This statement isn’t the wishcasting of a ‘pro-Russia shill’ but rather the assessment of Ukrainian President Zelensky’s own aides, who spilled the beans to Time in a bombshell profile of the troubled and increasingly delusional head of state.
The much-trumpeted spring/summer/fall offensive which we were assured would drive a stake through Putler’s heart and be the beginning of the end of modern Russia as we know it turned out to be a complete disaster, costing untold thousands of lives and burning through the immense mound of cash and equipment sent by NATO.
And all of it was sacrificed without achieving any meaningful gains on the battlefield.
The massive army assembled for the offensive, that had the ‘advantage’ of western training, unprecedented logistical and intelligence support, and the added bonus of being armed with anything and everything in NATO’s arsenal that wasn’t tied down has now been largely degraded to the point that it is no longer capable of offensive action and is currently buckling under renewed Russian pressure all along the line of contact.
The Ukrainian aides cited in Time’s inadvertent expose, who have served directly under Zelensky for the duration of the war, expressed their concern about both their boss’s troubled psyche and Ukraine’s future military prospects.
According to the aides, Zelensky is increasingly isolated both at home and abroad in the midst of the simultaneous failure of the offensive and the emergence of a new conflict between Israel and Hamas which has completely drained the world’s focus away from Ukraine.
But perhaps most disturbing, from the Ukrainian perspective, were the aides' confessions regarding the true rate of Ukraine’s wartime casualties, long a subject that engendered angry denials and/or outright obfuscations when brought up to Ukrainian leadership.
Put simply, Ukraine’s losses in personnel have been staggering, with one aide confessing that even if the the United States came through with every single piece of equipment promised to Ukraine it wouldn’t matter because “we don’t have the men to use them.”
Things are now so bad that, according to Time, the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now an almost unbelievable 43 years old. A fact, corroborated by an ensuing report from NBC news that cited White House sources, which means that an entire generation of Ukrainian men has been wiped out, an irrecoverable loss which is likely to result in a crushing Ukrainian defeat in the field if the war continues too much longer.
Of course, none of this bothers the neocons who devised Ukraine’s failed strategy, who simply don’t care how many Ukrainians die in the pursuit of their vengeful ideological fantasies. However, it should bother every single American with a conscience.
This is true regardless of what thinks about the morality of Russia’s invasion. The simple truth, as Saint Augustine observed over 1600 years ago, is that a war can only be just if the party undertaking it has a reasonable chance of success.
The harsh truth is that, thanks to the foolish military decisions of Zelensky and his incompetent American advisors, Ukraine no longer has a reasonable chance of succeeding. Their losses have been simply too great.
It is for this reason that Speaker Johnson and the GOP House leadership should do the right thing and block all future funding for Ukraine.
The sooner the U.S. turns off the spigot of free money and arms the sooner the Ukrainian leadership will be forced to come to a negotiated peace with their Russian foes.
And the sooner that happens, the sooner the brutal and unnecessary slaughter of Ukraine’s men will finally be over.
