The Trump administration is selling Barrett .50 cals to Ukraine
courtesy The Telegraph

Does this count as collusion? . . . Donald Trump approves deal for US to sell sniper rifles to Ukraine, angering Russia

The Trump administration has approved the export of lethal small arms including a multimillion dollar sniper rifle deal, ramping up its support for Ukraine in the simmering conflict with Russia-backed separatists.

Moscow condemned the move as likely to escalate violence.

Uh huh.

…The Washington Post reported that the state department had approved a license for the $41.5 million commercial sale of .50 caliber Barrett M107A1 sniper rifles and ammunition to Ukraine. During a trip to eastern Ukraine this week, soldiers told The Telegraph they were outgunned by separatist snipers.

And Foggy Bottom says it’s really no big thing.

The state department said on Wednesday it had approved a license for US manufacturers to sell .50 caliber firearms and smaller weapons to Ukraine, including assault rifles, combat shotguns, silencers, military scopes and flash suppressors. Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the license was “nothing new” since Ukraine has previously purchased small amounts of such weapons.

This Trump administration is just moving forward on action Congress authorized three years ago, but the Obama administration blocked.

The US congress authorised the export of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine in a law signed in 2014, but Barack Obama’s administration refrained from delivering the arms. The US government is still not directly supplying weapons to Ukraine, and the export of the much-sought Javelin antitank missiles has not been approved.

One step at a time.

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48 COMMENTS

  1. Trump is officially taking steps that will likely kill Russian soldiers? Yeah, that pretty much kills ANY alleged evidence of “collision”. Further proof the “Russian investigation” has been Fake News from the start.

    • I weep for your innocence. IT’S A COVER UP FOR THEIR COLLUSION BECAUSE PEOPLE DON’T REALIZE PUTIN DOESN’T MIND SACRIFICING SOLDIERS FOR PR REASONS!!!!! (/sarc/)

  4. God speed to the Ukrainian’s against the “rebels” in eastern Ukraine and the filthy russian military who are fighting with them although russia denies this and lies about it. It was a russian anti air craft missile that blew up the passenger plane from the Netherlands a few years ago. There is video of the battery fleeing back across into russia. Those scumbag russian’s were part of murdering 300 people on that commercial plane and they haven’t been held accountable for it.

    russia is scum. We should support Ukraine completely. This is a good move, I hope more arms are approved.

    • Really? This is a country whose current president was installed by Obama’s regime due to Victoria Nuland’s actions, and then they poured money into the Clinton campaign and supplied North Korea with the engines for their nuclear missiles. Ukraine can screw off.

      • Let’s not forget the numerous war crimes carried out by Ukrainian troops against the local population… Because when I think “police action” the first solution that comes to mind is to shell population centers with massive quantities of 150mm artillery.

        The reality is that self-determination is a human right. Right now, the western half of Ukraine is running the country into the ground in favor of the latest batch of globalist plutocrats. Unsurprisingly, Russia is not all too keen on having yet another failed state on their border with a large Russian speaking population getting their faces stomped by the latest bunch of authoritarian thugs.

        • The comment about plutocrats almost hits the nail on the head, in fact it’s the real reason for the conflict. Ukraine and Russia started together after the collapse of the USSR, and Ukraine was the richer of the two (per capita). Only 20 years later an average Russian is 3 times richer than average Ukrainian. 3 times, guys! If not for the economic meltdown in Ukraine, all these territories would be “self-determinig” towards the loyalty to Kiiv (or however it’s spelled this week). The policies of genocide by Ukrainian government only started because they began to lose their grasp on the territories. They would not need to genocide anyone if all those people were happy to remain in Ukraine.

      • The previous president of Ukraine was putin’s puppet who fled to moscow when he was tossed. And russia along with china are the countries helping N Korea.

        You’re either a russian troll or an ignorant fool.

        God speed to Ukraine, screw the russian scum

        • I’m a real Ukrainian with family on both sides of the issue. You can sit down and shut the fuck up. Both sides are assholes, but it was the Ukrainians who rolled in the troops and started this mess.

        • You’re a loon buddy, you show it day after day. Hopefully TTAG will one day be without your racist and ignorant posts.

        • You’re a loon and a racist, you post racist stuff all the time. TTAG is better without racist nutcases like you.

        • You post an opinion piece from a russian immigrant as proof? LOL LOL LOL You’re a loon, a racist and you post a russian’s opinion piece in the hill as “proof”. LOL LOL

          How pathetic are you. And clean up your language. Swearing like an idiot and your persistent racist comments. How classy.

        • As I said… Learn to read.

          “Lev Golinkin arrived to the United States as a child refugee from the Soviet Union.” (FYI: The author is a Ukrainian Jew.)

          But please, keep defending your national socialist buddies. I’m sure that the fact that I’ve cited three far left publications proving my point is not lost to people here. Go jack off to your Hitler memorabilia.

        • Though I do love the fact that the Nazi accusing me of being a racist is the one who doesn’t bother to look into the author of the piece I cited and just assumes all Soviet refugees are actually Russian… Who’s the racist here?

        • pwrserge, are you a child? Swearing and acting like a child? You also seem to have anger issues, maybe you should seek a therapist.

          This website is a fun forum for people to converse, if you can’t handle that like an adult, maybe you should leave. We really don’t need bratty children throwing fits, it detracts from the site. It’s really sad you seem to have such poor manners and self control.

        • I’m sorry, I take some rando defending a government that’s supported by actual Nazis to be more than a bit offensive. (Not alt-right cosplayers, but guys who actually go to war with god damn SS runes on their gear.) Especially since that government happens to be in charge of the place where I was born. Everyone here knows who I am and why I despise garbage like DDay. Quite frankly, sir, you seem to have very skewed priorities.

          Go read the articles I linked (from far left publications that I personally despise, I might add) and tell me more about how we should associate ourselves with a government that allows scum like that into their armed forces. Moreover, this is the same government that thinks that the appropriate response to the exact same thing that got them into power in the first place, is to roll in the god damn troops and shell tightly packed population centers with heavy artillery.

          Quite frankly, I’m at the “a pox on both [their] houses” stage and if you find that offensive, I suggest you find your balls. You have no idea about the topic being discussed and until you have members of your family on opposite sides of a civil war, you never will. So take your unsolicited advice and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

    • Right… Because we should totally support a government that stomps down on political opponents with military force and deposes a democratically elected president with a violent coup… Yeah…

      Oh, and pro tip: Don’t fly airliners over combat zones. It’s not rocket science. On a radar screen, a civilian airliner looks a whole lot like a high altitude bomber.

    • American “scumbags” shot down an airliner in 1988, and Ukrainian scumbags shot down an airliner in 2001. Just making sure we have a perspective on these events.

    • I’m from Ukraine and Western Ukraine at that, but that country is dead to me now. It has gone mad and turned into a pathetic, third world, feudal banana republic, with murderers in charge, using neonazis to kill fellow Slavs, including their own people. It’s funny how no one in the West gave a crap when Ukraine rolled in its sad, unprepared, joke of an army and (later) Central American style death squads (Azov, Right Sector, Aidar, Tornado, etc) into the Donbas and indiscriminately bombed and shelled the cities and villages with everything they had, murdering dozens of civilians on daily basis that summer. Then, the Boeing with some Westerners on it got shot down and everyone was “Oh! The horror! Those nasty, ruthless Russians!”. Never mind that both Ukraine and the US have accidentally shot down civilian air liners too and when Ukraine did it, they basically said “shit happens”. Westerners couldn’t give two shits about Ukrainian or Russian lives. It’s also funny how Ukraine didn’t judge it prudent to close that air space to civilian traffic, even after their planes started getting shot down on daily basis, eventually forcing them to call off the air campaign. They were getting money for the use of this air space and were callous enough to keep it open, even after it became clearly unsafe. Russia reacted like any country would… like US would react if Russia destabilized and subverted Mexico. However, Russia was actually very measured in its response and support for the separatists. If Putin wanted to, they could take all of Novorossiya, from Kharkov to Odessa, in two days and most of the locals would throw flowers at the tank columns. The difference in military capability between Russian in Ukraine, is about the same as US vs Iraq in 1991. Ukraine doesn’t stand a chance. Sniper rifles or even Javelins, will not help. Putin might still give the order, if the Western weapons keep coming in and the current escalation in the shelling of cities continues. If the Ukrainian leadership was any smart, they would admit their defeat, write Donbas off as a loss and stick to Minsk 2 like flies stick to shit. By not implementing Minsk 2 and pouring more gasoline on this fire, they are playing a very dangerous game. Poroshenko might wake up one day, with a Kalibr cruise missile flying into his window and an Iskander crashing through his roof. Unfortunately, in such a scenario, more innocent lives will be lost too. I’m just glad that all of my family is out Ukraine now, including the pro-regime relatives. I really hope that some day soon, Ukraine will come to its senses, so that I can at least visit my family graves, without feeling dirty from just being in the country and having to put up with the nationalist, anti-Russian hysteria stocked by the West. May God bless and re-unite all of Rus people!

  6. A properly set up Mosin Nagant M91-30 sniper rifle is as deadly as anything we could sell them. And they have been proven in battle!

    It’s not the quantity of shots you get off, it’s the accuracy.

  7. Hey, California! Ukraine can buy a .50 cal Barrett but you cant! Nyah, nyah, nyah!!! 😜

    (That was kinda snotty of me, wasn’t it?)
    🤠

  8. The same Ukraine that gave money to Hillary’s campaign and made deals with her foundation that definitely qualify as collusion? The same ukraine that sells rocket motors, warhead reentry vehicle technology, and God knows what else to the North Koreans? Yeah, lets help them.

  10. I think we really need to just grab both sides by the ear and have them sit down and talk this out. The reality is that Ukraine will never have the firepower to reconquer the seceded regions without external support, support that will guarantee direct and overt Russian intervention. FYI, to the nutjobs screaming about “muh’ Russia”, if Russia wanted Ukraine, there would be a Russian flag over Kiev by Sunday and there would be jack shit anyone could do about it.

    The reality is that there are civilian being shelled by their own government because they didn’t support a coup against a democratically elected president. Both sides have absolutely horrible people fighting for them. From outright rune wearing Nazis on the Ukrainian side to open Bolsheviks on the separatist side. This entire mess can best be summarized as “not our problem”.

    • Indeed. People often forget the Ukrainian revolts that started this whole thing. Most people and the US media didn’t start paying attention until Putin invaded. Some of us, who do more research then just watch mainstream news, could see what was going on months before. I remember telling people Russia was going to invade Ukraine and people would look at me like I had a dick growing out my forehead. This whole conflict started over left wing populist revolts that have very much in common with ANTIFA here in America. The revolting groups were a demographic of the young left wing kids in urban cities, who were revolting against a president who was popular among the rural areas. Does that sound familiar to anyone? These groups then overthrew the legitimate government in Kiev which started the civil war. Russia invaded because it decided it wasn’t going to let Crimea fall into thier hands, and the rural eastern population is ethnically Russian. Now, I’m not defending the Russian cause, but when the Russians fight, they fight dirty. It shouldn’t surprise anyone with what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

      • I don’t like the former Ukrainian president much either, but his replacement is just as much of a shit stain, just on the pro-Merkel side of the fence. The reality is that, regardless of the causes, using heavy ordinance in civilian population centers as tightly packed as those found in Eastern Ukraine is a war crime. By supporting the Ukrainian government, we become a party to said war crimes. Ukraine has been a shithole for decades, I should know, I’ve been there more than once over the years. What’s happening now is basically two groups of assholes fighting it out over the virtues of national socialism as opposed to international socialism with hundreds of thousands of civilians being caught in the crossfire.

      • This is the same Russia that, decades before, had deliberately starved to death upwards of 12 million ethnic Ukrainians — this while eventually working to death up to 62 million Russians in its gulags starting from a little before then and on through the following decades — just so that they could turn the farms over to the state whose agents couldn’t so much as run a broom in a horse stable, much less a farm. It was a mass genocide by starvation, Holomodor they call it, planned by Stalin to physically kill off the growing Ukrainian independence movement. That is literally about the only reason that there is even any significant Russian-speaking population there in the first place, as they filled the enormous void left by millions of dead people.

        As horrible as the Ukrainian government is, we can rightly say fuck the Ruskies, too. This is just Putin finishing what Stalin started three generations ago, and I sincerely hope they’re made to pay dearly for every little inch of it.

        This is yet another giant bowl of “not our problem” that our government is once again dipping its spoon in, in our name, and we’re all going to be made to eat it one way or another.

        • Remind me again… where was Stalin actually from? (Hint: He was in no way Russian.) There is a difference between Russia and the Soviet Union. (I hate the latter, I’m rather ambivalent to the former.) Pretending otherwise ignores quite a bit of history.

          Somehow, I really doubt Putin really gives a shit about Ukraine beyond the fact that having another third world neighbor with strong ties to the EU is bad for Russia. If Putin really wanted to “finish what Stalin started” there would be a Russian flag flying over Kiev and there would be jack shit anyone could do about it.

          This entire mess started when the EU tried to bring Ukraine into their sphere of influence and out of Russia’s through some very very underhanded means. (Like deposing a democratically elected president.) Naturally, the primarily Russian speaking regions of Ukraine with strong family ties right across the border were not all too thrilled at having their country become a satrapy of Germany.

  11. I’m less than impressed with this move by Trump.

    First, because it seems that the international arms market is becoming quite loosey-goosey, and we could ship a case of Red Ryder BB guns to some third world dungheap and by the end of the month, we’ll find them in the hands of someone we don’t like and are fighting. .50 BMG rifles? Yea, I’ll bet our guys will be on the wrong end of one of these rifles within a couple of years. For that reason alone, I’m against giving any more of our arms to anyone – and I mean anyone.

    Second, because the whole Ukrainian situation isn’t as clean and neat as we’d like to believe.

    Lastly, what are we getting out of this deal? A possible thumb in Putin’s eye? That’s not enough compensation, IMO.

  12. What possible good will this do us? Why should Trump support Hellary’s backers in the Ukraine? How is this putting America first? The only way this would help us is if we sold them all our oldest past expiration date weapons/ammo, at 10 times our cost. I might actually do that. How many think that will happen? We will ship new ammo and will not receive a penny for it. Not our monkees, not our circus.

  13. Screw Ukraine. They brought this on themselves. You don’t screw with another nation’s naval base. How would we react if Cuba decided to take back Guantanamo? Would we just rollover and let them have it?

    I want my Russian AK’s and 7n6 back!!
    And if Ukraine actually wants to make money and gain my forgiveness they can quit screwing around and ship us their Fort-brand AK’s.

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