The major corporate media headlines about the Proxy War this morning focused on last night’s mostly-repelled Russian drone attacks against the Ukrainian capitol, Kiev, and against Lviv, a city in Western Ukraine near the Polish border.
There was nothing about the Spring CounterOffensive™. And if Russia is out attacking Kiev again, instead of focusing on defending its captured territories, it strongly suggests the counteroffensive is over. Or at least paused to regroup or something.
If it is in fact over, it would not be too surprising. Over the last weeks, we’ve seen very few claims of Ukrainian victories by U.S. corporate media propagandists, who surely would have inflated the tiniest scrap of victory into a spectacular patriotic musical. Instead, over the last two weeks we’ve had constant reports from Russian military and warbloggers citing devastating losses for Ukraine, culminating in reports of a massive weekend assault in the Zaporizhzhia region that the Russians described as a “slaughter,” with claimed Ukrainian losses up to a staggering 50%.
Scattered through the last week there were also regular reports of Ukrainians surrendering, often in groups, sometimes in large groups and bringing heavy equipment with them. On the other hand, there were no credible reports of Russians surrendering.
The Russians were also scoring victories on the political front. News emerged over the weekend that, after the Russians had nearly captured Kiev in 2022, the Ukrainians had agreed to a peace deal that would have kept their territory intact, but precluded NATO membership. A draft treaty had even been circulated.
But, according to newly-released documents, the Biden Administration interfered, and the Ukrainians were committed to endless war.
Many Russia hawks confirm that Ukraine is struggling; it is difficult to find any claims of Ukrainian advantage except for small incursions into various townships that nobody ever heard of. Here’s an example of what could be called the current “consensus:”
David Sacks posts:
The reason the counteroffensive is failing is unexpected. It’s not weapons. Reports suggest Ukraine is overflowing with high-tech weaponry and heavy armor. Instead, Ukraine is running out of experienced military commanders. Russia is said to have done a very good job of targeting battlefield leaders and taking them out one by one.
Now that we can look at it over the course of the last year, Ukraine’s war strategy appears to have been a test of the United States’ modern military theory. Our generals have bet on technology. They just love it. Contemporary American military strategy depends on an integrated, wirelessly connected, computerized battlefield designed to wipe enemies out long before they can gain any ground.
So, we sent Ukraine lots of high-tech toys, starting with our HIMARS missile systems, and initially it appears to have worked. In 2022, the Ukrainians halted Russian gains and caged the Russian bear in the East. But the Russians have adapted, they are learning countermeasures, like jamming U.S. communications signals and GPS locators.
The truth is the fighting has devolved into murky, smoke-fogged trench warfare, with brutal hand-to-hand combat, with artillery blasts landing overhead. It seems European warfare has not, in fact, evolved much since the last two World Wars.
It seems to always eventually come down to this.
With the usual caveats about the fog of war, official disinformation, and absence of any fully reliable source of news, it seems likely that the Proxy War is running out of immediate options and the status quo is untenable. The longer the Russians have to secure their positions in occupied Ukraine, the harder it will become to dislodge them.
Assuming that Zelensky is a non-factor who just takes orders from the U.S., which seems like a safe assumption, Biden’s team will soon be forced to make some difficult decisions about whether to escalate or evacuate. If I had to bet, I would bet on them doing the dumbest, most irrational thing imaginable, and whatever they finally do will fail badly, exploding in a shower of unintended but completely predictable consequences.
by Jeff Childers, Coffee and Covid
The press reports:
Last Friday Sec. of State Antony Blinken confirmed once again that the Biden administration has no intention of ending the Ukraine conflict peacefully. He dismissed the idea of a ceasefire + called for further transfers of high-tech weaponry + aircraft.
Robert Barnes On Ukraine War:
(Tom: What the USA are doing in the Ukraine is pure evil. They are attempting to reduce the power of another sovereign state, Russia, via useless economic sanctions that hurt their supposed allies more than the intended target, an act of international terrorism on the Nord Stream pipeline, a proxy war ostensibly waged by Ukraine, that has zero chance of achieving its stated objective as waged, has the potential of plunging the world into WWIII and in the process is killing 350,000 and wounding hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians, displacing tens of millions and wasting billions of dollars all round!
Pure evil from an out of control rogue state.)