YouTube link here.

(This interview was conducted on 9/24/24)

YouTube link here.

Clayton Morris is a former FOX News anchor. Natali Morris is a former anchor and reporter for MSNBC, CNBC and CBS News. On Redacted, the married couple (not brother and sister!) and former mainstream news professionals take an in-depth look at the news the mainstream media largely ignores. They explore the legal, social, financial, and personal issues that matter to you. They want to set the record straight and bring you the stories nobody else tells. Along with the facts and the complete picture, Redacted offers real-world analysis without an agency driven by corporate overloads. With Clayton’s extensive journalism experience, he isn’t afraid to demand the truth from authorities. Redacted is an independent platform, unencumbered by external factors or restrictive policies, on which Clayton and Natali Morris bring you quality information, balanced reporting, constructive debate, and thoughtful narratives.

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Putin Effect? Iran Attacks Israel After Russia PM’s Visit; Netanyahu Gets New Warning From Moscow – Hindustan Times

YouTube link here.

YouTube link here.

Kim Iversen interviews Greg Stoker, a former United States Army Ranger with a background in special operations and human intelligence collection. He conducted 4 combat deployments to Afghanistan and is now a human rights activist and geopolitical analyst at Mint Press News.

By Aaron Sobczak, Responsible Statecraft, 9/23/24

Earlier this summer, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced an amendment to the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which “requires a report on the casualty and equipment losses for both sides involved in the conflict in Ukraine.”

His amendment was accepted into the House’s version of the NDAA and awaits review by the Senate.

In an interview with RS, Rep. Massie — who almost succeeded in getting a similar measure into last year’s NDAA — talked about his motivation behind presenting his amendment this year, as well as some insight into how the conversation about Ukraine is trending on Capitol Hill.

He said several factors motivated him to introduce the amendment, namely that even the House Speaker didn’t know how many Ukrainians have been killed or injured in the war, and that State Department officials seemed to know only Russian casualty statistics — but not those for Ukraine.

Here is the full interview which has been edited for clarity:

RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT: When looking at this year’s NDAA, what was your particular motivation for introducing an amendment like this?

REP. THOMAS MASSIE: Well, in a classified briefing, I stood up and asked what the casualties were on the Ukrainian side, and in that meeting I believe, you had representatives from the intelligence community, and they were briefing us, and they went out of their way to tell us how many Russian casualties there were, and they would not answer my question of how many Ukrainian casualties there were.

And this was a briefing to Congress in a classified setting. They really didn’t have an excuse, other than they weren’t really sure, which seems like an incredible lie. So then a few months later, I’m in the Speaker’s office, and I asked the Speaker if he knew the number of casualties in Ukraine? He began telling me how many Russian casualties there were. I said, Do you know how many Ukrainian casualties there are? And he said, No. I said, Have they ever told you? And he said, No. I said, Have you ever asked? He said, I should ask. So the Speaker of the House doesn’t even know. Didn’t even know at the time how many casualties there were. And if you ask, for instance, an AI assistant, how many Ukrainian casualties there are, even the AI assistants here in our country can’t tell you how many. At the time when I drafted this, AIs came up with wildly different numbers because they’re relying on everything that’s been published. And there’s virtually nothing reliable that’s been published.

RS: So based on what you’re seeing with support or lack of support, do you have any indication as to how confident you are that this might make it into the final draft this time?

MASSIE: It’ll be up to the conference with the Senate, and it’d be interesting to know if there’s somebody in the Senate that wants it taken out, because I’ve heard no real resistance to it here in the House. And think about it, nobody has a good reason.

RS: From my perspective, it’s a really good way to bring transparency to the issue. Who can deny that we should have basic casualty numbers?

MASSIE: I’ll give you a related amendment to my amendment, which was from Warren Davidson (FY2024). It said that the administration has to have a strategy and goals related to the Ukraine war. We fought even harder to get that one to a vote, and it failed. And that just blows my mind, that Congress could say, No, we don’t want to have any stated goals in Ukraine, we’re just going to keep sending money.

RS: Okay, this goes back to my earlier question. Why do you think it’s been so difficult to get official numbers on casualty and equipment losses. Have you ever seen this kind of blackout or lack of curiosity related to other conflicts?

MASSIE: We’re just being fed propaganda in these classified briefings. And if other members of Congress couldn’t see that when I asked the question, then shame on them. Part of the reason I asked that question in that setting, was to show the other members of Congress that they’re just giving us one side to try and motivate us to keep sending the money and weapons. I think it’s obvious that they’re just feeding us propaganda in classified settings, and then I think it’s also true that the Speaker himself has been a subject of propaganda and lacks the curiosity to even question the narrative that we’re being fed.

RS: Can you speak on why they’re presenting you with propaganda?

MASSIE: It’s the State Department that’s pretty much directing this, and then Congress. It’s the tail wagging the dog. Congress is the dog, right, and the State Department believes that war is a tool of statecraft, or diplomacy, that they’re going to use war for diplomacy, and they don’t want Congress to get in the way. So once it gets started, we’re supposed to just open the pocketbooks and let the money flow. And they’re afraid if we got any bit of bad news about how the war was going, that there would be a reluctance from Congress to keep funding it, or push for an ending.

RS: Maybe some of your colleagues would contend that the only reason you’re raising the issue is to disparage the war effort and make the case for preventing more aid from going to Ukraine. Do you have any thoughts on that?

MASSIE: Well, it’s certainly the case that I don’t want to send more aid to Ukraine. But if continued funding for Ukraine requires sticking your head in the sand, then I think we need to quit funding Ukraine. I mean, I would just put it back on somebody who thinks that way. If they are worried that knowing this number might diminish the appetite for funding the war, then that’s the main reason that Congress needs to know the casualty numbers.

RS: Was there any other information related to the amendment that you would like people to know?

MASSIE: I hope it makes it into law, and I hope they follow the law and the spirit of the law when it makes it into law, because we certainly have these numbers. We must have very close numbers, and even if they can’t make them public, they need to tell Congress. Ultimately, we’re the ones who are responsible for watching what’s going on and deciding if and how much money to send for this effort.

By Paul Robinson, Canadian Dimension, 9/27/24

“Next year in Ukraine, expect the unexpected,” I wrote in Canadian Dimension at the end of last year. And indeed, the past nine months have been full of surprises. I don’t know, for instance, of a single military analyst who foresaw that the Ukrainian army would launch a large attack on Russian territory, as it did in the Kursk region a few weeks ago. Wars are inherently difficult to predict.

That said, there comes a time when the general trend in a war becomes evident. Individual incidents may still surprise, but the overall movement of the conflict is no longer in doubt. In the middle of 1942, for instance, it would have been rash to predict the outcome of the Second World War. But by the middle of 1944, it was fairly clear what the result was going to be. The Germans were still able to pull off a few shocks, such as the Battle of the Bulge, but it was obvious that they were doomed.

In much the same way, the general direction of the war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly clear, and it doesn’t look good for the Ukrainians. That’s not to say that it’s glowingly positive for the Russians, but we have reached the stage where the odds of Ukraine achieving its objective of recapturing all its lost territories are vanishingly small. The issue is more likely how much more territory it will lose rather than how much it will be able to recapture.

Today, the Russians are in the process of surrounding and capturing the town of Vuhledar (Ugledar), which is the linchpin of the Ukrainian defence in the southern part of Donetsk province. What remains of the town’s garrison is faced with the grim choice of fighting its way out, staying and dying, or surrendering. The town’s capture now seems inevitable and will be a major victory for the Russian army.

Meanwhile, the Russians are advancing elsewhere, grinding the Ukrainians down with superior numbers of troops, equipment, and ammunition. As one prominent Ukrainian military analyst noted this week, “Unfortunately, the situation on the frontline is dire in many areas. These tiring efforts to paint a rosy picture … are hindering honest discussions and urgent calls for help … Ukraine is going to lose the war unless there are radical changes in how this war is approached.”

There is, however, little prospect of such a radical change, and even if it were to happen it might not matter, for the simple reason that Russia’s resources greatly outmatch those both of Ukraine and of its Western allies (or at least what the latter are willing and able to give it). It is hard to see how the Ukrainians can reverse their decline.

All of which provides a context for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s much-hyped ‘victory plan’ and his visit this week to the United States.

It would appear that while Zelensky continues to talk of restoring all of Ukraine’s lost territory he has begun to wake up to the reality that this is impossible by direct military means. Unable to shift military dynamics in his favour, he is hoping instead to shift the political dynamics by refocusing the Ukrainian war effort away from defending its own territory and towards striking the territory of the Russian Federation. He also perhaps hopes to drag NATO deeper and deeper into the war on his behalf. This could, at least in theory, put political pressure on the Russian authorities to end the war, even as the Ukrainian position on the frontline continues to deteriorate.

This explains the attack on Russia’s Kursk province as well as Zelensky’s repeated demands for permission to use NATO weapons to strike deep into Russian territory and his continued requests that NATO grant Ukraine immediate membership.

The exact details of Zelensky’s victory plan are a closely guarded secret, but press reports suggest that the core of it lies exactly in this—NATO membership and long-range weapons along with permission to use them deep in Russia.

As plans go, it’s not a very good one. NATO membership isn’t on the cards, while if long-range weapons could win the war, Russia would have won it long ago, as it has been using them in abundance against Ukraine for nearly three years. Ukraine’s fundamental problem is Russia’s growing advantage on the ground, in terms of manpower and weaponry. The victory plan fails to address this in any way, merely relying on the hope that damaging Russian infrastructure will somehow change Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mind about continuing the war—a rather long hope indeed.

American officials are supposedly “unimpressed” by the plan. Zelensky’s meeting with US President Joe Biden on Thursday evening passed almost without comment in the media. There were no big announcements indicating a shift in US policy in the direction Zelensky wants. Notably there was no talk of NATO membership, nor of lifting of restrictions on long-range attacks. Zelensky’s victory plan is dead in the water.

That’s not to say that Zelensky is going home empty handed. This week, Biden announced another $8 billion of aid to Ukraine. But it is unclear when the weapons and ammunition associated with this will actually reach Ukraine, beyond which it is just more of the same, and to date it is obvious that the same is utterly inadequate. Thus, while the US has rejected Zelensky’s plan, it hasn’t come up with anything remotely plausible to replace it.

Furthermore, there is no guarantee that this is not the last large tranche of aid that Ukraine will receive from the US. Relations between the Republican Party and the Ukrainian government are going from bad to worse. This week, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives accused the Ukrainian ambassador to the US of electoral interference on behalf of the Democratic Party for having invited only Democrats to accompany Zelensky on a visit to an American military factory. Republicans are already reluctant to spend more money on Ukraine. If, as seems likely, the latter’s military situation continues to deteriorate, that reluctance will probably only grow, as more and more people make the argument that it is pointless, and even counterproductive, to throw more and more money at a lost cause.

Among those making this argument is Donald Trump, who on Wednesday blamed Biden for encouraging Ukraine to continue with a war it could not win, thus bringing ruin to the country. “Any deal—the worst deal—would’ve been better than what we have now,” Trump said. “If they made a bad deal it would’ve been much better. They would’ve given up a little bit and everybody would be living and every building would be built and every tower would be aging for another 2,000 years.”

Dare I say it, but Trump has a point. One of the criteria of just war theory—that body of philosophy that helps one determine if war is justified—is that of “reasonable chance of success.” Given that wars inevitably involve great destruction and suffering, waging one which cannot reasonably hope to succeed cannot be justified. As things stand, it’s very hard to say that Ukraine has a reasonable chance of success. Indeed, it’s very hard even to say any more what “success” might be.

Unfortunately, there is as yet hardly a politician in the West who is willing to admit this. Speaking to Zelensky on Thursday, Biden told him, “Ukraine will prevail, and we’ll continue to stand by you every step of the way.” This is obvious nonsense, as the US clearly doesn’t support “every step” that Ukraine wants to take. It’s unwilling, though, to tell Ukraine that it should consider stepping in a different direction entirely. The result is a slow, but accelerating deterioration of that country’s position. Sadly, it appears that neither the Ukrainians nor their Western allies have a realistic idea of how to improve their situation while also being unwilling to admit that they don’t and to draw the necessary conclusions. This does not bode well for the future.

Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.