And that war is not going Ukraine's way right now, with sustained and slow losses along the Eastern Front. Perhaps a reason for the stark and significant policy change from the white House on Sunday. Sources telling CNN that the US president, Joe Biden, has finally given [00:00:16] Ukraine the go ahead to use long range American weapons to strike inside Russia. Today, there's a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions, but strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves. [00:00:34] Ominous message from the leader of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Now President Joe Biden is now allowing Ukraine to use serious offensive weaponry, including long range missiles made by the United States to attack Russia for the first time. [00:00:51] So here's more on the specific weapons that the U.S. Will be supplying Ukraine, and why this is such a big deal. The MGM 148 Atacms, As you mentioned, the Army Tactical Missile System has a range of around 180 to 190 miles. [00:01:08] And what it can do is it can attack things like ammunition depots, troop concentrations, logistical centers, all of those kinds of things that could resupply a front line. So what the purpose of this is, from the Biden administration's standpoint, [00:01:26] is to actually make it possible for the Ukrainians to prevent the Russians and the North Koreans from attacking the Ukrainian concentrations in Kursk, which is the territory of Russia that Ukraine has occupied since August. [00:01:42] So these missiles are designed to go in and take out those kinds of things, like those logistics installations that I described. And they're designed to do this in a very efficient, very lethal manner. Now, Biden's decision to allow for this type of offensive weaponry [00:01:58] to be used in Russia or against Russia also clears the way for other allies, like the UK and France, to provide similar weapons to Ukraine if they so choose to do so. The Biden administration also started supplying several hundred atacms. [00:02:15] That's the name of the weapon that we're talking about here to Ukraine, specifically for use on Ukrainian territory that had been occupied by the Russians. And that includes, of course, the Crimean peninsula. And it's unclear how many of those long range missiles [00:02:32] currently remain in Ukraine's arsenal. The Biden administration's justification for doing this is now, North Korea is supplying troops to Russia in order to carry out this war against Ukraine. They've allegedly deployed 10,000 North Korean troops. [00:02:51] American officials said the missiles were likely to be deployed, at least initially, against combined Russian and North Korean troops in territory Ukraine has captured in the Kursk region of southern Russia. Ukraine invaded Kursk in part to basically take control of Russian land [00:03:08] it could use as leverage in peace talks. It could deploy longer range strikes to try to safeguard its position ahead of any negotiations Trump might push for. And of course, we all know Donald Trump wants the war to come to an end. And so they see Kursk as their bargaining chip in possible peace negotiations. [00:03:28] Yeah. So there's a couple of reasons why they might do this. So one is the one that is being officially put forward here. You know, it'll gain us some leverage in our negotiations. It's plausible. But it could also massively escalate things. [00:03:43] So that's also plausible. I'm going to come back to that in a second. I saw another explanation, which I thought to be hilarious, that, well, maybe this could cause the Russians to retreat before Trump comes in. No, that's not going to happen. That's a ridiculous proposition. [00:04:00] Well, look. Put Trump aside. Russia's winning the war. They now have occupied a fifth of Ukraine. They have made slow and steady gains throughout this war. There are civilians in Ukraine who do not want to fight this war, and they're being forced to fight it. [00:04:16] I mean, Boris Johnson meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky and discouraging him early on in the war from engaging in peace negotiations was the biggest mistake imaginable. Yes. So the West pushed Zelensky further in a war. [00:04:32] They pushed Eastern Europe further into war. But by the way, if you're a right winger, being pro-Russia is not an anti-war position. They started the war. You can't be anti-war if you start a war. So look, there's plenty of blame on all sides. [00:04:49] Russia deserves a great lion's share of the blame for doing the actual invasion in the first place, killing all those people, etc.. Now, that's not the question. The question is, what are we going to do now? Right. So what is most likely is that when Trump comes in, he's going to force them into a settlement by threatening to take away all their funding and weapons, [00:05:05] in which case they would be screwed. So but now the problem is that Russia already knows that. Right. So what is most likely going to happen is that Russia is going to keep about, you know, 20%, maybe whatever the percentage is of Ukraine. So their invasion is going to be partly rewarded. [00:05:20] And that sucks and I hate it, but that is the most likely outcome. Now there's another possible reason why Biden ordered these, missiles allowed the missiles to strike inside Russia, which is further escalation. And why would escalation help? Well, it wouldn't help us. [00:05:36] It wouldn't help the Russians or the Ukrainians, but it would help the military industrial complex. And they would love to dig us further into this war so that it's harder to get out later. And so, look, I get the price of getting out, which is that you lose a piece of Ukraine and you encourage Putin because he that's a second country, [00:05:55] third time second country. He's gone in somewhere, grabbed land and gotten away with it. By the way, it also encourages Netanyahu, who now looks at Putin, goes, hey, apparently you could just steal people's land. So we always wanted Gaza and West Bank. Maybe we'll go steal that. And Trump's going to let us steal that too. [00:06:11] Right. But nevertheless escalating now when Russia is not going to retreat and causing a major escalation that might dig all of us back into this war is not a good idea. It's a terrible idea ordered by Biden, I suppose, or whoever the hell is in charge. [00:06:30] Notable, though, that, you know, civilians, tragically have been killed in this war. And I do think it's notable that while tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in Gaza, a tiny stretch of land by the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces, in the case of Ukraine, [00:06:46] Russia has killed 11,700 civilians. But Russia, public enemy number one, according to the United States government, the Israeli government doesn't matter how many innocent civilians they kill in Gaza or the West Bank or in Lebanon. [00:07:02] We are going to back them no matter what, regardless of what administration or which political party is in charge in this country. That's the reality of the situation. Just a side note on that. Now real quick, how has Russia responded to this new foreign policy [00:07:19] by the Biden administration? Well, Vladimir Putin back in September had said this. The use of long range weapons will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then bearing in mind the change [00:07:36] in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us. And so that was in September. Now that the decision has been made by Biden, Putin and the Russian government is saying we will respond and the response will be tangible, basically continuing on [00:07:54] with their threats. The Biden administration again justifying this because they claim, well, this is a new front in the war. We're now dealing with North Korea's involvement in supporting Russia and what's so what. - Why does that make a difference? - I don't think it does. [00:08:09] Like, oh, Russia is being more aggressive. They were already plenty aggressive. They invaded the country and took giant amount of land bringing in North Koreans. So what I don't like, they're just looking for any excuse to make the war bigger and worse. So one of our members, Preston Parks, wrote in Biden [00:08:26] locking in his pro-war legacy. That's right. He's going to be known as the guy who authorized the Iraq War, who authorized Israel to kill anyone they like, take any land they like. Now, say to Ukraine, maybe you start a giant war with Russia, by the way. And Anna's right. It's not just this, needlessly, step [00:08:45] that takes it, much greater escalation. But also in the beginning, we told Russia that we would not encroach on Eastern Europe. And we did that when the Soviet Union was falling apart. To assure them, we assured among other people, Putin, that we wouldn't. And then we encroached and we encroached and we encroached, and [00:09:04] we got next to his grandmother's house. And then and then we said, oh my God, I, we are so innocent. So we're not innocent at all. And we should not have gone into Eastern Europe with NATO. It was totally needless, right? And especially threatening in Ukraine was just criminal negligence. [00:09:20] Okay. Now, having said that again, nothing justifies the invasion, but also nothing justifies a last minute escalation on your way out other than to say, don't get it twisted. The Democratic Party now loves war. Joe Biden, our standard bearer, loves war. [00:09:37] And we'd like to lose further elections because the American people hate war. But we're the new neocons. So congratulations, Joe Biden, for screwing the Democratic Party and the American voters one more time. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. [00:09:55] You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me, Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. 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