https://antiimperialistnews.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-war-is-being-prolonged
Almost everyone now concedes it's unwinnable
May 19, 2024

The headlines are telling us “Ukraine is in serious trouble” and this means the empire has given the media the green light to report the truth. Russia’s defence industrial base is reportedly firing on all cylinders and producing weapons and ammunition at a rate the west cannot match. It’s now clear Russia’s main reason for taking its time was to build up stockpiles and transition to a wartime economy. It has now made that transition, having nullified Ukraine’s counter-offensive and regained ground it lost. The momentum has shifted massively in favour of Russia which has returned to pre-war strength.

Russia is planning a multi-pronged summer offensive to spread Ukrainian forces thinly with the ultimate goal of seizing Kharkiv and Kupyansk. The signs are that Putin is hoping to create a buffer zone along the Ukrainian border with the Belgorod Oblast. This was the Kremlin’s stated goal back in March when asked about taking over the Kharkiv region. Success would put Russia out of range of Ukrainian fire.

The region is strategically important because it’s mineral-rich and contains about 40% of Russia’s iron ore. It also contains industrial companies and farmland so it’s not hard to see why a buffer zone would be Russia’s key objective. The border city of Belgorod has faced near-constant bombardment from Ukrainian rockets. Russian villages and oil facilities have also faced attacks launched from dense forests that are hard to detect.

A Ukrainian attack on December 30th killed 25 civilians, including children, and injured 100 more, during holiday celebrations in Belgorod. In another attack, a kindergarten was shelled, forcing the governor to evacuate 9,000 children from the region. It’s interesting that when Palestinians launch similar attacks, we call it terrorism, but when Ukrainians act, they have the “right to use all means” to protect their territory. It seems we always argue for more bloodshed and who cares about consistency?

The problem with attacking civilians is that you risk your enemy responding in a similar manner, unless, of course, that is your aim. Escalation favours Ukraine if it can draw its allies into a war that is otherwise unwinnable.

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At present, Russia does not have enough soldiers ready to take Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv. Despite that, the relatively small Russian forces in the area have been probing and finding weaknesses in Ukrainian defences. This is causing Ukraine to scramble forces to fill the gaps, which only leaves weaknesses elsewhere along the frontline. Ukraine is in serious trouble because Russia is giving it more than it can handle with only a fraction of its full power. There does not seem to be any military solution.

As George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War said of Russia: "They're improving every day."

One factor that should help Russia is Putin’s recent cabinet reshuffle. An economist with no military background called Andrey Belousov has replaced Shoigu as defence minister with the job of auditing the Russian Defence Ministry and ensuring resources are going to where they’re most needed.

Washington’s approach has been to send military aid at the last minute when Ukraine is most desperate and that is hardly a winning strategy. It’s what you do when you are dragging something out because you’re not ready to admit defeat. The last thing Biden needs is humiliation in Ukraine to coincide with disapproval of the Gaza genocide. Ukrainians are going to die to boost Biden’s re-election chances - and he is not going to win anyway and neither are they. It’s hard to imagine how his foreign policy decisions could have been more disastrous.

David Cameron is promising Ukraine help for “as long as it takes”, but if it’s clear even to Ukraine’s cheerleaders the war is unwinnable, you have to ask what would this achieve? The answer is nothing but bloodshed. Cameron surely knows this, of course. He once said he would support Libya and Afghanistan for “as long as it takes” and we know how well that worked out.

The UK is promising £3 billion a year for Ukraine that we so badly need at home so why the hell are we wasting this money? My guess is we aren’t and that we will U-turn on support within the year, if the war even lasts that long. But there is plenty of opportunity for miscalculation in the meantime.

Cameron said Ukraine has a right to strike inside Russia with the weapons we send, a position not even the US takes. Zelensky begged Biden to let him strike inside Russia with US weapons to target the 30,000 Russian troops that amassed along the border, but in a rare example of restraint, Biden said no.

Deludedly, Zelensky is still talking about a ten point plan to reclaim all of Ukraine’s former territories, including Crimea and the Donbas, something about as likely as me celebrating a Lotto win by going on a date with Sydney Sweeney.

Propagandists are trying to save face by arguing Ukraine has already won the war by preserving its independence, but that was on offer at the beginning with a peace deal.

There’s a pattern here, isn’t there? We involve ourselves in these nightmarish conflicts without any sense of workable objectives, amid a wave of hysterical propaganda, and when the dust has settled and many have died, it becomes clear that anti-war voices were right all along.

Our leaders will say anything to manufacture consent for their disastrous wars. For example, they massively under-reported Ukrainian death figures to convince Ukraine flag Twitter the empire was winning. In February this year, they announced Ukraine had lost about 20,000 men, but a US intelligence figure last August put the figure at 70,000. Whatever the true figure, it’s likely to be much higher than either of those figures. Any estimate by the US is about as credible as a Mossad report on Gaza.

Sometimes half-truths slip out though. One Ukrainian official said Ukrainian losses were about the same as Russia’s, but given that Russian losses have probably been overstated by the same propagandists that understated Ukrainian losses, it’s more likely that you can flip the reported losses for Russia and Ukraine around.

Ukraine admitted it needs 500,000 soldiers to replace the dead and injured which tells you just how well this is going. Was it worth sacrificing all these brave men for a sliver of land inhabited mostly by native Russians that Ukraine has lost anyway? The Ukrainian population don’t seem to think so, at least not the ones of fighting age who are increasingly reluctant to accept conscription.

Rather than accept they have no desire to fight, some countries decided they will deport male Ukrainian refugees so they can be sent to the frontline against their will. How can you claim to be fighting for freedom and democracy when you’re not giving civilians the choice of whether they live or die? How is that anything resembling freedom?

This war of attrition is going to be won by the side with the most fighters, and given Russia has three times the population of Ukraine and Russians are militarised at school age when they are taught skills such as how to use a gun, it’s clear which side is going to outlast the other. Ukraine either agrees to a compromise with Russia or it loses three generations of men. All of the NATO weapons in the world mean nothing if you have no one to operate them.

Ukraine is getting so desperate for soldiers it is looking at recruiting convicts, offering them a chance at parole, but they’re only looking at a pool of 20,000 potential recruits.

Good luck trying to teach a bunch of convicts and out of shape guys who’ve been hiding from conscription to take on a military superpower. Europe has been helping with that training but is struggling to train a few thousand soldiers a month - nowhere near the number Ukraine is losing.

Personally, I would rather stay in prison than be flung into the meat grinder. Prison is probably the safest place these men could be, but many will seize their chance at freedom. How do you mitigate the risk of them fleeing? Even murderers can be eligible for recruitment if their crimes weren’t premeditated. They’re hardly recruits you can trust to stay and fight, but then again, regular recruits are fleeing the battlefield so what’s the difference?

Interestingly, prisoners will not be forced to mobilise, unlike the teenage boys the Ukrainian army snatches from the streets, but even those volunteers are hardly willing participants. This begs the question, if no one wants to fight your fight, what the fuck are you fighting for? Blackrock?

The lack of value that we’re placing in the lives of these men should concern everyone, given how close our leaders have taken us to World War III. One bit of good news to come out of this sorry mess is our leaders seem to be cooling on the idea of taking the fight to Russia as the reality dawns. The only solution to this crisis is a diplomatic one, same as it is in Gaza. The sooner we start sending diplomats instead of bombs, the safer we will all be.

A telling moment came when Boris Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings was interviewed by the i Newspaper and said things that would have got him called a “Putin puppet” two years ago. Suddenly, the truth is considered a respectable viewpoint. Whether you are pro- or anti-Ukraine, you should consider the media’s power to decide which views are acceptable.

Cummings said we “should have never got into the whole stupid situation” and sanctions have had a greater impact on Europe than Russia.

The fact the man who was the prime minister’s chief adviser is saying this confirms everything they said at the time was a lie. It was about as sincere as Boris Johnson’s commitment to Covid lockdowns, or his wives and children for that matter.

We were told we had no choice but to intervene, that this was about saving Europe from the next Hitler, but that was clearly nonsense. This was a fight about ethnic Russians who had been bombed by Kyiv for eight years for wanting independence. The crisis could and would have been rectified with a peace agreement, had we not pumped weapons into Ukraine. Ukraine only fought this war because we made it possible. Same thing is happening right now in Gaza.

Cummings mocked comparisons to World War II and the idea of treating the corrupt Zelensky as a war hero. He said the Ukrainian mafia state had conned us all and we’re getting “fucked” as a result, with Russia and China closer than ever and the cost of living in Europe soaring. Have you noticed how we’re now allowed to say all of the things that were once taboo?

The i Newspaper recently published an article arguing that ordering men to fight an unwinnable war that is killing thousands each month is little better than murder. At the start of this war, people were banned from social media for making similar arguments. Are you tired of the world catching up to our position only when so many lives have been needlessly lost?