Biden signs budget bill that includes $13.6 billion for Ukraine; Botched assessment of Ukraine’s will to fight mirrors Afghan intel failures; Report: Russia has 14 days to break Ukrainian resistance before tide turns; NY Post/WSJ: Russia-Ukraine News LATEST UPDATES, and other related stories

By admin On Mar 15, 2022

Biden signs budget bill that includes $13.6 billion for Ukraine:

President Biden signed a bill Tuesday that will provide $13.6 billion in new military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as part of $1.5 trillion in federal spending that will fund the government through September.

At a White House signing ceremony, Mr. Biden said the funds will “support the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their country.”

“We’re also going to be better positioned to provide for the rapidly growing humanitarian needs of the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Biden said. “This war has turned nearly 3 million Ukrainians into refugees with numbers growing every single day.” —>READ MORE HERE

Botched assessment of Ukraine’s will to fight mirrors Afghan intel failures:

Fresh off of the Pentagon overstating the strength of the Afghan military ahead of the Taliban’s rapid takeover last year, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency admitted he underestimated Ukraine’s will to fight in the lead up to Russia’s invasion.

The invasion of Ukraine came after weeks of warnings by the Biden administration that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was likely to invade. But a top defense intelligence official admitted last week that he had underestimated the quality of the Ukrainian military. Even President Joe Biden said in January he believed a Russian victory in Ukraine would essentially be certain.

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, began a line of questioning during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday by commending the intelligence community for “the outstanding work that it did leading up to the invasion” in warning about Putin’s impending attack.

Cotton noted that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines had said Putin underestimated the skill of Ukraine’s military and its willingness to fight, and asked if U.S. intelligence had made the same mistake.

Haines replied: “So, we assessed prior to the invasion that he was overestimating — or underestimating, rather — the Ukrainians’ … resistance. So, I think we did well there. We did not do as well in terms of predicting the military challenges that he has encountered with his own military.”