Gregory J. Wallance, The Hill: Who lost Ukraine?
Ukraine hasn’t been lost yet. But it will be if Congress fails to pass a Ukraine military aid package this month. Without U.S. weapons and equipment, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky bluntly put it, “we will lose the war.”
Who will get the blame if U.S. aid ceases and Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly enters Kyiv, executes or imprisons tens of thousands of Ukrainians, wipes out the Ukrainian identity, and starts menacing Western Europe with his newly-captured, Western supplied armaments?
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WNU Editor: This is one of those conflicts that could have been avoided. Minsk 2 was an agreement that all parties had signed onto, and it would have defused tensions and put an end to the ongoing war with Ukraine's Russian majority populations in the east.
Before the war I always felt that the solution to Ukraine's ongoing war and conflict with its Russian minority population would be a federated system like Canada's, where linguistic and cultural rights will be protected and respected. Minsk 2 was a pathway that would have lead to such a system. Why Ukrainian leaders choose to break this agreement and pursue a military option thereby opening the door for Putin to order the invasion of the country is one of those questions that I hope will be answered when the war is finally over.
As to who lost Ukraine?
On top of my list is Ukraine President Zelensky and Ukraine's hard-core nationalist leaders. This is then followed by US President Biden and the leaders of most Western governments.
They all underestimated Putin, and they also completely underestimated and misread Russian public opinion on Ukraine and the war. They were also clueless on Ukraine itself. Not appreciating the simple fact that a third of the country regard themselves as Ukrainian-Russians with deep linguistic/cultural/and religious ties to the Russian identity, and that they would fight and go to war to protect their rights.
6 comments:
In what world is the TREASURY Secretary qualified for this kind of assessment 🤣
If it wasn't for Russia we'd all be eating bratwurst now people have very short memories Russia beat the most disciplined,organized,trained and technologically advanced army back then.As ti why the US/EU thought it would be a pushover beats me.....
What if the point wasn’t to win or lose, but to make sure you stay under the boot of the rotten western usury class even after alternative multipolar systems have grown to maturity?
Taiwan won’t be won either but it certainly WILL rescue the bloated upper crust from having to compete with the more dynamic Asian ruling class, for at least the next 50 years.
What they gained will last decades, if not centuries. The only thing the United States gained is more enemies and a Ukrainian population that will blame them for what happened to their country and loved ones
yea skods, old Voldemort zelinski has had it
Russia always intended the Minsk agreements to be a trojan horse that could be used to make Ukraine ungovernable and Kyiv unable to control its own territory. That was why Ukraine always insisted that it could not implement them until it reasserted control over its own border, and thus prevent Russia from supplying weapons to its proxies. If all Russia wanted was to allow some measure of language autonomy, then it would have allowed that to happen. But they didn't. Ukraine did not violate the Minsk accords, Russia did by never allowing Ukraine to regain control over its border. The idea that all Putin wanted was Ukraine to be more like Canada is ridiculous.
This isn't surprising because the only reason fighting broke it in the Donbas anyway was because Russia was providing weapons, men, and leaders for the rebellion. Without that, Kyiv would have reasserted control over its own territory fairly early and with much less bloodshed.
For years prior to 2014, Russia had been interfering in Ukrainian politics going back to the original election fraud and dioxin poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko that lead to the Orange Revolution. There would not even have been a Euromaidan except for Putin's last minute interference and intimidation that caused Yanukovych to first back out at the last minute of Ukraine's economic agreement with the EU (which had massive support throughout the country) and then to use violence to suppress the protests. and of course Russia's invasion of Crimea also predated the violence in the Donbas. WNU Editor always ignores these acts of Russian aggression.
Russia has never sought any kind of justice for Russophone speakers in Ukraine. All of its actions for more than a decade has to been to turn Ukraine into a vassal state. WNU Editor knows this, but he never admits it because he's too much the Russian chauvinist. His many statements about Ukraine over the years indicates that he, like many Russians, just does not consider Ukraine to be a legitimate nation.
WNU Editor always conflates the number of Russian speaking Ukrainians with ethnic Russians with supporters of Putin. There is no evidence anything like one third of Ukrainians support Russia's invasion. The overwhelming number of such Ukrainians are supporting the government. Even in occupied Ukraine we see much evidence of a large and active partisan movement. But that conflation is why WNU Editor predicted things like Kharkhiv falling without a fight on the first day of invasion when in reality the city rallied against the invaders and never fell.
The only way this conflict could have been avoided is for Ukraine to surrender its sovereignty to Russia. Allow Moscow to determine its foreign and economic policy, and likely set the stage for a series of agreements that would integrate Ukraine back into Russia like how Belarus is doing. WNU Editor knows this. It's what he wants.
It takes a delusional man to insist that the big story is the West underestimating Putin rather than Putin underestimating Ukraine. Like Hitler, Putin thought all he needed to do was kick the door in and the whole house would collapse. Instead he has a war with no end in sight that has cost Russia hundreds of thousands dead, the ruin of Russia's military reputation, an active anti-Putin resistance movement conducting sabotage acts on Russian soil, a massive brain drain, and the entire population of Ukraine (including Russophones and ethnic Russians) now hating Moscow with a passion.
The linked article is not a sober analysis of the military situation in Ukraine. It is a hit piece on the Republicans meant for a domestic American audience. It's more concerned with Republicans reducing their border security demands than any analysis of Ukraine. If the author truly thought aid to Ukraine was so critical, he could have written a piece telling Biden and the Democrats to drop their demands and give the Republicans what they want since Ukraine is so important. But he didn't.
Chris
Chris
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