Peace in Ukraine Is Still a Long Way Off

Recently, Comrade Vladimir Trump has once again dispatched his trusted lieutenants abroad, claiming that this time they have come up with a more acceptable peace proposal. I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t even bothered to read it. All I’ll say is this: you can’t expect anything decent to come out of that lot. It’s going nowhere.

Russia still holds the initiative on the battlefield. In other words, for the most part it is Russia that decides what to do, where to do it, and when, while Ukraine is forced to react. It is only because of the inherent defensive advantage of entrenched positions, the ingenuity of the Ukrainian military, and NATO’s intelligence advantage that Ukraine has been able to stop the great majority of Russian attacks while suffering fewer casualties.

It is hard to describe an army that still holds the battlefield initiative as one that is losing the war.

Recently, Estonia’s intelligence chief said that Russia could suddenly experience a coup. Political commentators around the world immediately went into overdrive, and optimistic predictions of Putin’s imminent downfall began springing up like mushrooms after rain.

I see no sign, however, that Putin is about to fall.

The trend is certainly bad for him. But imagine a company worth several hundred million dollars that starts losing twenty million a year. That is undoubtedly cause for great concern. It does not mean the company is about to go bankrupt.

Back in 1945, the Soviet Red Army had already encircled Berlin, yet Hitler was still sitting in his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery issuing orders for armies that effectively no longer existed to march on Berlin and save him. It was only when he could hear with his own ears the unmistakable rapid fire of Soviet PPSh “Papasha” submachine guns  that he finally abandoned hope and killed himself.

Now consider that Russian forces still hold the initiative on the battlefield, and add to that the long-standing tendency of Putin’s subordinates to feed him false reports about the situation. Putin is nowhere remotely close to that state of despair. The probability that he would now agree to withdraw from every piece of Ukrainian territory Russia occupies—including Crimea—is not 1 percent. It is not 0.1 percent.

It is zero.

From Ukraine’s perspective, meanwhile, the trend is very encouraging. With the full financial and technological backing of the civilized world—and the word “civilized” naturally excludes the new bully—America—Ukraine is bringing into production, or is on the verge of bringing into production, long-range AI drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and missile-defense systems.

Russia has found no effective answer. Oil refineries, major depots, and other strategic facilities across the country have been destroyed on a massive scale. Petrol stations around Russia are seeing long queues, and the country has been forced to import petrol.

Agriculture is extraordinarily dependent on fuel, and Russian agriculture is heading toward catastrophe. The consequences have not yet become fully visible because crops have long production cycles and Russia currently has surplus grain stocks. Once these advanced weapons enter service on a large scale, Russia’s predicament will become even worse.

Eventually, Russia’s ability to sustain the war will fall below a critical threshold. At that point, the deterioration in the combat effectiveness of Russian forces at the front will cease to be merely quantitative and become qualitative.

That is when Ukraine’s great counteroffensive will begin.

The objective of Ukraine and the civilized nations standing behind it is therefore perfectly clear: the complete recovery of all occupied Ukrainian territory will by no means be Ukraine’s only demand. This war must make Russia bleed so much that, fifty years from now, Russian children will still have nightmares about it. Only then can there be any assurance that the Russian animals will not simply forget the pain once their wounds have healed, recover their strength, and attack again.

Given the enormous gulf between the two sides’ positions, and then looking at the diplomatic travels of the two clowns Comrade Trump has dispatched abroad, you have to wonder:

Has the FSB given Comrade Trump another direct order from headquarters?

Alas, the America that has faded in to legend, the America of Washington, Roosevelt, Reagan, Carter and Bush!