By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 9/3/24

Little Prospect for Immediate Peace

The general tone of pro-Russian coverage of NATO’s proxy war against Russia over Ukraine continues to be somewhat triumphal, supported by an empirical reality in the battlefields with which western mainstream media are now largely in agreement (perhaps, as one noted, so as to be ready to blame Zelenskiy for the whole sorry mess once Washington has called the whole thing off).

I have explained in a recent post how my immediate instinct is to distrust triumphal reporting, even when substantiated by the empirical “facts on the ground.” That is because I do not believe that anyone or any group, for or against the War or for or against the position of Russia, or Ukraine or the West in the war, is in possession of all of the facts.

There is far less consensus as to how things will turn out from here, with many commentators eager to discern evidence of a movement towards negotiation and a relatively short war, on the one hand, against those who consider the gap between Zelenskiy’s “peace plan” and Russia’s security and other needs absolutely unbridgeable. With Russia now in a more certain position to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk, some think, Russia will be more inclined to consider negotiations.

The main problems with this expectation, as I see it, are as follows:

(1) Russia’s main enemy is not Ukraine by itself, it is Washington and the West, and parties to negotiation need to include all relevant voices;

(2) Russia’s principal concerns are not concerns that it has only with Ukraine, they are concerns that the Global South has with the West; therefore, the substance of negotiations, if they are to be truly successful, cannot just be about Ukraine. Instead, they need to be about the global order and about reform of that global order in a direction that is more polycentrist, less hegemonic, and regulated by a somewhat re-thought and reformed United Nations, a process in which the BRICS could be an extremely useful intermediary. (I note in passing that Turkey’s request to enter the BRICS has now been formalized).

(3) There are no circumstances in which Russia is going to voluntarily agree to give up Crimea and the four oblasts that it has formally enfolded into the Russian Federation; there are live questions as to whether its security needs can be respected without acquisition of Kharkiv, Kiev, Odessa and any other oblasts that separate Novorussiye from the Dnieper;

(4) There are no circumstances in which Russia is going to agree to talk to a Ukrainian delegation appointed by the current regime, which Russia correctly asserts to be an illegitimate and unelected regime, even by the standards of Ukraine’s own constitution. It is a regime that would be booted out of office in the event that martial law would come to an end, and new elections instituted; regime change is a prerequisite. One cannot negotiate or do deals with people like this.

(5) There are no circumstances so far as can currently be seen in which Zelenskiy and his gang are going to voluntarily give up power;

(6) These considerations, therefore, have two consequences. The first (a) is that practically all discussion in the West about possible endings to this war, together with a great deal of discussion in Russia itself, adopts far too narrow a conception as to what this war is really about and what must happen for it to be won or to reach settlement. The second (b) is that because the gulfs between the main parties – Russia (together with China and other major allies in the BRICS), Ukraine, Brussels, Washington and the West generally – are so broad, no successful negotiation is currently practicable, and the war will therefore continue, finishing only whenever Ukraine collapses, amidst serious fissures and fragmentations within the EU and NATO, or the Russian Federation itself collapses.

(7) For the moment, the first of these two scenarios seems the most likely. This largely results from quantitative and qualitative superiority of Russian forces, weapons, manufacturing capability and alliances (including with China and Iran). The longer the war lasts, the more attrition there will be of Ukrainian forces, specifically, and of Western armories more generally. The pace of Western attrition will speed up if Israel manages to coax the US to fight a war on its behalf with Iran; and if the US manages to provoke a war between China and Taiwan. This would present a three-front challenge to the USA at a time when its ability to fight even only one front seems questionable.

(8) Russia has never at any time indicated that its ambitions went beyond the Donbass. Nor was there any sane reason to think that it did. However, the Western reaction to Russian assertion of its security needs has been so extreme (and, to be frank, so extremely fake), so over-the-top, that Russia must now be obliged to consider the entire West as its enemy. Therefore, against all previous indications to the contrary, Russia may now be planning some broader and more durable defense strategy vis-a-vis NATO.

Fragmenting NATO/ Europe amid Liberal Authoritarianism

As discussed in my previous post, three of the EU’s major powers are in deep water, struggling to climb out of it by ever more authoritarian means.

Britian nears recession, its new government proclaims that ten years of austerity are necessary, yet doubles down on Ukraine and resorts increasingly with dire, repressive measures to crush protests against this clear insanity.

The French President, in the face of an election disaster for his party has manouvered his chips to keep out of power the one party (that of Marine Le Pen) that won the most seats in the general election, and is coopting fragments of the Left alliance to work with his Party and to keep the other fragments out of power.

In Germany, a recently formed party, the AfD, typically described by its Establishment opposition – the SPD (in power) and CDU (principal opposition) – as “far right,” has won over 30% of the votes in two States – Thuringia and Saxony. A new Left party, the BSW, formed only six months ago as a splinter of the traditional Left party Die Linke, and led by Sahr Wagenknecht has won 16% of the votes in Thuringia and 12% of the votes in Saxony.

The AfD and the BSW together, therefore, represent almost half the voting population of these two, formerly East German states. Both parties oppose continuing German participation in the war in Ukraine. A likely alliance in the federal elections of October 2025 between the CDU and BSW (or comparable alliances at several state levels) might therefore force a radical shift in Germany’s stance in the war, and also derail moves by Washington to establish intermediate and long-range nuclear missiles on German soil.

The Battlefields

A Russian Iskander strike with two ballistic missiles struck a military academy in the Central Ukrainian town of Poltava and, according to some reports, also hit a nearby hospital. This has killed over 50 and wounded some 500, according to a source cited at midday today by Dima (i.e. not the 200 I originally saw reported). Poltava is west of the Dnieper. At this time of writing I do not know if all the victims are military or whether, as one might expect, some civilians have also suffered. It was mainly contract soldiers, not cadets, who were hit. The dead included foreign, including several Swedish, instructors, probably assigned there for training courses related to 2 AWACS aircraft that Sweden has gifted Ukraine.

Following Russian strikes elsewhere across Ukraine, there have been reported Iskander explosions in Kharkiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia (where an Iskander destroyed a hotel hosting many foreign instructors). All Russian artillery brigades are now being equipped with Iskander missiles and have the authority to use them.

In southern Donetsk, Russian forces have secured the village of Prechystivka, west of Vuhledar, and have been shelling Urozhaine, Novodonetsk, and Makarivka. From Prechystivka they have advanced north in the direction of Novokrainke, and, as a result, they likely control a large swathe of territory from Novomaiorske up through Prechystivka and Novokrainke, eastwards to Pavlivka. To the northeast of Vuhledar they have taken the South Donbass coalmine together with a nearby stronghold and are poised to enter the eastern outskirts of Vuhledar itself.

In Pokrovsk, Russian forces have moved on Zhelanne Persha, of which they now control 50%. This is east of Lisivko which they took yesterday; they are attacking Ukrainsk nearby to the west, from Dolynivka and Memryk, and poised to move on Zhelanne Druhe, and on Hirnyk to the south. Ukrainian forces have abandoned a swathe of territory that runs from Hstytsynivka in the west to Nevelske in the east and then, moving southwards, to Krasn. In Selydove, Russian forces continue to advance on the town from Mykhailivka to the east and have taken the hospital area. North of Selydove, Russian forces control over a good half of Novohrodivka but there are still significant clashes for control over the western half of the village.

Russian forces are entering deeper into Toretsk, where they have occupied the school area while, to the immediate north, they have established control over Druzba. Russian forces have resumed their offensive towards the center of Chasiv Yar, making new advances and have established a foothold west of Kalinivka to the north of Chasiv Yar, tracing all the way down the western bank of the Kanal to a point south of Kleshchiivka.

South of Siversk, Russian forces have resumed progress towards the taking of Pereizne (they control 50%), and in the very near future are likely to take Fedoriivka to the immediate west. In Kupyansk, Russian forces have moved further from Pishchanne and are within less than two kilometers from the Oskil river at the settlements of Hlushkivka and Kolishnykivka.

In Kursk, there are reports that Russia has recovered a line of villages from Pogrebki down to Malaya Loknya. Dima considers that Ukraine will be forced out of Kursk by the end of the year.

Palestine

Just as consensus accumulates in favor of a triumphal outcome for Russia in Ukraine, there is a gathering unison of pessimistic tone with respect to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. Netanyahu is proving himself impervious to the unrest of a sizable proportion of all of Israel that protests vehemently for a ceasefire that will bring home all the remaining hostages. He is impervious too to the voices in his own army, the IDF, that express concern that they are barely able to defeat Hamas, let alone Hezbollah in Lebanon, or to win a war against Israel [I think he meant to say Iran – NB].

Writing for Antiwar.com, Caitlin Johnson writes of Israeli and western media reaction to the recent deaths of six hostages:

“Israeli strikes killed 47 Palestinians in Gaza in one 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday, receiving not the tiniest fraction of the attention as those six Israeli hostages.Israel is extending its military offensives”

Jeremy Scahill reports today the situation in Jenin:

“For nearly a week, the Israeli military has been laying siege to hospitals in Jenin and other cities in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, severely restricting access to medical care, targeting medical workers and ambulances, and cutting off water and electricity, as part of a massive military offensive in the occupied West Bank, the largest operation  in the Palestinian territory in over two decades.”

For Global Research, Steven Sahiounie writes:

“The Israeli military is attempting to pull Hezbollah into a full-scale regional war, through the massive and continuous airstrikes across the south of Lebanon and into the Bekaa Valley. Only Netanyahu benefits from this plan so that he can remain in power and stay out of jail due to being found guilty of corruption. This is the same reason why Netanyahu has continued to refuse a ceasefire in Gaza, despite the massive losses of Israeli military personnel, equipment, and the economy.”

Tunnels and Missiles

In interview today with Judge Napolitano, Alastair Crooke wonders in amazement how it is that neither Israel nor the West seem to understand just how far the nature of war is changing, in the first place, how sophisticated are the stocks of missiles and drones in the hands both of Hezbollah and, even more, Iran, in the second place and how, thirdly, these weapons and their launch systems are increasingly located underground, often unknown and invisible to their enemy.

The New York Times today carries a long article about the Hamas’ networks of tunnels, especially under Gaza, and puts these forward as the reason why Israel’s progress against Hamas has been so slow. The silly pretence is that for the New York Times this is an amazing discovery! Yet for up to a decade or more, the Times and other western mainstream media have eagerly devoured Israeli propaganda stories about the Hamas tunnels as evidence of how evil and threatening to Israeli security is Hamas.

It is obvious that the tunnels have been a major obsession in Israeli security and military planning and that their existence cannot possibly have been a surprise to anyone. Indeed, one only had to listen to Scott Ritter’s analyses since the beginning of the war to know that Israel was likely biting off more than it could chew. If Ritter knew about the tunnels, certainly everyone else who matters knew as well. Finally, one can observe the usefulness of this “tunnel discourse” as forming the basis of a fake justification for Israeli genocide.