Daniel Hannan, der optimistisk troede på Forårsoffensiven, skriver i Telegraph at Putins Rusland nærmer sig en “ødelæggende sejr”, der vil blive NATOs “Suez øjeblik”
We need to talk about Ukraine. While the world’s attention has been focused on the war between Israel and Hamas, grim tremors have been shaking that rich, black soil. Ukraine’s counteroffensive has failed – or, in Volodymyr Zelensky’s words, “did not achieve the desired results”.
As exhausted Ukrainians fall back from Russia’s ramparts and minefields, the initiative is swinging to the invaders. Russia is advancing through the skeletal remains of what used to be Marinka, a city in Donetsk, perhaps of greater psychological than strategic importance. Missiles are again hitting Kyiv. Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, has taken to the BBC to warn that her country is in “mortal danger”.
Now, it is the Ukrainians’ turn to dig in, to try to hold what they have. As in 1914, a fortified line runs the length of the front, from the Dnieper delta to the Russian border. And, as then, military technology favours the defender, so that tiny gains are bought at terrible cost.
(…)
Why did I get it wrong? I had been talking not only to Ukrainians, but to British military observers with direct knowledge of the battlefield. They had watched the extraordinary Ukrainian gains in Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022 – gains that had emboldened the West to offer the kinds of matériel that they had previously held back from sending, lest it fall into enemy hands.
Ukraine now had long-range missiles, mine-clearing kit and modern tanks. At the same time, the Prigozhin mutiny had shown how soft Russia was behind the hard shell of its front lines.
But the invaders had learnt from their earlier mistakes. While Ukraine rushed to train its men in how to operate their new weapons last spring, Russia seeded mile after mile of landmines, built fortifications, dug trenches and amassed drones.
Hannans indrømmelse er en bitter pille for ham at sluge, men sluger, det gør han. Med formuleringer som Donald Trump ”makes no secret of his admiration for the Russian tyrant, once going so far as to declare that he trusted Putin before the US security services” uden at huske, at efterretningsvæsenet havde spioneret mod hans valg-kampagne, løjet for ham og det amerikanske folk og i flere omgange forsøgte at få ham fjernet som præsident. Ligeledes er republikanernes stigende skepsis for støtten til vedvarende død og ødelæggelse grundet i “partisan dislike of Biden” og at Putin “was too scared to stray beyond Russia’s borders”. Med alle sine fjender blandet sammen i et parodisk pæle-mæle, glemmer hen den ydmyghed, der burde komme af at have taget fejl af virkeligheden og konkluderer at hvis “Russia ends up annexing land by force, it is not just the West that will lose; it is the entire post-1945 international order.”
Sandheden er, at vi var blinde for, at Vestens, eller den liberale hegemoni er slut for længst og overspillede vores kort. Men det er måske ikke slut, trøster han således sig selv, drømmende sig tilbage til sine illusioner
It is still possible to imagine a peace deal that does not overtly reward aggression. Perhaps the eastern oblasts could win autonomy under loose Ukrainian suzerainty; perhaps an internationally supervised referendum might be held in a demilitarised Crimea.
Hvorfor Rusland skulle demilitarisere det stykke land, de regner for deres, og som de har vundet i en blodig krig, skal man tro på forårsoffensiver for at få til at give mening. Erkendelse tager tid, du drikker, se i øjnene hvor meget. Og glem konen, hun kommer ikke tilbage. Speaking of which, Den ukrainske propagandist (intet i vejen for det, men han er, hvad han er) Anton Gerashchenko citerer den ukrainske Førstedame
“We really need help. To put it simply, we cannot get tired of this situation, because if we do, we will die. And if the world gets tired, they will just let us die,”
Og Zelinski selv overvejer at indkalde mænd over 40 år. Også Det Hvide Hus begynder at se den skrift på væggen, som de desperat holder fast i en fortsættelse af den udsigtsløse krig
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken conceded that Ukraine will collapse without substantial U.S. aid during an interview with CNN on Sunday.
President Biden has called on congress to pass a massive, $100 billion foreign aid package that will include $60 billion for Ukraine, as well as $10 billion for Israel and a smaller amount for Taiwan.
I forrige måned kaldte Eugene Rumer og Andrew S. Weiss, ideen om et russisk nederlag for “magisk tænkning” i Wall Street Journal. Om hvad de fejlagtigt kalder Putins “all-out assault on Ukraine”, når sandheden er, at knap 200.000 mand er milevidt fra at være et ‘all-out’ angreb på at land af Ukraines størrelse
Putin has reason to believe that time is on his side. At the front line, there are no indications that Russia is losing what has become a war of attrition. The Russian economy has been buffeted, but it is not in tatters. Putin’s hold on power was, paradoxically, strengthened following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed rebellion in June. Popular support for the war remains solid, and elite backing for Putin has not fractured.
Western officials’ promises of reinvigorating their own defense industries have collided with bureaucratic and supply-chain bottlenecks. Meanwhile, sanctions and export controls have impeded Putin’s war effort far less than expected. Russian defense factories are ramping up their output, and Soviet legacy factories are outperforming Western factories when it comes to much-needed items like artillery shells.
The technocrats responsible for running the Russian economy have proven themselves to be resilient, adaptable, and resourceful. Elevated oil prices, driven in part by close cooperation with Saudi Arabia, are refilling state coffers. Ukraine, by contrast, depends heavily on infusions of Western cash.
For Danmarks vedkommende kan vores manglende evne til at skrue op for produktionen af krigsmateriel undskyldes med, at der er sygeplejersker, der også skal betænkes i deres alt for travle hverdag. Det er fint med skåltaler om tapre ukrainere, men det ligger i den politiske virkelighed på den anden side af Polen og vil tabe i enhver politisk debat, hvor der skal prioriteres klima og normeringer i daginstitutioner. Ukraine kan få, hvad vi alligevel skiller os af med, og nu er det snart slut med det
Putin can also look at his foreign-policy record with satisfaction. His investments in key relationships have paid off. China and India have provided an important backstop for the Russian economy by ramping up imports of Russian oil and other commodities. Instead of fretting about lost markets in Western Europe or Beijing’s reluctance to flout U.S. and EU sanctions, Putin has decided that it’s more advantageous in the short term simply to become China’s junior partner in the economic realm. Goods from China account for nearly 50% of Russian imports, and Russia’s top energy companies are now hooked on selling to China.
Even neighboring countries that have every reason to fear Putin’s aggressive tactics, such as Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, have made fat profits by serving as enablers of sanctions circumvention and as transshipment points for the goods that Russia used to import directly.
Despite Putin’s indictment by the International Criminal Court and abundant evidence of Russian state-sponsored war crimes in Ukraine, he is still embraced in various parts of the so-called “global South.” The Ukraine war holds little salience for many countries who bristle at what they perceive as U.S. and European double standards or a lack of engagement on issues that concern them.
None of this should come as a surprise. More than six months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin signed off on a new National Security Strategy for Russia. The main thrust of that document was to prepare the country for a long-term confrontation with the West. Today Putin can tell the nation that his strategy is working.
Putin does not feel any pressure to end the war or worry about his ability to sustain it more or less indefinitely. As winter approaches, the Russian army has mounted a limited ground offensive of its own and surely will expand missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, power plants, industrial sites and other critical infrastructure. At a minimum, Putin expects that U.S. and European support for Ukraine will dissipate, that Ukrainians will tire of the endless terror and destruction inflicted on them, and that a combination of the two will enable him to dictate the terms for a deal to end the war and claim victory. From his perspective, the ideal person to put such a deal together is Donald Trump, if he returns to the White House in January 2025.
Donald Trump “wants everybody to stop dying!”. Stil det udsagn op overfor Bidens krav om yderligere 60 mia. dollars til fortsættelse af det perspektivløse blodbad i en debat under den kommende valgkamp.
De herrer Rumor og Weiss geråder sig også ud i et langt forsøg på at få det bedste ud af det totale nederlag, hvor der tales om at isolere Rusland sammen med resten af Verden, som Vesten godter sig over at Finland og Sverige er nye NATO medlemmer. Men uden at det skal forstås som en ny kold krig, blot et evigt spænd af antagonisme, for de ved ikke helt, hvad de siger. Og det gør de ikke, fordi de ikke har fået at Rusland har taget den bid af Ukraine, hvor der dels bor russisk sindede og som samtidig beskytter Krim og den strategisk vigtige varmtvandshavn i Sevastopol. “Ukraine has withstood the Russian onslaught”, trøster de sig med i deres savnede illusion.
In less than two years the Ukrainian army has reduced an entire decade of Russian military modernization to dust. Keeping Ukraine in the fight and supplying it with weapons and ammunition, as President Biden pledged in a speech on Oct. 19, is not charity but the most urgent—and cost-effective—element of Western strategy.
Det ligner ‘magisk tænkning’.
Illustrationen er fra Jyllands-Posten
På MSNBC, så den forfærdelige virkeligheds ankomst således ud
Og deres moderselskab NBC skrev
U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions.
The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said. Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.
The discussions are an acknowledgment of the dynamics militarily on the ground in Ukraine and politically in the U.S. and Europe, officials said.
They began amid concerns among U.S. and European officials that the war has reached a stalemate and about the ability to continue providing aid to Ukraine, officials said. Biden administration officials also are worried that Ukraine is running out of forces, while Russia has a seemingly endless supply, officials said. Ukraine is also struggling with recruiting and has recently seen public protests about some of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s open-ended conscription requirements.
NATO’s generalsekretær Stoltenberg sagde, at dårligt nyt om krigen var på trapperne. Tidligere har han sagt at krigen er udløst af Vestens insisteren på at udvide NATO. Lars Løkke sagde til de russiske spasmagere, der havde udgivet sig for afrikanske diplomater, at Ukraine på et tidspunkt måtte tage bestik af virkeligheden og komme til forhandlingsbordet. Og det af Rusland beskårede Ukraine ville det være meget, meget, meget svært at få plads til i EU grundet størrelsen, hvilket var en direkte indrømmelse af at Ukraines interesser altid var pølsesnak. Den amerikanske præsident Biden havde forinden slået samme pointe fast, at Ukraine var et våben, man brugte imod Rusland, da han ikke vidste, om Bakmut var faldet eller noget, men godtede sig over russiske tabstal.
MONOKULTUR 
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