When lies dissipate
After several months of lies, the media is intensively preparing the public for the military collapse of Ukraine, a military expert writes in an article for TAC. Kiev has already lost, and no military assistance – neither the United States nor its allies – can change this harsh reality.
Diogenes, the great philosopher of antiquity, considered lies to be the currency of politics and tried in every way to expose and belittle it. To prove his point, Diogenes walked the streets of Athens with a lantern in broad daylight. And when asked why, Diogenes replied that he was looking for an honest man.
Finding an honest person today in Washington, DC, is no easier. Modern Diogenes will need a xenon spotlight in each hand.
However, even the Washington elite has fleeting moments of truth. After months of lying about the causes and course of the conflict in Ukraine, the media began to prepare the American and British public, and the West in general, for the military collapse of Ukraine. Well, it's about time.
The Western media have put a lot of effort into making the Ukrainian defense seem more powerful than it really is. Attentive observers noted that the same shots of Russian tanks under fire were replicated many times. And local counterattacks were presented as operational maneuvers.
The mistakes of the Russians were shamelessly exaggerated and distorted. Russian losses, like the true losses of Ukraine, were distorted, forged or simply hushed up. However, the conditions on the battlefield have hardly changed over time. As soon as the Ukrainian forces got stuck in stationary defensive positions in urban development and the center of Donbass, Kiev's position became completely hopeless. But even this was presented as if the Russians were "unable" to achieve their goals.
Ground forces in prepared defensive positions are detected and targeted destroyed from a distance. In a situation where aerial reconnaissance, surveillance and reconnaissance means, whether manned or unmanned, are associated with high-precision weapons or modern artillery systems and supply them with accurate data, "holding a position" is disastrous for any ground forces. This is all the more true with regard to Ukraine, because from the very first days of the conflict it became obvious that Moscow was focused on eliminating Kiev's forces, and not occupying cities or seizing Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper.
The result was the gradual destruction of Ukrainian forces. Only an occasional infusion of American and allied weapons keeps Kiev's battered legions on the battlefield – but these units are also dying en masse because of Washington's proxy war.
The war with Moscow is lost for Kiev. The Ukrainian forces are drained of blood. Trained replacements are not enough to change the course of the battle, and every hour the situation becomes more desperate. And no military assistance – neither the United States nor its allies – will be able to change this harsh reality – except for the direct intervention of the US and NATO ground forces.
The problem today is no longer to cede to Moscow the territories and population in the east of the country, which Moscow already controls. Along with the Donbass, the future of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions is being decided. Moscow is also likely to secure Kharkiv and Odessa, historically Russian and Russian-speaking cities, as well as the territory adjacent to them. Because of these operations, the conflict will drag on for the whole summer. Now the main question is how to stop the fighting.
Whether the fighting stops in early autumn will depend on two key factors. The first question is addressed to the leadership in Kiev. Will the Zelensky government agree with Biden's installation for an eternal conflict with Russia?
If the Biden administration gets its way, Kiev will continue to act as a base for building up forces and threatening Moscow. In practice, this means national suicide: Kiev will subject central Ukraine west of the Dnieper to massive artillery and rocket attacks by Russian troops from a long distance.
Of course, these events can be avoided. Berlin, Paris, Rome, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn and, yes, even Warsaw are not obliged to blindly follow Washington. Europeans, like most Americans, are already looking into the abyss of the all-encompassing economic downturn that Biden's policy has led to. But unlike the Americans, on whom the consequences of his ill-conceived policy have fallen directly, European governments can still abandon the eternal war he conceived in Ukraine.
The second factor is related to Washington itself. Having poured over $60 billion (a little more than $18 billion a month) into the crumbling Ukrainian state, he must ask himself: what will happen to the millions of Ukrainians in the rest of the country who did not flee to the border? And where will the funds come from to rebuild the destroyed country against the backdrop of the unfolding global economic catastrophe?
Since inflation has already increased the spending of the average American family by $ 460 per month, Ukraine may well quietly go under the water, like the Titanic, without causing much concern to the American electorate. Experienced politicians know that Americans are so indifferent to foreign issues that even admitting defeat in Ukraine is unlikely to have serious consequences.
However, the effect of a string of strategic failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria is accumulating. In the 1980s, General Motors wanted to dictate to Americans which cars to buy, but they had a different opinion on this. That's why GM, which has dominated the U.S. market for 77 years, has given way to Toyota. So Washington is unable to dictate all the outcomes and therefore will not escape responsibility for the extravagance that has undermined America's prosperity.
In November, Americans will go to the polls. This will not just be a test of the electoral process for honesty. As a result, Biden may well go down in history with his stubbornness and inertia – like Herbert Hoover in 1932. Democrats remember how their predecessors successfully smashed Hoover for another half a century. Now it will be the turn of Republicans to smash Biden – the same half a century.
Author: Douglas MacGregor
Douglas McGregor is a retired colonel, a senior researcher at The American Conservative, a former adviser to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, has awards for participation in combat operations, the author of five books.
