Ukraine is not being "supported". It's being used. And it was set up to be used. And, unforgivable, it was a stupid scheme all along bound to fail. It's pure waste.
To be more specific,
ukranians were set up. The sitting president there played the role of peace-maker when campaigning for the job, who would end the civil war, against the war-maker Poroshenko. Was voted into office on that platform. And afterwards promptly betrayed that vote. Ukrainians were played on, to be used for the already stated purpose (by the curring US administration, it's on their public record) of "weakening Russia". They are being wasted in their hundreds of thousands as pawns. And it's a failed crusade: the rest of the world not directly involved is aligning with Russia, against the US. Vassals are deserting it, look at Saudi Arabia for an obvious example, I told you here, one year ago, to look at what SA would do, it was predictable. Look at countries from Indonesia to Malaysia to Brasil dumping the US dollar and stating they do so to be rid of vulnerability to US pressure.
The
motives for this war are, I say again, essential to understand where it is going and how it can (will eventually) end. Russia motives, US motives, "european" motives. The motives of ukranians unfortunately matter little now which means they are stuck on this.
The motives of russian elites can be found either by reading their media, including official statements, but also the vast discussion of those - its a society with plenty of debate and skepticism, russians have become cynics after their experiences of the 1990s. But of course their media is mostly censored in the oh-so-free "west". You can also look at "western" analysis of russian motives, which
in the military and academic press sometimes can be almost devoid of propaganda.
If you want my opinion, the decision to accept the war in 2022 was not light, the trap in it was seen and the russian government walked into it because they judged the odds of turning the tables on the US good. So they met the challenge and after 8 years denying recognition and protection to the separatists, changed policy, recognized them and formally sign a defense treaty with them. It was a clear warning: back off immediately or there is war. By then the russian government had indeed made the decision for war. Also did the "west": before the military war started the EU eagerly went for economic war with sanctions already ready that were supposed to cause the russian economy to collapse, and the US ordered Ukraine's government not to back off (and as Nuland bragged long ago had invested a lot of money making sure it pulled the strings there). In both places (the EU countries and Ukraine) there were enough people bought and deceived by the neocons's propaganda of american hegemony and inevitable "western" victory that the war party prevailed. War it was.
Now, the russian goal of preserving their independence (avoiding regime change in Russia)
could be done in other ways without engaging in war to defend the separatist republics. In 2023 Russia could have evacuated those territories as it evacuated Kherson, without the government on Moscow falling. Granting NATO a victory with the usual ethnic cleansing as had been done in Yugoslavia (Krajina). So
the decision to meet the threat and go to war now, instead of submitting like Serbia did in 1995, was done looking at matters well beyond Ukraine. It was NATO's expansion, the military threat it posed. Talk of arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons, and they had people crazy enough about exterminating russians that they might use them. And, this is critical, seeing that countries that matter in the rest of the world are fed up with western meddling and willing to turn against the west. The time was ripe to attempt to end western european vassalage to the US.
This is Russia's war goal: kick the US out of western Europe, extend russian influence there even if not to the same degree as the US now holds.
This is relevant because it means there will be no ease fire in Ukraine, and no desire for a quick victory there. The attrition war is by design, having this war drag on is necessary for Russia's strategic goals.
- it exposes american military weakness, as its equipment fails to get its proxy to win in a serious war. And not just a wuick war but one that took long enough to rule the excuses of human error or lack of training. Wonder-weapons just keep failing, much as Saudi Arabia kept failing to crush the Houtis in Yemen and lost standing (and ultimately faith in american military power and western weapons) because of it.
- it exposes NATO as worthless because all its support and training cannot help its proxy win a real war, its
open promises of support get shown as useless. Worse than useless, a path to disaster.
- it militarily disarms western Europe without having to engage in war with western european countries, as they helpfully sent their usable military equipment to Ukraine to be destroyed
- it makes the silly european governments shoot their own economies with sanctoning their own supply of cheap energy and raw materials, to the benefit of asian (and american) competitors. This causes economic hardship and therefore political trouble inside those european countries and ends up threatening
their regimes - the sanctions weapon turned against its creators, and the blame is entirely of its governments.
A quick defeat of Ukraine would just be written off and forgotten. A dragged on attrition war cannot be written off or ignored. It keeps having consequences in Europe. To the point where western european governments must exit it. And they get to do it by ditching the american alliance.
The portion of the ruling elites of the "west" who planned for this war - the neocons - calculated that they could draw Russia to fight a war - they were correct - and that they could defeat Russia through economic pressure and because its army would be weak - they were completely wrong on both counts - do a regime change there and and then resume the looting of the country like in Yeltsin's days. The
rest of the ruling elites of the west just blindly followed along because they're so used to "neocolonial" wars having no bad consequences for them that what the hell why not go along with another adventure. Obviously businessmen are very unhappy with thus but they failed to lobby against it strongly when they could - before the crap started flying - and then it was very hard to go against the "humanitarian war" propaganda apparatus. Greed probably played a role on that groups inaction: what if the neocons were right and regime change followed by looting
could be done?
Now in the "west" the game is up, Russia cannot be defeated militarily, not isolated economically. The world at large does not care to volunteer to fight the wars of its old colonial masters. If they let any emotional response intrude in foreign policy, it will be joy at seeing those former colonial masters losing one, and relief at seeing their military threat (Libya was destroyed for defying the "west") taken down. The european and american materiel and mercenaries destroyed in Ukraine cannot be used for attacking another Iraq or Libya. The US withdrew finally from Afghanistan because it couldn't support the logistics of keeping its occupation there while fighting a war with Russia over Ukraine. The hegemon is visibly overstretched and so the vassals can escape. They
are ditching the dollar and they're not getting regime-changed or bombed into anarchy as a mafiosi lesson for those who cease paying protection money.
And western elites are now split.
The remaining industrialists want sanctions ended and a return to the past. but the past is past, the political requirements for "globalized" trade have changed: accept a "multi-lateral" world. So be it, they have no reason to dislike that.
The financiers would want to keep the "world financial system" as it was, meaning "free" capital flows and the use of the dollar without impediments (such as sanctions) that drive away business. A new cold war is very bad for their business. But, again, the political requirements have changed... and the new world will handle many currencies, which is by no means
bad for people engaged in finance. But will mean they must spread around the world, and indeed the UAE is already snatching a lot of business from London, with Singapore and Bombay trying to also. In China even HK is getting rehabilitated to make a run for the business alongside Shanghai (smart move, never let
one financial center grow too influential inside the country). The financial types can live quite well with this change, they are not the kind to have any local roots or national allegiances any longer.
The military... they do not want to all die in a nuclear war. So an escape from the present situation by running forward, towards WW3, is out.
So, who remains? Only the
ideologues are in on the "crusade against Russia and the multi-polar world" no matter what. The rest of the people that matter are willing to come to terms with the change, drop the US as the "necessary country" and adapt to a multi-polar world.
This is the reason why Russia is taking the war slow, and abstaining from escalating or inflicting real (military) pain on the european NATO co-belligerents. They intend to win and they
are winning.
Again, evidence of that is who the world outside the US and vassals is reacting, their ditching of the dollar and ignoring of sanctions and attempts at intimidation. The world
has already changed. Western Europe is the only place still resisting change because many among the "elites" here drank too much of its own propaganda! All the "humanitarian wars" and phony "rule of war" and "we are the garden and the others are barbarians". These people are blind ideologues and this place needs has to go through some house cleaning before it recognizes it's living in the past. We're lucky the goal for the "asian alliance" in this is to draw european countries into accepting a new security and political architecture of the world. Not to destroy them. Any self-inflicted harm we here in western Europe suffer is on our own governments through the blow-back from their policies. I'm rather sanguine about the war not getting beyond Ukraine's borders.
@Birdjaguar regarding facts: if you choose to disregard anything but your own governments propaganda, how could I ever supply you facts that would make you satisfied?
That corrupt german Ursula heading the EU already admitted to more than a hundred thousand military dead in Ukraine months ago, only for the press to pretend it was never said. I did mention it here (link included). So do the recent leaked documents from the NATO side, only for the intelligence agency annexes NYT and WP to publish what to me are obviolsy fake news claiming that "the numbers were doctored".
You choose to believe in such
allegations by media well known to carry water to intelligence agencies planting false stories (found those WMD in Iraq already?), what can I do? At least
do not censor what the people outside that propaganda bubble say.
You already saw "western" sources admitting to casualties in Ukraine (dead in action only...) into hundreds of thousands. Multiple western sources have put russian casualties under 20 thousand (I pointed you to the BBC's inquiries into military burials also months ago). This is coherent with universally cknowleged relevant military facts of this war: that Russia has a huge advantage in artillet ude, and that most casualties in any modern war are caused by explosives. Obviously the side on the receiving end of the biggest tonnage of explosives is going to have the highers casualties.
But you still would rather believe the war propaganda that Ukraine is wining and all is going wonderfully in NATO's anti-Russia crusade? Frankly that is because you
need to believe in the propaganda, otherwise you could not justify your ideological support to continuing this war. In other words: the propaganda is having its desired effect on you.
If I may ask: have you been deceived by the "Iraq has WMD" claim back then? By the "serbians massacred albanian civilians in Kosovo" thing back then? By the "back viagra fueled mercenaries raping for Qaddafi" more recently? By the mythical "moderate jihadis" in Syria? Perhaps you should examine your willingness to believe your favorite sources for what passes for information, before insisting on question other people's. I have pointed out all these hoaxes as they happened. Long before they were admitted. "Ukraine is winning" is also a hoax. It's losing, badly. The country, its population, is being used to in a failed war to sustain an hegemony hat has already collapsed. In plans hatched by the kind of people who said (Madelaine Albright) that
a million iraqui children dead were a price worth paying to hold back Saddam. Basically in every new war hatched by the monsters you are willing to simply believe their narrative on what is pure which and what is blackest black?
Come on, you are old enough and experienced enough to know that they lie, and lie, and lie. And that behind every war are many groups pulling their own ways, spinning their own false narratives, and you must reason through it all. Not just "read the facts" in today's paper. Therefore
this "war news thread" should not be just a dump of second-hand propaganda from whatever the media is carrying today. If it is to have any value at all, it must look back and forward also, it must analyze and compare narratives, it must reason about motives.
If one reasons about this war, it was obvious from day one that helping Ukraine could only be done by ending the war by agreeing to peace terms that could not be refused. It could have been done by "the west", by the US government really, in day one. Having Ukraine fight it out is not "helping", it is "using up". Ukraine has been used up s a tool. And to add insult to injury that use was useless.
