The Bell, 1/10/22

What did Russia’s invasion cost Ukraine? Throughout the year, we have written about the impact of the war on Russia’s economy and society. But the main victims of this war are Ukraine and its citizens. Here is a short list of the losses and destruction inflicted on the country by the Russian military. In addition to those killed and injured — including civilians — Ukraine faces a budget deficit of at least $50 billion, a 70% fall in industrial output and a fivefold increase in poverty. Russia’s economy: -6% GDP The Russian economy in 2022 was expected to grow about 3%, according to government and Central Bank predictions from early February. However, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a broad coalition of nations, both Western and Eastern, imposed several rounds of sanctions against Moscow. As a result, Russia’s economy contracted 2.8% this year. That means the war and sanctions caused Russia’s economy to be about 6% smaller than it would otherwise have been at the end of 2022.

At 2021 prices, 6% of Russia’s GDP is equivalent to 9 trillion rubles ($130 billion). That figure would cover Russia’s healthcare budget for 6 years, or pay for education for 7 years. However, the bigger issue is the long-term consequences. External restrictions will prevent Russia’s economy from developing: Western markets are closed and in Asia there is high competition and overstretched infrastructure. It will take some time to fully enter these markets. Instead of proactive investment in innovation and technology, the authorities are choosing to spend on the military. Investment in people is increasingly linked to political views: funding for nurturing “patriotic” feelings is up sixfold, academic mobility is effectively at an end and access to cutting-edge equipment is blocked. In the modern world, economic development is shaped not by resources, but by human capital. Ignoring this fossilizes economic development. The middle class is hardest hit Russia’s middle class is the main economic victim of the Kremlin’s war. Real disposable incomes for Russians will fall 2.2% in 2022, the Ministry of Economic Development predicts. Incomes fell 1.2% year-on-year in Q1, 0.8% in Q2 and 3.4% in Q3 (figures for Q4 are not yet available). At the same time, middle class incomes (before we take into account the third quarter) are already down 5% year-on-year, according to calculations by an analyst at one of Russia’s biggest investment banks using data from the State Statistics Service.

At the same time, there was steady growth in the incomes of the poorest groups in society, probably due to a wide range of social benefits. This is not the first time Russia’s middle class has been hit hardest by an economic crisis. First, it was hobbled by the 2008-09 crisis, then it suffered a protracted squeeze on incomes after 2014. The coronavirus pandemic only worsened the situation, with part of the middle class dropping into poorer income brackets. There’s no quick fix for Russia’s middle class, as the National Agency for Financial Research admitted. To achieve an uplift, the state would need to explore technological development, increase labor productivity, boost real incomes and support families with children. The government pledged to do these things in the 2010s, but those promises now appear to be long forgotten. 500,000 have left the country The war in Ukraine has sparked two waves of emigration. In spring, amid rumors of imminent border closures, hundreds of thousands of people rushed to leave the country. The authorities kept the borders open, and many returned to the country. However, seven months later, after the announcement of a “partial” mobilization, there was another exodus. In addition to the panic buying of airline tickets, which pushed prices sky-high, there were also enormous lines at Russia’s land borders.It’s almost impossible to get an accurate figure for how many people left the country because of the war. But we estimate that, since February, at least 500,000 Russians have fled the country and not returned.

25,000 fewer births Russia’s reproduction rate is already below “break even” and further decline seems inevitable. The direct impact of mobilization alone could amount to 25,000 ‘missing’ births in 2023, according to calculations by leading Russian demographer Mikhail Denisenko.Several factors lead to a declining birth rate including men of reproductive age being “taken away” from family life, according to Salavat Abylkalikov, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Demographics at the Higher School of Economics. There are also losses due to people leaving the country. However, the most important factor is people deciding to postpone having children until things are better — meaning many births will never take place. There are even suggestions that the total fertility rate will drop to the level of the late 1990s.Demographer Igor Yefremov estimates an imminent decline in the total fertility rate to 1.3, and then to 1.2 per woman. That compares with 1.5 last year. That will bring the number of births next year down to 1.2 million (last year there were 1.4 million). 25 million people without Instagram The past year has seen Russia blocking websites on an unprecedented scale. Just three weeks after the start of the war, communications watchdog Roskomnadzor — which has evolved into a sort of censorship agency — started restricting access to photo sharing social media site Instagram (at that time the second most popular social network in Russia). Within a week, the courts listed  the platform’s owners, Meta, as an “extremist organization. At first it seemed that this cyber-blockade would do little to undermine Instagram’s position. After all, a similar ban on Telegram a few years earlier did little to affect the messenger’s audience. This time, though, the blockade was far more successful. According to Mediascope, 32 million people a day were using Instagram at the end of February. By early April, that had halved, and by early December the numbers dropped to just 7 million. An average user now spends 15 minutes a day on the site, compared with a pre-war 41 minutes. The main reason for the dramatic decline is the more effective blocking mechanisms available to the authorities that have followed a law “on sovereign Russian internet”. That law forced providers to install special devices to control traffic, making blocking far more effective. They also enable the state to block VPN services. Despite this, between March and July, 2022, Russia was second in the world for VPN downloads. We don’t know what will happen to Russia’s internet next year, but indications are not encouraging. So far, Russia’s authorities have shied away from the most radical step — a block on YouTube. Banning YouTube would “trigger another wave of interest in mechanisms to get round the block” and “greatly increase the load on Russian services that are barely ready to cope,” said parliamentary deputy Anton Gorelkin who has been at the forefront of legislative restrictions on the internet. Gorelkin added that YouTube, like any bad habit, should be suppressed gradually. Isolated by visas and prices Contrary to widespread fears, the Russian authorities did not close the country’s borders. However, 2022 still saw journeys outside of Russia — especially to the West — become more difficult and more expensive. Land borders to the European Union are almost completely closed to Russians with tourist visas, getting a visa is far more expensive and time-consuming and flights to Europe are two or three times more expensive. A source close to the travel industry told The Bell that the average cost of tickets from Russia to Europe has increased from its pre-war average of €400 ($423) to between €1000 and €1500. Flight times have increased from an average 3-4 hours to 8-24 hours. The key factor is the need to fly via third-nation hubs such as Istanbul, Yerevan or Astana (because most of Europe’s airspace is closed to flights from Russia). By the end of 2022, the total number of passengers carried by Russian airlines will be about 95 million. That’s down almost 15% compared with the previous year, or 26% compared with 2019 (before the pandemic), according to a source close to the aviation industry.

By Kelly Vlahos, Responsible Statecraft, 1/6/22

Tell us, Washington, how do you really feel about American public opinion?

For years now, Beltway establishmentarians have been trying desperately to countermand the idea that they are in fact, elites: out of touch, impervious to what regular Americans want and need, and slaves to conventional foreign policy doctrine and dogma.

But it is wartime again, and that’s when the masks slip. It began with the steady stream of Eliot Cohen and Anne Applebaum columns from the start of the Russian invasion, all demanding that Americans see the war in Ukraine as our fight, a struggle for democracy, the liberal world order. If Americans do not have the stomach for it, there is something wrong with us, a moral failing.

These ham-fisted approaches befit the neoconservatives who wield them, as they did the same in the Global War on Terror, and to a great extent, worked to keep the Iraq War going for almost a decade and the war in Afghanistan shambling on for a full 20 years.

In addition to the destruction of two countries, trillions of dollars, a massive refugee crisis, a new generation of U.S. veterans dependent on lifetime assistance, and countless dead and wounded, these “elites” are in great part responsible for the mistrust of Washington that has eaten away at the culture and politics here to the core.

Poll after poll show a plunging lack of faith in American institutions, including the once-vaunted military. That’s what going to war based on lies, distortions, and rhetorical bullying will do to an already strained and tribalized society. Add a financial collapse (2008) that Washington addressed with an unprecedented bank bailout, while homeowners and workers struggled to survive, and you have the basis for major populist movements — on the left, and the right.

The rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were buoyed in part by a continuing skepticism of the ongoing wars and of the elites at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, which had become as self-serving and disconnected from American interests as they were.

You would have thought they had learned their lesson.

But the war in Ukraine has given them new purpose and in that vein, to both patronize and ignore the wants and needs of the American public. A new commentary by Gian Gentile and Raphael S. Cohen, deputy director of the Rand Corporation’s Army Research Division, and Air Force Strategy and Doctrine Program, respectively, says it all. Clearly written for Beltway practitioners and politicians, the takeaway from “The Myth of America’s Ukraine Fatigue” is clear: don’t mind the polls, or even American public opinion. Ukraine’s (and in effect, Washington’s) long war will go on no matter what the hoi polloi is thinking, or feeling.

“In war, from a purely political perspective, it’s usually safer for politicians to stay the course.

“Perhaps this is why democracies’ track records of playing the long game in armed conflicts is actually pretty good. From the ancient Athenians during the Peloponnesian War on through to the present day, democracies have not usually been the fickle, shrinking violets their detractors make them out to be. In the United States, the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were all eventually deeply unpopular. Yet the United States fought for three years in Korea, almost nine years in Iraq (before going back in after the initial withdrawal), and almost 20 years in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. All these campaigns involved significantly more investment of American blood and treasure than the U.S. commitment to Ukraine has demanded thus far.”

The authors are referring to a number of recent polls that would appear to show that Americans’ unconditional support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion has its limits and in some cases, may be flagging. To start, Cohen and Gentile say that isn’t true, that Americans support Ukrainian sovereignty and the fight for it. Absolutely. What the authors don’t say is that the polls indicate that Americans are also concerned about a protracted war that could lead to more death and a direct U.S. confrontation with the Russians. That they are less enthusiastic about supporting Ukraine “as long as it takes,” and have shown a growing interest in negotiations to end the war sooner than later, even if that ultimately means concessions for both sides.

Instead of recognizing the nuance and giving credit to Americans for understanding the implications of another long war (whether they are directly involved on the ground or not), the authors blame the media for hyping up what they believe is the negative messaging from the surveys. Furthermore, they suggest that — citing the cases of Vietnam and our recent wars — conflicts will go on (and rightly so!) no matter where public opinion is at.

“If past is precedent, and present trends continue, it could be years before any of the declines in the American public’s support actually result in a change of policy,” the authors contend. Cohen and Gentile (much like their counterparts in the Iraq and Afghanistan War eras, did) diminish those “amplifying the Ukraine fatigue narrative,” claiming they fit into neat little categories: 1) “America First” Republicans who’d rather focus on domestic issues 2) “knee-jerk” anti-war activists on the left, and 3) those who “may genuinely sympathize with Russian talking points” that Americans will tire of the war.

Meanwhile, “some Americans may really believe that they are paying more of a price for the conflict than they in fact are, but this is primarily based on perceptions—not facts.”

Right. That is exactly what Fred Kagan, the AEI neoconservative who helped to craft the Iraq War Surge plan said in this lengthy National Review piece in 2008, entitled “Why Iraq matters: Talking back to anti-war party talking points,” in which he deployed this fatuous bromide:

“Americans have a right to be weary of this conflict and to desire to bring it to an end. But before we choose the easier and more comfortable wrong over the harder and more distasteful right, we should examine more closely the two core assumptions that underlie the current antiwar arguments: that we must lose this war because we cannot win it at any acceptable cost, and that it will be better to lose than to continue trying to win.”

Which makes this all very ironic, since (Col.) Gian Gentile was one of the few brave souls in the active duty military who were openly speaking out against Fred Kagan’s “Surge” and the counterinsurgency craze that was rocking the Blob during that period. He was an arch critic of Washington’s hyper-message management and selective history machinations. It is head scratching that he would oversimplify the effects of public opinion on recent wars — and suggest its relative unimportance — while offering the thinnest of arguments for in essence, “staying the course.”

“The leaders of the free world need to remind their publics what is at stake in Ukraine—not just for European and global security, but for democracy at large,” Gentile exclaims in his recent piece with Cohen.

This, from an historian who in his 2013 book, “America’s Deadly Embrace of Counter-Insurgency,” not only took on what he called the “myths” of Iraq and Afghanistan, but the shibboleths of the U.S. counterinsurgency in Vietnam and the British military’s “success” in Malaya (1948-60) as well.

Gentile’s “Ukraine fatigue myth” article is elite thinking, which reads as a pep talk for Beltway insiders in the wake of recent polling. For the rest of us, it is a cogent reminder that the same people who did not want regular Americans to actually think about foreign policy during the Iraq War, are still out there, whether they want to call themselves “elites” or not.

By Larry Johnson, Sonar 21, 1/4/22

Larry C Johnson is a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism

I have confirmed that the Defense Intelligence Agency is relying solely on Ukraine for the intelligence on Russian and Ukrainian casualties. In other words, if Ukraine tells its DIA liaison officer that Ukraine killed 400 Russians in its latest HIMARS strike then that is what DIA tells the U.S. General commanding EUCOM. This is more than troubling. This is dangerous.

There are six basic types of intelligence that a good analyst should consult in preparing an assessment:

1) Intelligence from foreigners recruited to spy for the United States,

2) Intelligence produced by foreign governments that is passed to the United States,

3) Reports produced by U.S. Government organizations, e.g. State Department cables sent from US embassies and Defense Attache reports based on information the attache collected in a particular country,

4) Electronic intercepts, which includes communications collected and analyzed by the National Security Agency,

5) Imagery from satellites and air craft (including drones)

6) Open source, e.g. press, media, and social media

What DIA and CIA ought to be doing is to scour all source intelligence to come up with an accurate report on the casualty rate for Ukraine and Russia. For example, surely the United States has intercepted communications between Russian military commands discussing killed and wounded. Ditto with respect to Ukraine.

Here is what we know with certainty from open source reports.

“Russia is firing a staggering 20,000 artillery rounds per day, a senior U.S. defense official estimated, while Ukraine is firing from 4,000 to 7,000 rounds daily.

“The Ukrainians are quickly burning through their stockpiles of artillery rounds and other ammunition, including for their air defense systems, officials said.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/russia-ukraine-war-ammo-rcna56210

Those rounds translate into casualties on both sides. Put simply, Ukraine is suffering at least four times the number of killed and wounded than Russia.

U.S. journalists are a lazy lot and are regurgitating to the public the official line presented to them by the White House, the Department of Defense and the Department of State. The same applies to most of Europe. But once in a while, a reporter stumbles on to the truth. Maria Senovilla, who writes for the Spanish magazine Atalayer, committed an act of journalism:

“What is happening in the battle of Bakhmut? The news we are receiving is of the death of very many people.

“Yes, we have to look to the Donbas because Bakhmut is precisely the blackest point of the war in Ukraine. This week, both the Institute for the Study of War, which is a prestigious American think tank, and other international thin tanks, have agreed that up to 400 Ukrainian soldiers a day are being killed and wounded in Bakhmut.

“And beyond the number, which is just a figure, I have been able to talk in recent days with different military sources, both official and combatants who have been there, and what they say makes one’s hair stand on end. The city is for the moment under Ukrainian control, but the Russian troops have stationed their artillery close enough to fire there, but far enough away so as not to expose their troops too much. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army, as it has to defend the terrain, has a lot of infantry, light units, paramilitary units that can do little against the bombs. This combat front has become today a real human meat grinder. That’s how crude I can say it.

“Right now it is one of the most, if not the most, worrying point for Zelenski’s armed forces. Our listeners are probably wondering what is the importance of Bakhmut to take such a commitment to defend the position with such a very high cost of living. Bakhmut is not an iconic city like Severodonetsk was, where one of the great battles of this war also took place. Bakhmut is not that kind of iconic city. However, it is a communications hub that is key to the supply lines of Ukrainian troops in Donetsk province, and it is also the buffer that contains the advance of Kremlin troops towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. If the Russian Army were to take these two cities, it would gain almost total control of the Donetsk province and, therefore, of the entire Donbas, something that Putin could already sell as a great victory. So you can imagine the effort that the Kremlin is putting right now in taking Bakhmut and what it is costing the Ukrainians to defend it.”

https://atalayar.com/index.php/en/content/maria-senovilla-bakhmut-blackest-point-ukrainian-war-400-ukrainian-soldiers-day-are-being

I understand why politicians will lie about a failing policy. But it is inexcusable for intelligence professionals to enable that lying. The best antidote is factual, objective analysis. Especially analysis based on multiple sources. Politicians need a Dutch Uncle who will tell them uncomfortable truths. That is not happening. One of these days the reality of the carnage Ukraine is suffering will become impossible to cover up and the Kabuki theater of looking for a scapegoat will kick off in Washington. Guess what? It will be called an intelligence failure. The politicians will be frantic to escape any blame for the debacle of “losing Ukraine” and the intelligence community will be the culprit. In this case, the intelligence community will have earned its culpability. They are cowards who refuse to stand up and tell the truth.

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine, 1/6/22

The military’s deep penetration into all aspects of American life has hampered the development of a strong anti-war movement—at a time when it is desperately needed.

Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across the U.S. in the last few years to decry police brutality, to oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to restrict abortion rights, and to contest what they believed was a rigged election (the January 2021 Capitol riots).

Only small hardy bands by comparison have taken to the streets to protest record military budgets—approaching $1 trillion under Joe Biden—or the illegal bombing of Syria, expansion of U.S. troops in Africa, provision of $20 billion in U.S. military aid to Ukraine, and military provocations directed against China.

Joan Roelofs’^[1] new book The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2022), starts with an important question: “Why is there so much acceptance and so little protest against our government’s illegal and immoral wars and other military operations?”

Her answer is simple and convincing: Money.

While successful propaganda, fear and distraction are important, the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his Farewell Address in 1961 has penetrated so deeply into American life that much of the American public has essentially bought into acquiescence.

Roelofs writes that “the economic impact of the military-industrial complex is a highly effective silencer.”

Particularly important is the fact that military bases have been placed strategically across the U.S., often in remote rural areas, where they become the life blood of economic development.

Millions of American workers find jobs with military contractors or their subsidiaries, which finance scholarships and internships for college students who have no knowledge of the anti-Vietnam War protests that once roiled their campuses.

According to Roelofs the triumph of military Keynesianism in the U.S. is evident by the fact that military spending consumes half of the federal government’s discretionary budget.

This type of spending has a great impact on the economy, she notes, because a) it is recession proof; b) is a boon in rusted and depressed areas of the country; c) does not rely on consumer whims; and d) has a huge multiplier effect: contractors, subcontractors, and employee spending, as well as military bases and installations are economic hubs of their region, supplying customers for real-estate agents, landscapers, restaurants, furniture shops, museums and yoga studios, while enhanced tax receipts support social services, education, infrastructure and culture.

Many in the middle class benefit from weapons manufacturers stocks in their mutual fund portfolios. In Roelofs’ home state of New Hampshire, the F-35 program supports 55 suppliers—35 of which are small businesses—and more than 900 direct jobs, many of them located at BAE Systems in Nashua, which Money Magazine twice deemed the “best place to live in the U.S.”

According to Business Review, the F-35 program “generates over $481 million in economic impact in the state.”

Read full article here.

By Dmitri Lascaris, Website, 1/2/23

Just about every time Western media interview a Western soldier who has fought in the Ukraine war, we hear accounts of the war that diverge radically from the narrative peddled by Western leaders and pro-NATO think tanks. Their narrative is that Ukraine is winning a war being fought for democracy and freedom, and that those who stand with the Ukrainian state are the good guys, while those who oppose it are the bad guys.

That narrative simply cannot be reconciled with accounts from the battlefield.

A case in point is “Trapped in the Trenches of Ukraine”, published by The New Yorker on December 26, 2022. The article was authored by war correspondent Luke Mogelson, who interviewed numerous members of Ukraine’s International Legion.

One of his sources was a Canadian Army veteran who survived a Russian missile attack on the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security in Yavoriv, Ukraine, a town that sits 10 miles from the Polish border. According to that army veteran, the March 3, 2022 attack resulted in a “bloodbath”, but he claimed that only Ukrainians — and no foreigners — died in the attack. The Canadian veteran said that many of the foreigners who were at the base fled Ukraine after the attack. He felt that this was for the best, because a number of these volunteers were “shit”: “gun nuts,” “right-wing bikers,” “ex-cops who are three hundred pounds.” A “chaotic” lack of discipline, he added, had been exacerbated by “a fair amount of cocaine.”

Mogelson explains:

Many foreigners, no matter how seasoned or élite, were unprepared for the reality of combat in Ukraine: the front line, which extends for roughly seven hundred miles, features relentless, industrial-scale violence of a type unknown in Europe since the Second World War. The ordeal of weathering modern artillery for extended durations is distinct from anything that Western soldiers faced in Iraq or Afghanistan (where they enjoyed a monopoly on such firepower).

According to Mogelson, “the Ukrainian military has been extraordinarily opaque about how it is executing the war, and journalistic embeds are almost nonexistent.” Mogelson nonetheless managed to obtain permission from the G.U.R., the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence directorate, to accompany American and other foreign soldiers for two weeks in the Donetsk region.

The foreign soldiers were attached to a unit led by Ukrainian soldiers from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade. That Brigade had previously served in Bakhmut, where “an enormous number of soldiers had died, and even more had been wounded. The trauma of Bakhmut,” wrote Mogelson, “had unnerved many of the survivors, and they now seemed wary of outsiders.” He continues:

Many of the professional soldiers in the 72nd had been killed or injured in Bakhmut. Conscripts had replenished the ranks. Some had attended a three-week basic infantry course in the U.K., with instructors from across Europe, but most had received only minimal training before being given Kalashnikovs and dispatched to the front.

“Turtle”, one of the foreign soldiers from the unit in which Mogelson was embedded, told Mogelson of a recent mission in Pavlika. Although Turtle and his team-members had briefed the 72nd on their route for the mission, a Ukrainian unit opened fire on the team as they approached. The team shot back. “We won, they didn’t,” Turtle told Mogelson.

The team then continued on its mission and stumbled upon a large grouping of Russian soldiers. A fierce firefight ensued, in which one U.S. soldier was killed and three others wounded. Numerous Russians were also killed. One of the wounded Americans was bleeding profusely and screaming for help, but Russian mortars prevented his rescue. He died.

The “debacle” had “further strained the team’s rapport with the 72nd.” Turtle confessed to Mogelson that “some people don’t like us in this area anymore”. Mogelson continues:

The leeriness was mutual. Members of the brigade’s reconnaissance company—with which the team was supposed to coordinate—had followed the foreigners partway through the tree line, and had agreed to provide additional backup if anything went wrong. Yet none of the Ukrainians had joined the battle with the Russians. (One of them later told me that their radio had malfunctioned and they had not heard the team’s call for help.)

Eventually, Mogelson accompanied the unit on a dangerous, front-line mission. During the mission, Mogelson and the soldiers were forced to take shelter in the ruins of a house as Russian artillery rained down on them. Remarkably, none of them was killed.

After narrowly escaping with their lives, the soldiers reflected upon their brush with death and their reasons for coming to Ukraine:

[Turtle] once told me that many volunteers who quit the Legion did so because they hadn’t been honest with themselves about their reasons for coming to Ukraine. “Because when you get here your reason will be tested,” Turtle said. “And if it’s something weak, something that’s not real, you’re going to find out.” He was dubious of foreigners who claimed to want to help Ukraine. Turtle wanted to help, too, of course, but that impulse was not enough; it might get you to the front, but it wouldn’t keep you there.

I asked what was keeping him there.

“In the end, it’s just that I love this shit,” he said. “And maybe I can’t escape that—maybe that’s the way it’s always gonna be.”

What kind of a human being ‘loves’ war?

A recent interview by British YouTuber Nikolas Lloyd sheds an even harsher light on the sordid reality of this war and the foreigners serving in it. Lloyd conducted a three-part interview of a British soldier who had just concluded seven months of service in Ukraine’s International Legion. (All three parts of the interview are embedded below.)

In the interview, the soldier identifies himself as “Joseph MacDonald”. MacDonald begins the interview by explaining that he travelled to Poland from the U.K. shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in late February of last year. From Warsaw, he was bused across the Ukraine-Poland border, along with other volunteers, to the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security. MacDonald arrived at the Center shortly before the Russian missile strike of March 3, 2022. He estimates that over 100 Ukrainian officer recruits were killed in that strike. Unlike Mogelson, who reports that no foreigners died in the attack, MacDonald asserts that “a few” recruits for the International Legion were in fact killed.[1]

MacDonald blames the foreigners’ deaths on poor security measures:

If you are going to hide a bunch of chaps who are foreign and who have come to fight for your country, don’t put them at the ‘International Cooperation Centre’, that’s all I’ve got to say. If you were playing pin-the-missile-on-the-donkey, and I was Vladimir Putin, it would be a good bet, right next to the Polish border, called the ‘International Cooperation Centre’, large base, definitely capable of dealing with all of these people coming in, let’s blow that one up, eh?[2]

MacDonald reveals that, in the aftermath of the strike, “there was an awful lot of looting going on. Like a lot of looting”.[3] He explains:

A lot of people who came to volunteer for the Ukrainians were also kleptomaniacs or just total [indiscernible] who’d gone there with the intention of plunder… That is a problem that the Legion kept having for several months…. It was a no-vetting, sign-up-we’ll-take-anyone free-for-all at the start, and it drew in a lot of undesirable types.

MacDonald then refers to the infamous Georgian Legion, some of whose members were at the International Cooperation Center at the time of the Russian missile strike. (Members of the Georgian Legion are suspected of having executed a dozen Russian soldiers after they had surrendered.) According to MacDonald, in the aftermath of Russia’s strike on the International Cooperation Center, he and a British fellow soldier came across Georgian Legion members who were looting an armoury. The looters reacted menacingly when the other British soldier tried meekly to stop their looting. MacDonald describes the Georgian Legion as “not the most uniform and regimented group of guys”, “quite ‘piratey’” and a “pack of hyenas on a carcass”.[4]

MacDonald confirms that, after the missile strike, a “great desertion” happened: 600-700 of the 1,000 or so foreign volunteers left the International Legion. Some left Ukraine altogether, but others went to other Ukrainian militias, believing or hoping that, in those militias, they would find opportunities to shoot Russians with impunity, which MacDonald describes as “sweet spots”. But the reality, according to MacDonald, is that “there is no sweet spot like that – if you are fighting the Russians, you are getting horribly shelled…. No one gets the Call of Duty experience. The artillery strike is on all the time.”

At one point, MacDonald comments on the Canadian soldiers with whom he served. He commends the “really great guys from First Nations and the French side”, but then adds “sadly, the rest of them proved a bit on the cowardly side. That’s the only way to say it.” According to MacDonald, these soldiers – even those who had served up to ten years in the Canadian military – could not endure shelling that was of medium intensity (let alone high-intensity shelling). He observes that a soldier who served in Afghanistan “didn’t like it when the enemy had bigger guns than him, so he went home.” MacDonald refers to these soldiers as “goldilocks soldiers”.[5]

While praising U.S. soldiers from U.S. special forces, MacDonald asserts that many of the U.S. soldiers he encountered were “spoiled”, adding “it’s very easy to be the best army in the world when you can get an F-16 to go and blow up a mortar team on a hillside… I haven’t seen a fighter plane this whole bloody war. They’re all over Kyiv, keeping the President safe.”[6] Artillery, mortars, tanks and rockets do “all the killing on the battleground… Your rifle, if that accounts for 1% of the dead in this war, I’d be surprised.”[7]

MacDonald comments extensively on the three Ukrainian commanders under whom he served. MacDonald found the first of them to be “excellent”, but that commander’s replacement was “very obtuse” and “inept”: he “seemed to think that picking a nice house for him and all his drivers to stay in was much more important than picking a house where you had radio comms to your actually deployed units in the field.”[8]

While posted in a trench in Ukraine, MacDonald contracted lime disease. “They weren’t feeding us very well at the time”, he states. “Pretty much everyone had Covid or some kind of common or garden flu.” After finding a large tick in his nose, MacDonald became very ill. He went to a hospital in the central Ukrainian city of Rivna. There, the doctor who treated him “was not to Western standards” and “looked like he smoked about 80 a day and had a bottle of vodka every night” while “using some very 1950s implements”. Ultimately, MacDonald found it necessary to return to the U.K. to receive proper medical treatment.[9]

At one point, MacDonald’s company was transferred from one city to another. His company’s convoy included two trucks containing advanced military rifles, machine guns and javelins — “a whole company’s worth of Western weapons”. According to MacDonald, the two trucks “just disappeared” as the convoy was in transit.[10]

After explaining that foreign volunteers were treated much more favourably by Ukrainian commanders than Ukrainian rank-and-file soldiers were treated, MacDonald describes a Russian strike on a Ukrainian military base. He explains that, whereas the soldiers of the International Legion were permitted to spread out their tents so as to reduce the risk of mass casualties in a missile attack, Ukrainian soldiers at a nearby military base were forced to keep their tents close to each other. The Russians dropped a thermobaric bomb on the tents at that base and killed about 135 Ukrainian soldiers. They apparently were all young officer recruits.

Several important themes emerge from these accounts, and they are themes that I have commented upon previously (see, for example, here and here).

First, this war is unlike any war that NATO has fought in at least fifty years. It is happening on a massive, industrial scale and is being waged by NATO and its proxy against a peer enemy, whereas NATO’s typical wars are fought against enemies that are vastly outmatched. As Stalin observed, artillery is the “God of war”, and Russians have plenty of it. By most accounts, their firepower is vastly superior to that of Ukraine and is inflicting horrific casualties on Ukraine’s military, many of whose conscripts have not been adequately trained.

Second, many of the foreigners who have gone to Ukraine are there for ignoble reasons. They certainly are not the sort of persons whom Western militaries should be arming.

Third, Ukraine is a deeply corrupt country. Inevitably, much of Western weaponry transferred to Ukraine will end up in the hands of criminals, as Interpol’s chief has warned. Flooding Ukrainian society with deadly weapons imperils the long-term stability of Europe and is a recipe for disaster.

Thus far, Western states have expended well in excess of US$125 billion on sustaining this war. Hundreds of thousands of persons have been killed or wounded. The Ukrainian economy lies in smoking ruins and would collapse without massive Western financial aid. Russia is in the process of destroying the Ukrainian energy grid as Ukrainians head into the heart of winter. Worst of all, with every act of escalation, the risk of a nuclear holocaust increases.

The humane and sensible thing to do is to seek a negotiated resolution of this war. The worst thing we can do is escalate it.

When, if ever, will Western governments come to their senses?