by Scott Ritter, Consortium News:
Most Americans approached last weekend thinking about how they would spend the much-anticipated end of the work week with their friends and family.
Few realize how close they came to actualizing the scenario so horrifyingly spelled out in Annie Jacobsen’s alarming must-read book, Nuclear War: A Scenario.
72 minutes.
That is all it takes to end the world as we know it.
That is less time than most movies playing at the local cinema.
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Most people could not drive to the local home improvement store to buy the materials needed to do the little repairs around the home that usually wait for the weekend.
Walk the dogs?
Play with the kids?
Forget about it.
72 minutes.
And everything you thought you lived your life for would be dead.
And if you survived?
To quote Nikita Khrushchev, “The survivors would envy the dead.”
Ukraine, together with many of its NATO allies, has been asking for permission from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to be able to employ precision-guided long-range weapons systems provided by these countries against targets deep inside Russia.
On Sept. 6, at a meeting of the Ramstein Contact Group, a forum where U.S.-NATO military support to Ukraine is coordinated, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally appealed to the group for more weapons support from its Western allies and called on allies to allow Ukraine to use the weapons they provided to strike deeper inside Russia.
Zelensky Seeks ‘Long-Range Capability’
Zelensky and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, on Sept. 6. (DoD/Chad J. McNeeley)
“We need to have this long-range capability,” Zelensky said, addressing the attendees, who included U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin,
“not only on the divided territory of Ukraine but also on Russian territory so that Russia is motivated to seek peace. We need to make Russian cities, and even Russian soldiers think about what they need: peace or Putin.”
Secretary Austin, in comments made afterwards, said he didn’t think the use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia would help end the war, adding that he expected the conflict would be resolved through negotiations. Moreover, Austin noted, Ukraine had its own weapons capable of attacking targets well beyond the range of the British Storm Shadow cruise missile.
Despite Austin’s pushback, President Joe Biden appeared to be on track to give Zelensky the green light he was looking for regarding the use of British-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles and U.S.-provided long-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles for strikes on Russian soil.
On Sept. 11, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accompanied by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, visited Ukraine, where they held meetings with Zelensky and his newly appointed foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha.
Blinken & Lammy in Ukraine
Blinken and Lammy, on right side of table in center, meeting with Sybiha, opposite them, in Kiev on Sept. 11. (State Department/Chuck Kennedy
Blinken and Lammy, however, failed to make the announcement the Ukrainians were waiting with bated breath to hear. Instead, Blinken and Lammy reiterated the full support of their respective nations to Ukraine’s victory, adding that they would adapt their support to meet Ukrainian needs. “The bottom line is this: We want Ukraine to win,” Blinken said after his meeting with Zelensky.
The stage was now set for Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, to fly to Washington, D.C., last Friday, where he would meet with Biden and jointly agree to give Ukraine permission to use Storm Shadow and ATACMS against targets inside Russia.
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