Never mind Vladimir Putin, does Barack Obama know this is going on?:
Ukrainian and U.S. troops launched fresh drills Monday near the war-torn country's Polish border in a bid to show unity and resolve in the face of an increasingly resurgent Kremlin.
Actually, it was a bid to dishonestly reassure the former "Soviet Near Abroad" and Warsaw Pact states that the Obama Regime hasn't (yet) started printing the invitations and programs for the declaration and dedication ceremonies of Czar Vlad's Neo-Warsaw Pact.
The annual Rapid Trident exercises involve 1,800 soldiers from eighteen countries and last for just under two weeks.
Because three brigades is more than enough to stop Putin's multiple tank armies.
BTW, anybody care to wager on how many U.S. personnel were actually involved in these exercises? The ability to count them on one's fingers without having to take off one's shoe is not outside the realm of possibility.
Their immediate aim is to build resolve and cohesion within the ex-Soviet state's outdated and woefully underfunded armed forces....
Which O refuses fund and bring up to date.
....caught in a fifteen-month east Ukrainian quagmire against [a Russian invasion] that has claimed more than 6,500 lives.
But they also deliver a transparent message to the Kremlin about Washington and its allies' determination to thwart any expansionist ambitions Russian President Vladimir Putin may have.
Yeah - that we're not serious about stopping Vlad's "expansionist ambitions". Because if we were, we would send THAT message, and the "Russian president" might refrain from sending nuclear bombers into our airspace on a regular basis.
Of course, if The One did have a total change of heart and became a Reaganesque hawk, he could never send that message convincingly, and would probably blunder into a nuclear war instead. That's what happens when you throw away your deterrent. Because once you do, once our enemies no longer take our president seriously, that's something that is very difficult if not impossible to get back. Contrast that with President Reagan, who our enemies always took seriously, never stopped taking seriously, and as a consequence was able to win the Cold War without firing a shot.
Which is a circuitous way of saying what Tom DeLay said last week: We desperately need a (conservative) Republican POTUS.
"These joint maneuvers ... display a broad support for Ukraine in its struggle for freedom and sovereignty," Ukrainian forces commander Oleksandr Syvak told the festive flag-raising ceremony.
If that pittance constitutes "broad support," I'd hate to see what friendlessness would look like.
His U.S. counterpart Alfred Renzi said the participating countries — most of them NATO members but also such former Soviet nations as Moldova and Azerbaijan — "will prove an ability to cooperate as one unified force for stability."
....and cannon fodder, because boutique forces aren't going to accomplish anything other than to provoke Czar Vlad without being able to deter or stop his "expansionist ambitions".
But he appears content to play tit-for-tat - for now:
The launch of Rapid Trident was quickly followed by the Russian navy's announcement that one of its warships stationed off Ukraine's Kremlin-annexed Crimean peninsula would conduct live rocket fire drills Sunday.
"After a long interruption and in order to demonstrate the navy's combat capabilities, the Ladny frigate will attack a dummy target from an anti-submarine system," Black Sea Fleet spokesman Vyacheslav Trukhachyov told Moscow's news agencies.
Russia marks its annual navy day Sunday and such activities are planned well in advance.
But the scale of Russia's celebration this year has been grander than most.
Trukhachyov said that more than thirty naval vessels and another thirty jets and military helicopters would show off their capabilities near their tsarist-era base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
The ships will be accompanied by Su-27 Flanker interceptors and Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack jets.
Two possibilities: Either Vlad doesn't think he's strong enough to pursue his "expansionist ambitions" any faster than he is, or Uncle Barry is so pathetic at saber-rattling that the Czar is barely noticing it and isn't bothering to be provoked by it. The next year and a half will provide the answers, because if Putin believes that Obama is leaving office when he's constitutionally required to do so, we can expect the operational tempo of his forces to pick up dramatically in order to overrun as much of eastern Europe - and knock down NATO once and for all - as he can before sanity returns to the White House.
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