What if the Russians Don't Want to End the Ukraine War?

 Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig just loves it. 

 Attributed to George Bernard Shaw

 When Donald Trump was campaigning for president, he promised to end the Ukraine war within two weeks after taking office. I thought he could do it.

After all, the battle front had stabilized with Russia holding Crimea, the Donbas, and other portions of eastern Ukraine--about 12 percent of the country. If Ukraine made modest territorial concessions, surely the Russians would make peace.

Trump gave it the old college try--drawing on all his considerable negotiating skills. He leaned on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, urging him to make territorial concessions. And he leaned on Russian President Putin,  alternating between flattery and veiled threats. The President even arranged a one-on-one meeting with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. 

Pundits and commentators assured Americans that the Russians are paying a heavy price for their invasion--a million casualties, growing unrest in the civilian population, and an economy nearing collapse. Surely, Putin was ready to throw in the towel and stop fighting. 

Yet the carnage continues. 

Perhaps the Russians don't want the war to end. Maybe Putin is content to grind down the Ukrainian national identity, no matter how long it takes.

This is the view of an essayist on Zero Hedge, who goes by the name of Armchair Warlord (AW). AW posits this theory: "[M[aybe the killing itself is the point of all this."

AW argues that the Russians are fully capable of capturing large swaths of Ukrainian territory, but have not done so. Instead, [t]he Russians have . . . consistently forgone breaking the front and taking swaths of ground in favor of killing the largest possible number of Ukrainian soldiers on the existing front under the existing attritional combat dynamic."

AW maintains that the Ukrainian army has sustained massive casualties--1.7 million dead, wounded, captured, or missing. This number is far higher than the figures given by the mainstream, pro-Ukrainian news media.

So what is Putin's long-term objective? According to AW:

Putin wants to make Zelensky put on a suit, come groveling to the Kremlin, and sign a treaty that will see the Maidanite government surrender its arms, disgorge massive amounts of territory, and reverse every single anti-Russian policy position it ever had.

Is AW's assessment correct? I don't know. Nevertheless, the mainstream Western media has not reported accurately about what's going on in Ukraine. Contrary to what Americans have been told, the Russian economy is not nearing collapse. In fact, its GNP has grown since the war began, and the Russian ruble has gained in value against the U.S. dollar.

And Ukrainian casualties are surely higher than the Ukrainians are reporting. And let's not forget the millions of Ukrainians who are refugees from the war. 

America's progressive politicians--the Democrats--support continued American involvement in the largest military conflict since World War II. Unlike President Trump, they're not thinking about ways to stop the fighting or the consequences for our country or for Europe if the war drags on for several more years. 

It's time for our political leaders to confront reality, and these are the facts. Either the U.S. and NATO will have to make a long-term investment in propping up Ukraine, or they will be forced to accept the fact that Ukraine is slipping back into the Russian orbit. 

And this much is certain. Russia wants more than Crimea and the Donbas to stop the killing--and that is a chilling realization.

Image credit: Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

 

A Half Million Ukrainian War Casualties and 6 Million Refugees: What’s the Point?

 During the First World War, it was said that the British military maintained three sets of casualty lists. One version was kept to hoodwink the public. A second set was maintained to dupe the British War Office. And the third set was kept to deceive itself.

According to the New York Times, nearly half a million troops have been killed or wounded over the last 18 months of Ukraine's war with Russia. The Times calculates that 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 180,000 wounded. Russian military casualties are even higher: 120,000 deaths and 180,000 injured.

Of course, these numbers are only estimates. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have revealed their casualty lists. These tallies don't include civilian casualties, which must be severe given the routine bombing of Ukrainian towns and villages by the Russians.

As the Times put it, the toll of dead and wounded is “staggering.” To put it in perspective, about 58,000 American soldiers died during the Vietnam War, a conflict that stretched over ten years. Ukraine, a country with a much smaller population, lost 70,000 soldiers in only 18 months.

Then there are the refugees. Around 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country, and another 5 million have been displaced but still live in Ukraine.

Most Americans feel no moral responsibility for this catastrophe, even though American weapons and money have significantly contributed to the carnage. College students, by the millions, protested the war in Vietnam, but today's young students have more refined moral sensibilities. They can be whipped into a frenzy if a conservative judge gives a speech on a college campus. They don't give a shit about the Ukrainians.

And consider this. The New York Times may have miscalculated the death toll from the Ukrainian war. Douglas Macgregor. a retired U.S. Army officer, believes 400,000 Ukrainians have been killed during the war—more than five times the number reported by the Times.

America's legacy media report that Ukraine is winning this war, but that's untrue. Ukraine will never recover Crimea or the Donbas, no matter how many Ukrainians are killed or maimed in this senseless war with Russia. And make no mistake. The Russians will find a way to make America pay for provoking this pointless conflict.