U.S. arms Latvia against Russia with 120 armored units

RT reports, March 9, 2015, that the Latvian Ministry of Defense confirmed that more than 120 armored units, including M1A2 Abrams tanks and M2A3 Bradley armored vehicles, have been delivered by the US to Latvia via Riga Freeport after being offloaded from the carrier ship Liberty Promise.

Latvian Minister of Defense Raymond Vejonis said in a statement on Twitter,”The presence of our allies (US and NATO) in Latvia is a confirmation of solidarity and security in the region.”

US Army General John O’Conner who witnessed the tanks arriving on Latvian soil said, “Freedom must be fought for, freedom must be defended,” and that the tanks “demonstrate resolve to President Putin and Russia that collectively we can come together” and would stay “for as long as required to deter Russian aggression.”

Meanwhile, ZeroHedge reports that a day after the delivery of U.S. lethal aid to Latvia, on March 10, 2o15 U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told a Senate committee that the U.S. can “confirm” new Russian weapons delivery to Ukraine and “can tell” when Russia sends in new weapons, but Nuland offered no explanation of how the U.S. knows all this.

Note: This is the same Victoria Nuland whose conversation with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was bugged and leaked on YouTube in February 2014. As pointed out by BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus, the conversation shows that, contrary to the Obama administration’s insistence that the U.S. is working with all sides in the Ukraine crisis to reach a peaceful solution and that “ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future,” Nuland’s conversation suggests that the US favors the Ukraine “opposition” and has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals. (To read the transcript of the Nuland-Pyatt phone conversation, go to BBC.)

At the same Senate committee hearing, U.S. Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense Brian McKeon said the US is “actively considering more weapons for Ukraine,” which implies the U.S. had already sent weapons.

~StMA