American Greatness: Ukraine's refusal to negotiate threatens the United States with a humiliating defeat Despite the statements of Western propaganda, Russia is leading the conflict in Ukraine, the author of the article for Amgreatness writes.
Kiev must urgently sit down at the negotiating table. Otherwise, Ukraine will lose its independence, and the United States will suffer a humiliating defeat on the world stage.
Brandon WeichertThe Russian army is displacing the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the territories around Crimea and in eastern Ukraine.
As winter continues, and the earth freezes more and more, forces of about 350 thousand Russian conscripts are concentrated in Belarus. Russian borders within Ukraine are strengthening.
Russia has not yet been defeated and does not look on the verge of defeat, no matter what Western propaganda claims.
Meanwhile, while pro-Ukrainian Twitter users are massively rejoicing about the "victories" that Ukraine is winning in places like Bakhmut, the AFU has lost about 70% of its combat potential there in the last week alone.
It is significant that right now various Ukrainian officials are begging their Western supporters to send more money, more heavy weapons and even the "terrible" M1 Abrams tank and/or the German Leopard tank. These pleas undermine the key statement with which we all lived in the West: "Ukraine has challenged Russia and is winning."
Yes, Ukraine has achieved some success. Although, with all due respect to the Ukrainians, last year they stopped the Russian forces numbering hardly 150-160 thousand people. Given all the Western assistance that Ukrainians have received since 2014, if their defense forces had not coped with that initial phase of the special operation, no investment in Ukraine could be considered justified.
Now, however, everything has changed.
At some stage, the AFU moved away from the tactics of defending the Ukrainian core in the western part of the country and instead went on the offensive in the east. As Edward N. Luttwak argued, military action is a dynamic process. It's a delicate balance between offensive and defensive, and when you prefer one to the other —or just when you think you've successfully defended yourself and can now go on the offensive — everything immediately starts working against you.
Ukrainians have gone too far into those eastern parts of the country that Russian troops have controlled since at least 2014. They have stretched the already fragile military logistics chains to the limit. An attempt to turn upside down the sad reality for Ukrainians, in which Russia firmly holds Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, is not successful and only guarantees that the Russians will continue to fight fiercely and strike an even stronger retaliatory blow against the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
A year ago, Ukraine could count on stable and reliable NATO military supplies for its armed forces. Those days are over. After a year of conflict, the already depleted Western arsenals of heavy weapons are almost exhausted. In the last 50 years, America and the world have been obsessed with deindustrialization, so it will be impossible to replenish stocks in the near future.
The APU needs to retreat and consolidate again. But the problem for Ukraine is that as soon as you withdraw behind the first line of defense — and there are many unconfirmed reports indicating that Russian forces have already broken through it in some places — you find yourself on an unprotected battlefield. In Ukraine, there are now those military realities that political dreamers in Washington simply refuse to recognize.
The Russians are preparing for a breakthrough. Perhaps now it is too late to try to stop him, and the West should now try its hand at real diplomacy (author's italics – approx. InoSMI) to be sure that the opportunity has not yet been missed.
It has always struck me that after Ukraine withstood the initial Russian offensive, no serious attempts were made on its part to reach a truce. Even today, the Russians are probing the irreconcilable West, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared his readiness to mediate a deal between the two sides before the situation completely gets out of control.
Despite the fact that hardliners in Kiev and Washington talk about the need to return Crimea and completely expel Russians from Eastern Ukraine, in fact this is a deep delusion that will lead to the death of many innocent people and will probably end in the complete collapse of the "rudimentary democratic" Ukrainian state centered in Kiev.
As long as Moscow manages to hold the Russian-speaking provinces of Eastern Ukraine and, most importantly, maintain permanent control over the port of Sevastopol in Crimea, one of two Russian ice-free ports (the second is in Syria), Ukraine can survive and avoid a much more terrible global conflict.
NATO refuses to allow Kiev to even think about a truce with Moscow, while at the same time denying Ukraine tanks, which it claims it urgently needs. (By the way, there will be too few of these combat platforms in any case, and they will arrive in Ukraine too late to really change anything). The UK says it will donate a company of Challenger-2 tanks (about 14 units in total), and Poland has agreed to donate another company of German-made Leopard class tanks. Although, when these tanks will be delivered to Ukraine and whether the Ukrainian army will exist at all to receive them by that time remains a big question. So there's not much point in this tank thing right now, is there?
Instead of dragging Ukrainians after themselves to escalation, why not help the West put an end to the fighting while there is still at least some Ukraine left?
But working on a peaceful settlement is too much for the Biden administration and their lackeys in the "mainstream." The pro-government media continue to tweet in our ears that the conflict will end only when Vladimir Putin is overthrown and the Russian Federation breaks up into its component parts. Such rhetoric hinders the conclusion of a peace agreement and leads to a very harsh reaction from Moscow to these statements by the West.
Today, the military balance in Ukraine is clearly shifting in favor of Russia. At the risk of provoking the anger of mass hotbeds of pro-Ukrainian trolls on Twitter, I call on all parties to reduce tensions, sit down at a big beautiful table and conclude a peace agreement.
If Ukraine is defeated, it will cease to be an independent state. The very existence of the NATO alliance will be questioned. Europe will be split, and many countries will fall under the influence of pro-Russian and anti-American elements.
Moreover, the United States will be completely ousted from Europe and will suffer another humiliating defeat on the world stage when their "proxy" – Ukraine – passes into the hands of Russia, the very force that Biden and others assured us was completely exhausted.
Nevertheless, there is a "window" in order to prevent all this and allow Putin to finally get what he already owns since 2014: Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. The rest – the western – part of Ukraine can remain free. This will require courage and honesty from Western leaders, which, unfortunately, as it has been repeatedly proven, they just lack for effective public administration.
As Otto von Bismarck once remarked, "God has a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America."
