second administration with aides and advisers who would check his overtures to Moscow and his suspicions about Ukraine.
Mr. Putin continues to seek advantage in American politics. Senior intelligence officials briefed members of Congress last month that Russia remains determined to sow chaos in America’s elections process and erode faith in its democratic systems, and that spy agencies have specific intelligence that the Kremlin wants Mr. Trump back in the White House.
In response to questions about the development of Mr. Trump’s views, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, replied only that “weakness” on the part of President Biden and Ms. Harris was to blame for Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“President Trump will restore world peace through American strength and ensure European nations carry their weight by paying their fair share to our mutual defense to lighten the unfair burden on American taxpayers,” she said in an emailed statement.
A Dark Portrait Emerges
In August 2016, less than three months before Mr. Trump’s stunning election win, his campaign took a body blow.
Paul J. Manafort, the campaign chairman, resigned days after news broke about an investigation by a Ukrainian government agency into handwritten ledgers purporting to show millions in undisclosed cash payments to Mr. Manafort from a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine, where he had worked as a consultant.
Weeks earlier, Mr. Trump had publicly appealed to Moscow for help in his campaign against Mrs. Clinton, encouraging Russia to leak damaging emails about his opponent that Russian government hackers had stolen from the Democratic National Committee.
But the disclosure of the investigation into the ledgers was seen among Trump allies as evidence that the Ukrainian officials were in cahoots with the Democrats to sully the Trump campaign’s reputation.
Mr. Manafort would later say that the allegations about cash payments appeared to be deliberate and premeditated, writing in his memoir that he believed “there was something larger and more sinister going on.”
According to the 2019 investigation by the Republican-majority Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Manafort and other Trump campaign officials began to advance the theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that had carried out the hack.
The report said that Mr. Manafort “parroted a narrative” expressed by Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national who worked for Mr. Manafort in Ukraine and whom the report called a “Russian intelligence officer.” Mr. Kilimnik has denied working for Russian spy services.
By that point in the campaign, Mr. Trump had spoken in public on occasion about Ukraine’s simmering conflict with Russia. Usually it was to question the wisdom of sending money and arms to a country that he saw as being of little strategic importance to the United States when powerful European countries like Germany refused, or were reluctant to do so, for fear of antagonizing Moscow.
But, within Mr. Trump’s circle, a darker portrait of Ukraine began to emerge, one of a country filled with Mr. Trump’s political enemies.
An impromptu conversation Mr. Trump had at a fund-raising dinner late in the 2016 campaign seemed to reinforce this view with the future president. In October of that year, a Trump campaign donor named Robert Pereira hosted the candidate at his oceanside mansion in Hillsboro Beach, Fla., a home designed in the image of Versailles Palace in France.
Among those in attendance was Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born American who would go on to help Mr. Trump and Rudolph W. Giuliani try to find damaging information about Hunter Biden in Ukraine and then turn against Mr. Trump.
In that conversation and others that followed, Mr. Parnas said he described Ukraine as a place where corruption was a “way of life” and where the financier George Soros, the liberal billionaire who is seen as a boogeyman in Republican circles, spread money to bolster the Democratic Party’s influence.
“Absolutely, I spoke to him about that, and about the way that the Democrats were the corrupt ones,” Mr. Parnas said in an interview. He acknowledged that he was telling Mr. Trump what he thought “he wanted to hear.”
H.R. McMaster, the former White House national security adviser, wrote in his recent memoir that during the president’s June 2017 meeting with Petro O. Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president at the time, Mr. Trump said bluntly he had heard from “a Ukrainian friend” that Ukraine was a corrupt country, and that the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, was actually part of Russia.
Mr. Parnas said he believes that was a reference to him. “I’m the only Ukrainian American friend he had at the time,” he said.
Putin Stokes the Fire
As he prepared to take office, all of these events, and subsequent findings by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had intervened to help get Mr. Trump elected, were seen by the thin-skinned president-elect as an attempt to sow doubt about the legitimacy of his victory. And they created fertile ground for Mr. Putin to exploit when he and Mr. Trump spoke by phone on Jan. 28, 2017, their first call of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
According to a former senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of what took place during the call, it was Mr. Trump who first raised the issue of Ukraine, asking Mr. Putin to give his opinion about the country because he had heard differing views.
The Russian president seized the opening. He launched into an extended monologue about corruption in Ukraine. Mr. Trump was guarded in his response, neither agreeing with Mr. Putin nor defending Ukraine, but he acknowledged that Russia’s dispute with Ukraine was an obstacle to his goal of improving relations with Moscow.
That same day, Mr. Trump got a different perspective on Ukraine from Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, but had little patience for what he saw as Ms. Merkel’s lecturing.
During a phone call, Ms. Merkel walked the American president through the history of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship. She discussed what American and European nations did to support Ukraine during the Obama administration, how it was essential for the support to continue and how Russian aggression in Ukraine needed to be blunted or risk further destabilization in Eastern Europe.
Mr. Trump shut down the discussion.
“Thank you very much, and goodbye” was Mr. Trump’s response, according to one person who listened to the call.
At the time, the F.B.I. was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and contacts between Mr. Trump’s advisers and individuals connected to the Kremlin. In response, some of Mr. Trump’s allies began circulating a baseless theory that the Democratic National Committee’s hacked computer server was actually in Ukraine and that the F.B.I. was never able to examine it.
Mr. Putin stoked the fire, publicly asserting that Ukraine had tried to assist Mrs. Clinton.
During a February 2017 news conference with Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, Mr. Putin said that the “Ukrainian government adopted a unilateral position in favor of one candidate” in the American election.
“Certain oligarchs, certainly with the approval of the political leadership, funded this candidate, or female candidate, to be more precise,” he said. “Now, they need to improve relations with the current administration.”
Soon, Mr. Trump began promoting the conspiracy theory about a link between the D.N.C. server and Ukraine, including in an April 2017 interview with The Washington Examiner. “Somebody had mentioned, and this may be incorrect, a company that’s owned by somebody from the Ukraine,” he said. “You’ve heard that, I assume you’ve heard that?”
During a May 2017 meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, Mr. Trump turned the conversation to the subject of Ukraine. According to the former senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of what took place during the meeting, Mr. Trump started “ruminating” about what he perceived as a connection between Ukraine and Mrs. Clinton, and peppered Mr. Lavrov with questions about ties between Ukrainian officials and Democrats.
As Mr. Trump’s resentment toward Ukraine began to build, some of his advisers tried unsuccessfully to convince him that conspiracy theories about Ukrainian election sabotage were baseless.
Thomas P. Bossert, the White House homeland security adviser, said he had “lengthy conversations with the president” to brief Mr. Trump on all the intelligence collected by American spy agencies showing it was Russia, not Ukraine, that meddled in the 2016 election.
“I refuted the notions that the servers were in Ukraine to Trump, and I reaffirmed the intelligence community’s conclusion that it was Russia and not Ukraine with evidence, with intelligence community evidence, voluminous evidence,” Mr. Bossert said in an interview.
There is little evidence that Mr. Trump listened.
A ‘K.G.B. Shtick’
Mr. McMaster and Mr. Bossert prepared Mr. Trump for the Hamburg meeting with Mr. Putin. The tough stance they supported toward Moscow was evident in a speech Mr. Trump gave the day before the summit. On July 6, 2017, Mr. Trump stood before a jubilant crowd assembled at Krasinski Square in Warsaw, Poland, and sent a stern message to Mr. Putin: Stay out of Ukraine.
Russia, Mr. Trump said in a line included in the speech at Mr. McMaster’s insistence, should “cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine” and join “responsible nations in our fight against common enemies.”
But the next day in Hamburg, sitting across from Mr. Putin, the American president listened as Mr. Putin delivered a monologue. Mr. McMaster wrote in his book that Mr. Putin “used his time with Trump to launch a sophisticated and sustained campaign to manipulate him.”
Beyond his usual points about Ukrainian corruption, Mr. Putin made an argument that he had a duty to protect Russian speakers in the eastern part of the country, along the border with Russia, from “ethnic cleansing.”
Mr. Putin even brought up an episode from American history to defend Russian military operations. Just as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, advanced by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, justified American intervention in the internal affairs of Latin American countries, he said, so was Russia justified in operating inside Ukraine to protect Russian-speaking citizens there.
Fiona Hill, a senior member of Mr. Trump’s National Security Council staff who was in Hamburg for the summit, said she believed that Mr. Putin most likely referred to Roosevelt in the meeting “because he did his homework” and knew that Mr. Trump had a fixation on the former “strongman” president.
When Mr. Tillerson huddled after the meeting with several of Mr. Trump’s advisers, including Mr. McMaster and Ms. Hill, Mr. Tillerson said that the Russian president had done his “K.G.B. shtick” on Mr. Trump, Ms. Hill recounted. Mr. Tillerson, she said, stressed that they all had work to do to counter Mr. Putin’s anti-Ukraine rhetoric.
“Putin was basically telling him that you can’t trust Ukraine, and don’t give them anything,” Ms. Hill recalled about Mr. Tillerson’s briefing.
‘The Antibodies Kicked In’
And yet if Mr. Putin’s goal during the Hamburg meeting was to turn American foreign policy squarely against Ukraine, his strategy had the opposite effect, leading Mr. Trump’s national security team to become more assertive about countering Moscow.
As one former American official put it, “The antibodies kicked in.”
After the Hamburg meeting, one former top White House official recalled, Mr. Putin ended his direct approach, appearing to conclude that seeking to sway Mr. Trump was backfiring by provoking a strong anti-Russia response in the American foreign policy establishment.
The Kremlin would subsequently adopt a different strategy, U.S. officials said. Russia advanced its agenda in part through a network of proxies — including a Ukrainian lawmaker whom the U.S. government has identified as an “agent of the Russian intelligence services” — to stoke conflict in American politics and influence Trump loyalists like Mr. Giuliani who had the president’s ear as they sought information in Ukraine about the Biden family.
While Mr. Trump expressed an interest in improving U.S.-Russian relations, his administration took a series of overt and covert steps to penalize the Russians, and to help Ukraine’s military and intelligence services stand up to them.
One of those overt steps was a 2017 decision to provide the Ukrainian military with a limited number of Javelin antitank missiles, something the Obama administration had declined to do. At Mr. McMaster’s urging, Mr. Trump was persuaded to take that step in spite of Mr. Putin’s message in Hamburg about how doing so would be “a mistake.”
At the same time, the C.I.A. stepped up its operations against the Russians and expanded its intelligence partnerships with the Ukrainians. According to a former senior U.S. official, Mike Pompeo, Mr. Trump’s first C.I.A. director, told U.S. intelligence officers, who worked closely with the Ukrainians and other European allies, that their mission was to “crush the Russians.” (Mr. Pompeo did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
From the perspective of U.S. intelligence officers who operated against the Russians, stories in the press about Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of Mr. Putin and interest in improving relations with the Russians provided a convenient cover for what they were doing behind the scenes to counter Moscow.
Yet Mr. Trump’s negative views of Ukraine hardened over time, creating a strange disconnect between official American policy and public statements by the commander in chief.
On the morning of July 25, 2017, weeks after his meeting with Mr. Putin, the president fired off a post on Twitter, seeking to prod his attorney general to investigate election meddling by Ukraine:
“Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump campaign — ‘quietly working to boost Clinton.’ So where is the investigation A.G. @seanhannity”
Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill began to echo Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about Ukraine, and most of them rallied to his defense during his first impeachment, after the 2019 phone call with Mr. Zelensky.
In effect, what Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani were asking the Ukrainians to do in the 2020 election — announce an investigation into the Bidens — was akin to what they accused the Ukrainians of doing for Mrs. Clinton in the 2016 election with the announcement of the black ledger investigation.
Mr. Zelensky did not give in to the pressure.
‘It Takes Two to Tango’
During the current presidential campaign, Mr. Trump has sometimes played his usual notes, such as when he said during a July 2023 rally that Congress should refuse to authorize money for weapons to Ukraine “until the F.B.I., D.O.J. and I.R.S. hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden crime family’s corrupt business dealings.”
Then, in April, Mr. Trump dropped his opposition to a $60 billion Ukraine aid package that had stalled in Congress. The bill passed by a wide margin.
Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that if he is elected, he will push to end the war “in one day” with a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine, citing his “very good relationship” with Mr. Putin.
Mr. Zelensky’s trip to Pennsylvania last month left Mr. Trump fuming again. So did Mr. Zelensky’s remarks in an interview in The New Yorker in which Mr. Zelensky said that Senator JD Vance, Mr. Trump’s running mate, was “too radical” and that Mr. Trump “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how.”
Mr. Trump even suggested that the blame for the widespread destruction in Ukraine caused by the Russian assault rested with the Ukrainian president. Mr. Zelensky, he said, should have cut a deal with Mr. Putin to avoid the invasion.
“Those cities are gone, they’re gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Mint Hill, N.C., with a smattering of jeers and boos from the crowd when he mentioned Mr. Zelensky’s name.
When Mr. Zelensky sought to mend fences with a visit to Trump Tower, the former president repeated his message that if he is elected he will promptly negotiate a peace deal.
“We have a very good relationship and I also have a very good relationship with President Putin, and if we win I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Mr. Trump said with Mr. Zelensky at his side.
When Mr. Zelensky broke in to say, “I hope we’re going to have more good relations with us,” Mr. Trump said, “You know, it takes two to tango.”
Adam Goldman contributed reporting.
A correction was made on October 5, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated Viktor Orban’s position in Hungary. He is prime minister, not president.
Mark Mazzetti is an investigative reporter based in Washington, D.C., focusing on national security, intelligence, and foreign affairs. He has written a book about the C.I.A. More about Mark Mazzetti
Adam Entous is a Washington-based investigative reporter focused on national security and intelligence matters. More about Adam Entous
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| | Offline | | |
| Locis | | 11. Oct 2024, 20:57 |
#9950
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|  Kopš: 14. Aug 2008
No: Dobele
Ziņojumi: 11491
Braucu ar: X5 , Jeep, Tuareg, L200, Jumper,Master ,Transit, Stralis x2, Volvo FL, Atego, Deu
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11 Oct 2024, 14:54:37 @kaprons2 rakstīja:
10 Oct 2024, 23:36:03 @elbruss rakstīja:
Tikai nesaceraties, ka poļi skries mums palīgā. Primāri viņu mērķis (tāpat kā visu citu) ir savas valsts intereses. Stundā X visi drošības līgumi un miera laiku vienošanās būs sekundāras. Vienīgais reālais iemesls braukt mums palīgā būs frontes līnijas pavirzīšana prom no viņu robežas (lai netiek nolīdzinātas viņu pilsētas, bet viss kipišs notiek pie mums baltijā). Savukārt, ja te visu nedēļas laikā okupētu, tad viņi nostātos pie savas robežas netālu no Suvalku koridora un to sargātu. Cik labi, ka krievi pagaidām aizņemti citur....
Vēsturi neesi mācījies.
Polija 1920 gadā uzvarēja sarkano mēri savā teritorijā un vēlāk palīdzēja no tā mēra- atbrīvot Latgali.
Ņemot vērā, ka Baltija ļoti palīdzēja Ukrainai, tad nešaubos, ka satriekt RU- viņi gribētu jau Baltijā, ne savā teritorijā!
39 gads atkal citas lietas- mīkstā demokrātija no Rietumu puses un mīkstie diktatori Baltijā- no otras puses.
Poļi bruņojās, jo saprot, ka viņi ir šī reģiona sargs.
Diez Baltijas ietvaros kaut kādas atsevišķas dārgas iekārtas ,bruņojumu nav iespējams vieglāk realizēt kopā ? Teiksim kaut kāds tur mega kruts radars vai izlūk ļotene ,dronu pasūtījums uzreiz 3 valstīm uz apjomu skidons utt
Kur palikušas tas ziņas kad tuvako gadu laikā briest russia vs NATO rubaks?
Katrā ziņā ja speciem būtu kaut kādi info ,ka drīz kaut kas varētu notikt ,tad gar rusia -nato robežu no mūsu un sabiedroto puses nebūtu vairāk kādi pasākumi? Teiksim pretgaisa iekārtas savestu utt? Nu tada ziņā jau NATO būtu jāpanāk pretī tam valstīm kas apdraudētākas,jeb konkrētā gadījumā robežojas ar rus.[ Šo ziņu laboja Locis, 11 Oct 2024, 21:02:18 ] | | Offline | | |
| Locis | | 11. Oct 2024, 21:04 |
#9951
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| Kopš: 14. Aug 2008
No: Dobele
Ziņojumi: 11491
Braucu ar: X5 , Jeep, Tuareg, L200, Jumper,Master ,Transit, Stralis x2, Volvo FL, Atego, Deu
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11 Oct 2024, 13:34:41 @Joachims rakstīja:
10 Oct 2024, 23:49:36 @Locis rakstīja:
Uzbruka arī daļēji,kamēr vēl nav iestājušies NATO,tāpat kā ar Gruziju.
Tak Ukraina uz to brīdi pat neskatījās NATO virzienā, pat teiktu, ka otrādi. Ukrainas austrumos nebija stacionēta neviena kaut cik nopietna brigāde, ar domu uzbrukt orkiem. Kaujasspējīgākās vienības bija Ukrainas vidienē un rietumos.
Es nesaku ka Krievijai vajadzēja justies apdraudētai no Ukrainas puses ,bet tai nav jāgaida ka Ukraina iestāsies NATO,vai to domas darīt ,bet izmantot brīdi kamēr vēl nekas tāds nenotiek. | | Offline | | |
| Fandulis | | 11. Oct 2024, 21:12 |
#9952
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| Kopš: 29. Nov 2004
Ziņojumi: 13762
Braucu ar: sipisnīku pi vuškom
| Par draudiem no raškas Latvija un citas valstis runāja kopš iestāšanās, kad vēl raška ar baltkrieviem sēdēja NATO, visi ierēca un uzskatīja par histēriķiem.
Konkrēti par kopējiem iepirkumiem, runāja tik pat ilgi, arī ar kaimiņiem, bet neviens nepiekrita, citiem vajag ķiveres citiem lāpstas, netrada kopsaucēju. Par to arī sarunas jau kopš iestāšanās vai pat vēl ātrāk bija. Iniciātors aizgāja no tās padibenes, kuru par tādu pārvērš esošais ministrs.
| | Offline | | |
| Lafter | | 11. Oct 2024, 21:21 |
#9953
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| Kopš: 23. Sep 2007
Ziņojumi: 28686
Braucu ar: wv
| Bija laiki!
Ilyushin Finance varētu piegādāt Sukhoi lidmašīnas airBaltic
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Gribās pļūtīt? Nejūties novērtēts? Neviens nepievērš uzmanību?
Spied zemāk.
Spama topiks
Jā! Man jūk komati. Tas dēļ ilga perioda komunicējot citās valodās.
| | Offline | | |
| bum_bumz | | 11. Oct 2024, 21:32 |
#9954
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| Kopš: 05. Jan 2006
Ziņojumi: 7113
Braucu ar: E34
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11 Oct 2024, 20:57:10 @Locis rakstīja:
Diez Baltijas ietvaros kaut kādas atsevišķas dārgas iekārtas ,bruņojumu nav iespējams vieglāk realizēt kopā ? Teiksim kaut kāds tur mega kruts radars vai izlūk ļotene ,dronu pasūtījums uzreiz 3 valstīm uz apjomu skidons utt
Tas nav aliexpress, kur uzreiz 'reel' ar čipiem
Kautkas jau ir pasūtīts, rinda. Arābi ar koferīti rokās brauc pirmie, baltiešiem nav koferīša ...
Dronus, Patria utml. lietas varētu ražot kopā... Cik Baltijas projektus zini? Es - dažus, neveiksmīgus. Pat RB, kurš no ārienes uzspiests, nekustas | | Offline | | |
| Samsasi | | 11. Oct 2024, 22:45 |
#9955
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| Kopš: 01. Nov 2014
Ziņojumi: 5133
Braucu ar:
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11 Oct 2024, 19:53:02 @mrCage rakstīja:
11 Oct 2024, 19:26:21 @Samsasi rakstīja:
https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/11/glava-gen...ibaltiku-a144714
обещать не значит жениться
domāju, ka poļiem tikai padod iemeslu, viņi krievus labprāt noslaucīja no zemes virsas. | | Offline | | |
| Samsasi | | 11. Oct 2024, 22:47 |
#9956
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| Kopš: 01. Nov 2014
Ziņojumi: 5133
Braucu ar:
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11 Oct 2024, 21:32:20 @bum_bumz rakstīja:
11 Oct 2024, 20:57:10 @Locis rakstīja:
Diez Baltijas ietvaros kaut kādas atsevišķas dārgas iekārtas ,bruņojumu nav iespējams vieglāk realizēt kopā ? Teiksim kaut kāds tur mega kruts radars vai izlūk ļotene ,dronu pasūtījums uzreiz 3 valstīm uz apjomu skidons utt
Tas nav aliexpress, kur uzreiz 'reel' ar čipiem
Kautkas jau ir pasūtīts, rinda. Arābi ar koferīti rokās brauc pirmie, baltiešiem nav koferīša ...
Dronus, Patria utml. lietas varētu ražot kopā... Cik Baltijas projektus zini? Es - dažus, neveiksmīgus. Pat RB, kurš no ārienes uzspiests, nekustas
mums nav naudas. Un nav arī poņas. | | Offline | | |
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| Locis | | 11. Oct 2024, 22:51 |
#9957
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| Kopš: 14. Aug 2008
No: Dobele
Ziņojumi: 11491
Braucu ar: X5 , Jeep, Tuareg, L200, Jumper,Master ,Transit, Stralis x2, Volvo FL, Atego, Deu
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11 Oct 2024, 13:34:41 @Joachims rakstīja:
10 Oct 2024, 23:49:36 @Locis rakstīja:
Uzbruka arī daļēji,kamēr vēl nav iestājušies NATO,tāpat kā ar Gruziju.
Tak Ukraina uz to brīdi pat neskatījās NATO virzienā, pat teiktu, ka otrādi. Ukrainas austrumos nebija stacionēta neviena kaut cik nopietna brigāde, ar domu uzbrukt orkiem. Kaujasspējīgākās vienības bija Ukrainas vidienē un rietumos.
Sarunas par iestāšanos jau ievirzītas bija 2008. gada.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Bucharest_summit
Te par gruziju vairāk
April 3, 2008 - NATO members at a summit in Bucharest, Romania, defer the decision on Georgia and Ukraine's admittance until December 2008.
April 21, 2008 - Georgia accuses Russia of shooting down an unmanned drone over Abkhazia on April 20. Russia denies the claim.
April 29, 2008 - Russia sends more troops to Abkhazia to counter what it says are Georgia's plans for an attack.
May 26, 2008 - A UN investigation concludes that the drone shot down on April 21 was struck by a missile from a Russian fighter jet.
May 30-31, 2008 - Russia sends several hundred unarmed troops to Abkhazia, saying they are needed for railway repairs. Georgia accuses Russia of planning a military intervention. [ Šo ziņu laboja Locis, 11 Oct 2024, 22:56:08 ] | | Offline | | |
| Lafter | | 12. Oct 2024, 12:35 |
#9958
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| Kopš: 23. Sep 2007
Ziņojumi: 28686
Braucu ar: wv
| Hezbollah spokesman Mohammad Afif said yesterday that Hezbollah was open to any efforts to achieve a ceasefire, but stressed that "Israel has yet to see what Hezbollah is really capable of."
 viņiem laikam nepielec
-----------------
Gribās pļūtīt? Nejūties novērtēts? Neviens nepievērš uzmanību?
Spied zemāk.
Spama topiks
Jā! Man jūk komati. Tas dēļ ilga perioda komunicējot citās valodās.
| | Offline | | |
| Lafter | | 12. Oct 2024, 18:42 |
#9959
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| Kopš: 23. Sep 2007
Ziņojumi: 28686
Braucu ar: wv
| THE PRICE
To understand how America is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee’s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics.
“Does anyone know why we’re here?” a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. “Um, because you’re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older,” she ventures.
Adalie is correct. The U.S. Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards.
The coursework — on this particular day, welding crackers together with Easy Cheese to create mini-submarines — is one small facet of the much bigger preparations America is making for a historic struggle with its nuclear rivals. With Russia at war, China escalating regional disputes and nations like North Korea and Iran expanding their nuclear programs, the United States is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years to revamp its own arsenal.
The spending spree, which the government began planning in 2010, is underway in at least 23 states — nearly 50 if you include subcontractors. It follows a decades-long freeze on designing, building or testing new nuclear weapons. Along with the subs, the military is paying for a new fleet of bomber jets, land-based missiles and thermonuclear warheads. Tally all that spending, and the bill comes to almost $57 billion a year, or $108,000 per minute for three decades.
Times Opinion spent six months traveling to cities and towns around the nation to discover how this modern Manhattan Project is coming together, interviewing more than 100 residents, workers, community leaders and federal officials. The portrait that emerged is a country that is being transformed — physically, financially and philosophically — by an unprecedented wave of nuclear revitalization. The effort is as flush with cash as it is rife with problems and delays: At least 20 major projects are already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
If you don’t live where the submarines are welded or the missile silos are dug, there’s a good chance you wouldn’t know it’s happening. The federal government has said little about the plan in public, outside of congressional hearings and strategy papers, or the vast amount being spent. There has been no significant debate. The billion-dollar programs move under the radar. At a time when funding for politicized issues such as climate change, foreign military aid and border security are under a microscope, this issue miraculously appears to have sidestepped the crossfire.
But each day, more than 110,000 scientists, military personnel and private contractors with high-level security clearances are scanning into facilities, putting on safety gear and piecing together a modern arsenal for a volatile new nuclear age.
We should talk about why Washington is making America nuclear again and what we hope to achieve with one of the most ambitious, far-reaching construction projects in the country’s history. The money is already flowing, assembling weapons everyone hopes will never be used.
The submarines.
GENERAL DYNAMICS ELECTRIC BOAT may face a labor shortage, but you wouldn’t know it standing inside one of the company’s football-field-size warehouses along Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.
On a morning in September, roughly 2,000 employees were at work across the sprawling complex, moving among mammoth machinery and the hulls of several submarines sliced into segments like giant sushi rolls. “What you’re seeing is the future of American naval power,” Rear Adm. Todd Weeks, who oversees strategic submarine construction for the U.S. Navy, shouted above the din.
At 560 feet long and 43 feet in diameter, the Columbia-class submarines under construction at the site will be the largest America has ever built when the first boat enters service this decade. They are also the most expensive, at an average of $11 billion per boat. Engineering a nuclear submarine is widely considered to be more challenging than building a spacecraft: The sub needs to carry more than 100 people to crushing ocean depths, along with the nuclear reactor that powers it, and be capable of launching its nuclear-tipped missiles to any location on the planet. Every cut, every weld, every rivet matters
On the factory floor, it is plain to see the dream of nuclear disarmament, once shared by Republican and Democratic presidents alike, is dead. Or, at the very least, on life support. Not so long ago, the consensus among global leaders was that the world needed fewer nukes and means to deliver them, not more. America’s nuclear portfolio was deprioritized after 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. After spending trillions of dollars over decades, Washington cut back on nearly everything nuclear-related. The prongs of the American military’s so-called triad — nuclear-weapon-carrying submarines, jets and intercontinental ballistic missiles — were maintained, rather than replaced, for years beyond their intended use.
Nuclear ballistic missile submarines — known as boomers by sailors — are arguably the most important part of that ecosystem. They are America’s guarantee that the military can strike back in the event of the country incurring a first attack, even if an adversary manages to turn Washington into radioactive ash. They are constantly deployed around the world, are virtually undetectable under the water and can carry up to 20 long-range missiles loaded with several nuclear warheads apiece.
The 14 boomers now at sea are about 40 years old, on average — ancient in submarine years. The aging boats come with a host of liabilities, including higher maintenance costs and onboard technology that predates the personal computer revolution. With China operating the world’s largest, newest naval force (234 warships to America’s 219), the U.S. Navy says new submarines can’t be produced fast enough. Once U.S. production hits its stride, the plan is to build one boomer and two attack submarines a year. To make that happen, the Quonset Point factory has added six buildings, doubling its floor space, from one million square feet to two million square feet, over the past 10 years.
But four years in, the first boat is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget because of a combination of supply chain issues, design problems and nagging labor shortages. Recent analysis from the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog, calculated cost overruns that are more than six times the company’s estimates.
When the Cold War ended, the demand for subs dropped, and the pipeline of trade specialists trained to work on these highly specialized boats did, too. General Dynamics Electric Boat’s work force sank from around 22,000 to 7,000. The Navy now estimates it needs at least 100,000 new workers to join defense companies to meet production demands.
On the factory floor, it is plain to see the dream of nuclear disarmament, once shared by Republican and Democratic presidents alike, is dead. Or, at the very least, on life support. Not so long ago, the consensus among global leaders was that the world needed fewer nukes and means to deliver them, not more. America’s nuclear portfolio was deprioritized after 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. After spending trillions of dollars over decades, Washington cut back on nearly everything nuclear-related. The prongs of the American military’s so-called triad — nuclear-weapon-carrying submarines, jets and intercontinental ballistic missiles — were maintained, rather than replaced, for years beyond their intended use.
Nuclear ballistic missile submarines — known as boomers by sailors — are arguably the most important part of that ecosystem. They are America’s guarantee that the military can strike back in the event of the country incurring a first attack, even if an adversary manages to turn Washington into radioactive ash. They are constantly deployed around the world, are virtually undetectable under the water and can carry up to 20 long-range missiles loaded with several nuclear warheads apiece.
The 14 boomers now at sea are about 40 years old, on average — ancient in submarine years. The aging boats come with a host of liabilities, including higher maintenance costs and onboard technology that predates the personal computer revolution. With China operating the world’s largest, newest naval force (234 warships to America’s 219), the U.S. Navy says new submarines can’t be produced fast enough. Once U.S. production hits its stride, the plan is to build one boomer and two attack submarines a year. To make that happen, the Quonset Point factory has added six buildings, doubling its floor space, from one million square feet to two million square feet, over the past 10 years.
But four years in, the first boat is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget because of a combination of supply chain issues, design problems and nagging labor shortages. Recent analysis from the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog, calculated cost overruns that are more than six times the company’s estimates.
When the Cold War ended, the demand for subs dropped, and the pipeline of trade specialists trained to work on these highly specialized boats did, too. General Dynamics Electric Boat’s work force sank from around 22,000 to 7,000. The Navy now estimates it needs at least 100,000 new workers to join defense companies to meet production demands.
The uranium
ANY PASSING DRIVER can watch the construction on the industrial park along Bear Creek Road in Oak Ridge, a city in the far eastern corner of Tennessee. Crowds of laborers move among four unfinished buildings, heavy machinery growling at the edges. It looks like any other work site, until you notice the tiers of razor wire, patrols of armed guards around the perimeter and the peculiar fact that none of the structures have any windows.
This construction site, for the Y-12 National Security Complex, is the top-secret centerpiece of America’s plans to rebuild the nation’s nuclear bomb-making complex. When the $10 billion overhaul is done, the revamped site will be solely responsible for processing the highly enriched uranium used in U.S. weapons into the next century. But if you keep driving down the road, it feels as though you’re moving back in time. Row after row of aging brick buildings are scattered across Y-12’s campus, many containing hazardous waste that dates back decades.
Under the cover of the Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge was a high-tech secret city, ringed by security checkpoints and armed guards. The plant employed more than 22,000 people but didn’t appear on any official map.
The equipment at Y-12 separated the radioactive isotope uranium-235 for the first atomic bomb used in warfare, Little Boy, which was dropped on Hiroshima.
After World War II and the start of the Cold War arms race, manufacturing uranium components for nuclear weapons became the site’s defining mission. Every nuclear weapon in America’s current arsenal of 3,748 nuclear bombs and warheads contains uranium from Y-12.
The Energy Department, which oversees the nuclear stockpile, went through an extensive retrenchment after the U.S.S.R. collapsed, much like the military. The overall number of weapons was cut. The budgets of the labs that designed the weapons were cut. The skilled work force that manufactured and assembled them was cut. The facilities where this work took place, full of modern equipment during the Cold War, were never updated.
Few, if any, sites embody this neglect better than Y-12. Despite all the technological advancements that have unfolded outside Y-12’s barbed wire fences over the past 80 years, America’s nuclear arsenal is still largely put together there by hand, like a Ferrari engine, using machines created decades before their operators were born.
Signs of decay and decrepitude are everywhere. Eric Helms, the deputy director of enriched uranium operations, who has worked at Y-12 for 23 years, leads me through a labyrinth inside the complex of narrow hallways in Building 9212, where workers stand in coveralls. Strips of the ceiling hang overhead like ribbons. Sections of pipe that jut from the hulking machinery are wrapped with duct tape, and paint on the steel doors and walls has chipped away, exposing layers of green, brown and cream underneath. “That’s where we painted over contamination spills,” he says. “Stripping the paint would just create a bigger problem.”
Large areas of the floors have also been painted over or feature a patchwork of stainless steel sheeting to cover contaminated concrete below. On the day I visit, the internal 1950s-era vacuum system has been broken for more than a week, so workers can’t suck away scraps of uranium that fell around the furnaces. Mr. Helms says it’s a nagging problem. “We’re looking forward to moving into the new facility,” he says.
Today Y-12 is under the control of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a quasi-independent arm of the Energy Department. Once the new facility is up and running, it will process uranium not only for nuclear weapons but also for the nuclear reactors aboard U.S. Navy ships and nuclear research reactors. Much of the radioactive material will be shipped by truck to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex plant in Texas, where it will be assembled into different types of nuclear warheads. The surplus will be held in an onsite storage vault nicknamed the Fort Knox of uranium.
For that, Mr. Helms and the rest of the staff will have to wait. Six years into its renovation, construction at Y-12 is years behind schedule and around $4 billion over budget because of a combination of supply chain hiccups and unforced errors. (At one point, a contractor mistakenly designed the roof 13 feet lower than it needed to be in the new uranium-processing building, costing $540 million alone.)
Because of the repeated delays, the earliest that Mr. Helms and his team can move into the new facilities is 2031.
The missiles
UNLIKE MOST OF the U.S. military’s weapons systems, America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, which ferry nuclear warheads to their target, aren’t kept on military bases or in warehouses. Currently, 400 Minuteman III missiles are buried 80 feet underground in people’s backyards — or, more specifically, their farm fields — in Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana and North Dakota.
For decades, these aging missile systems have been on 24-hour alert, ready to obliterate almost any spot on Earth using the best technology available in the 1970s, when they were installed. The Air Force, which is in charge of the land-based missiles, has been maintaining the missiles for half a century.
The Minuteman III missile silos are located along country roads, inside fenced-off areas.
Now the entire system is set to be replaced. Changing out the missiles, silos, command hubs and roughly 7,500 miles of underground cables snaking under the property of thousands of landowners will be one of the most expensive projects in military history, rivaled only in scale and technical complexity by the operation to build the Interstate System of highways.
For the past two years, representatives of the Air Force have fanned out across the northern Great Plains to talk to residents about the plans. Construction crews have begun work on support buildings at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. The hope is to open new silos through the next two decades — but the project could go well beyond that, given the current delays — and steadily bring the Sentinel system online while maintaining the old Minuteman III system until it’s fully replaced. Up to 3,000 laborers will descend on dozens of small towns to live in temporary camps, potentially doubling or tripling the local populations for however long they need to be there.
The Air Force does not yet know how or where the workers will be housed, which is a concern for some people living in these missile-hosting towns, many of which have only one or two law enforcement officers. Robin Darnall, a commissioner for Banner County in western Nebraska, says she’s focused on how to balance the influx of workers along with the safety of farming and ranching families, whose forebears, in some cases, arrived there in homesteading days. “I feel like we need to increase our law enforcement in Banner County for this project,” she says. “Our sheriff can’t do that all and satisfy his current responsibilities.”
When the Air Force installed missiles there in the 1960s, locals enthusiastically embraced the idea of providing a home to a critical national security project aimed at defeating the Soviets. The arms race was on, after all. But today, like in most of America, the grave threat of nuclear war barely registers to many residents of the heartland, even if classified work is happening beneath the communities they live in.
In the Great Plains, too, things are taking longer than they should. The missile modernization program, called LGM-35A Sentinel, was first estimated to cost about $96 billion in 2020, when the defense company Northrop Grumman won the initial contract to build the system. The price tag has since skyrocketed, with current costs pegged at around $141 billion, a cost increase so severe that it triggered the Nunn-McCurdy Act, which requires the Pentagon and Congress to evaluate whether to cancel troubled programs. The government is reviewing the details but has already decided to move forward with building the new missiles.
Walter Schweitzer passes a missile silo almost every day on his way to work as president of the Montana Farmers Union. He and his members are military supporters but are increasingly concerned with the lack of information provided by the Air Force. Another point of contention involves restrictions around the silos, such as forbidding wind farms within a two-mile radius. “Unless you’re prepared to reimburse property owners the loss of their rights, then the farmers’ union can’t support that,” Mr. Schweitzer says. “No way. No how.”
The plutonium
OUTSIDE THE LAB, the scenic town of Los Alamos, N.M., is being renovated with all manner of construction projects to accommodate the new arrivals. Inside the lab, technicians and scientists are busily melting, refining and shaping plutonium into grapefruit-size cores that trigger the explosions in nuclear bombs.
Manufacturing plutonium pits, which is what the nuclear industry calls them, can be a messy and dangerous business. The radioactive metal has to be shaped into hollow spheres. Workers do this by handling it with rubber gloves inside workstations called glove boxes. It takes skill and nearly a year of training to become comfortable working with such perilous material. A tiny shaving of plutonium can kill a person if it is inhaled. Accounting for every bit of it is crucial.
In 2018, Congress directed Los Alamos, which is overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration, to produce 30 plutonium pits a year by 2026. The agency plans to manufacture an additional 50 pits a year at a larger facility in Savannah River, S.C. The pits will go into the warheads that are affixed to the new Sentinel missiles.
Some progress is being made: On Oct. 1, Los Alamos produced the first pit certified to enter the war reserve. But meeting the full production mark won’t happen until the mid-2030s, at the earliest, the National Nuclear Security Administration says, as the cost estimate has climbed to more than $28 billion. The upside is the delays won’t hurt as much because everything is behind schedule, including the missiles.
The last time the United States was mass-producing plutonium pits, it didn’t go well. The Rocky Flats production site in Colorado was the last place to do it. In 1989 the facility, overseen by the Energy Department, was raided by the F.B.I. and Environmental Protection Agency and later shut down after rampant environmental violations were discovered. It was a rare episode in U.S. history in which one federal agency raided another.
The output at Rocky Flats, which at one point during the Cold War hit 1,000 pits per year, dwarfs the modern ambitions of Los Alamos. Still, the new production is expected to generate levels of radiological and hazardous waste that the lab has not experienced. This comes on top of the contamination already present, which the government estimates will cost some $7 billion to clean up. “We’re endangering our community for an unnecessary arms race that puts us all at risk,” says Jay Coghlan, the executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a Santa Fe-based watchdog.
Environmental contamination isn’t the only concern that Los Alamos’s neighbors have. The Los Alamos County Council recently passed a $377 million budget for fiscal year 2025 — an eye-popping sum for a population of just 19,400. County officials say their primary focus is housing and amenities. The lab hired 4,000 employees over the past two years, and it’s been a struggle to find homes for them all. A recent study found they have a housing shortfall of at least 1,300 units, which county officials attribute largely to the lab expansion.
Los Alamos’s strategic location, nestled between canyons, poses a vexing challenge. The limited space creates transportation problems in and out of the town, which has led to a spate of auto accidents, including one in September in which a former lab director, Charles McMillan, was killed. To alleviate traffic, money is also going into infrastructure improvements and an expansion of the Atomic City Transit system.
“Our whole community has changed with this new bomb factory,” says Greg Mello, the executive director at the Los Alamos Study Group, a nonprofit watchdog that is critical of the nuclear weapons complex’s expansion. “There’s no telling where it will end.”
LAST CENTURY, the world watched in horror as the number of nuclear weapons around the globe rocketed from approximately 3,000 warheads in 1955 to more than 70,000 by the late 1980s. It took time for nuclear nations to grasp the mutual vulnerability, the financial investment and general insanity of the arms race. Cooler heads prevailed. International treaties were signed. Now there are an estimated 12,000 nuclear weapons in the world.
All of the progress meticulously made over the past 40 years is now at risk. Agreements are being abandoned rather than forged. The future of arms control appears bleak. The United States is considering increasing the number of weapons in its arsenal — not just replacing the old ones — after the New Start Treaty with Russia expires in February 2026. If such a decision is made, foreign adversaries will certainly follow suit.
After all, decisions about an arsenal in one nation trigger rethinking among them all. Since the United States first took concrete steps toward rebuilding its weapons in 2010, the eight other nuclear-armed nations are believed to have expanded or enhanced theirs. Russia has overhauled its nuclear arsenal. China is on track to double the number of its nuclear warheads by the decade’s end and may continue building, according to U.S. intelligence estimates.
It is undeniably true that the world is becoming more contentious, and nuclear weapons do deter our adversaries. But it’s also true that our children will inherit this — the nationwide nuclear complex revitalization, the astronomical bill, the potential for confrontation. Congress decided that America needed new weapons when it first allocated funding to their replacement more than a decade ago. But it’s clear, after I visited these places, that the American people have not. Even in communities where this work is happening, there is too little awareness about what’s occurring, let alone in the rest of the country.
Our next president will have to decide whether America needs these new weapons. Americans deserve to know more about the candidates’ views, how our money is being spent and what’s at stake. After all, the weapons under development using taxpayer dollars are expected to be with us well into the next century. And if any one of them were ever used, it would fundamentally change the course of human history.
So should Americans brace for another arms race? Another Cold War? To put it in perspective: The Manhattan Project cost about $30 billion, adjusted for inflation, over the course of World War II. The United States is on pace to spend nearly double that amount each year for at least 30 years. It’s time to reflect on whether we are on a path toward a brighter future or headed back to a darker past.
W.J. Hennigan writes about national security issues for Opinion from Washington, D.C. He has reported from more than two dozen countries, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of U.S. service members. Additional reporting by Spencer Cohen.
An-My Lê, whose work exploring themes of displacement and war was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, is an arts professor at Bard College.
This Times Opinion series is funded through philanthropic support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Outrider Foundation and the Prospect Hill Foundation. Funders have no control over the selection or focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. The Times retains full editorial control. LAST CENTURY, the world watched in horror as the number of nuclear weapons around the globe rocketed from approximately 3,000 warheads in 1955 to more than 70,000 by the late 1980s. It took time for nuclear nations to grasp the mutual vulnerability, the financial investment and general insanity of the arms race. Cooler heads prevailed. International treaties were signed. Now there are an estimated 12,000 nuclear weapons in the world.
All of the progress meticulously made over the past 40 years is now at risk. Agreements are being abandoned rather than forged. The future of arms control appears bleak. The United States is considering increasing the number of weapons in its arsenal — not just replacing the old ones — after the New Start Treaty with Russia expires in February 2026. If such a decision is made, foreign adversaries will certainly follow suit.
After all, decisions about an arsenal in one nation trigger rethinking among them all. Since the United States first took concrete steps toward rebuilding its weapons in 2010, the eight other nuclear-armed nations are believed to have expanded or enhanced theirs. Russia has overhauled its nuclear arsenal. China is on track to double the number of its nuclear warheads by the decade’s end and may continue building, according to U.S. intelligence estimates.
It is undeniably true that the world is becoming more contentious, and nuclear weapons do deter our adversaries. But it’s also true that our children will inherit this — the nationwide nuclear complex revitalization, the astronomical bill, the potential for confrontation. Congress decided that America needed new weapons when it first allocated funding to their replacement more than a decade ago. But it’s clear, after I visited these places, that the American people have not. Even in communities where this work is happening, there is too little awareness about what’s occurring, let alone in the rest of the country.
Our next president will have to decide whether America needs these new weapons. Americans deserve to know more about the candidates’ views, how our money is being spent and what’s at stake. After all, the weapons under development using taxpayer dollars are expected to be with us well into the next century. And if any one of them were ever used, it would fundamentally change the course of human history.
So should Americans brace for another arms race? Another Cold War? To put it in perspective: The Manhattan Project cost about $30 billion, adjusted for inflation, over the course of World War II. The United States is on pace to spend nearly double that amount each year for at least 30 years. It’s time to reflect on whether we are on a path toward a brighter future or headed back to a darker past.
W.J. Hennigan writes about national security issues for Opinion from Washington, D.C. He has reported from more than two dozen countries, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of U.S. service members. Additional reporting by Spencer Cohen.
An-My Lê, whose work exploring themes of displacement and war was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, is an arts professor at Bard College.
This Times Opinion series is funded through philanthropic support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Outrider Foundation and the Prospect Hill Foundation. Funders have no control over the selection or focus of articles or the editing process and do not review articles before publication. The Times retains full editorial control.
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