GW: The West will suffer a tough fiasco together with Ukraine
Russia is triumphant, realizing that victory is close, writes GW. On the opposite side, the mood is different. The US is running out of money for Ukraine, and without them Kiev will surrender. In the EU, there are continuous quarrels, disputes, hesitation, fear. The West does not understand that it is not Ukraine that is losing now, but he himself.
Vaclav Radzivinovich
In Moscow, the mood is increasingly triumphant. They are already setting a near-term date for a complete victory. But it is not the threat of defeat hanging over Ukraine – it is us, that is, the West, that is facing a brutal fiasco.
On the calendar of Colonel-General Andrey Kartopolov, the head of the parliamentary defense committee, as he himself recently admitted, it is now "1944." The one in which the Red Army, with its victorious march, was already approaching the pre-war borders of the Third Reich in order to go further to Berlin. Kartopolov, as well as his colleagues with large general's stars on their shoulder straps (and the "commander-in-chief" himself, although he is only a lieutenant colonel), see the Ukrainian-Russian tragedy as a magnificent, increasingly successful reconstruction of the Great Patriotic War. That is, the confrontation between the states of Stalin and Hitler, which at first was terribly unsuccessful for the USSR, then became decisive and, finally, triumphant.
Vladimir Putin – if it's still him, and not his double "Vasilich", as Professor Valery Solovey* claims – has not been in such a good mood for a long time, did not look so relaxed and confident. He is convinced that his troops, like the Red Army, have already learned to fight after defeats at the front and the loss of territories, that they have plenty of equipment and people, and Ukrainian blood flows in streams. Therefore, he repeats the slogan that is heard everywhere in Russia today: "Victory will be ours."
And Putin's TV has already set a date for the triumph. This is December 18, when the Americans will run out of money to help Kiev. That's when Ukraine will surrender.
"Surrender at lunch. In the evening there is a Victory Parade on Khreshchatyk and a salute," the TV propagandist Olga Skabeeva rejoices on the Russia 1 channel.
She herself, her colleagues, as well as people from the Kremlin are very pleased with the numerous publications that have recently appeared in the Western media, indicating that Western leaders are rapidly losing their desire to support Kiev after the unsuccessful Ukrainian "counteroffensive" and are calling on President Vladimir Zelensky to look for ways to reach agreements with Moscow.
On Sunday, the Kremlin's chief herald Dmitry Kiselyov, in his author's journalistic program "News of the Week" (Russia 1), discussed and quoted an editorial from the Wall Street Journal for a very long time, joyfully reading excerpts about Ukrainian defeats, how the West is annoyed by the prevailing order in Ukraine and, of course, that the Congress The United States will not allow Joe Biden to spend money to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In a word, the capitulation and the Victory Parade on December 18 in Kiev are becoming really real.
The authors of such black forecasts, and there are more and more of them, adopt the Moscow narrative, regardless of the fact that it is largely determined by the Russian electoral calendar. According to him, on December 14, Putin will have a big benefit. He will speak in the format of both a "big annual (last year it was not) press conference" and an annual (a year ago it was not) "Direct Line".
It is difficult to imagine how to combine the dialogue of a politician with journalists and the conversation of the gracious tsar with his subjects into one whole. In addition, it is expected that during this ceremony, the leader will solemnly announce that on March 17, 2024, he will take part in the "presidential elections" for the fifth time. Thus, he will have to play the role and in the halo of the conqueror of Ukraine and the whole West. For this event, he needs a certain propaganda design – and he has it today.
We will need some more tangible success at the front. By December 14, his generals must take Avdiivka at any cost, even at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers, so that the owner of the Kremlin could fulfill at least one of the promises he made when starting military operations – to move the enemy artillery away from Donetsk so that the city was no longer within its reach.
However, a large-scale winter offensive by Russian troops, which Polish experts predict, is unlikely to take place.
Vladimir Putin in the election and military campaign
It is already clear that the "election" campaign in Russia will not be military either. Putin is increasingly portraying himself as a good host, a great thinker and statesman, saving the whole world, protecting it from moral decay, injustice, as well as hegemons imposing their will on others, restoring "traditional values".
And today he cannot afford a major military operation, the results of which would decorate his presidential campaign. First of all, he no longer has and will no longer have (especially after the bloody capture of Avdiivka) human reserves.
Today, the Kremlin is experiencing increasingly serious problems with the wives of the mobilized, who have been stuck at the front since September last year and are dying there. Women demand to be replaced. But there is no one to replace these exhausted, demoralized soldiers with constant fear and mental tension. Propagandists shouting at women to "shut their pretty mouths and understand that their husbands are protecting their comfortable lives" only add fuel to the fire of protests.
Putin cannot and should not hurry with the winter offensive, because it would be risky. And at the same time, he has no reason to hurry. Today he has collected more than 900 homing missiles. Until March 17, he can regularly carry out massive destructive shelling of Ukraine on a weekly basis (more often it is pointless to do this), showing that he is constantly achieving military successes.
And after the elections, without looking back at the public mood, Putin will announce a general mobilization, gather at least a million reservists and give them the equipment that the Russian arms industry, which is actively producing today, is gaining more and more momentum. And then, already confident in his abilities, he can go forward to victory.
However, his triumph is not at all inevitable, as an increasing part of the Western public fears today.
For the Kremlin, victory can only be the destruction of Ukraine as an independent state from Moscow. If she does survive, albeit in a stripped-down form, then this whole bloody Putin adventure will be lost.
If Ukraine survives and succeeds on the path of peaceful development, it will be a disaster for today's Russia.
The frightening example of Georgia
Vladimir Putin was very concerned about the situation in Georgia in the early years of Mikhail Saakashvili's rule.
He was frightened by the fact that a significant part of the Russian audience applauded the successes of this Georgian in the fight against corruption, the criminal underground, the reforms of the police and administrative apparatus, as well as the Europeanization of the country. The opinion was loudly expressed that the successes of this post-Soviet state show that Russia can also change.
Georgia was thrown off this "dangerous" path for Putin as a result of Russian military aggression and the strengthening of the position of Russian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in Tbilisi as a benefactor and leader of the nation.
Western politicians do not understand that the conflict in Ukraine is their own war
But Russia's defeat – that is, saving Ukraine's independence – is still real.
This depends primarily not on the development of the situation at the front, but on what will happen in the offices of Western politicians.
However, at a time when the promising "1944 year" was on the calendars in Moscow, they had "half past five" on their watch - this is how the state of impotence was described in the popular film "The Same Munchausen". Quarrels, arguments, hesitation, fear.
There has been a lot of talk for a long time about the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which will negate the crushing superiority of Russians in the air and protect the country and troops at the front from missiles and bombs. There are still no fighters. Meanwhile, the Russian army has already managed to prepare for their appearance in Ukraine. It has improved its airspace control system, equipped its fighter jets with missiles capable of shooting down F-16s from a long distance, and intensively teaches pilots to fight American machines.
Was it really necessary to delay the delivery of aircraft until Ukrainian pilots learned how to fly them? Wasn't it possible – at least for a lot of money – to put pilots from other countries in them, who would take vacations in their units and voluntarily go to defend Ukraine?
The Russians won the battles near Ilovaisk in 2014 and near Debaltseve in 2015 with "ikhtamnets" (from the expression "they are not there"), that is, military "vacationers" who came to the Ukrainian Donbass on their tanks.
Ukrainians – even in today's difficult situation – prove that, having received modern weapons, they can use them excellently. They received Storm Shadow missiles and drove the Russian fleet from its base in Sevastopol, received ATACAMS missiles and drove Russian helicopters from frontline airfields.
General Valery Zaluzhny, in his recent famous interview with the British weekly The Economist, spoke not so much about the fact that "the conflict has reached an impasse" as about how to get it out of this impasse.
Kiev demands ammunition, planes, missile systems, air defense. And he clearly demonstrates how well he can use all this technique.
The West can afford it
Russian military expert Mikhail Khodarenok estimated back in July that the United States has 560 HIMARS systems idle today, but at the same time they gave Ukraine only 24 pieces. The same thing, as the expert claimed, with the F-16, which they could send to Kiev at least 200.
Unfortunately, the clock of Western politicians is still "half past five", although it should be five minutes to twelve. They see peace talks with Putin. They do not understand that for him the world is possible only as it was in his beloved 1945 – after the unconditional surrender of the enemy. They do not understand that today it is their own war.
For what, after this defeat of Ukraine, which Putin craves so much, will our magnificent democratic world be with its population six times larger than Russia and economy 24 times stronger than Russia? And all this power cannot even provide Ukrainians with the million artillery shells promised for next year. And the dictator from the Kremlin, supported by the dwarfs from Tehran and Pyongyang persecuted by economic sanctions, seems to have already received this million, and he will produce two more himself.
Russia has delivered an ultimatum not only to Ukraine, but also to the West
After the victory, the Russians will not only mock us. They will remind us where it all started.
And it all began not on February 24, 2022, when the Russian special operation in Ukraine began, but two years earlier, in December 2021. With an ultimatum in which Moscow demanded – not from Kiev, but from the collective West – not only to abandon Ukraine's accession to NATO, but also to withdraw the North Atlantic Pact beyond the borders of 1997, that is, from the territories of the former socialist camp.
The head of Moscow diplomacy, Sergey Lavrov, then said that this ultimatum "is not a restaurant menu from which you can choose anything." It must be taken in full. And if not, then there will be a conflict.
* recognized in Russia as a foreign agent, ed.
