“Betrayed!,” shouts the headline in Der Spiegel, Germany’s top left-wing news outlet.
“Trump’s embrace of Putin is a Molotov-Ribbentrop crisis for Europe,” declares Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the London Daily Telegraph.
The putatively pro-Trump New York Post devoted its Feb. 21 front page to an extended screed against the US president by neocon wordsmith Douglas Murray.
From the howling in the war camp, you’d think it was the end of the world. But it’s not the end of the world: It’s just the end of them. Nothing fails like failure, and the twenty-year campaign to launch regime change in Russia from Ukraine failed miserably, as the Russian Federation built more weapons than the whole of NATO combined. Relentless Russian gains hollowed out the Ukraine Army.
The war party’s only hope is to blame their failure on Trump, and to spin out the conflict until it becomes a permanent state of war.
Trump has offered a grand design for a global builddown of armaments that would allow the United States to cut its defense budget in half and avert an eventual American debt crisis. That would leave the permanent national security establishment in Washington, Brussels, and London irrelevant and unemployed. The establishment won’t go down without a fight.
The Biden Administration believed the Russian economy would collapse under US sanctions. In March 2022 President Biden declared, “The Russian economy is on track to be cut in half.” On the contrary, real per capita GDP in Russia was 6% higher in 2024 than in 2021. Russia’s round-the-clock war economy has produced inflation and high interest rates, but Russians produce and consume more now than they did before the war began.
The entirety of the foreign policy establishment—from liberal globalists like Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan to neocon Republicans like Trump’s dismissed National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and former Defense Secretary James Mattis insisted that Ukraine would crush Russia with sufficient Western help. They were thunderingly wrong.
Asia benefitted from discounted Russian energy exports at the expense of Western Europe. As the German news service Deutsche Welle reported February 22:
In 2021, almost 50% of Russia’s exports went to European countries… Yet, by the end of 2023, less than two years after the invasion began on February 24, 2022, the picture was completely transformed. Recently published figures for 2023 show China and India out in front as Russia’s two main export markets, accounting for 32.7% and 16.8% respectively — half the total. In 2021, China accounted for 14.6% of Russian exports whereas India accounted for just 1.56%.
To the astonishment of Western war planners, Russia produced more armaments than the combined NATO countries, increasing its overall weapons output tenfold, including seven times more artillery shells than the combined West according to Estonian military intelligence estimates. India, Turkey, the former Central Asian Soviet Republics, as well as China all increased their exports to Russia, trading in local currencies to avoid financial sanctions on Russia.
The foreign policy establishment can’t argue credibly that Russia’s economy is on the verge of collapse, but it continues to lie about the state of the war on the ground.
Ukraine refuses to publish casualty figures, and the Western press is full of wildly exaggerated reports of Russian casualties. But the best estimates of US military intelligence officers state that Ukraine’s casualties are significantly higher than Russia’s – and Ukraine has a quarter of Russia’s population. Some 6.3 million Ukrainians are registered as refugees in Europe, and a reported 650,000 Ukrainian men had fled the country to avoid military service as of November 2023. Today’s total is higher.
Western media claim that Russia is taking heavy casualties in “human wave” assaults. This is pure invention. The war is fought at a small-unit level with dozens rather than hundreds or thousands of soldiers engaged at any given time. A high-ranking US military intelligence officer who reports on the Ukraine war explained why in a January memorandum:
There are few troop movements or assaults that involve larger-than-platoon forces. In fact, on any given day there might be 150-200 “assaults” by the Russians. A single assault will involve one or more squads, each of seven-to-10 troops, moving on a Ukrainian position.
The two or more squads aren’t tightly coordinated, they are simply attacking at the same time in the same general area. The assault usually includes being moved to the forward lines in one or an armored personnel carrier or two and dropped off before the Ukrainians engage the APC(s).
The squad then breaks up into fire teams of three-to-four troops and starts working forward. They work forward as far as they can, searching for Ukrainian troops. Once found, the Ukrainians are engaged by the Russians using both their own weapons and whatever else they have available for the day (armed drones (that carry weapons), FPV drones (First Person Video drones (suicide drones), artillery, and aviation if available.
The attack continues until everyone in the slit trench, bunker, building, etc., in front of them is dead. Then they move on.
As can be seen, using such tactics, and with the goal of killing Ukrainian soldiers versus taking land as priority one, there is unlikely to be any sort of “breakout.”
Unlike Ukraine, Russia permits the publication of accurate casualty numbers, for example through Mediazone, “which conducts exhaustive searches of thousands and thousands of Russian websites to find reports of individual family members who have died in combat. These numbers have tracked remarkably close to estimates by various outside observers who have used confirmed reports of various units and then scaled up those numbers to get estimates,” the cited US intelligence officer wrote.
Mediazone reports that current Russian dead (end of December 2024) is just short of 87,000 and gives an upper bound of 120,000 to that number. Checking of their numbers shows that about 17,000 have died in the last 100 days – the period of the renewed Russian “offensive.”
Russian soldiers killed in action (KIA) total between 87,000 and 120,000 through December 2024, which implies wounded in action (WIA) of between 305,000 and 480,000. The Ukrainian General Staff claim of 40,000+ Russian casualties per month simply does not bear up under close scrutiny and probably overstates the case by at least 100% (they are more than doubling the numbers).
Ukraine casualties, in this intelligence officer’s estimate, are at least 108,000 KIA and 375,000 WIA. But the more likely numbers are 160,000 KIA and 640,000 WIA. In addition, Ukrainian desertions are tremendous. As of the middle of December it was being reported by several different sources that there were more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers who had been charged with desertion. Russia is suffering huge losses but, in absolute terms, Ukraine’s losses are probably worse. When taken as a whole, against the fact that Russia has a population of nearly 150 million (5 times larger than Ukraine), the war of attrition is not sustainable.”
Whether Russia or Ukraine started the war is an issue for sophists, not strategists, but the mainstream media have made it an obsession. Trump declared February 18 that Ukraine “should have never started“ the war three years ago, to howls of protest from the war camp.
Technically, as Trump acknowledged in a Fox News radio interview February 21, Russia fired the first shots. But Trump has stated repeatedly that Zelenskyy’s insistence on NATO membership for Ukraine was a tripwire for war. He told venture capitalist David Sacks in a podcast last June, as I reported at the time:
“Biden was saying all the wrong things. And one of the worst things he was saying was, no, Ukraine will go into NATO. When I listened to him speak, I said, this guy’s going to start a war. As you know, for years there was never even talk of Russia going into Ukraine. That would have never happened. Russia was never going to attack Ukraine.”
Russia advanced a plan – the so-called Minsk II agreement – for an independent, sovereign and neutral Ukraine, with autonomy in language and cultural matters for Russian majority areas. Zelenskyy and his backers in Washington and London abandoned the agreement. The long-serving former German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared in her memoirs, published in November 2022, that the West pretended to negotiate with Russia on the Minsk II framework “to buy time” for Ukraine to re-arm.
Putin’s response to the extension of NATO to the Ukrainian-Russian border was the same as America’s response to the prospect of Russian missile deployments in Cuba in October 1962. As the Russian leader declared on February 23, 2022, on the eve of the war:
The Alliance, its military infrastructure has reached Russia’s borders. This is one of the key causes of the European security crisis; it has had the most negative impact on the entire system of international relations and led to the loss of mutual trust.
The situation continues to deteriorate, including in the strategic area. Thus, positioning areas for interceptor missiles are being established in Romania and Poland as part of the US project to create a global missile defense system. It is common knowledge that the launchers deployed there can be used for Tomahawk cruise missiles – offensive strike systems.
In addition, the United States is developing its all-purpose Standard Missile-6, which can provide air and missile defense, as well as strike ground and surface targets. In other words, the allegedly defensive US missile defense system is developing and expanding its new offensive capabilities.
The information we have gives us good reason to believe that Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the subsequent deployment of NATO facilities has already been decided and is only a matter of time. We clearly understand that, given this scenario, the level of military threats to Russia will increase dramatically, several times over. And I would like to emphasize at this point that the risk of a sudden strike at our country will multiply.
Just as President Trump said, Ukraine and its NATO backers provoked the war. Not only did they provoke a war that never should have begun; they bungled its execution, woefully underestimating Russia’s capacity to adapt to new warfare technologies, and overestimating Washington’s ability to choke Russia with sanctions. The war party faces not only shame and humiliation but unemployment, and it will do anything in its power to prevent this.
Oh, no doubt Trump owns the outcome in Ukraine now–if Russia prevails. To argue that the U.S. could not continue to afford to support Ukraine with 4% of its defense budget strains credulity.
The argument that the progress which Russia is making in Ukraine has strategic significant is also dubious. At the end of March, 2022, about 5 weeks after the start of the Russian invasion, it controlled about 27% of Ukraine. It now controls about 18%. At the rate at which it gained territory in 2024 (4,000 square miles), it would take 35 years for it to control the percentage that it did in March 2022, which would leave nearly three-quarters of Ukraine still controlled by Kiev.
Undoubtedly, Ukraine faces severe manpower constraints (given that it doesn’t conscript men between the ages of 18 and 25). But it felt confident enough of it’s ability to lose ground only slowly to invade and occupy Russian territory, which it still holds more than 6 months later.
Spot on.
The story is typical of the Russian disinformation campaign. Author refers to a “twenty-year campaign to launch regime change in Russia from Ukraine” which is itself based on Russian disinformation. Anyone who has spent time in Ukraine over the last 20 years would recognize that the vast majority of Ukrainians simply wanted to be tied to the West and not to Moscow. There is NO evidence of any attempt at regime change in Russia, and, if anything, history shows that the West seemed to preferred a stable regime in Russia.
Most importantly, no matter what Putin and his regime might have believed about Ukraine becoming part of NATO, no such alignment was in the cards. Even if there was a possibility of Ukraine joining NATO sometime in the future, that does not justify Russia’s military invasion of a sovereign country.
The fact is that Russian has viewed Ukraine as “theirs” and that was the reason that Putin gave for his invasion.
Trump is betraying not only Ukraine, but Europe and the West, just so that he can build casinos in St. Peterburg.
Finally, Russia’s alleged booming economy is suffering huge inflation and is a war economy based on military spending. Russian has a lot of problems that would be exposed if Russia had a free press.
True, Putin and most Russians regarded Ukr like the English did with Ireland in 1910.
But the Euro’s leaders (esp Germany & Fr) have been total nitwits. On the 1 hand not committing, and on the other expecting the US to.
A ‘free press’?
Like, what you don’t have in the US, UK?
“There is NO evidence of any attempt at regime change in Russia, and, if anything, history shows that the West seemed to preferred a stable regime in Russia.”
Who should believe this Lie?
If anyone believes that I gave a booster shot an a mask to sell them!
Another Chinese pretending to be something else. Well anything is better than being a midget with squinty eyes.
Another Ukraine supporter crowing about the “free press” in Russia. Let’s look at the facts – Zelensky nationalized the news media, placed journalists under arrest – including Gonzalo Lira who was tortured in custody and who died in jail, banned opposition parties, banned entire religious denominations, seized their church grounds and canceled elections. Even 90% of his media was paid for by Brandon’s USAID. Ukraine continues to spiral and every offer they have gotten from Minsk on has been steadily worse. Insanity is when you keep doing the same thing expecting different results. The neocons are evil and incompetent, and the Mad King of Kiev needs to go.
Another Russian troll forgetting Prigozhin and all the other folks who met mysterious ends.
Face it comrade, 300yrs of fighting and suffering side by side. All gone. Now the Ukr’s hate you just as all the other Slavs do.
The neocons and their British imperial revanchist brothers never learn, nor do they admit any error. The blood of millions and ruin of several nations on their lies sits on their souls, and of those who embrace those lies.
Abit like Mao and the 60m dead during the Cultural Revolution? Never admitting mistakes?
This is the first time I’ve read a normal comment. No wonder the Anglo-Saxons were so deeply moved. They haven’t been so upset for a long time. True hohols almost never fought against the Germans on the side of the Russians. Banderites fought on the side of Hitler, it was just not profitable for either the Russians or the Americans to flaunt it. But the Jews don’t forget insults, so they punished the Ukrainians with the hands of the Russians.
Strange then that Prague was (nearly) liberated by Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front then.
So a large part of the Red Army that crushed the Nazis were Ukrainians.
But don’t let your conspiracy theory get too complex.
In reality Prague was liberated by the Prague Uprising (Pražské povstání) for which a Metro station is named.
You show your ignorance here: Ukrainian Front is denoted by where it is situated, not by who does the fighting.
You buffoon. Ukr is nowhere near where the Ukr Front crossed the border into Moravia. Why don’t you look up Konev and how his statue has fallen.
In the latter part of the war on the Eastern Front, the Red Army was organized into fronts based on their geographic location at the time they were created — several “Baltic Fronts”, several “Belorussian Fronts”, and several “Ukrainian Fronts”. These were then not changed for the rest of the war, so the Ukrainian Fronts retained their names even after they advanced out of Ukraine and into Romania, Hungary, etc. The names had nothing to do with the ethnic makeup of the soldiers in each front. You will note that there were no “Russian Fronts”, so by your logic that would mean no ethnic Russians were doing any of the fighting, when actually it meant that the Germans had been mostly pushed out of Russia proper by the time the Red Army reorganized on these lines.
Ukraine gave the Red Army: 7 Front and Army Commanders, 200 Generals, more than 6 million soldiers, NCO’s and officers.
Of course you show your ignorance as soon as you open your mouth…
While you do your noises from another orifice.
Comrade, where did you come from? From the planet Mars? The amazing incompetence of all Western commentators. I explain to all Western readers and writers. In the Soviet Army, the name of the front corresponded to the place of its battles, and not to the national composition of the fighters. There were 1, 2, 3 Ukrainian fronts and 1, 2, 3 Belarusian, but there might not have been any real khokhols in them at all!!! Why was there no Buryat front, although there were many Buryats in the war? Because there were no military actions on the land of the Republic of Buryatia.
Ukraine gave the Red Army: 7 Front and Army Commanders, 200 Generals, more than 6 million soldiers, NCO’s and officers.
At the end of the Soviet Union, Russia thought they could get rid of the Central Asian Republics, while the Slavs of BeloRuss and Ukr would still be part of the Rodina.
Seems like the Ukr’s decided they were a different people. And with that you Russkis lost the bravest and most intelligent part of your Empire.
Your % of Mohammedans is increasing, you have more and more Central Asians doing the real work, Chinese are settling Siberia. Meanwhile you Russkis get drunk and beat your wives.
Wonderful country.
Utter nonsense.
Pražské povstání only occurred because Patton was in Plzeň and the Praguers were emboldened to strike believing that Patton would reinforce the movement. Unfortunately, largely because of FDR’s collusion with his party’s hero, Stalin, at Yalta, Patton was not allowed to enter Prague and the Praguers were sitting ducks.
Pražské povstání in and of itself was not capable of liberating and thousands died while being forced to wait so that the Communists could take the credit and the glory.
The Prague uprising (when Germans from the Benesau Training area reinforced the German soldiers in Prague) was a serious uprising. You are right the Czechs expected to be liberated (but at this time they were pro-Russian so they didn’t care who did it). The Communist party of CzS got over 40% of the vote after the war – Cz’s didn’t have much trust in the West after Munich.
The Yanks did stop at Pilsen, but the Russians only got as far as Vlasim. No doubt the Russians wanted to do the same as in Warsaw, and let the Germans kill all the troublemakers.
The Germans knew the Russians were close and agreed with the Czechs to stop shooting and let them escape to the West.
You are right the Communists/Russians took credit, although today the Czechs want to rename Konevova Ulice and pull down his statue.
Sure FDR had colluded with Stalin.
But if you ever visit, you’ll find plenty of monuments to the Yanks in the West – like Domazlice – erected after 1991.
Spengler’s been forecasting an imminent Russian victory since the start of the 3 wk SMO.
Yet here we are 3yrs later.
Numbers vary, but the Russians don’t…. canon fodder is their way to fight wars.
Russia has lost. It now has a new enemy. Not one of the Middle European Slavs who looked Russians to protect them from the Ottomans or Germans, but a people who have fought and suffered side by side with them since Catherine the Great.
Not to mention the dire TFR of ethnic Russians leading to the increase in Mohammendans and the Chinese takeover of Siberia.
These comments are no more than a rouse to hide your Indian identify. When you’ve been bitten by the open defecators delusion, you never lose it.
China, a place where Europeans and Indians feel ‘black’.
Small people, small eyes and v small weapons.
Evidently CB hit the nail on the head, else you wouldn’t be reacting this way.
What a curse to be born into this world a jeet
Agreed, Jeet or pak is a curse. Winning last prize in the lottery of life.
I won 1st !
We could all chip in and donate rooster a toilet. He’ll be a celebrity in his village. A king even!
We could donate a ‘plastic fantastic lover’ for ConBob, any potential wife he might get would appreciate it.