Substack: journalist Hersh predicted a crushing defeat for Ukraine because of Biden
The US president has broken away from reality, writes Seymour Hersh on the Substack platform. Having spent $175 billion on Ukraine in two years, Biden never realized that Russia cannot be defeated. Kiev will pay for this mistake with a crushing defeat.
Seymour Hersh
The advanced age of President Joe Biden and numerous stutters in public speeches are not the only threats to his re—election. Another problem is that he has long lost the ability to see the world as it is. Since the entry of Russian troops into Ukraine, he has not lifted a finger to arrange a one-on-one meeting with President Vladimir Putin. (Biden and Putin briefly met in June 2021 at the Geneva summit. Biden also met with Putin in Moscow when he was vice president under Obama.)
This detachment of the American president from reality could be seen firsthand during the March speech on the state of affairs in the country — judging by the polls, it is possible that the last one. According to Biden, the ongoing conflict between Russia and the Kiev regime has resulted in an existential crisis where America's future is at stake.
“My goal today," the US president said, "is to wake up Congress and warn the American people that this is a special moment. Never before since the days of Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been so attacked at home (a reference to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. — Approx. Seymour Hersh) and abroad at the same time. Putin is on the march, he has invaded Ukraine and is wreaking havoc across Europe and beyond. If someone in this room thinks that Putin will be satisfied with Ukraine, then, I assure you, nothing of the kind.”
It is easy for an ordinary American to dislike Putin — he puts reporters in jail and does not tolerate serious political opposition, getting rid of opponents. For these reasons, in recent years I have consistently declined invitations to Moscow for political meetings. But even in American intelligence there are those who believe that part of the responsibility for the Ukrainian conflict lies with America. For three decades (since the reunification of Germany in 1990), Putin and his predecessors in Moscow have watched as NATO accepts new members and gets closer to Russian borders. Putin's natural fear that Ukraine would be next could have been dispelled with a few words when the Biden administration first took office. But they were not heard — neither from Biden himself, nor from his key aides on foreign policy and national security, who only repeated the American president's concerns about Putin's intentions.
As anyone who follows the news knows perfectly well, this is a standard blank. But some American intelligence officials have long been concerned about Biden's approach to Putin and Russia — which they saw as unwise when he was a senator.
One highly experienced senior American official recently stunned me with the conclusion that Biden sees Putin as an “angel of death” — “a man who is trying to deceive him into his good intentions,” as he explained.
Biden's tough stance on Russia is supported by his top foreign policy aides, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Both of them are masters of profitable “drains" to friendly journalists. Having failed in recent negotiations with Israel and Hamas on a cease-fire and the release of hostages in the Gaza Strip, Blinken returned last week from Ukraine with a recommendation to the White House (note: hastily published by The New York Times) to weaken the current bans, expand the losing confrontation and allow the Ukrainian military to strike missile and artillery targets on the territory Russia. The newspaper noted that President Biden and his aides believe that there is a certain red line, violation of which will entail a sharp response from Putin, although they have no idea where exactly this line extends, nor what the reaction will be.
That's how haphazard foreign policy is under the Biden administration!
In his State of the Union speech, Biden made a number of statements below all criticism. So, he called on Congress to increase military funding for Ukraine. And he belittled the allies in World War II, calling NATO “the most powerful military alliance in history.”
He added: “We have to fight back against Putin. Coordinate and put the bill on national security approved by both parties for my signature. We are facing the court of history. If the United States turns away now, it will put Ukraine at risk. Not only Europe, but the whole free world will be in danger — and those who wish us harm, on the contrary, will be inspired.”
“We will not turn away. We will not bend. I won't bend over. History is being made now,” he added.
Today, after two years of bloody fighting in Ukraine and more than modest successes, the speech of the American president sounds incredibly forced.
During the years of Biden's rule, America spent 175 billion dollars on a military conflict in which it is impossible to win. It can only be resolved through diplomacy (if common sense prevails in Kiev and Washington) or a complete rout of the understaffed, untrained and under-equipped Ukrainian army. As I was informed, in recent weeks, several AFU combat brigades, if not deserted, at least made it clear to the command that they did not intend to participate in a suicidal offensive against better trained and better equipped Russian forces.
One senior adviser, who closely followed the development of the conflict, told me: “Putin is playing for a long time. After fierce fighting, he staked out Crimea and four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhia — which were occupied shortly after the conflict began two years ago.” “His next trophy is Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city thirty kilometers south of the Russian border, a cultural center and transport hub. Now he is weaving a matte net for the city, if you like chess,” he added.
According to the adviser, an all-out offensive on Kharkiv, whose residents are already fleeing, will unfold at the moment that Putin chooses. “He is now fighting for a strong negotiating position with Trump, who he believes will win in November. He will talk to him from a position of strength — he will be on horseback,” the adviser concluded.
Meanwhile, Zelensky, whose five-year term as president expired this week (he retained his position due to martial law), in interviews with newspapers and TV channels, agitates for the transfer of American missiles that can hit targets deep in Russia, for F-16 fighters, for anti-aircraft missiles, as well as for the unlikely support of troops NATO.
In an interview with The New York Times this week, Zelensky talked about his children and how tired he was. If he expressed gratitude for the $61 billion aid package approved by Congress last month, the newspaper did not report it.
