Gonzalo Lira: Ukraine Coup Incoming?

May 31, 2022 natyliesb 6 Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ih1MwvAOv4

This is interesting speculation. I’m interested to hear what my readers think in the comments about it. – Natylie

Ben Aris: Nine out of 10 Russians oppose concessions in exchange for end of sanctions; approval of US nosedives

May 31, 2022 natyliesb 2 Comments

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 5/27/22

Russians’ attitudes towards the US have nose-dived to their second worst level on record and the overwhelming majority (87%) believe the Kremlin should not make concessions to the West in order to have the extreme sanctions on Russia lifted.

Only 13% of Russians believe that their country should make concessions to the West. Young respondents under the age of 40 are a little more likely (18%) to believe Russia should make concessions. Older respondents, on the contrary, are the least likely to accept concessions from Russia (only 9% in the age group of 55 years and older), Levada found in its latest survey.

At the same time, negative feelings towards the US have increased dramatically, with 72% of respondents in March saying their feelings were “bad” against 17% that felt “good” and 1% undecided.

That is a turnabout from a slight majority for “good” (45%) versus “bad” (42%) in November last year right at the beginning of the rising geopolitical tensions.

Indeed, the population’s attitude towards the US has been broadly positive for almost all of the last three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In the very early days Russians were optimistic that after the animosities of the Cold War ended with the fall of the USSR that the US would step in with its famous entrepreneurial skills and actively participate in rebuilding Russia’s collapsed economy. Aid, such as food relief delivered in 1992 to deal with shortages, was seen as a sign of this co-operation. However, those expectations crashed in the 1998 financial crisis when Russia was left to fend for itself after the ruble collapsed on August 17, 1998.

Friendly feelings towards the US recovered during the booming noughties but crashed again in 2008 thanks to the double whammy of the US-induced global economic crisis and Washington’s backing of Georgia during a short war it fought with Russia.

Relations recovered again in the next decade, only to comprehensively collapse for a third time following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the international sanctions regime, which remains in place to this day. That collapse was a permanent change, as Russia was always willing to give the US the benefit of the doubt until the sanctions were imposed.

Attitudes towards the US started to improve slowly as the last decade wore on, despite the sanctions, as Russia emerged from a four-year long recession and the feel-good factor of returning prosperity in 2018 and 2019 made itself felt. Attitudes to the US even turned a net positive briefly in 2018 and at the start of 2020, until the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic broke out. But feelings towards the US have turned sharply negative again since the war broke out on February 24.

The number of Russians that feel it is necessary to co-operate with the US has fallen by 30%, Levada said, since the war started, but worry that dangers to the country are rising. The share of Russians that feel relations with the US are bad now reached 72% in March, the second worst result since January 2015, when 81% of the population felt negatively about the US and just ahead of April 2018, when 69% said the same.

“Respondents were offered a set of phenomena and processes and asked how dangerous they are for Russia. When comparing the results with the last wave of the survey, which took place in 2016, attention is drawn to the general increase in anxiety and the increase in the proportion of answers “very dangerous” for all the proposed options. At the same time, the greatest increase in fears is associated with foreign policy factors: the actions of the Nato alliance and the growth of US military power,” Levada said in a note.

Older respondents are more optimistic and more likely to expect changes for the better in terms of Russia’s global political influence (42%). Young people, on the contrary, are more sceptical: only 28% expect the strengthening of Russian influence, Levada found.

The number of Russians who believe that Russia was and remains part of Europe has remained virtually unchanged at 68%, against the results of a comparable study conducted in 2016 (64%).

There is noticeable age differentiation in the respondents’ answers: young people are less likely to agree with the statement that Russia is part of Europe than older people.

When asked which countries have respect in the world, the most respondents (88%) believed that China enjoys global respect, followed by Russia (66%) and Germany (52%). But only a third of Russians (34%) thought the US was respected with one in five (18%) saying Ukraine was respected.

Amongst respected world leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin scored best amongst Levada’s respondents with 87% believing the Russian president is respected. Russian allies also scored well with Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko’s 82% and China’s president Xi Jinping’s 82%. Attitudes to western leaders did less well: French President Emmanuel Macron (24%), German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (14%), US president Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (both 6%).

Levada compared the results of its survey amongst Russians with those in the US, in a parallel survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which found a mirror image amongst American respondents. Asked which world leaders were respected, the US respondents put Zelenskiy at the top of the list with 81%, followed by Biden (52%), Xi (10%) and Putin (4%).

Ukrainian Finance Ministry names primary sources of budget revenue

May 30, 2022 natyliesb

dirty vintage luck table — Photo by Rūdolfs Klintsons on Pexels.com

Virtually all of the revenue is from external sources, debt and printing money.

Interfax News Agency, 5/26/22

Allocations from the European Union in the amount of $603 million and from the United States in the amount of $500 million, as well as $431-million return on war bonds were the primary sources of Ukrainian budget revenue last week, the Ukrainian Finance Ministry said in a statement on its website.

Between February 24 and May 25, war bonds yielded $3.068 billion, and the budget gained $1.382 billion from the European Union and $986 million from the United States, while the largest contributions were received from the National Bank of Ukraine – $4.103 billion, or UAH 120 billion, it said.

Loans from international financial institutions, bilateral loans and grants are other primary sources of Ukrainian budget revenue, the ministry said.

Jeremy Kuzmarov Interviews Former Virginia State Senator and Purple Heart Winner Who Warns: “We’re at a 1914 Moment”

May 30, 2022 natyliesb 5 Comments

Former State Sen. Dick Black - Biography | LegiStorm — Colonel Richard Black [Source: legistorm.com]

by Jerry Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine, 5/27/22

Colonel Richard Black has been one of the few former high-ranking military officers or government officials to speak out against U.S. military intervention in places like Syria and Ukraine. He is extremely concerned about the prospects of nuclear war breaking out and appalled at the callousness in which some government officials talk about a nuclear first strike.

In a May 17 interview with CAM, transcribed below, Colonel Black emphasized the grave danger associated with Ukraine’s sinking of the Moskva, Russia’s flagship Black Sea missile cruiser, with assistance from U.S. intelligence. According to Black, this act was tantamount to an act of war. He warns that we’re now “at a 1914 moment [year when World War I broke out].”

The triggering act for the latter was the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist (Gavrilo Princip), while the sinking of the Moskva may very well be the triggering act for the outbreak of World War III.

In the Tradition of George Washington

Colonel Black flew 269 combat missions in the Vietnam War, winning a Purple Heart. He served in the Virginia State Senate from 2012 to 2020 and was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998-2006.

Black is that rare breed of principled conservative who supports limited government including in the realm of foreign affairs. He operates in the tradition of George Washington, who warned in his farewell address about the threat to democracy of a large standing army.

CAM is rooted in the political left; however, an anti-war and anti-imperialist political coalition could be forged with principled conservatives like Black and challenge what veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls MICIMATT—the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank complex.

Black’s outspoken opposition to U.S. involvement in Ukraine contrasts markedly with so-called progressives like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and members of “the Squad” who have aligned with the Democratic Party establishment war-makers and voted in favor of the recent $40 billion military aid package to Ukraine—among others there.

In 2016, Black traveled to Syria and met with its president Bashar al-Assad, to whom he had written a letter thanking for saving Christians in the Qalamoun Mountain range. In his letter, Black praised Assad for “treating with respect all Christians and the small community of Jews in Damascus,” stating it was obvious that the rebel side of the war was largely being fought by “vicious war criminals linked to Al Qaeda.”

The Islamic State subsequently included Colonel Black on a list of enemies, calling him “the American Crusader,” and quoted a statement he made suggesting that, if Damascus fell, “the dreaded black and white flag of ISIS will fly over Damascus.”

Below is an edited transcript of my interview with Colonel Black:

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Thanks for joining us Colonel. I want to mainly discuss the conflict in Ukraine and Syria with you. But first, if you can start with just a bit about your background, including your involvement in the Vietnam war and how that might’ve shaped your outlook towards war and military intervention.

Colonel Black: I retired out of the Pentagon in 1994 and I have spent a lot of time in the Virginia legislature. I was in the House of Delegates. And in the Senate over a span of 20 years. And Vietnam was an important factor in all this because I want to make the point, I don’t come at this as somebody who is anti-American or anything of that sort. I’m patriotic. I volunteered to fight in Vietnam. I was a Marine Corps helicopter pilot and flew 269 combat missions and was hit by ground fire on four occasions. And then I volunteered to fight on the ground with the First Marine Division. I was a forward air controller and fought in the bloodiest engagement of the entire war for the Marines. During the final battle, I served in about 70 combat patrols, most of them at night, most of them in heavily enemy-controlled areas.

And on the last patrol we were trying to rescue a Marine outpost and during the attack to do that, I was wounded and both of my radio men were killed right beside me. So I put my life on the line many times for the country, hundreds of times, literally. And so I just say that to lay the background, because sometimes you’ll get people who are critical of someone who takes a different point of view like I have and say, well, you know, he’s never done anything for this country.

Actually, I think you’ll find most of the, most of the people pushing for war have done precious little for the country. And so anyway, I just put that by way of background. Now after fighting in Vietnam, I attended law school and I was an Army JAG officer and did a great number of things, including serving as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Germany for three years.

During the height of the Cold War at that time, NATO was a very good defensive alliance. And we were faced with the Soviet Union, which was a very aggressive entity right across the east-west border. Eventually I was in the Pentagon where I advised the Senate Armed Services Committee, and wrote executive orders for the president. And so I come at this as somebody who’s very much, I guess, a part of the American establishment. But I have very grave differences with the direction that we’re headed right now.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: And just for clarification, what years did you serve in Vietnam?

Colonel Black: I was there in 1966 and 1967. I was in two small unit battles where men won the Medal of Honor. It was a time of blistering bloody combat, something that I don’t wish on other people. I have no interest in seeing young Ukrainian men or young Russian men killed in battle for the glory of the politicians and the global elite.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: It seems that you were generally supporting U.S. policy in the Cold War. In hindsight, do you think Vietnam was a misguided war?

Colonel Black: Well, in this sense [yes, it was misguided]. The president of South Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm, was a very talented politician. He wanted the United States to provide him with weapons because he was fighting an insurgency and eventually an invasion from the North. But he did not want us to come in with military troops because he said, as soon as you do that, you’re going to be viewed as another colonial empire.

Just like the French, just like the Japanese. When Diệm was assassinated—at the behest of the President and at the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—the North Vietnamese were absolutely stunned. Ho Chi Minh was amazed. He was deadly enemies with Ngô Đình Diệm, but he said the Americans have been astoundingly stupid.

This is because they have killed the one man that we could never outmaneuver. It wasn’t just [in the realm of the] military. Ngô Đình Diệm understood the politics and the complexities of the Vietnamese culture and the North Vietnamese [would have had difficulty] overcoming his insight and wisdom. But we, like we do often, decided, well, he’s an impediment to what we’re doing. We’ll get rid of him. He was taken out by a General’s coup. They captured him eventually with the help of the CIA, took him off in an armored personnel carrier and killed him, assassinated him and his brother. So we never needed to be there [in Vietnam].

Now, once we were there, the people who fought with us [the U.S.] fought with enormous gallantry and courage and self-sacrifice. In many ways. I think we were fighting for a good cause, but we were fighting a war we never needed to fight. And that was really the key issue at stake; that we never should have been there. It would have saved a lot of bloodshed and the war [within Vietnam] would have ended differently.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Thanks. It’s interesting to hear this. I interviewed a lot of Vietnam veterans before [for my book, The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs], and it’s always interesting to hear their points of view. Now you worked for NATO in the 1980s during the Cold War. Can you briefly relay your experience and compare the situation in the 1980s with today?

Colonel Black: [When I worked for NATO] it was at the height of the Cold War and the Soviet Union was very threatening [as Black saw it] and a tremendous nuclear power. There were tanks lined up on the border. Thousands and thousands of tanks. And we thought there was a substantial chance of the outbreak of war. But one thing that was different from today was that both the United States and all of the allies and Soviet Union were extraordinarily cautious about an accidental outbreak of nuclear war. There was an understanding that, if a nuclear war broke out, everybody was the loser.

In one particular incident, we had three young JAG officers and their wives who wanted to go to East Berlin. And the corridor to East Berlin was controlled by the Soviet Union. And we were not allowed to take photographs. And so this group stopped at a checkpoint and there was a Soviet soldier who walked around the car while they went in and submitted their documents at the checkpoint. And one of the wives, she didn’t mean anything by it, she just wanted to get a little piece of history and she snapped a picture of the guard, just an ordinary photo, but some proof that she had lived through this period.

Within 24 hours, the Soviet authorities reported that to the United States. Those three officers and their families were on a plane out of Germany, forever. All of their household goods, their furnishings and things were packed up on an emergency basis. They were on a plane. There was no evidence that they had ever resided in West Germany.

And it just shows the dramatic efforts that we made to make sure that there was not some spark that would trigger World War III. Had we reported that a Soviet soldier did something similar, the same thing would have happened to him. He would have vanished.

But now we’ve become really quite reckless with the way that we talk about nuclear weapons. Just recently there was a Republican Senator Roger Wicker [from Mississippi] and he’s very senior on the military committee in the Senate. And he said we should not take off the table the idea of putting American troops on the ground and using nuclear weapons. And he was saying, we should be willing to consider a first use of nuclear weapons.

And what he’s talking about is that we should be willing to consider launching a preemptive Pearl Harbor-type strike on Russia with Americans being in the shoes of the Japanese, launching the attack. I think that is insane. It is [also] immoral. It’s a terrible thing for any American to suggest the first use of nuclear weapons.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Thanks. I feel the same way. And maybe before getting into the current conflict and dangerous situation, if you can say something about, having served with NATO, what your attitude toward the issue of NATO expansion in the 1990s under the Clinton administration is. And how do you think this expansion has contributed to the dangerous situation we have today?

Colonel Black: Yeah. See, here’s the thing; we used to constantly send out messages: “we are a defensive alliance.” Now this is before the fall of the Berlin Wall. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1991, it signaled the dissolution of the Soviet Union; this great empire, literally just fell to pieces. It wasn’t conquered, it just fell to pieces. And the philosophy of Bolshevism, Marxism, communism simply dissipated, it fell apart.

And so what happened is that there was a defensive alliance that the Soviets had—the counterpart of NATO called the Warsaw Pact. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact disappeared and everybody went home.

And one of the great tragedies of human history is that NATO did not dissolve. It had no purpose to its existence now that the Soviet Union was gone. There was no threat anymore. But you had this enormous bureaucracy with all of these military think tanks. And these people had a lot at stake, a lot of money, a lot of income and so forth.

And so NATO continued and it gradually converted to a very aggressive, assertive alliance. And it began this inexorable march to the east.

Now in 1991, there was a thousand mile buffer between nuclear-powered forces in Germany and nuclear-powered forces in Russia. This was a tremendous safety buffer. And what’s happened is we have gradually marched all the way literally to the Russian border.

And in 2014, we overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine. There was a presidential coup and the CIA conspired with counterparts in Ukraine and conducted a violent overthrow of the government. A lot of people were killed in the process.

And they installed this revolutionary government. Well, what happened as a result of that is there were a lot of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, about a quarter of them, and they tend to be focused in the eastern parts, in the Donbas and in Crimea, The people there refused to recognize the new revolutionary government.

They were fine as long as they had a vote, as long as they could participate in the election of their government, but they were not going to join a revolutionary coup. And as a result the Russians were very threatened by what was happening because their Black Sea Fleet was stationed in Crimea at Sevastopol port.

And they were afraid that the new revolutionary government would renege on the 99-year lease that Russia had there. So they moved in now. Crimea was solidly part of Russia, and it had been Russian for 500 years. It is a kind of a historic anomaly that it was temporarily in the hands of the Ukrainians.

And so the Crimean people welcomed the Russians in; they came in quietly, there was not a shot fired. They took over Crimea, held a plebiscite. About 92% of the people voted in favor of becoming a part of Russia. Donbas was a little bit different. They declared their independence from Ukraine.

And that’s really the source of the continuing problem. NATO and particularly the United States and United Kingdom flooded enormous quantities of weapons. And they also sent troops in some cases on the ground in Ukraine, training Ukrainian soldiers to kill Russians right across the border.

And I think there was an intent virtually from 2014 to start a war with Russia. And eventually they got the Russians backed into a corner where they were forced to fight, but before the war broke out, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government made desperate attempts to achieve peace.

They actually put written peace proposals on the table with NATO, trying to establish a zone that would be de-militarized. And that was rejected out of hand because NATO fully intended to compel Russia to force them into a war, which they did.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: And what do you think the motive is? Why did they want to force Russia into war? This could trigger a world war.

Colonel Black: It’s a very good question. I think that there are several reasons….

Read full interview here.

Dmitriy Kovalevich: May update: a war to the last Ukrainian

May 29, 2022 natyliesb

ukrainian flag waving in wind with clear sky in background — Photo by Nati on Pexels.com

By Dmitriy Kovalevich, New Cold War, 5/27/22

In this month’s update, New Cold War’s regular contributor and analyst Dmitriy Kovalevich describes what has been happening on the ground in Ukraine throughout May. In his comprehensive account, based on reports including those from the Ukrainian media, Kovalevich clearly demonstrates how the western establishment’s narrative differs strikingly from the reality and why Zelensky is now saying that, despite bellicose statements from countries like Great Britain and Canada, the conflict can only end through diplomacy.

By the end of May, Ukraine had already experienced three months of hostilities, and had lost a total of 21% of its territory[i] since the beginning of the Russian operation. In the Russian-controlled territories of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, the Russian authorities appointed a temporary local administration, introduced a dual-currency zone (Ukrainian and Russian currencies), and began to pay pensions and salaries.[ii] At the end of May, the Russian authorities also decided to issue Russian passports to the residents of these regions, in addition to the people of Donbass.[iii] According to their estimates, about 70% of the inhabitants of the regions want to adopt Russian citizenship.[iv]

A landmark moment was the surrender of the Ukrainian military at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, which is already completely controlled by the military of the DPR and the Russian Federation. According to preliminary estimates, about 200,000 inhabitants, or half of the population, remained in the city. During April and May, neo-Nazis from the Azov regiment recorded tearful appeals to the Pope, Elon Musk, Western leaders, Xi Jinping and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, demanding an “extraction” procedure, evacuation with weapons and banners instead of surrender, but this did not help them.

Calling the surrender an “evacuation”

Until the end, the authorities of Ukraine refused to call the surrender of the Azovstal garrison “a surrender.” President Zelensky, followed by the Western media, called it an “evacuation” to a safe place, allegedly supervised by Ukrainian intelligence.[v] Even so, the “evacuation” was in fact a normal surrender when the Ukrainian military, including hundreds of neo-Nazis from the Azov Battalion, laid down their weapons on camera and went through a search procedure, after which they were taken as prisoners of war to Donetsk. The DPR authorities promise a tribunal[vi] over the Ukrainian military for many years of crimes against the republic, recognized only in February by the Russian Federation. Russian media showed prisoners with tattoos of swastikas, portraits of Hitler and Nazi slogans in German.[vii] A red flag[viii] was symbolically raised over Azovstal, taken there by the DPR forces, and the Donetsk militia posed for photographs with a red flag bearing the inscription “In defense of Marxism-Leninism.”[ix]

According to the Ukrainian media, the prisoners, totaling 2,439 people from Azovstal and another 1,630 from the plant named after Ilyich in the same city, are being kept in normal conditions, and no violence has been used against them. This is reported by the relatives of the prisoners, who were given the opportunity to communicate with the captives.[x] Donetsk militias call on their comrades to be extremely tolerant, humane and respectful towards POWs, including neo-Nazis, as this will encourage other Ukrainian servicemen to surrender, thereby saving more lives on both sides.

The news about the surrender was a serious blow to the hubris and belligerent rhetoric of the Ukrainian authorities. Only after it became clear that captivity and the subsequent tribunal was not an evacuation, did the Ukrainian authorities and Azov commanders begin to make adamant demands that commenting on the event should stop, while at the same time trying to divert the public’s attention.[xi]

The fall of Svetlodarsk

The next informational setback was the fall of the city of Svetlodarsk in the Luhansk region and the tactical encirclement of the Ukrainian military group in the Severodonetsk, to which, after the separation of Luhansk, the Lugansk regional administration was transferred, which had at the beginning of May controlled only 25% of the region. It is also forbidden to call the retreat by Ukrainian troops “a retreat.” Officially, this is being called a “defensive maneuver,”[xii] after which Russian troops appear in Ukrainian cities.

The Ukrainian authorities are still trying to reassure the population with weekly forecasts of an “imminent counteroffensive” and the collapse of Russia “as early as this year.” In this regard, they refer to the data of the British media and intelligence, which are trying to keep the Ukrainian authorities’ morale in good shape with such promises.

However, the Ukrainian military, who are directly involved in the hostilities, are much less optimistic. In May, a wave of protests began in Ukraine among the military, who are refusing to obey orders, as well as among their relatives, who are protesting against sending their husbands and sons to the frontline. Mostly, they complain that armed only with machine guns and without training they are immediately being dispatched to trenches on the front line, where many of them do not survive for even a day. Particular dissatisfaction is being shown by the so-called territorial defense, paramilitaries, originally formed to defend their settlements. These are mostly non-professional military; however, due to the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it is these paramilitaries who are plugging the holes in the defense and being forced into going to the front line.

“We do not want to be cannon fodder”

Members of the battalion of the Cherkasy territorial defense refused to fight and recorded a video message to that effect. They say that on May 22 they were sent to the front line to carry out a combat mission but they were not provided with heavy weapons.[xiii] For this reason, they refused to carry out the assigned task, after which the authorities took away their light weapons and protective equipment, threatening them with arrest and prosecution. They complain that many of them died or were wounded in the first battle, for which they are not receiving medical care. They consider their presence on the front line illegal. “We do not want to be cannon fodder,” sums up the mutinying members of the territorial defense.

Earlier in May, the military of the 115th brigade of Ukraine’s armed forces, who refused to follow orders in Severodonetsk, also recorded a video about poor service conditions. They were sent to a pre-trial detention center as deserters. They said they were refusing to carry out combat missions due to lack of reinforcements. The combatants also blamed the incompetence of their command.[xiv]

In early May, in the Transcarpathian region’s city of Khust, local women stormed the military registration and enlistment office, protesting against sending their husbands from the territorial defense to the front. When the head of the military office did not go out to meet the women, they began to smash the windows and broke into the building.[xv]

Russian forces change tactics amid uncertainty over number of Ukraine combatants

In May, the Russian army altered its tactics. Now, instead of raids comprising tank columns going deep into Ukraine, it uses the tactics of slowly grinding down the Ukrainian armed forces with long-range artillery, “dismantling” the fortified areas into ruins and dust. With countless shell craters, the fields of southeastern Ukraine now resemble those of Belgium during the First World War.[xvi]

Volodymyr Zelensky claims that 700,000 Ukrainian servicemen are now taking part in the fighting.[xvii] In May, he extended martial law and new waves of conscription for the next three months. According to Ukrainian media reports, young people who are being seized from the streets of Kharkov and Odessa are being conscripted into the army.[xviii] Unwilling to fight, Ukrainian men launched a petition in May, demanding that they be allowed to leave or be evacuated overseas (which has been banned since February). In the first three days, the petition gained the necessary 25,000 signatures, after which, by law, the president must consider it. However, Vladimir Zelensky has refused to do so, instead drawing attention to the military personnel who are in the trenches.[xix] Zelensky’s adviser Alexei Arestovich promises to put under arms not 700,000, but a million people.[xx]

This declared number of Ukrainian military deployed against the Russians’ offensive is at odds with that of Western intelligence data, while Ukraine’s Defense minister says that the number of Russians involved in Ukraine is about 167,000.[xxi] Whatever the case, even with a threefold superiority in manpower and the weapons supplied by NATO countries, the Ukrainian army is losing territories and cities every week.

Russian blogger German Kulikovsky, the author of the telegram channel ‘Older Edda,’ based in the Kharkiv region, describes the tactics of the Russian army in May as follows:

“Russian troops are advancing slowly but surely. They take care of the personnel and try to destroy the enemy with artillery, missiles and aircraft. In general, our offensive in this direction is similar to the movement of a road roller, which, although not fast, reliably rolls the roadway […]. The Russian army is grinding [down] the enemy, the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are growing exponentially, and Ukraine is trying to close the holes on the front line with fresh reinforcements, throwing them into battle right after their arrival, which certainly increases the number of killed and wounded in the ranks of the Ukrainian army even more.”[xxii]

“A war to the last Ukrainian”

Against this background, in May Zelensky’s party deputies attempted to propose a bill that gave the right to shoot Ukrainian servicemen on the spot if they refuse to fight, tried to desert or surrender,[xxiii] although the bill was withdrawn after a public outcry. In the same month, the same fate befell a bill that proposed to deprive Ukrainian men of their citizenship if they illegally left the country. And the number of this latter group is growing every week, as are the prices being charged by smugglers for their services, due to the many young males who have been seized on the street and immediately sent to the front.

The war “to the last Ukrainian” thus becomes a reality. Judging by the rhetoric of Western politicians, even against the wishes of many Ukrainians, the authorities of Great Britain and Canada are inciting that the war continues, in contrast to the statements calling for compromise that are being heard in Paris, Berlin and Vienna.