chris talpas

My brother in law just died a needlessly horrible drawn out death, today. He fought for decades in a variety of ways to defend the USA. One person was directly responsible for how it went down. My sister is heartbroken, and enraged at what happened. I am in more than a foul mood. So my thoughts right now are colored in a certain way by this tragedy. Not particularly with distance, nuance and diplomacy. What happens when you are inside the box, not outside. My apologies if you don’t like them. I don’t either.
Lot of talk lately about Ukraine has GOT to produce big battlefield wins, now. Trying to put myself within Ukraine’s box:
1. Your country was suddenly invaded by one of the largest monsters in the world, ravaging your cities, raping and killing civilians. That is awful. We condemn it. You will collapse in three days.
2. We are NATO. We are a hugely powerful military alliance designed  to defend ourselves against that very same horrible monster.  Because we all fear trying to do so alone. Like you. Too bad you aren’t in NATO.
3. There won’t be any cavalry coming to your rescue, on land, sea, or air. But good luck, we support you brave people. Here are a lot of supplies and defensive short range weapons. You go fight the monster. We’ll cheer you on. 
4. OK, you have been doing a great job! Well done. Even with most of your cities and power grid regularly under missile and drone attack in the winter,  thousands of casualties, and smashed into rubble cities, you are still standing! Great job! Here are some more weapons, and one with a little longer range. It works really well so you can continue to not only survive but make some progress. Not too much progress though. Might be dangerous. So, no to your other requests for planes and long range weapons. We can’t risk getting attacked by the monster.. But we will open war crimes investigations into the massacres, rapes and civilian killings and targetings.
5. Hey, you haven’t won yet! We don’t think you can win although the monster has obviously already lost. You have really fracked up his army good. By the way, our patience is growing thin and you haven’t defeated one of the world’s largest military powers yet. After a whole year.  We are the richest group of countries ever on Earth.  We have awesome military capabilities beyond belief. And lots of nuclear weapons. If we lose interest and get tired, you probably will have to negotiate away big chunks of your country you fought and died for. If you only achieve a stalemate against the monster. Unless you defeat that monster, real soon now. Here’s a few older tanks we made a long time ago. And a handful of rusty old Soviet/Russian jets, some don’t work though. Please don’t complain. It’s ungrateful.
6. Oh, hey. Go out there as soon as the ground is firmed up and really tear apart the monster, the monster we are definitely not wanting to get any madder at us. No pressure, but if you don’t defeat the monster right now, you are pretty much up a creek because we’re tired and have real problems here in our nice undamaged, heated homes. By the way, we are worried about you defeating the monster. What will happen to the him? He might hurt us. But don’t forget, the monster has already lost.
7. I mean, yeah, the monster just threw a few hundred thousand troops at you and you survived and all. Well, most of you. But hey, they weren’t well-trained. And we all know the monster has already lost (as far as threatening us over here in NATO - yay).  So you better defeat this monster by yourself, Right now. We gave you a LOT of equipment so you should be able to do this on your own. We can’t get involved. But here are a few more old jets. Don’t work so good right now, but…
8. We just got Finland into NATO!  Mostly thanks to you!). Now we are even stronger, and NATO makes sure none of us have to try to defeat the monster on our own. Like you. Because we don’t think we could. We can’t give you more powerful offensive weapons because it would have taken you all last year to learn how to use them. And then you might have defeated the monster. And we are really really worried because that might be bad. For us. You understand. So go out there NOW and defeat the monster. Or we will probably have to reduce our support for you. Like, if things get really bad for you. Not winning. We might not be there. As much. Or something. Hard to tell. But go win. Now. OK? 

PS. I really am pleased at how the West has helped out. I just don’t think it’s been soon enough with enough of the right stuff to end it before the political rot sets in. So I’m ventilating how it might feel. While I am grieving.

Man that really highlights the issue at play here.  The US is more than a nation of 360-odd million.  It is an idea.  An idea that despite it flaws, contradictions and even occasional hypocrisy that the western world signed up for because it resonated.  We all took the idea and made it our own.  It was bigger than a political system.  It spoke to themes of liberty, representation, security, justice and equality.  We built a global order to oppose Communism around this big idea.  That is what this war is really about - the defence of that idea.  
Supporting Ukraine is simply the right thing to do.  It is about pushing back a genocidal bully and declaring to any and all that would think about trying this “Hey, this is our idea and we are going to defend it.  You are not attacking Ukraine, you are attacking our idea”.

I think a lot of this springs from a sort of ignorant entitlement mentality.  The world is just supposed to keep the US on top because it is the US.  This completely misses the sacrifices and decades of work it took to position it on top - and frankly everyone in the western world should be happy it worked out that way.  But no, the US should be able to simply “Let it be” and somehow the world will keep spinning the way it has - this is beyond ignorant and is heading to dumb.
Here is a crazy thought for all the Russian apologists, isolationist, Cro-Magnon-adventists who try and frame this war as anything than it is: Some wars are worth fighting, and this is one of them.
”Oh if we had only…[insert upside down theory]”. Well we did not. Russia invaded a nation that was minding its own business and is killing innocent people in a naked power grab.  I do not care if Russia wigged out because NATO - so freakin what?  We use our words not poorly aimed cruise missiles.  
This entire war is not the result of anyone’s foreign policy other than Russia and Putin.  Every nation that joined NATO did so of its own free will - you know, the thing we are supposed to be protecting?  Anyone who suggests that we should live in a world where we let regional dictators pull of nonsense like this war - “to avoid war” is deluded.  Or, as I suspect is in this case, is that kid in the class who is just clever enough to be contrary and get attention but has no real solutions to offer.

And even if it didn't push enough people to get over 50% they would have been close and the divisions would have remained a raw point in UK politics: Whatever Russia spent would still have been well invested.
As a Canadian I hate to think what a separation referendum would be like if it were held today instead of 1995. <shudder>

So I really do not have a dog in this whole EU fight but what I am seeing on both sides of the discussion are classic symptoms of information operations.  Russia has not simply been “troll farming”, evidence points to a re-emergence of subversive warfare doctrines re-tooled for the 21st century.  This is basically a lot of effort aimed at finding and exploiting the fractures and divisions in a society, leveraging that to either create negative decision (undeciding things, like EU membership), null decision (paralysis by rendering something undecidable) or positive decision (reflexive control type stuff where decisions are made that are in the interest of the sponsor, not the targeted state).
The things to watch out for just unfolded in these last two pages.  Polarized information spheres - Cpl S is clearly in one where the narrative is the EU is ruling the UK like a monarch to the detriment of the “working man”.  While others are being given evidence the EU was beneficial etc.  in reality there is enough truth in both to sustain the spheres and keep them accelerating away from each other - we saw the exact same thing with NAFTA here in NA.  The actual truth is almost immaterial, and is usually pretty mundane - something which some have glanced off of.
And then there is the agency reflex - “well I was not influenced”. Well you probably were, how much and how far it influenced your decisions is variable and likely linked to how much you cared (although there is plenty of evidence of apathy reinforcement).  The reality is that if you were involved in a decisive issue you likely have been influenced to a degree.
Now how successful Russia has been is a major problem.  If they have not been the reflex will be to ignore and continue, which is good for the sponsor of the campaign.  Or if it is over subscribed it hijacks heathy discourse and makes a boogeyman where none exists, also good for the sponsor.
We have seen the results right here - sides yell at each other pretty much abandoning any and all facts.  Someone leaves in a huff, which is pretty much what subversive sponsors want because meaningful discourse and compromise do nothing for their effort.  Agency reflex/active denial and actual facts getting lost in the noise.
Finally, the other place to watch for these sorts of things is on issues that are not only highly divisive but hang in a fine balance.  Subversion rarely works in creating massive landslides, they are not designed to and the costs are too high.  On tight races where a few thousand votes can swing things (or conversely in an autocratic society, a few key decision making nodes) this is where subversive warfare really kicks in.
Now as to how well Russia influenced Brexit?  Who really knows.  We do know they were involved and put some effort as it is in their interests to split up the EU.  How successfully they pulled that off would take a lot of effort to figure out.  But in reality the fact that people are still divided and yelling past each other is a pretty good sign they are still getting something out of the whole affair.

with regards to the tank turret
Call it roughly 4 seconds falling from max height and assuming negligible wind resistance
d=.5 g t^2
= 5 * 4^2
= 80 m.  =~240 ft
very impressive

with regards to the tank turret
Call it roughly 4 seconds falling from max height and assuming negligible wind resistance
d=.5 g t^2
= 5 * 4^2
= 80 m.  =~240 ft
very impressive

with regards to the tank turret
Call it roughly 4 seconds falling from max height and assuming negligible wind resistance
d=.5 g t^2
= 5 * 4^2
= 80 m.  =~240 ft
very impressive

This what Putin is counting on. Really, his only hope for redemption is being re-embraced by a newly elected president Trump: Sanctions lifted immediately, resumed threats to leave NATO, verbal attacks on all USA allies as before, and leaning towards foreign dictators (again). With a Republican House of Representatives bent on spending cuts, a return to threatening to withhold Ukraine military support unless it agrees to various demands is probable. Demands many here would find appalling. At which point Putin and Xi announce their “Peace Plan”, with loud Trump endorsement. Europe in disarray not just over the war, but much more fundamental, over what they feared four years earlier. USA no longer a reliable partner, perhaps in anything. Not trustworthy. The end of the Atlantic Alliance.
This isn’t a prediction! It’s a possible scenario with more than a 50/50 probability because it is based in many aspects on past behavior. So, all the more reason to underscore the critical need for providing Ukraine with *everything* it needs to win convincingly on the battlefield this year. To deliver such a major Russian battlefield defeat that the Russian military in Ukraine is finished. And no one can doubt the fact. Because the only reasonable guarantee of ending the threat of future Russian attacks is full NATO membership. And the only way all NATO members might consider this is the convincing, devastating Russian defeat. Gambling *anything* about NATO until after 2024 is gambling Ukraine’s lives and future.

Just think, if they join this summer it could become AUKUST in august! 😄

An irrational and highly unstable geopolitical partner they have to invest more in to prevent from completely falling apart or dragging them into a major war than they can ever expect to get out of?  Or how about a completely fractured former superpower with 6000 loose nukes at their back door?  
Oh goody, it was getting quiet in here…US bashing day.  Yes, please tell us again how this was all the US’s fault for allowing former eastern bloc countries entry into a free and transparent collective defence treaty?  And after those independent and sovereign nations had, of their own free will, decided it was in their best interest to join said collective defence organization. Or why they would want to join said organization in the first place?
Or perhaps a thesis on how the world would be a much better place if we have left them in the cold and trusted Putin to not do this exact same thing in Estonia, Latvia etc?  I mean the guy looks pretty trustworthy based on his performance in this war, right?  Oh that’s right, like a good domestic abuser argument we made him do this.  And if we had only shrank back and stayed out of it the power hungry dictator would have surely been a ok.  
Here is a counter thesis and question - how many Ukrainians would be alive today if we had pulled them into NATO in 2013?  “Oh but look at how unstable and corrupt they were?”…Turkey.  “Oh but it would have made Russia mad and our gas prices go up”…whoops. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shootdown  This?  We are talking about this?  No, this is a Russian violation of Turkish airspace that prompted a lethal response (that was a hard kill to btw).
Ah, well you squarely have the Great US Satan in your brainpan today and look like are planning on a pretty wide scope logic journey while standing on the righteous hill of “it isn’t fair!”
Can we expect a sequel of how the US and NATO forced Russia into invading a neighbour?  Bioweapon black sights and sinister US oil interests?  How all those people at Bucha were crisis actors?  I mean if you are going to go all crazy in public, why do half measures.

It will buff out.
 

Right now the nukes are functioning exactly as designed.  They're sitting in locked spaces keeping NATO and Russian troops from going directly at each other.  The instant someone tries to blow up someone else with one, they've failed, independent of whether they explode.

Lavrov the clown making people laugh with his nonsensical comments. 🤡

We can assume that the so called “China’s peace plan for Ukraine” is a wishful thinking from some hot heads, it won’t produce any positive result (even to China). Just take a look at recent disastrous PRC diplomacy in middle east.
Back in Dec 2022, our great leader visited Saudi. In the hope this is the beginning of a new world order, no one dare to tell him that the Gulf states laid a trap for him. 
The joint statement between PRC and Saudi/ Gulf Cooperation Council made Iran outranges. The statement not only called on Iran to cooperate with the IAEA but also support UAE’s position to "reach a peaceful solution" with Iran on three disputed islands (that can be interpreted as support UAE’s claim on the three islands currently controlled by Iran)
https://amwaj.media/media-monitor/china-slammed-in-iran-over-unfriendly-posturing-in-riyadh
Iran was outrages and summoned Chinese ambassador, condemn the statement as an interference into the Iran’s internal affairs. And later Irani president Raisi demand compensation from Beijing during a meeting with a Chinese envoy.
And Raisi visited Beijing last month, he got what he wants, an assurance from China (if not, then at least a good posture) that China will pursue strategic partnership with Iran, a joint communique that railed against “efforts by certain governments to politicalize the work” of the IAEA (that is a 180-degree turn compare to the joint statement with GCC in Dec), also an investment agreement of $3.5 billion
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/18/how-will-raisis-beijing-visit-impact-iran-china-ties
Wondering when the Saudi and Israeli will send their envoy to Beijing, claim that the Irani visit hurt their feeling and demand the compensation in cash. 😄
 
Our great leader has hundreds of nicknames, a very popular one call him DSB. It comes from first letters in pinyin “Da Sha Bi”. It means “a big a**hole”. It also has a similar pronunciation that describes a fool “spend money in a foolish way but get nothing in return.” .By looking at the drama in middle east diplomacy, I guess we can understand why he got this nickname.
 
It might surprise people that Chinese diplomat and Xi’s Consultant don’t give a warning to him about the potential issue in the joint statement with GCC. Maybe they are so incompetent and thought Irani are Arabs so they should get along with each other (lol, of course NO). Or maybe they are aware of the risk but decided to keep silence. This is a kind of "Resistance".
The arrogant big boss will brush aside any concerns as “not willing to thinking unorthodox” and will punish anyone speak out the truth. The slang “Tang Ping / Lying flat” was born from internet back in 2021, but the essence of Tangping has been practiced dozens of years in part of China. In many of those self-sustained, isolated state own enterprises, everything is running under the will of the leader, his word is the law.  That is the sprite of 我不要你觉得，我要我觉得 😃 .
Any talent person will quickly know his/her correct position in the organization, any dissident voice will be quickly silenced (although they will not be sacked or fired due to some special rule in Chinese state-owned corps.)
An active resistance is futility in this kind of environment, Tangpin, a resistance similar to Satyagraha (but it is much more passive than Satyagraha) is the best solution in this kind of situation.
Another type of passive resistance is called “acceleration”, note this word is copied from “Accelerationism” but has a totally different meaning in China.
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/%E5%8A%A0%E9%80%9F%E4%B8%BB%E4%B9%89
Basically, if your arrogant boss is heading towards to a trap, why stop him? On the contrary, you should encourage him , ask him double speed. In a company or a government agency, the disaster could get your supervisor removed, that means you get your chance to promotion  . For a country that controlled by a bunch of idiots, well, just like a Nirvana, only a death can led to a new re-birth.    Of course there is too much optimism in “acceleration ideology”,  it is based on the assumption that you can be excluded from the consequence of the disaster. In reality this kind of action driven by the blinded optimism can be called as accomplice. For example, if a war broke out, hardly anyone can be excluded from the aftermath of that.  

Canadian Armed Forces and Polish Armed Forces training the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Leopard 2s.

News from Bakhmut by M.Lachowski:
-Situation is dire, Russians are 2,5 km from Khromove road- only stable line of supply
- Ukrainians are still defending the city from behind the river, but katsap firepower is overwhelming- they seem to conserve a lot of ammo for this assault.
-Muscovite airforce intensified, flies 3-4 sorties a day very close to the frontline
-Ukrainian counterattack did happen (note UA fights for Jahidne), but was only temporary and conducted with not enough force
-there is very strict info discipline on defender side; not a lot of info around except it is heavy. Both sides suffering heavy casualties, RU are of course again throwing assaults squads like before
 
Ok, quite frankly I don't know why they hold to this town so stubbornly. Also part of Ukrainian public seem to be questioning reason here- I saw and read many soldiers opinions it is rather pointless at this point to hold Bakhmut with fingers and nails.

Dan ,
you are close to the truth. It is a posturing. However, the audience is neither Russia, US, EU nor any 3rd world countries. It is targeting domestically, more specifically, to make great leader happy. Let him know that “Under your guidance we just create a proposal, and all the foreigners are listening to your wisdom.”
In Ministry of Foreign Affairs of PRC , after years of purge, the staff with professional training/experience have either been replaced or too timid to speak out the truth. They don’t do evaluation, questioning and planning anymore. All they know is to follow the “leader’s instructions” (aka , grasp the essence from leader’s word) .  I can talk more about this later,  that should also partially explain the root cause of “Wolf warrior diplomacy”. And very unfortunately, just like Ministry of Foreign Affairs, almost all Chinese government agencies are following the same path to abyss.

Canada announced 4 more today.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-four-more-tanks-ukraine-1.6759775
Also this was posted by Anita Anand, minister of defence back on Feb 4 so the original ones should either be in Ukraine or next door.
 

1 year of the war is passed. From the start of the invasion and to the huge count of air and missile strikes. One of my friends has been killed by wagner artillery in Bohorodichne village near Bakhumt. My father-in-law has been killed by storming the defensive enemy positions in the Kherson region 1st of October. I gave 3 of my salaries (all what I have)on the first day of the war on the military budget. Thanks to all of you, thanks for your help. Taking carry of our refugees, helping our soldiers to destroy enemy forces with AT weapons, artillery, APS, AFV, and Tanks, peoples who served in foreign legions. Thank you for giving billions of money to support our economy. Special thanks to battlefront for small support for me, when I asked about a discount, they gave me 2 games with all DLCs for free - I didn't expect this. Some of my relatives were in Kherson in occupation, and all high-value electronic and expensive things were looted from them by Russian forces. And now we don't fear rocket strikes (10 times they exploded 700-1000m from my house) we don't fear nuclear threat, we don't fear the second army in the world and you shouldnt. Sorry for we English would that what I want to say for all of you, I can tell you many things about the war but first i will try to improve my language knowlages.

Ok and @Kinophile can jump in on this one too.  So we are muddying up some stuff here, so to clarify:
- The original point on MC vs DC was to point out the cultural constipation of conventional services and how they are nowhere near as innovative or open to disruptive thinking as is often sold.  Over the military generations, military doctrine becomes dogma and counter-thinking in an organization that literally exists to create uniformity in behaviour is not well accepted.  We in the west have built a democratic myth of "empowerment and gumption" but it really does not translate well into actual military reality.  We can debate this but I know what I have lived for the better part of 3.5 decades. 
- The UA is a hybrid mix of Soviet and Western schools, and for them I think this was a major advantage.  It was not because we peppered them with western doctrine and training, it was because they had both worlds to pull from.  If we had an all western force in this thing, with the same restraints/constraints and capabilities as the UA, my hypothesis is that we would have done worse because we would have tried to apply an all-western approach.  I can definitely see in Phase I where this would have gotten us into a lot of trouble.  The UA is already outside of boxes and pulling in so much from the civilian side so quickly also helped in breaking doctrinal group-think and creating whatever this has turned into.  As to which school MC or DC, that the UA employs I do not think we have a clear idea but it is also likely a hybrid - which was how the entire thing was actually designed to work.
- MC vs DC schools of thought.  Ok, this is a whole other thing.  Mission Command is a essentially (and I will just use my own descriptions, feel free to go look up others) is essentially empowered command.  It arms subordinates with context and intent, "why we are doing this and here is what we are looking for".  This, plus allowing them to exercise initiative to exploit opportunity - the alignment of circumstance, context and capability, theoretically provides a force with higher potential for tempo advantage.  The thinking goes that empowered tactical commanders can see opportunity well before formation level and as such if they exploit it without waiting to be told the entire force can OODA faster than an opponent.  This is a cornerstone of Manoeuvre Warfare which is really a strategy of Annihilation through Dislocation.  We seriously bought off on all this and drank the Kool Aid on it about 40 years ago, to the point it became so dogmatic that it left little room for counter thought.
DC is one of mission control being held at higher levels.  Subordinates are empowered to do a task (The terms are actually derived from the Germans largely because Depuy and Starry really were hot for German warfare - Auftragstaktik and Befehlstaktik, The first meaning "mission tactics" the second "detailed orders tactics").  They then wait for further direction before exploiting opportunity.  They can still execute initiative in execution of the task but not the overall mission. 
So was born the Great American Military Myth (and frankly almost every western nation jumped onboard).  We were a democratized military built on "good ol 'merican innovation and initiative."  Further this All-Yankee Doodle (sorry but we really got beat over the head on this one back in the day) approach is very economic as it yields quick nearly bloodless wars.  The Persian Gulf became the poster child for this type of warfare, but more than few put up their hands and asked if it wasn't a false-positive.  The Gulf War was highly attritional and mostly driven by air supremacy - the land battle of mission command and manoeuvre warfare was basically executed against an already beaten foe, and one crushed by far more Detailed Command approaches of the Air Force. (This brings up the other problem with the Kool Aid, it really does not work for either the Navy or Air Force - and does not work enough for SOF, kinda).  
The truth is far more complicated.  The largest problem with Mission Command is that while it is great in theory it runs into serious problems in full execution because of all those pesky enablers.  Tactical commanders can run all over the place all empowered but there is only so much ISR, artillery, engineers and logistics to go around.  So what really happens is far more control in practice.  The Main Effort gets a lot more empowerment but if you are on a side gig, well you might very well get held back because the boss simply does not have the stuff to support you if you go all manouvrey.  Detail Command it far to restrictive and you get into micromanagement, so in reality neither systems works in extremes.
The future.  Well the problem was seen coming way back during the RMA days.  "What happens when a higher level commander knows more than a tactical one?"  I suspect if the UA has created a sort of ad hoc JADC2 system then this has already happened.  If a higher formation commander knows more than the tactical level, then DC starts to make a lot more sense.  And then what does Manoeuvre Warfare turn into? Well a form of Corrosive Warfare is one option apparently.  There is a lot of sense to this, we already do it with unmanned systems, which are going to expand in use not contract.  Detail Command that controls the battlespace like a production line and not a jazz band is not totally out of the question.  
So at one end we have "lets go all DC because higher can see all".  While at the other end we have "remove higher command entirely."  This is hyper-Mission Command, or self-synchronization.  Here tactical units are loaded up and basically command themselves with their peers - this gets a lot of traction in SOF circles. They then share enablers in a hand-off system where "higher" is really coordination and not command and control.  Here we get into military effects clouds and inverted command systems.  This also makes some sense but many are shy as to human nature.  How are enablers going to be shared?  This is always a friction point, and higher commanders are the referees.  What happens if we get rid of them.  Some have suggested AI does the job as it can calculate requirements far faster than a human can, or a human AI pairing because human can do context.
So in the end there is no "answer".  We should continue to try both, and maybe have a C2 system that can swing wildly from one to the other based on good ol human art of war.  But service cultures and equities already get in the way.  This is way tanks got resisted, the machine gun and even unmanned systems.  We make idols of our history and sometimes it gets in the way of evolution.  Experimentation and paying attention to wars like these are absolutely critical as we can start to get some idea of where things are going and then plan to adapt at a better rate than an opponent.      

This really is a “you guys” thing, so I am going to leave out any and all personal opinions one way or the other.  However what I do not get is that the US government is one of the most transparent governments in history.  
So if I am sitting on my back porch and someone in my sphere says “the government is spending all that money on Ukrainians and screwing Ohio-ians, damn [insert political party of your choice]”.  It literally takes an internet connection and about 10 mins to unpack this thing to a level that at least lays out some actual facts:
https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/quality-ohio/revenue-budget/budget-policy/review-of-ohios-2022-23-budget
https://www.lsc.ohio.gov/assets/organizations/legislative-service-commission/files/historical-revenues-and-expenditures-table-1-grf-lpef-and-lgf-revenue-history.pdf
https://www.lsc.ohio.gov/publications/historical-revenues-and-expenditures
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state
So the punchline is that the US federal government spent about $40B on Ohio alone in 22-23 (12B in grants which are code for “we never except to see them back”) and Ohio is in the top ten states to receive federal funding annually.
Yes, it looks like FEMA is being particularly dense and bureaucratic - and they likely need some executive nudging, however, we are talking about apples and unicorns here in both scale and funding streams.
And finally, there is a lot of some pretty convincing arguments flying around that said dangerous cargo was supposed to be off that train but…politics: https://apnews.com/article/wv-state-wire-north-america-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-2e91c7211b4947de8837ebeda53080b9mp-us-news-ap-top-news-transportation-1936e77a11924c909880f1ef014c7ca7
So what?  Well could the federal government be doing more cut through the red tape and support East Palestine Ohio - looks like it could.
Is the US government blowing all it money on Ukraine and therefore cannot support Ohio-eons?  No, that does not track.
Do US rail safety regulations look like they need a revisit - yes, probably a good idea.
Is there a direct link between East Palestine Ohio and US support to Ukraine - no.  In fact trying to find and indirect link is pretty hard.  The US federal budget was roughly $6.27T in 2022.  The $50B in aid to Ukraine comes to about .8% of that.
So for perspective if an average family income in the US is about 71k per year: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html
So in parallel terms this would be the same as that family spending about $560 dollars, or about $46 per month.
And last point, one of those corrupt former Soviet republics is Russia, a P5 UNSC member and nuclear power, and is directly threatening US global interest and influence, on a great power scale - you wanna stay on top?  You have to fight for it.