How the USA handcuffs its allies and emboldens its enemies

 From the Hill:

"Biden is handcuffing our allies, emboldening Putin and the Axis of Evil

by Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet, Opinion Contributors - 10/17/24

 

The most salient national security aspect of Bob Woodward’s new book “War” is his revelation that Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely emboldened to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after President Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

We concur with that assessment.

We have long argued that the “permissive environment” established by Biden and his national security team was taken as a greenlight by the Kremlin — and increasingly on a global basis by Putin’s arsenals of evil, China, Iran and North Korea.

Effectively, the West has been in a global ideological third world war ever since Putin’s ground forces began their ill-fated march towards Kyiv. The post World War II order as we have known it has been destroyed, yet this White House acts as if its equilibrium can be restored if we “defend” democracy into perpetuity. 

Unfortunately, we cannot do that. There is no reset button.

Think of everything major that has happened globally since February 24, 2022, as a series of falling dominoes. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, after it begins to falter, begets the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. Oct. 7. leads to Israel declaring war against Hamas. Iran and North Korea begin supplying Russia’s army in Ukraine with weapons and munitions. 

Khamenei launches a ballistic missile attack against Israel in April. Jerusalem kills Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, along with most of his top commanders.

Iran strikes Israel for a second time on Oct. 1, as the Israel Defense Forces widen their ground invasion of Lebanon to enforce U.N. Resolution 1701. Now we await Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet’s response to Tehran. 

Meanwhile, North Korea is becoming increasingly involved in Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, including unconfirmed reports that Kim Jong Un is sending 3,000 troops to fight in the Donbas.

Nor has China been quiet. Not only is Beijing increasingly supplying Moscow with dual-use technologies and components for use by Putin’s sputtering war machine, but Xi is also continuing his navy’s bullying of Filipino commercial and naval vessels in the South China Sea.

Most ominously, the People’s Liberation Army keeps practicing for a blockade of Taiwan. The most recent such exercise was earlier this week. Notably, Xi traveled to Fujian province in China, which faces Taiwan across the strait. Xi’s messaging to Taipei was unmistakable just days after Taiwan celebrated its National Day: I am coming for you. 

If unchecked, Taiwan and eastern Europe may be the last dominoes to fall in this increasingly kinetic global war Putin and Xi are running against Washington, Brussels and their western allies.

The next domino, however will likely be Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Biden has repeatedly pledged that Khamenei will not obtain nuclear weapons on his watch. Yet Iran is on the cusp of nuclear breakout, if not already there. White House officials have made clear that Biden does not want Israel to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities as part of their forthcoming retaliatory attack.

Yet a failure to strike them would be insane. It would only embolden Iran to accelerate its completion of its nuclear weapons program. It would give Putin the strategic check he needs against Washington to guarantee an uninterrupted supply of Iranian munitions, drones and ballistic missiles via the Caspian Sea.

This White House madness has to stop. Biden and his national security team, as led by Jake Sullivan, is emboldening Putin and his Axis of Evil allies to continue escalating their war against Western liberal democracies.

Biden’s red lines are increasingly turning green. “Don’t” has become “do” for Iran, Israel, Russia and Ukraine. The Biden White House and the U.S. are increasingly irrelevant. The “big stick” President Theodore Roosevelt once wielded has been reduced to a twig.

Democracy is not dying in darkness, but it is at risk of dying in the fields of Ukraine, in the sands of the Middle East and in the waters surrounding Taiwan.

Biden has allowed far too many dominoes to fall, and he still fails to comprehend how they are all connected. Defending the next domino that topples is not going to prevent all of the dominoes from falling.

Biden’s evergreen escalation paralysis has in effect created a deadly purgatory for our country’s national security interests. Our allies — particularly Ukraine and Israel — are paying with their lives.

Equally alarming, Biden’s escalation fears are infusing Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign for the presidency. While campaigning in Las Vegas, Harris, when asked about the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, responded by saying, “We’ve got to de-escalate.”

Like Biden, Harris evidently fails to grasp that every time the Biden-Harris White House utters the word “de-escalate,” solid green lights go off in the heads of Putin, Xi, Khamenei and Kim Jong Un. They invariably respond by taking another step up the escalation ladder, causing more dominos to fall and harming our national security and that of our allies.

The White House must reverse course. Biden can start in Ukraine by authorizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to use U.S. made ATACMS, British made Storm Shadows and French made Scalps to interdict Russian military targets and destroy them wherever they present an imminent threat to Ukrainian forces or civilians.

Ditto recognizing that now is the time to put an end to Khamenei’s nuclear weapons program before it becomes operational. That means getting Israel the 20,000-pound bunker-busting bombs it needs to hit deep inside Natanz — and for Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to stop sending warning letters to Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to placate anti-Israel staffers in Foggy Bottom.

Israel is not our enemy. Putin, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are — and China is preparing and angling to become one as soon as it can get into this fight over Taiwan.

Kneecapping and handcuffing our allies is not a winning strategy to ensure liberal democracy defeats tyranny in the 21st century. It only emboldens our country’s enemies and imperils our national security."

Trump victim-blames Zelensky for being attacked by Putin

 From Marianne LeVine, the Washington Post:

"Trump says Ukraine’s Zelensky should ‘never have let that war start’

Former president Donald Trump blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for allowing the war in Ukraine to start, even though Russia was the aggressor, during an interview with a podcaster that was published Thursday.

Trump called Zelensky “one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen” and marveled at how much aid Ukraine has received from the United States.

“Who else got that kind of money in history?” Trump said in the interview with podcaster Patrick Bet-David. “There’s never been. And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him because I feel very badly for those people. But he should never have let that war start. That war is a loser.”...

Trump has reportedly maintained a personal relationship with Putin since leaving the White House, and this week said, “Russia has never had a president that they respect so much.”...

The podcast interview that aired Thursday is not the first time Trump has appeared to suggest Zelensky is at fault for the ongoing war. During a campaign event in Mint Hill, N.C., for example, Trump said, “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal.”..."

***

Americans, please do not elect this monster!

"I won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now I'm asking the US to send missiles to Ukraine"

 Olexandra Matviichuk, USA Today / Yahoo!News:

"When I started my career as a human rights lawyer, I never imagined one day that I would publicly say we need weapons and missiles to protect human rights.

However, I have found since the unprovoked Russian invasion of my country that you cannot wave the Geneva Conventions in front of a Russian tank. You cannot use the United Nations Charter to stop the raping and kidnapping. You cannot defeat evil without bravery to resist it.

Global freedom and human rights are under attack, and Ukraine is the front line to protecting democracies and civil liberties across the globe. The world’s democratic countries must work together to counter increasing aggression from authoritarian regimes hellbent on suppressing freedom.

In 2023, global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year, with a fifth of the world’s population experiencing reduced political and civil rights. To put this in perspective, only 20% live in countries where they have the freedom to vote in fair elections, freedom to practice their choice of religion and freedom to live without violence...

If Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds in his vision of recreating the Russian empire, neighboring countries in Europe are next, inevitably leading to conflict with North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries, triggering Article 5 and putting U.S. troops on the ground.

Make no mistake, the global decline of freedom and democracy is not a coincidence.

Authoritarian leaders such as Putin are deliberately subverting rights and working to create a world devoid of freedom − a world run by despots and antidemocratic regimes. Today, autocracies outnumber democracies 74 to 63, according to the Bertelsmann Stiftung's Transformation Index.

Hear my words clearly: U.S. troops in Eastern Europe are the last thing Ukraine expects. Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, our ground forces have carried the burden of the war on their own shoulders. We just need America’s support and the weapons to defend our country against Russia’s unprovoked aggression.

History will remember Putin as an evil narcissist and the biggest kidnapper of children in the world. His army is torturing, raping and killing innocent Ukrainian civilians, kidnapping more than 20,000 Ukrainian children and ripping families apart.

They are persecuting Christians who are not part of the Russian Orthodox Church, including evangelicals and Protestants, and torturing religious leaders.

Global freedom is on the line, and if we don’t act swiftly, history will not look kindly at the West’s hesitation.

Ukraine desperately needs more weapons to defend itself and the world against the Russian empire. As President Ronald Reagan said, freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.”

I fear that if Putin succeeds in this war, Russia and its authoritarian partners in China, Iran and North Korea will be emboldened to strike their own targets.

The reality is these countries are already working together to suppress freedom in their countries and around the world − including in Ukraine. We are doing the best we can to stop Russia’s army from advancing, but we cannot do it alone.

Arming Ukraine with the tools it needs to counter Russian aggression will allow us to continue to stand up for global democratic values and ensure that Putin knows democracies will not go down without a fight. Democracies must win wars.

Our values are in jeopardy. It is up to countries, led by the United States, to help Ukraine protect them by standing firmly against authoritarian forces. Ukraine will never stop fighting to save our country and save freedom − we pray the rest of the world won’t either."

FP: In 2022, the US administration promised to Putin not to let Russia lose

 In an Oct. 9 Foreign Policy article titled What a New Book's Explosive Revelations Tell Us About Biden, Trump, And Putin, by Michael Hirsh, in addition to Trump bashing (surely well deserved), there are intriguing paragraphs about the outgoing president Biden:

"...In the two and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden has often been criticized for temporizing over his response and failing to offer the Ukrainians sufficient defensive weaponry quickly enough. He has hesitated in sending first-generation main battle tanks such as the M1A1 Abrams, long-range precision artillery, and fighter jets such as the F-16—though ultimately he has done so. And in October 2022, after Ukraine had launched its successful Kharkiv counteroffensive, Biden warned Americans of a potential nuclear “Armageddon,” saying it was the first time since the Cuban missile crisis that there had been a “direct threat” of nuclear weapons being deployed...

The degree to which Ukraine has fought off Russia’s advances, causing hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties, is also very worrisome in view of another conversation that Woodward recounts between U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery Gerasimov. Asked to state the conditions for a Russian use of nuclear weapons, Gerasimov responded that one of them involved “the right to use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of catastrophic battlefield loss.” Milley responded at the time that “none of those conditions are going to obtain.”

But they could before long.

Thus, the world now has a better idea why Biden has acted as he has..."

***

In other words, Putin's army invading Ukraine (whose safety the USA had guaranteed with the Budapest Memorandum), razing cities to the ground, murdering thousands of civilians, is no reason for concern. What is "very worrisome" is "the degree to which Ukraine has fought off Russia’s advances". Ukrainian columnist Olexandr Kirsh comments in the Obozrevatel:

"...Milley then calmly promised that these conditions will not be realized, that it, he effectively guaranteed that US aid to Ukraine will never lead to a situation in which we could talk about a Russian catastrophe. So the United States promised Mordor that Ukraine will never defeat it, and all the record of later US arm supplies testifies that the USA is keeping its word. Indeed, Ukraine is not winning."

This is a horrible betrayal of a democratic ally, and proves that the USA as a defender of the Western civilization does not exist anymore.

Mike Johnson has no "appetite" to fund Ukraine

 From Punchbowl News:

"The world according to Mike Johnson

LANCASTER, Pa. — Two weeks from today, Mike Johnson will have been speaker of the House for one full year. That’s longer than Kevin McCarthy lasted in the role...

The most critical moment of Johnson’s speakership came in April, when he put a bill on the floor to send $61 billion in aid to Ukraine [after withholding the bill for half a year, which inflicted horrible and lasting damage on Ukraine - M. M.]. Conservative hardliners immediately triggered a motion to vacate, which the Louisiana Republican beat back with the help of Democrats.

The war in Ukraine shows no sign of ending. And Johnson told us his support for sending additional money to Kyiv is waning:

 “I don’t have an appetite for further Ukraine funding, and I hope it’s not necessary. If President Trump wins, I believe that he actually can bring that conflict to a close. I really do. I think he’ll call [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and tell him that this is enough. And I think everybody around the world is weary of this, and they want it to be resolved. So whatever the terms are, I’m not sure, but I think if Kamala Harris is president, I don’t think it ends, and that’s a desperate and dangerous scenario.”"

***

Americans, please vote Democrat! The Republican Party - Reagan's party - has been taken over by Russian agents! They want to see Europe swallowed by Putin, and America obeying him.

 

Ceasefire in Ukraine will benefit only Moscow

 Melik Kaylan, Forbes:

"Moscow’s Hidden Plans For Exploiting A Ceasefire With Ukraine

There’s been a great deal of talk about backstairs peace negotiations for halting the war in Ukraine. To the allies, the picture looks gloomy as Russia relentlessly gains ground in the East, destroys Ukrainian settlements and kills civilians while the Ukrainian army remains outgunned and over-stretched. Not least because Western partners like America and Germany haven’t provided sufficient timely support. So the electricity grid has collapsed, winter looms without heat, the population is fleeing abroad and things look bleak for Ukraine.

The mooted ceasefire allows Russia to keep the occupied territory, for now, while Moscow agrees that Ukraine gets to join NATO. This column is about the feasibility of even that defeatist deal staying stable and the secret dangers built into the alleged negotiations. As pieces of interchangeable blocks the agreement looks straightforward. But, Moscow well knows, the devil is in the details, the hidden interstitial gaps. Because, in reality, with Putin pushing at the cracks, the deal can be obstructed at every stage.

By treaty law, NATO doesn’t accept new members that are in mid-conflict or even in a frozen conflict. As a result, accession will take time and Russia will not stand still. Even supposing Ukraine gets into NATO, what guarantees that its members, if called upon, will actively engage in a direct military confrontation with Russia when they won’t now? And what happens if Trump is President? Sadly, however you look at it, there’s a real possibility that any sort of compromise now will simply lead to bigger trouble down the line. If the chances of a Russia-forced peace look bleak , they’re even bleaker than you think.

What the seasoned Kremlin-watcher knows is that the Kremlin has made plans for this situation in the kind of detail that the West cannot match - a regimen self-evident to anyone who heeds the details of Moscow’s post-Soviet revanchism. All one needs to do is look at the highly revealing experience of Armenia and Georgia. When the Russians invaded Georgia in 2008, they consolidated their hold on Georgia’s separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia’s then President Saakashvili, seeing the weakness of Western resolve, announced a unilateral ceasefire, withdrew from the front lines, and saved his country from being flattened as Ukraine has been.

 

The peace conditions offered by Moscow to Tbilisi, relayed by French President Sarkozy, were so one-sided that Saakashvili turned them down saying - and this is important - ‘there will be a popular coup against me if I accept them.’ Putin had demanded that Georgia let go the separatist zones for good and Saakashvili step aside, among other things. Instead, Moscow made do with occupying the separatist zones and withdrawing troops elsewhere. How did that work out for Georgia? Russia kept creeping further onto Georgian land and also engineered regime change in 2013 by interfering in the national elections and getting a conservative nationalist oligarch elected in place of Saakashvili.

 

That Tbilisi oligarch, Ivanishvili, is still in power, a puppeteer behind the scenes but now also an openly pro-Moscow partisan. A nationalist AND pro-Moscow? How is that democratically possible in a country that hates Russia? This same Ivanishvili, with the October elections impending, has publicly declared that Georgia should apologize for the Russian invasion. Yes you read that right. He had originally got into power by offering a quiet life to Georgians, relief from strife and confrontation, by reviling the West’s fickle support and values, by floating a kind of non-aligned Georgia-first mirage. Instead, inexorably, he gifted Moscow his country’s independence. Perhaps you see inklings of how things might work in Ukraine if Moscow is allowed a favorable peace deal there?

 

But first let’s look at Armenia. After winning the first Nagorno-Karabakh war against Azerbaijan in 1992 and declaring a kind of Armenia-affiliated republic, the veterans of that victory gradually came to dominate Armenian politics as a whole. The tail wagging the dog. They grew cliquish and cronyist and self-dealing, perfect candidates for being inveigled into Russian dark money influence, military weapons kickbacks and easy power. They ended up as proxies of Moscow in Armenian affairs. In effect, Armenia slowly lost its independence and any semblance to a democracy. So the most militantly ultra-nationalist faction, heroes of war, impossible to stand against politically, became the most corruptly oligarchic and sold out to Russia.

 

It wasn’t until the populace grew so utterly sick of the pro-Russia faction’s shenanigans that in 2018 they successfully elected a true democrat, Nikol Pashinyan, despite all the obstacles. He promptly and regularly chided Russia for dominating Armenian affairs. As a result, Armenia was soon punished in 2020 when Russian peacekeepers did nothing to help defend the Armenian side during the second Karabakh war. Moscow was treaty-bound to do so. It did nothing. Instead, this time Azerbaijan emerged victorious. Moscow had got its revenge for Armenia’s democratic intransigence...

 

How does all this relate to the putative peace-deal in Ukraine? The Kremlin’s plan goes something like this. Zelensky is forced to cede the occupied territories pro-tem in exchange for promises of joining Nato. By the time Nato proceeds and implements, ultra-nationalist elements of the army revolt and stage a coup against Zelensky for giving away Donbas and Crimea. The West objects strenuously, thereby alienating the military putschist leaders. Putin inundates Ukraine’s airwaves with propaganda about the West’s perfidy, the West’s agonizingly slow and insufficient support of Ukraine, the West’s seeming willingness to bleed Ukraine as a proxy, Zelensky’s anti-democratic centralization of power, and the like.

 

Remember that Saakashvili had refused the Kremlin’s terms of ceding the separatist areas because there would be a coup against him. That could happen in Ukraine after a peace deal. In Armenia, the ultranationalists were suborned by Moscow. That too will happen to any military Putsch clique in Ukraine. And in the long run? They will not get the West’s support and won’t attempt to restart hostilities. All this, Moscow has gamed and maneuvered before.

 

It all starts with the temptation and delusion of easy peace. In Georgia, a populist authoritarian regime took over by promising relief from punishment and fear. The Georgian populace has long since been cowed by Moscow’s carrot and stick message. Be docile, be ruled by oligarchs and Russian money, you will be safe in a long national sleep. Russian protection. Coherence. Continuity. As opposed to Western neglect, indecision, distraction, disappointment, the chaos and polarization of freedom. And so it will be with Ukraine. In the wake of a peace deal."

 

Any concessions to Putin will backfire

 Anthony Halpin, Bloomberg:

"Talk of Ukraine Concessions May Embolden Putin

It’s cost Ukraine enormous effort and a huge toll to resist Russia’s invading army for what’s fast approaching 1,000 days.

Little wonder, then, that some of Kyiv’s allies detect a greater readiness to adopt a more flexible approach to end the war... The US is consumed by next month’s presidential election whose outcome could determine future aid for Ukraine’s defense. Some European allies are beginning to flag in their backing for Kyiv in a war that shows no sign of ending.

While specific concessions haven’t been mentioned, there’s a lot of chatter about Ukraine potentially gaining strong security guarantees in return for accepting it can’t oust Russian forces from occupied territories for now.

This could even extend to NATO membership, with some pointing to West Germany’s experience during the Cold War division with East Germany. Others don’t want to go that far, and the US has been notably non-committal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, gives no indication he’s interested in coming to the negotiating table. Talk of concessions is likely only to embolden the Kremlin in its belief that Russia can outlast the West in Ukraine.

Putin, after all, still occupies parts of neighboring Georgia seized in a 2008 war at little cost to Russia. He annexed Crimea and ignited fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014, with only a muted response from the US and Europe.

For all the war-gaming on ending the present conflict, the fundamental question for Ukraine’s allies is whether they continue to let Putin gain from military aggression and at what future cost to them."

The Pentagon: We provide Ukraine what it needs, they have been very successful

 From an Oct. 3 briefing of Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh (hattip: Ukrainian Dialog):

"Q:  Thank you. So today, President Zelenskyy urged NATO allies to help intercept Iranian missiles and drones over Ukraine, as they do  with Israel. Can the United States and allies help Ukraine with that? I mean since it's possible Israel, why cannot it be done with Ukraine?

MS. SINGH:  So thank you for the question. While I appreciate the question, we are talking about two very different landscapes and battlefields. The president, at the very beginning of when Russia invaded Ukraine, has directed this department to provide Ukraine what it needs on the battlefield.

They have been very successful in employing, whether it be air defenses or other capabilities, to continue to take back their territory. The secretary just had a call with Mr. Umerov, getting that battlefield update, getting to better understand what other capabilities they might need, if any. The president has made a commitment that the United States is not putting boots on the ground into Ukraine, but we are supporting Ukraine in their efforts to take back their sovereign territory.

Q:  Well, shooting those targets, say from Polish or Romanian territory, would that be putting boots on the ground?

MS. SINGH:  That would be involving us in a war in a different way. And right now, we feel that Ukraine has been able to successfully defend against Russian strikes to their cities, to their populations, to their infrastructure. And we're going to continue to make sure that they have the support that they need to do that."

***

Ms. Singh is stating this as the Russian criminal regime continues advancing in Ukraine, using ballistic and glide bombs to destroy Ukrainian defenders and civilians, children's hospitals, whole towns. All this because the USA gives only token aid and does not allow it to be used for strikes deep into Russian territory, from where the bombs are shot. Her words sound like cruel mockery. The USA I used to admire and trust is no more. It has succumbed to evil.

 

 

Starmer's incompetence allowed Biden to hurt Ukraine even more

 From the Telegraph:

"Western indifference has hung Zelensky out to dry

Con Coughlin, Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor

With only weeks to go before the US presidential election, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky could be forgiven for thinking that, irrespective of the outcome, Ukraine’s fight for freedom is fast becoming a lost cause. For all the pain and sacrifice the Ukrainian people have endured in the two-and-a-half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, all the indications suggest that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s initial calculation that the West would eventually lose interest in the conflict appears increasingly valid...

Zelensky is demanding that the West intensifies its support so that Ukraine can improve its bargaining position by making further gains on the battlefield. In particular, he wants the Biden administration to lift its restrictions on the use of long-range missiles, such as the Storm Shadow missile systems, to attack targets located deep within Russia.US president Joe Biden has been reluctant to provide the necessary authorisation for fear of provoking the Kremlin into escalating the conflict...

Nor did Zelensky do much better when he met former US president Donald Trump at his penthouse in New York. Having initially indicated he was too busy campaigning to meet the Ukrainian leader, Trump eventually relented, only to dash Zelensky’s hopes by stressing that he regards Putin as a close personal friend...

Is is not just in Washington that Zelensky will have identified signs that support for Ukraine is waning.

Even though Sir Keir Starmer pledged to maintain British support for the Ukrainian cause during his meeting with Zelensky at the UN, it is arguably due to Starmer’s own incompetent handling of the Storm Shadow issue that the Ukrainians find themselves unable to use the missiles in the way they would like.

The air-launched missiles, which were originally gifted to the Ukrainians by the previous Conservative administration, have been used to great effect by Ukrainian forces to target key Russian military installations in places such as Crimea. Even though the missile systems rely on US tracking and guidance systems, Conservative ministers only informed the US that the missiles were being used, rather than seeking Washington’s permission to carry out the strikes.

Thanks to Starmer’s evident shortcomings as a global statesman, after becoming prime minister he set a new precedent of first asking the Americans for permission to use the weapons system, thereby allowing Washington to veto their use when it did not comply with the Biden administration’s policy objectives. The result is the Ukrainians now have stocks of Storm Shadow weapons, but cannot use them...

If Harris succeeds Biden in the White House, then Putin can assume that her administration will adopt the same risk-averse approach to the Ukraine conflict, one that, in effect, means the Ukrainians are limited in what they can achieve on the battlefield.

A Trump victory would, by contrast, most likely lead to Washington abandoning the Ukrainian cause.

Either outcome would not only be disastrous for Ukraine, but for the future prospects of the Western alliance."

 

 

Experts: Important Ukrainian town fell because Biden's administration protects Russian military objects

 From the AP:

"The fall of Vuhledar is a microcosm of Ukraine’s wartime predicament

By  SAMYA KULLAB and VOLODYMYR YURCHUK

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The fall of a front-line town nestled atop a tactically significant hill is unlikely to change the course of Ukraine’s war against Russia. But the loss underscores Kyiv’s worsening position, in part the result of firm Western red lines, military officials and analysts said.

Vuhledar, a town Ukrainian forces fought tooth and nail to keep for two years, is the latest urban settlement to fall to the Russians. It follows a vicious summer campaign along the eastern front that saw Kyiv cede several thousand square kilometers (miles) of territory.

Ukraine’s military said they were withdrawing their troops from Vuhledar to “protect the military personnel and equipment” in a statement on Wednesday.

Vuhledar’s fall is a microcosm of Ukraine’s predicament in this chapter of the nearly three-year war. It reflects the U.S.'s refusal to grant Ukraine permission to strike targets deep inside Russian territory, preventing Kyiv from degrading Moscow’s capabilities. Meanwhile, Russia’s dominance of the skies allows it to develop and advance devastating aerial glide bombs for which Ukraine has no effective response...

The Ukrainians’ retreat from the town comes after a much-anticipated visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the U.S. last week. The Biden administration so far has refused Kyiv’s request to use Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to strike Russian airfields and other key targets, and Zelenskyy’s “victory plan,” was dismissed by some as more of a wish list than a plan of action.

In the meantime, Russian fighter jets continued to drop aerial bombs on Vuhledar, which precipitated the retreat, soldiers there said...

Ukrainians have been pressuring the U.S. to relax restrictions on the use of Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia. Lawmakers said they expected a green light from the U.S. months ago, but it didn’t come: The Biden administration refused to waver on this red line. 

It has meant that Russian command and control centers, logistics hubs and airfields from which Russian fighter jets carry deadly aerial glide bombs, are out of reach of Ukrainian forces.

Russia fires nearly 120 aerial bombs a day on average, about 3,000 a month. The bombs are Soviet-era weapons refitted with navigational technology.

“We cannot change the dynamics, and the Russians are pushing,” said Pavel Narozhnyi, founder of the non-profit Reactive Post, which sources spare parts for artillery.

Month after month of constant attacks eventually eroded Ukrainian defenses...

Vuhledar served as a defensive stronghold, a fortress town atop a hill surrounded by open fields and near two major roads. From there, Ukrainian soldiers were able to observe approaching Russian forces at a distance. From that vantage point, it was easy to coordinate counter-attacks. That advantage now falls to Russian forces..."

 

 

Anne Applebaum: Russia still wants to make Ukraine into a colony again

 From the Atlantic:

"The Only Way the Ukraine War Can End

Russia has to stop fighting.

By Anne Applebaum

...In recent weeks, Russian glide bombs and artillery have slowly begun to destroy the city of Pokrovsk, a logistical hub that has been part of Ukraine’s defensive line in Donetsk for a decade. Regular waves of Russian air strikes continue to hit Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure. The repeated attacks on civilians are not an accident; they are a tactic. Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to deprive Ukrainians of heat and light, to demoralize the people as well as the government, and perhaps to provoke a new refugee exodus that will disrupt European politics.

 

Russia remains the larger and richer country. The Kremlin has more ammunition, more tanks, and a greater willingness to dispose of its citizens. The Russian president is willing to tolerate high human losses, as well as equipment losses, of a kind that almost no other nation could accept. And yet, the Ukrainians still believe they can win—if only their American and European allies will let them...

 

Hoping to rally more Americans to his side, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spent much of last week in the United States. He visited an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania. He met with former President Donald Trump, and with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Zelensky also presented a victory plan that asked, among other things, for Ukraine to have the right to use American and European long-range missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia. This kind of request is now familiar. In each stage of the war, the Ukrainians and their allies have waged public campaigns to get new weapons—tanks, F-16s, long-range missiles—that they need to maintain a technological edge. Each time, these requests were eventually granted, although sometimes too late to make a difference.

Each time, officials in the U.S., Germany, and other Western powers argued that this or that weapon risked crossing some kind of red line. The same argument is being made once again, and it sounds hollow. Because at this point, the red lines are entirely in our heads; every one of them has been breached. Using drones, Ukraine already hits targets deep inside Russia, including oil refineries, oil and gas export facilities, even air bases...

 

Since this war began, we haven’t been able to imagine that the Ukrainians might defeat Russia, and so we haven’t tried to help those who are trying to do exactly that... Biden is right to tout the success of the coalition of democracies created to aid Ukraine, but why not let that coalition start defending Ukraine against incoming missiles, as friends of Israel have just done in the Middle East?...

 

Worse—much worse—is that, instead of focusing on victory, Americans and Europeans continue to dream of a magic “negotiated solution” that remains far away. Many, many people, some in good faith and some in bad faith, continue to call for an exchange of “land for peace.” Last week, Trump attacked Zelensky for supposedly refusing to negotiate, and the ex-president continues to make unfounded promises to end the war “in 24 hours.” But the obstacle to negotiations is not Zelensky... Right now, the actual obstacle is Putin. Indeed, none of these advocates for “peace,” whether they come from the Quincy Institute, the Trump campaign, the Council on Foreign Relations, or even within the U.S. government, can explain how they will persuade Russia to accept such a deal. It is the Russians who have to be persuaded to stop fighting. It is the Russians who do not want to end the war.

 

Look, again, at the situation on the ground. Even now, two and a half years into a war that was supposed to be over in a few days, the Kremlin still seeks to gain more territory. Despite the ongoing Ukrainian occupation of Kursk province, the Russian army is still sending thousands of men to die in the battle for [the Ukrainian] Donetsk province... 

 

Russia has not changed its rhetoric either. On state television, pundits still call for the dismemberment and destruction of Ukraine. Putin continues to call for the “denazification of Ukraine,” by which he means the removal of Ukraine’s language, culture, and identity—as well as “demilitarization, and neutral status,” by which he means a Ukraine that has no army and cannot resist conquest. Nor do Russian economic decisions indicate a desire for peace. The Russian president now plans to spend 40 percent of the national budget on arms production... The state is still paying larger and larger bonuses to anyone willing to sign up to fight...

 

Negotiations can begin only when this rhetoric changes, when the defense machine grinds to a halt, when the attempts to conquer yet another village are abandoned. This war will end, in other words, only when the Russians run out of resources—and their resources are not infinite—or when they finally understand that Ukraine’s alliances are real, that Ukraine will not surrender, and that Russia cannot win. Just as the British decided in the early 20th century that Ireland is not British and the French decided in 1962 that Algeria is not France, so must the Russians come to accept that Ukraine is not Russia.

 

At that point, there can be a cease-fire, a discussion of new borders, negotiations about other things—such as the fate of the more than 19,000 Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped and deported by the Russians, an orchestrated act of cruelty.

 

We have not yet reached that stage. The Russians are still waiting for the U.S. to get tired, to stop defending Ukraine, and maybe to elect Trump so that they can dictate terms and make Ukraine into a colony again. They are hoping that the “Ukraine fatigue” they promote and the false arguments about Ukrainian corruption (“Zelensky’s yachts”) that they pay American influencers to repeat will eventually overwhelm America’s strategic and political self-interest. Which, of course, might be the case.

 

But if it is, we are in for a nasty surprise. Should Ukraine finally lose this war, the costs—military, economic, political—for the U.S. and its allies will not go down. On the contrary, they are likely to increase, and not only in Europe. Since 2022, the military and defense-industry links among Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China have strengthened. Iran has delivered drones and missiles to Russia. Russia, in turn, may be providing anti-ship missiles to the Houthis, Iranian proxies who could use them against American and European commercial and military ships in the Red Sea. According to a recent Reuters report, the Russians are now constructing a major drone factory in China...

The democratic world remains wealthier and more dynamic than the autocratic world. To stay that way, Ukraine and its Western allies have to persuade Russia to stop fighting. We have to win this war."