Latest from the 'other war.'
Now there's lots of evidence that war in Ukraine could have been avoided.
Still dark at the end of Ukraine’s tunnel
"It's too early to plan a victory parade in Kyiv but all the momentum is with Ukraine now and there is no doubt in my mind that they will win this war, probably in 2023. — Gen. Ben Hodges, Dec. ‘22.
Russian forces attacked the Kharkiv region's north last Friday, making inroads of up to 6 miles and unbalancing Kyiv's outnumbered troops who are trying to hold the line over a sprawling front nearly 27 months since the invasion. — Reuters today.
While Western media is totally consumed with whitewashing the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, you have to dig hard to find any substantial reporting from the killing fields in Ukraine where a half-million dead soldiers, Russians, and Ukrainians, currently feed the Ukrainian soil.
So I dig hard…
Looking back, it’s clear that Gen. Hodges had his head up his ass. He wasn’t the only one. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said in Nov. of that year, that the Russian military was “really hurting bad” after nearly nine months of war in which the Kremlin has failed to achieve any of its goals. The Ukrainians have racked up “success after success after success,” Milley quipped, while the Russians “have failed every single time.”
It’s also clear that the rosy picture spoonfed by the military to Western media was simply a come-on for sending an unending stream of weapons and taxpayer dollars to feed an unwinnable war and the corrupt authoritarian regime in Kyiv. And it worked. Since January 2022, NATO countries have pledged more than $380 billion in aid to Ukraine, including nearly $118 billion in direct military assistance from individual countries.
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Not only were US dreams of early Kyiv victory without American boots on the ground, out of touch with what was going on at ground zero, but it’s obvious that Hodges and Milley had either underestimated Russian economic, political, and military viability or lied to us about it.
In the past year, the Ukrainian counter-offensive has been a miserable failure and the country has been battered militarily. Zelensky blames the hold-up in arms shipments from the US. But it’s unlikely that would have made much difference in the long run.
Meanwhile, Russia’s military has actually grown stronger than it was, pre-invasion. The IMF forecasts that Russia's economy will grow faster than all of the world's advanced economies, including the US, this year.
The most distressing thing about all this bloodshed and loss is that it probably could have been avoided early on. There were plenty of early opportunities for a negotiated peace. In the early weeks that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine engaged in substantial attempts to negotiate a peaceful settlement. These could have ended the war before the devastation of Ukraine’s infrastructure, the massive loss of lives, and the increased risk of unchecked escalation. Both Ukraine and Russia seemed to be close to an agreement that would have kept Ukraine out of NATO and limited Russia’s encroachment on Ukrainian territory.
But that was before the US and its NATO partners decided to push Ukraine deeper into a protracted proxy war aimed at regime change in Russia, or at least badly weakening Putin before “shifting” to the east to take on China.
Fast forward to today. The war is now seen by both sides as unwinnable. Zelensky is running out of artillery, ammo, and soldiers. He’s suspending most democratic freedoms, banning opposition political parties and critical media.
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At the beginning of 2024, the former Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s army Valerii Zaluzhnyi argued that the military needed another 500,000 soldiers. He expressed his frustration at “the inability of state institutions in Ukraine to improve the manpower levels of our armed forces without the use of unpopular measures,” in a CNN op-ed published in February.
Martial law prohibits most men between 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine unless they are deemed unfit for military service for health reasons or have an exemption. But tens of thousands of men have left the country illegally since the full-scale war with Russia began, many by paying bribes. Last year, Zelensky, fired every regional military recruitment head in the country, citing endemic corruption in the apparatus.
Now, any male Ukrainian not already in uniform is in danger of being grabbed off the street by “mobilization officers” and pressed into service. Zelensky signed a law on Friday allowing prisoners to be made to serve in the army. He then signed another ordering tougher fines for draft dodging.
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Mark Episkopos of the Quincy Institute writes in an op-ed:
The West’s continued lack of interest in feeling out the Kremlin’s terms for ending the war was jarring even in 2022, considering Russia’s massive advantage in all relevant indicators of military power. It is all the more boggling today in light of Ukraine’s substantially worse and rapidly deteriorating position.
My eyes hurt from thinking of US push to Ukraine ....where is justice???