J.E. Dyer
The Optimistic Conservative, Mar. 3, 2025
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So my desired end-state isn’t putting the European allies on a timer and berating them for a while, knocking the breath out of them until we blow the whistle and resume play. It’s not about castigating them or showing them up. But it is about seeing them coming, and not letting them shape and present our security options to us.”
After the series of unfortunate events in the White House during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit (a few comments appear below), Zelensky talked to the media and left for the UK. Besides a nice photo op with King Charles III, his visit bore fruit in a pledge from Prime Minister Keir Starmer for deployment of British boots on the ground and military aircraft to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
Notably, there’s no outline of how, exactly, such assets would be used to support Ukraine. There’s a whole viral theme flying around about the UK having only 40 deployment-ready main battle tanks, but besides not being sure that’s correct, my greater concern is what in the actual firetruck Britain would use MBTs for in the Ukraine situation. (See the image captions for links to X posts below.)
Link: https://x.com/OptimisticCon/status/1896303865475330512
Link: https://x.com/ezralevant/status/1896279505834324456
Link: https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1896321455606173969
If it’s putting them inside Ukraine, that’s insane. If it’s not, what would they be there for? To surge into Ukraine, all 40 of them (from, what, Poland? Romania?), if Russia gets a wild hare up and does something crazy?
The thought keeps intruding that Charleses have not been Britain’s luckiest monarchs. One hates to bring it up.
It’s not to make flippant observations, however, that I put fingers to keyboard on this matter….SOURCE