By Ahmed Adel | July 25, 2023
The West knew that Kiev did not have enough weapons for a successful counteroffensive but hoped that the “courage and resourcefulness” of Ukrainian soldiers’ would compensate for this deficit, reported The Wall Street Journal. Obviously, those hopes did not materialise as one cannot win a battle based on “courage and resourcefulness.”
“When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t,” reported the newspaper.
“Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment without a major shift in momentum,” added the Wall Street Journal.
According to the newspaper, the offensive risks a stalemate. It will cost Ukraine lives and equipment without significant progress. The publication also notes that there are not enough reserves in Europe to provide Kiev with everything necessary.
Moreover, according to Western diplomats, European leaders are unlikely to opt for a significant increase in aid to Ukraine if they feel a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the US, which in turn is preparing for the presidential election.
The Ukrainian offensive began on June 4 and has experienced catastrophy. But since the beginning of the special military operation in February 2022, Ukraine has lost 457 warplanes, 243 helicopters, 5,236 unmanned aerial vehicles, 426 air defence missile systems, 10,868 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,139 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 5,585 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 11,860 special military motor vehicles.
This catastrophic loss of military equipment demonstrates the complete failure of the Ukrainian offensive and is why more questions are being raised in Western countries about why support is still being provided when it is evidently making no difference in Ukraine’s fortunes.
In fact, it begs the question as to why the counteroffensive was ever launched to begin with.
As renowned political scientist Max Abrahms highlighted in a tweet, the White House boasted in May that “Ukraine has everything necessary for a counteroffensive.” This is a far cry from the recent revelation that the West believed that the “courage and resourcefulness” of Ukrainian soldiers’ would compensate for the lack of weapons.
For British military expert Jack Watling, Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia has been impeded by Western delivery delays and bureaucracy. The senior researcher on land warfare at the Royal Institute of United Services argues, “A bureaucratic, peacetime approach to training and stockpiling among Zelenskiy’s allies is posing a threat to European security.”
According to the author, Kiev has clearly communicated to Western capitals about what it needs to succeed on the battlefield, requesting artillery, engineering capacity, protected means of mobility, anti-aircraft defence systems and personnel training. Watling points out that Kiev did receive enough artillery and protected mobility assets but had a harder time obtaining other items on the list.
Western countries did not approve deliveries of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine until January 2023, making the situation difficult for Ukrainian forces: “Months of delays gave Russian forces time to build their defences, significantly complicating the task for the Ukrainians,” added Watling.
Effectively, it was a well-known fact, despite the public bravado, that the Ukrainian counteroffensive was going to fail. It questions why Ukrainians are being so easily sent into the Russian meat grinder to die or be maimed. This is difficult to reconcile since Ukrainians are literally being dragged off the street and sent to the front line.
Notably, more prominent voices in the West, such as Douglas MacKinnon, a former adviser for policy and communications at the Pentagon, and British Foreign Secretary Ben Wallace, are beginning to speak out against Zelensky’s entitled and spoiled behaviour. Although this has not deterred weapons transfers to Ukraine, it does suggest that patience could run out, especially as the US elections will take place in November 2024. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is also eyeing November 2024 for the UK’s General Election.
Particularly in the case of the US, the Republicans will likely use all the wasted billions of dollars and failure in Ukraine as a major election discussion point. With more and more revelations emerging that the Ukrainian counteroffensive never stood a chance of success, with foolish beliefs of “courage and resourcefulness” leading to tens of thousands of casualties, criticisms against the ruling governments in the West will only mount.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
RT | July 24, 2023
Leaving the European Union may soon become “a real alternative” for Hungary, the former governor of the Hungarian National Bank claimed in a television interview on Sunday.
Speaking on Hungary’s ATV network, Andras Simor said that while a Brexit-style departure from the bloc is an unlikely scenario, “it is a possible one.”
“It’s probability,” he explained. “If it was 10% last year, by now it has risen to 20%, to 30%.”
Citing the country’s rising inflation rate and the EU’s withholding of $30 billion in funding to Budapest, Simor stated that he is “afraid that Hungary’s government will maneuver the country into a situation where an exit from the European Union becomes a real alternative.”
Although Hungary is a net beneficiary of EU aid, much of this assistance has remained frozen for several years, with officials in Brussels citing Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s hardline anti-immigration policies and alleged crackdown on judicial independence and media freedoms as reasons for the holdup.
While Orban’s government successfully gained access to some of this money by lifting a veto on EU economic aid for Ukraine last year, the Hungarian PM has continued his criticism of the bloc’s support for Kiev. Orban has repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, and accused “pro-war Brussels bureaucrats” of stoking conflict with Russia “at the expense of European interests.”
Orban’s disagreements with the EU go beyond the realm of geopolitics. Speaking at a youth event in Romania on Saturday, he declared that the bloc “rejects Christian heritage, carries out the replacement of its population via migration… and conducts an LGBTQ offensive” against conservative societies.
Despite his regular broadsides against Brussels, Orban has repeatedly dismissed the idea of leaving the EU. Polls taken since the 2016 Brexit referendum have consistently found high public support for staying in the bloc, although a recent Eurobarometer survey recorded a 12-point drop in those with a “positive image” of the EU, with only 39% now viewing the union favorably.
By Paul Robinson | Canadian Dimension | July 24, 2023
Few people came out of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan looking good. A rare exception was John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Sopko was the Cassandra of the American war effort, repeatedly revealing unwelcome truths only to be equally repeatedly ignored. In charge of auditing the vast sums of money that the US government spent on economic aid and reconstruction in Afghanistan, SIGAR’s office issued regular reports detailing waste, incompetence, and corruption on a scale that boggles the mind. Among other things, SIGAR published stories of how the US spent $6 million airlifting nine Italian goats to Afghanistan; spent $486 million buying aircraft for the Afghan airforce which were so dangerous to fly that they were never used and were turned into $32,000 of scrap metal; and spent $150 million building luxury villas to lodge staff of its economic development office. All this was just the tip of a very large iceberg.
The basic lesson of SIGAR’s many reports was that throwing vast sums of money into poor countries doesn’t promote economic development. Instead, it encourages corruption and inefficient economic practices. Formal institutions (laws, governments) depend upon informal ones, such as local customs and social structures, that foreigners do not understand, leading to misguided policies and misdirection of funds. Efforts to impose Western formal institutions on top of these very different informal ones, and then flooding the country with Western advisors and money, ends up being counterproductive. None of this, of course, is particularly revelatory. Critics of foreign aid programs have been saying much the same for years. Still, it is an important message.
Although the United States has left Afghanistan, Sopko is continuing his work. Last week, he published a letter written in response to a request from various US Senators. In this, he discussed how lessons from rebuilding Afghanistan could be applied to Ukraine. All wars come to an end. When that in Ukraine does so, there will no doubt be huge pressure on Western governments to flood that country with development assistance. SIGAR’s letter provides a dose of caution that is well worth listening to.
SIGAR notes that “many of the challenges US agencies faced in Afghanistan—coordinating efforts, dealing with corruption, and effectively monitoring and evaluating projects and programs—will be the same as the ones they will face in Ukraine.” He identifies seven particular lessons. These are:
Sopko makes a number of important points under these headings. One that is, “In Afghanistan, the US government spent too much money, too quickly, in a country that was unable to absorb it.” Yet estimates of how much money will be required to rebuild Ukraine far surpass what was spent in Afghanistan. The US (and by implication other Western states also) must take care not to provide more than Ukraine is able to effectively absorb or more than the donor states are able to effectively monitor. More is not necessarily better.
SIGAR also notes that “Under pressure to produce results quickly, agencies bypassed Afghan institutions and government channels when they encountered corruption, rather than slog through efforts at reform. When aid did flow through Afghan budgets and institutions, the United States prioritized the survival and short-term stability of the Afghan government over following through on anti-corruption efforts.” This is a problem that is likely to be repeated in Ukraine, where corruption is “likely to be a significant obstacle to the country’s recovery” given the country’s status as “the most corrupt country in Europe.”
Strangely, SIGAR misses a key fact, which is that this point and the previous one are connected—corruption feeds off excessive foreign aid. So does poor governance more generally. It is no coincidence that so-called “rentier” states (states that derive their income not from taxes on citizens but from what economists call “rents,” such as revenues from natural resource production or from foreign aid) tend to be corrupt, undemocratic, and generally unresponsive to citizens’ needs. When your revenues come from your citizens, you have to pay attention to what they want. When they don’t, you can afford to ignore them. A post-war Ukrainian government that is dependent on foreign assistance, maintains a huge military and security apparatus that is beyond its means, and has few sources of finance of its own, will have few incentives to listen to its own people or to act in an honest way.
A final point made by SIGAR is that in Afghanistan US agencies “often failed to measure programs and projects against the ultimate outcomes and impacts they sought to achieve. Instead, how much money was spent, and how quickly, became the measure of success, regardless of the actual result. This poured money into a fragile environment with no concept of whether projects achieved their intended goal, or even necessarily where all the money was going.” This is a perpetual problem in aid and development projects. Post-war, Western governments will no doubt feel a strong need to be seen to be “doing something” to help Ukraine. They will therefore be likely to throw money at the problem, publicizing their “success” in terms of funds expended and projects begun, but ignoring the actual outcomes.
SIGAR sees part of the solution as lying in better monitoring and evaluation. The problem with this is that there are generally few incentives to carry out such monitoring, because if one does there is a high possibility that one will come to the conclusion that one’s aid is failing, a conclusion that one cannot politically admit. In addition, the recipient of the aid is very possibly aware of this, and thus lacks incentives to use the aid appropriately. Confident that the donor is politically committed to supporting him come what may, he is free to act as irresponsibly as he wishes.
Simply put, giving money away in large quantities tends to produce perverse incentives that cause people to behave in ways that engender negative results. This isn’t a problem that can be fixed by better monitoring, anti-corruption efforts, and the like. It’s inherent in aid itself. If there is a weakness in Sopko’s reporting, it is that, as an auditor, it’s not his job to say whether aid should be given, just to point out whether it is being used effectively. Consequently, his reports end up consisting of lists of how things could be done better without ever challenging whether they should be done in the first place.
Still, they are vital reading for anybody who wants to think about how to reconstruct war-torn societies. What is clear is that if Western states want to produce better results in Ukraine than they did in Afghanistan, they will have to think a lot more intelligently about what sorts of aid they give and how they deliver it. But it’s not as if they weren’t previously aware of the problems mentioned above. SIGAR warned them repeatedly. Nobody listened. One must wonder if they are listening now.
Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.
MAGYAR NEMZET | July 24, 2023
The European Union’s desire to increase budget contributions from member states to continue funding Ukraine’s drawn-out conflict with Russia is scandalous, the conservative Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has claimed.
Prominent FPÖ politicians sharply criticized the Austrian government for supporting the pro-war efforts in Brussels. Petra Steger, the party’s spokesperson on European affairs, insisted the European Union should not be fueling the conflict by providing an endless supply of military and financial support to Ukraine, and should instead be promoting peace talks in the region.
Steger slammed the plans proposed by the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell for the European Union to provide, in addition to existing measures, up to €5 billion per year for Ukraine’s defense needs and to guarantee a substantial contribution to the military training program of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
She said the plan represents a “bottomless pit,” and her party therefore reiterated its calls for the Austrian federal government to suspend its additional contributions to the European Union budget.
“The scandalous increase in the EU budget hasn’t even been implemented yet, and here they come with their next crazy demand. In the meantime, more than enough billions have been transferred to Ukraine, which has brought nothing but bloodshed and a boom for the U.S. arms industry,” Steger said.
“All this at a time when the European Union is constantly giving billions in gifts to third countries, openly supporting a warring party while the EU itself is degenerating into a debt union. Moreover, the European Central Bank is constantly overstepping its mandate. The hard-earned money of the Austrians is no longer in good hands in the institutions of the European Union,” she added.
Instead, Brussels should be hell-bent on promoting a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow to help bring peace back to the region.
“Until then, the EU’s behavior can only be described as a brazen Brussels rip-off that has turned into the ultimate disaster for the European financial budget,” she claimed.
More than €60 billion has flowed into Ukraine since the beginning of the war, and the European Union wants to approve even more funding through the European Peace Facility. This, however, comes at an additional cost for member states, and net contributors to the EU budget, like Austria, aren’t impressed.
“Our hard-earned prosperity over decades is incessantly sent to Ukraine by the EU,” Steger said, adding that the federal government supported Brussels in its plans and gave the European Commission its nod.
Her party colleague Axel Kassegger also criticized the European Union and the Austrian government for not being firmly opposed to the deployment of cluster bombs in Ukraine by the United States.
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JULY 24, 2023
The failure of Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive is undeniable six weeks after Westerners wrongly expected that Russia would swiftly be expelled from Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders. The New York Times (NYT) finally told the truth about this in their report on Sunday about “Weary Soldiers, Unreliable Munitions: Ukraine’s Many Challenges”. None of the facts contained within it are surprising since they’re all connected to the poor state of affairs that the Washington Post (WaPo) candidly described in March.
The observations shared by that Beltway outlet one-third of a year ago were dismissed by Kiev’s supporters as either being “Russian propaganda” despite WaPo’s leading role in pushing the Russiagate conspiracy theory or a “psy-op” that was designed to deceive Russia about the counteroffensive. It’s now known from the NYT’s latest report that this was a factual representation of the situation, the conclusion of which was extended credence by two other narrative developments over the weekend.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday that the West knew that Kiev wasn’t ready to launch its counteroffensive but still allowed it to go ahead anyhow. Zelensky then told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria the day after in an interview that “we had not enough munitions and armaments and not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons” for the counteroffensive to swiftly succeed. This backdrop set the stage for the NYT’s report, the highlights of which are as follows:
* The conflict has reached a “violent stalemate”;
* Ukrainian forces “are struggling… because of dense minefields” along the Zaporozhye front;
* They also “described a determined foe” whose morale remains high despite prior setbacks;
* “The Ukrainian military (is) facing a litany of new and enduring challenges”;
* Coordination problems between its troops persist;
* Ukraine has experienced “tens of thousands of casualties”;
* Its experienced and younger fighters have been replaced with “lesser-trained and older troops”;
* Russian forces have “become more adept” at dislodging Kiev from whatever ground it gains;
* “Ammunition is in short supply, and there is a mixture of munitions sent from different countries”;
* Old foreign-supplied munitions are “damaging [Ukraine’s] equipment and injuring soldiers”;
* Ukraine’s near-total dependence on Starlink has led to communication delays during assaults;
* “Training for more specialized skills, such as for snipers, has been sidelined in favor of trench attacks”;
* Ukraine’s lower-quality recruits, however, struggle to successfully carry out these assaults;
* Russia’s Lancet drones have been highly effective in destroying Ukrainian artillery and tanks;
* And it’s “impossible” to jam them, “at least for now”, and they’re also “hard to shoot down”.
The fifteen facts shared above leave no doubt that Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive has failed exactly as President Putin once again claimed on Sunday, which in turn makes it all the more likely that peace talks will resume by year’s end as was earlier explained here and here. The NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that Stoltenberg finally acknowledged in mid-February, which is the most important variable shaping this proxy war’s trajectory, is indisputably trending in Moscow’s favor.
Kiev’s supporters can no longer tell themselves that all reports about disadvantageous developments are either “Russian propaganda” or “psy-ops” designed to deceive their opponent after the NYT’s latest report confirmed that Zelensky’s damning admission about his side’s unpreparedness is indeed true. The situation is likely much worse than both of them described it as being considering their self-interested motivation in not wanting to demoralize everyone.
Nevertheless, their disclosures on Sunday still shattered the delusions that Kiev’s most diehard supporters had clung to since none of them would dare to defy their cult’s dogma by suggesting that Zelensky hadn’t spoken the truth. The coincidental release of the NYT’s report on the same day as his damning admission made it impossible to deny the veracity of what he said due to the detailed information contained therein, which runs the chance of catalyzing a crisis of confidence in their ranks.
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JULY 24, 2023
Russia carried out a surgical strike early Monday morning against targets in the town of Reni on the Ukrainian side of the Danube River near the tri-border with Moldova and Romania. This video alleges to show one of the explosions at its port while this image purports to be of a grain warehouse that was supposedly destroyed in the aftermath. It can’t be ruled out that military and/or terrorist assets were hidden there, however, since Russia insists that it doesn’t strike purely civilian infrastructure.
In any case, Monday morning’s surgical strike was very important since it sent several messages that Russia’s opponents would do well to heed. For starters, Reni is located on the other side of the Danube from NATO-member Romania, which demonstrated that Russia will hit targets anywhere in Ukraine and can do so with maximum precision. Those military and/or terrorist assets based on the literal border of that bloc but just outside of Article 5’s jurisdiction can no longer take their security for granted.
The second message is that Russia is serious about cracking down on those threats to its security that were previously untouchable due to Kiev exploiting the grain deal to protect some of its aforesaid assets. Russia remained committed to that agreement in spite of that since it sincerely expected that the West would eventually remove those sanctions that impeded its agricultural exports. Since that didn’t happen and Russia therefore declined to extend the deal, Kiev’s selfsame assets are now fair game.
Third, carrying out a surgical strike on Reni proved that Russia had actionable intelligence regarding the Danube’s role in Kiev’s military logistical network, which many observers have suspected for a while. Related targets were previously untouchable for the abovementioned reason, but that’s no longer the case now that the grain deal expired. Accordingly, it can be expected that this won’t be the last surgical strike on the Danube, though it of course can’t be known when the next ones will occur.
The fourth message is that Russia now knows that NATO won’t extend its air defense umbrella over any part of Ukraine after no effort was made to stop its surgical strike in Reni on the Romanian border. The bloc either didn’t see the missiles approaching their air defense zone or detected them but declined to attempt an interception in order for Russia not to think they’re ready to get directly involved in this proxy war. Either way, NATO looks weak and Russia thus feels emboldened to continue striking near its borders.
And finally, this successful strike signifies that no part of Kiev’s military logistical network is safe, which could lead to Moscow’s edge in the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” growing even larger if it keeps up the tempo of these attacks against its opponent’s previously untouchable assets. In that event, peace talks might resume earlier than many expect if this accelerates the erosion of Ukraine’s military capabilities and thus forces its patrons to move up their timeline for freezing the conflict.
With these five messages in mind, there’s no doubt that Russia’s surgical strike against military and/or terrorist assets on the Moldovan-Romanian-Ukrainian tri-border is much more important than it might appear at first glance. Not only did Russia hit closer to NATO than ever, but that bloc didn’t even try to stop it, thus suggesting that they’re reluctant to get dragged even deeper into this proxy war. If Poland doesn’t unilaterally intervene by summer’s end, then peace talks might recommence shortly after.
By Lucas Leiroz | July 24, 2023
Cluster munitions have already begun to generate civilian casualties in the Ukrainian conflict. Russian journalists were attacked with illegal US-supplied weapons, resulting in the injury of three people and the death of RIA Novosti’s war correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev. Once again, the Kiev regime shows its terrorist nature, also having NATO’s co-participation in the crimes, as the alliance is responsible for supplying the weapons used in the murder of Russian civilians.
The attack took place in the Zaporozhye region. A civilian vehicle with journalists inside was hit by cluster bombs, injuring all the reporters, and killing Zhuravlev. According to information given by spokespersons for the “Rossiya Segodnya” group, the media crew was near the village of Pyatikhatki when it came under fire from Ukrainian forces. It is believed that they were in that area precisely to report the use of cluster munitions in some nearby residential zones.
Considering that it was not a military convoy, but just a civilian vehicle with journalists, the attack was illegal, contrary to basic rules of international humanitarian law. For this reason, Russian authorities have already commented on the case, classifying it as terrorism. It is well known that Ukrainian soldiers deliberately target and kill Russian media professionals, both on the ground war correspondents and commentators outside the combat zone – as previously seen in the cases of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky. In this sense, Zhuravlev’s murder represents a continuation of the Ukrainian regime’s terrorist and anti-humanitarian practice of attacking the Russian press.
On social media, pro-Ukrainian militants reacted to the case by supporting the attack and “justifying” it with the allegation that Zhuravlev was a “military” or even a “war criminal”. To support this narrative, Ukrainian neo-Nazi activists spread photos of the journalist holding weapons and wearing military uniforms in the conflict zone. However, they omitted the fact that these photos are not recent.
Before becoming a war correspondent, Zhuravlev actually fought on the battlefield, having joined the Donbass militias in 2014, in the early months of the conflict. After completing his voluntary military service, Zhuravlev became an ordinary civilian journalist. He worked on the battlefield as a mere employee of Russian media agencies, not as a soldier, which makes the Ukrainian attack absolutely illegal.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the attack was against a civilian car, with other media professionals inside. These other reporters, unlike Zhuravlev, did not have any military background. So, the tale spread by propagandists is not only false but also baseless, being easily refuted with a simple analysis of the case.
However, the most important point of this topic is the use of cluster munitions. As predicted by several experts, journalists and Russian officials, Kiev’s forces are actually using these weapons to kill civilians, deliberately targeting people that have no military involvement. There was a strong pressure for the US not to approve the delivery of these bombs to Kiev as their use could affect civilians as a side effect. However, what is happening now is even more serious. These weapons are not accidentally killing civilians, but are being purposefully used by the regime’s forces to target non-military Russian citizens.
Furthermore, Russia sees the US as co-responsible for the crime. Since the US is the supplier of the weapons with which Kiev murders Russian civilians, then Washington is to blame for the attacks as well as the neo-Nazi regime. The Russian understanding on the subject should be shared by the entire international society, especially by organizations that defend international law and human rights. But unfortunately, biased opinions in favor of the West continue to be imposed on states and organizations, making it impossible to sanction countries that sponsor the war.
So, in the absence of diplomatic and legal alternatives to prevent the West from continuing to supply weapons that are used to kill civilians, Russia can only try to resolve the situation through military means. In this sense, severe responses from Moscow are expected in the near future, possibly intensifying attacks on Ukrainian command centers and weapons depots where cluster munitions are being stored.
Although Russian forces have repeatedly withheld retaliation to avoid escalating the conflict, the latest moves show that Moscow is no longer willing to tolerate violations of redlines. The cruise missile attacks on the ports of Odessa in response to the killing of civilians in Crimea made it clear that Moscow is ready to retaliate for crimes committed against its citizens.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
RT | July 24, 2023
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has reiterated Russian denials that one of its missiles was responsible for the damage done to the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odessa over the weekend. The claims coming from Kiev are “absolutely not true”, he told journalists on Monday.
“Our armed forces never conduct strikes on objects of social infrastructure, even less so on temples, churches and similar objects,” he assured. The Russian Defense Ministry previously said a Ukrainian interceptor missile was likely to blame, an assertion that Peskov endorsed.
The cathedral was heavily damaged on Sunday morning amid a Russian missile attack on targets in several Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said later in the day that a Russian Kh-22 anti-ship missile had struck the church’s altar.
The Ukrainian leader alleged that Moscow was targeting “the people and the foundations of our pan-European culture” and pledged that the church would be rebuilt, with Italy potentially footing the bill.
The Russian Defense Ministry denied the Ukrainian charge, suggesting later on Sunday that the incompetence of the country’s air defense forces was the most probable cause of the damage.
Russia targets only military locations and takes care to select only those far from civilians and sites of cultural value, it said. Meanwhile Ukrainian military leaders “place air defense assets in residential areas on purpose.”
The practice was acknowledged earlier this month by a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, who claimed that it was necessary because the country doesn’t have enough longer-range air defense systems.
Kiev has previously accused Russia of damage done by its own troops. The most notable case happened last November, when Zelensky accused Moscow of killing two Polish farmers in a border region and urged NATO to retaliate. Warsaw swiftly acknowledged that the projectile was likely fired by the Ukrainian side.
Last week, Russia started a series of attacks on targets in Ukrainian ports, which the military described as retaliation for Kiev’s drone strike on the Crimean Bridge last Monday. The Sunday barrage was aimed at sites where “the Kiev regime and foreign specialists planned terrorist attacks against Russia,” the Defense Ministry said.
The Transfiguration Cathedral in Odessa was founded in 1794 and was one of the primary Christian places of worship in Imperial Russia. The Soviet government blew it up in 1936, after declaring that it had no historic value. The building was restored over a decade starting 1999 and re-concentrated in 2010.
By Uriel Araujo | July 24, 2023
While Western discussions have focused on sending sophisticated weapons to Kiev, Hal Brands, a Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, argues that what Ukraine needs the most, besides air-defense systems, is artillery ammunition. He describes the current conflict as an artillery-centric one: “if Kiev can’t find enough artillery pieces and ammunition, especially 155mm shells, it will be at a dire firepower deficit along the conflict’s front lines.”
Already on March 29, Earle Mack, former US ambassador to Finland, writing in a piece for The Hill, described the current confrontation as proxy attrition warfare, that is one which seeks military victory by wearing down the enemy. He worried that Ukraine seemed bound to tire out first. Things have not gotten much better for Kiev, so far.
A July 23 New York Times story, by former Marine infantryman Thomas Gibbons-Neff, based on “dozens of visits to the front line” quotes a Ukrainian commander: “we’re trading our people for their people and they have more people and equipment.” According to the story, “Ukraine has made marginal progress in its ability to coordinate directly between its troops closest to Russian forces on the so-called zero line and those assaulting forward.” Moreover, the country’s artillery is in short supply, and “a mixture of munitions sent from different countries” is employed. The thing is that accuracy varies greatly between them and the Ukrainians need to use more ammunition. In addition, according to the same news report, “some of the older shells and rockets sent from abroad are damaging their equipment and injuring soldiers.”
Rather than using the complex military communication equipment, Ukraine’s troops employ “less sophisticated, but easier-to-use programs like smartphone messaging apps, private internet chat rooms.” Most of this system is dependent on Starlink satellite internet, and therefore it takes longer to communicate important military information when the units are assaulting and a Wi-Fi router is absent. In this case, unbelievably, “attacking troops have to reach someone with an internet connection to call for support.”
Regarding ammo, the problem is that US authorities themselves estimate that Moscow is capable of producing “1 million rounds of 152mm artillery ammunition per year.” The US, in contrast, produces merely a seventh of that, according to Hal Brands.
Right now, the US itself needs to purchase conventional artillery ammunition from its South Korean ally. In what Brands describes as a “desperate global scavenger hunt for munitions”, Washington has also been seeking ammo from Japan, as well as “repositioning rounds stored in Israel to Ukraine.”
Europe’s stockpiles are in no better shape. According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, NATO European states armed forces are “hollowed out, plagued by unserviceable equipment and severely depleted ammunition stocks.” Bloomberg’s journalist and military historian Max Hastings writes that, over a year ago, Berlin had committed itself to €100 billion to rebuild its worn out forces. So far, however, only an estimated 1% of that has been spent. The German National Security Strategy, last month, stressed the weakness of Germany’s economy. According to Hastings, the “political will” to strengthen their armed forces is “absent” not only in Germany, but also in other European countries.
As I wrote before, the problem for Europe goes way beyond depleted weapons stockpiles: for it to rearm itself, re-industrialization is badly needed, something which, quite ironically, Washington itself has consistently opposed via its subsidy war against the European bloc. In addition, Europe, with its heavily diffused and fragmented defense, lacks a European Union common defense market and a legal and bureaucratic framework, as Sophia Besch (a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow), and Max Bergmann (former member of the US Policy Planning Staff and Director of the Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies) write.
Britain’s industry today faces many difficulties, and the same thing happens with other European nations – manufacturers badly need funding expansion and governments are increasingly growing “tired” of the conflict’s costs.
As for the US, lecturer in History at Yale Michael Brenes argues that America’s own “war machine” is “broken”, with privatizations and several problems. He paints a picture of “shortages in production”, and “interruptions in supply chains”, all of which have compromised Washington’s ability to “deliver weapons to Ukraine.”
To sum it up, the current state of affairs, with a Western deindustrializations crisis, makes it very difficult for the political West to pursue its proxy attrition war. It simply cannot produce all the weapons it is pledging Ukraine. For the West, in fact, it is already a challenge to provide Kiev with enough ammunition.
By Colonel (ret.) Douglas Macgregor, US Army | The Kennedy Beacon | July 20, 2023
From the moment the war in Ukraine started, Western reporting on the war was a radical repudiation of the truth. Washington and its NATO allies always knew that NATO expansion to Russia’s borders would precipitate an armed conflict with Moscow, but NATO’s ruling globalist class did not care. For them, Russia in 2022 was unchanged from the weak and incapable Russia of the late 1990s. The risk of failure seemed low. Ergo, Russia could be bullied into submission.
Americans and most Europeans did not bother to question or analyze. Widespread strategic ignorance about Russia and Eastern Europe ensured that most Americans and even West Europeans would react quickly and viscerally to the Western media’s distorted images and lies about Russia. At the same time, tolerance for criticism of Washington’s role in fashioning the corrupt and deceitful conduct of the Volodymyr Zelenskyy Regime and its war was disallowed in the press.
Washington’s ruling class was cheered when it dismissed Russian proposals for talks on any grounds that did not recognize NATO’s right to transform Ukraine into a base for U.S. and Allied Military Power aimed at Russia. Ukrainian flags sprouted from the lush grounds of America’s wealthier neighborhoods like flowers in an arboretum and wonders in the form of limitless military assistance, miracle weapons, and cash were promised to President Zelenskyy––promises that strategic reality did not justify.
In 2022 the Biden Administration no longer possessed the military and economic strength to wage high-end conventional warfare that it had in 1991. Waging a major war 10,000 miles from home on the Eurasian continent is impossible without the support of truly powerful Allies on the model of the British Empire during WWII. Washington’s NATO allies are military dependencies, not formidable strategic partners.
Whereas Russian Military Power is still structured for decisive operations launched from Russian soil, U.S. Military power is geared to project limited air, naval, and land power thousands of miles from home to the periphery of Asia and Africa. American military power consists of boutique forces designed for safari in Africa and the Middle East, not decisive combat operations against great continental powers like Russia or China.
Eighteen months later Ukraine is in ruins. Its latest counteroffensive achieved nothing. In the last three weeks, an estimated 26,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in pointless attacks against world-class Russian defenses ‘in depth.’ (Defenses ‘in depth’ mean a security zone of 15 -25 kilometers in front of the main defense, that consists of at least three defense belts twenty or more kilometers deep.)
By comparison, Russian losses were minimal.
Today, more than 100,000 Russian troops are conducting offensive operations along the Lyman-Kupiansk axis. These forces include 900 tanks, 555 artillery systems and 370 multiple rocket launchers. It does not take much imagination to anticipate the breakthrough of these forces to the North where they can encircle Kharkiv.
Once Russian Forces surround the city, they will become an irresistible magnet for Ukraine’s last reserve of 30-40,000 troops. Ukrainian Forces attacking to the East to break through to Kharkov will present the combination of Russian space and terrestrial-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets and Precision Strike Aerospace, Artillery, Rocket, and Missile Systems with a target array that only a blind man could miss.
None of these developments should surprise anyone in the West. Building a Ukrainian army on the fly with a hotchpotch of hastily assembled equipment from a multitude of NATO members and an officer corps of many courageous, but inexperienced officers had little chance of success even under the best of circumstances.
Wars are decided in the decades before they begin. In war, the sudden appearance of “Silver Bullet” technology seldom provides more than a temporary advantage and strong personalities in the senior ranks do not compensate for inadequate military organization, training, thinking, and effective equipment. A new, leaked memorandum from sources inside Ukraine illustrates these points:
“Units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are at such terrible states of degradation that soldiers are abandoning their posts, and whilst not mentioned in these documents, a flood of videos have been published from Russian sources claiming Ukrainian service personnel are surrendering at the first opportunity owing to the belief that they are being treated as ‘nothing more than cannon fodder.’”
Events on the ground are beginning to overtake the carefully orchestrated charade in Kiev. There is little that pontificating retired generals and armchair military analysts can do to halt the inevitable. Moscow understands that the war will not end without Russian offensive action. Whatever Washington’s original goals may have been, they are unrealizable. Russian Forces will soon fall on the Ukrainian forces with the momentum and the impact of an avalanche.
In view of these points, before all of Ukraine’s manpower is annihilated, or a “Coalition of the Willing” from Poland and Lithuania marches into Western Ukraine, Washington can arrest Ukraine’s downward spiral into total defeat, and Washington’s own irresponsible drift into a regional war with Russia for which Washington and its allies are not prepared.
Cooler heads can prevail inside the beltway. The fighting can stop, but a ceasefire, and the diplomatic talks that must proceed from a ceasefire, will not occur unless Washington and its Allies acknowledge three critical points:
First, whatever form the Ukrainian State assumes in the aftermath of the conflict, Ukraine must be neutral and non-aligned. NATO membership is out of the question. A neutral Ukraine on the Austrian model can still provide a buffer between Russia and its Western Neighbors.
Second, Washington and its Allies must immediately suspend all military aid to Ukraine. Doubling down on failure by introducing more equipment and technology the Ukrainian Forces cannot quickly absorb and employ is wasteful and self-defeating.
Third, all U.S. and allied personnel, clandestine or in uniform, must withdraw from Ukraine. Insisting on some form of NATO presence as a face-saving measure is pointless. The attempt to extend NATO’s “new globalist world order” to Russia has failed.
The point is straightforward. It is time for Washington to turn its attention inward and address the decades of American societal, economic, and military decay that ensued after 1991. It’s time to reverse the decline in American national prosperity, and power; to avoid unnecessary overseas conflict;and to shun future interventions in the affairs of other nation states and their societies. The threats to our Republic are here, at home, not in the Eastern Hemisphere.
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 21, 2023
The NATO Summit in Vilnius (July 11-12) signalled that there is absolutely no possibility of talks to settle the Ukraine war in a foreseeable future. The war will only intensify, as the US and its allies still hope to inflict a military defeat on Russia although that is clearly beyond their capability.
On July 14, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of US joint chiefs of staff said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “far from a failure” but the fight ahead will be “long” and “bloody”. Milley has a reputation for speaking what the White House wants to hear, no matter his professional judgment.
Indeed, on July 19, the Biden administration announced additional security assistance of about $1.3 billion for Ukraine. The Pentagon said in a statement that the announcement “represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine.” That is to say, the US will be using funds in its Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative program, which allows the administration to buy weapons from industry rather than pull from US weapons stocks.
According to the Pentagon, the latest package includes four National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and munitions; 152 mm artillery rounds; mine clearing equipment; and drones.
Meanwhile, in an ominous development, no sooner than Russia let the UN-brokered grain deal expire on July 17, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky disclosed that he had sent official letters to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan suggesting to continue the grain deal without Russia’s participation.
On the very next day, Kiev followed up with an official letter to the UN’s International Maritime Organization spelling out a new maritime corridor passing through Romania’s territorial waters and exclusive maritime economic zone in the north-western part of the Black Sea.
Evidently, Kiev acted in concert with Romania (a NATO member country where the 101st Airborne Division of the US army is deployed). Presumably, the US and NATO are in the loop while the UN’s imprimatur is being arranged. It goes without saying that the NATO has been working on a new maritime route in the Black Sea for sometime already.
This is a serious development, as it seems a precursor to involving the NATO in some way to challenge Russia’s domain dominance in the Black Sea. Indeed, the NATO’s Vilnius Summit Communiqué (July 11) had forecast that the alliance is gearing up for a vastly enhanced presence in the Black Sea region, which has been historically a Russian preserve, where its has important military bases.
The relevant para in the NATO Communiqué said: “The Black Sea region is of strategic importance for the Alliance. This is further highlighted by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. We underline our continued support to Allied regional efforts aimed at upholding security, safety, stability and freedom of navigation in the Black Sea region including, as appropriate, through the 1936 Montreux Convention. We will further monitor and assess developments in the region and enhance our situational awareness, with a particular focus on the threats to our security and potential opportunities for closer cooperation with our partners in the region, as appropriate.” [Emphasis added.]
Four things need to be noted:
Most certainly, a new maritime route in northwestern and western regions of the Black Sea along Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey (all of whom are NATO member countries) will cut off the Russian garrison in Transnistria (Moldava) and would boost Kiev’s capability to strike at Crimea. The NATO involvement would complicate any future Russian operations to liberate Odessa as well, which is historically a Russian city.
Apart from the huge legacy of culture and history, Odessa is a port head for the industrial products of Russia and Ukraine. The Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline (which the Ukrainian saboteurs blew up recently) is one of the best examples. The 2,471 km pipeline, the longest ammonia pipeline in the world, connected the world’s largest ammonia producer, TogliattiAzot, in Russia’s Samara region with Odessa Port.
In strategic terms, without control over Odessa, NATO cannot have force projection in the Black Sea region or hope to resurrect Ukraine as an anti-Russia outpost. Nor can NATO advance toward the Transcaucasus and the Caspian (bordering Iran) and Central Asia without dominating the Black Sea region.
And for the same reasons, Russia cannot afford to cede the Black Sea region to the NATO, either. Odessa is a vital link in any land bridge along the Black Sea coast connecting the Russian hinterland with its garrison in Transnistria, Moldova (which the US is eyeing as a potential NATO member.) In fact, Crimea’s security will be endangered if hostile forces establish themselves in Odessa. (The attack on the Kerch Bridge in October 2022 was staged from Odessa.)
Clearly, the entire US project on the new maritime route is intended to pre-empt Russia from gaining control of Odessa. It factors in the strong likelihood that with the Ukrainian offensive floundering, Russia may soon launch its counter-offensive in the direction of Odessa.
From the Russian perspective, this becomes an existential moment. The NATO has virtually encircled the Russian Navy in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea (with the induction of Sweden and Finland as members). The freedom of navigation of the Baltic Fleet and the dominance in the Black Sea, therefore, become all the more crucial for Russia to freely access the world market round the year.
Moscow has reacted strongly. On July 19, Russian ministry of defence notified that “all vessels sailing in the waters of the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports will be regarded as potential carriers of military cargo. Accordingly, the countries of such vessels will be considered to be involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kiev regime.”
Russia has further notified that “the north-western and south-eastern parts of the international waters of the Black Sea have been declared temporarily dangerous for navigation.” The latest reports suggest that the Black Sea Fleet of warships are rehearsing the procedure for boarding foreign ships sailing to Ukrainian waters. In effect, Russia is imposing a sea blockade of Ukraine.
In an interview with Izvestia, Russian military expert Vasily Dandykin said he would now expect Russia to stop and inspect all ships sailing to Ukrainian ports. “This practice is normal: There is a war zone there, and in the past two days it has been the scene of missile strikes. We’ll see how this will work in practice and whether there will be anyone willing to send vessels to these waters, because this is very serious.”
The White House has accused Russia of laying mines to block Ukrainian ports. Of course, Washington hopes that the NATO moving in as the guarantor of the grain corridor, replacing Russia, would have resonance in the Global South. The Western propaganda caricatures Russia as creating food scarcity globally. Whereas, the fact of the matter is that the West didn’t keep its part of the bargain reciprocally to allow the export of Russian wheat and fertiliser, as has been acknowledged by the UN and Turkey.
What remains to be seen is whether beyond the raging information war, any NATO country would dare to challenge Russia’s sea blockade. The chances are slim, the daunting deployment of the 101st Airborne Division in next-door Romania notwithstanding.
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