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Washington’s gambit in Ukraine is facing disaster. Like so many would be conquerors of Russia, they craved Ukraine as a corridor onwards to Moscow, but it has failed like every previous attempt in history.
These plans (rolling well before the U.S. inspired coup that brought down the democratically elected President Yanukovych) have achieved nothing. Plans to surround and break-up Russia by stealth have been exposed and halted. Attempts to cripple Russia economically have backfired, driving a stronger Russia into the arms of China and giving urgent momentum to the BRICS economic alliance. Putin is stronger than ever both domestically and internationally.
Western spin and lies about the detail of their Ukraine operations are now being brutally exposed.
You may recall the “spring counter-offensive”of June 2023. It was supposed to split Russian forces in two and roll merrily onwards to Crimea – but it never got anywhere. So many U.S. Bradley fighting vehicles were set blaze that a part of the front line is now called “Bradley Square”. While The Guardian heralded the capture of a handful of tiny settlements near Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine suffered hideous losses of men and equipment for nothing.
Wars are not decided via PR narratives. The West needed to parade territorial gains and Ukrainian soldiers were entirely secondary to that end. Russia though was sending its own sons and recognised that victory would come via a slower rate of attrition. This disparity of focus has long given Russia a huge tactical advantage.
While Russia withdrew (to much western hoopla) from difficult areas, Zelensky (egged on by the West) not only refused to countenance any strategic withdrawals but insisted on counter-offensives. Time and again Russia set traps for Ukrainian soldiers because Ukrainian tactics pivot around PR. Zelensky poses in military fatigues and gives Churchillian speeches, but he is a politician who trades in headlines not bullets.
Now all of the chickens of Western hubris in Ukraine are coming home to roost. We have seen this time and again in recent decades in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya and now Gaza. Not only is the calculus nakedly immoral and narcissistic in each case – but the stated objectives are either not achieved, turn out to be counter-productive or both. Ukraine is yet another catastrophic illumination of the slow-motion collapse of the western empire, poisoned at the root by a bankruptcy of intellect and morality.
A Russian expeditionary force has made startling gains of territory in the north of Ukraine near the second city of Kharkov. This compounds Ukrainian losses of strategic towns like Avdiivka, Marinka and Bakhmut in the Donbass. Naturally the Western media is trying to spin away recent setbacks for Ukraine:
This from The Guardian’s live propaganda feed this morning:
“The changes to the frontline, which had barely budged in over a year, remain limited however, the analysis says, with Russia’s gains accounting for less than one percent of the Ukrainian territory under Moscow’s control.”
Ukraine is a huge country and the war pivots around its strategic towns. Conventional wars are fought on front lines and any breach threatens supply lines and risks troop encirclements. Russian troops are now punching holes in Ukraine’s front lines.
What the current territorial position also omits to mention are all the other indicators of war. Ukraine is bleeding soldiers, its elite units have been depleted and conscripts cannot replace them. While Russia has (via a pragmatic and dreadful cynicism) used convicts and conscripts in high risk areas, Ukraine has spent its best soldiers averting territorial losses which it would have been better advised to temporarily accept.
Russia is now on a full war footing and is massively out producing the west in terms of equipment and (crucially) ammunition. Much of Ukraine’s air defences lie in ruins, its artillery units are starved of shells and can no longer protect soldiers in the trenches.
Ukraine’s military defeat is now inevitable. Every day brings more evidence of Ukrainian weakness and territorial losses of key strategic towns, with Chasiv Yar looking set to fall next. Make no mistake, these losses are disastrous breaches of a front line that Ukraine can no longer defend.
How will The West respond to humiliating defeat in Ukraine? That should keep us all awake at night.
Contemporary U.S. policy makers are deranged and lack statecraft or strategic thinking. No reverse gear in Afghanistan until their ignominious withdrawal, none in Syria nor in relations with China. No reverse gear with regards to Palestine, Yemen or Iran. The pattern is always the same, threats and provocation, backed up by military posturing, propaganda barrages, economic sanctions and then bombs. Never is there a pause for reflection or any attempt to repair reputational damage.
The U.S. is an over-induldged toddler. Sly, devious and unburdened by principle, it knows only that it wants and acknowledges no limits to its power. Incapable of restraint or experiential learning, when the U.S. realises that it risks being found with its pants full of a Ukrainian mess of its own making…World War III may follow.
If the U.S. does plunge us into WW3, it won’t fight it very well. They may kill billions though, that being the only thing they excel at these days.
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