Leaks confirm that Biden admin has lied about Ukraine
With a bleak assessment of Ukraine's military, US intelligence leaks undermine White House excuses for shunning negotiations with Russia.
The White House has responded to a cache of leaked US intelligence documents on the Ukraine proxy war by discouraging the public from reading them. “This is information that has no business in the public domain,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declared. “It is not intended for public consumption.”
A glance at the documents makes clear why: they contain information showing that the US public has been misled about the proxy war waged in their name.
For months, the Biden administration has rationalized its rejection of talks with Russia by claiming that “the best way to hasten prospects for real diplomacy is to keep tilting the battlefield in Ukraine’s favor,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month.
The prospect of “tilting the battlefield” in Ukraine’s favor rests on an anticipated counteroffensive, described by the Washington Post as “Ukraine’s make-or-break opportunity this year to recapture territory held by Russian forces” in the east and south.
Yet in a leaked document from early February, US intelligence officials acknowledged that Ukraine’s depleted military will likely fall “well short” of its goal to retake territory in the one-fifth of the country that Russia controls. Strong Russian air defenses, the document says, along with “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies,” and “force generation and sustainment shortfalls,” will most likely “strain progress and exacerbate casualties.” According to the Washington Post, a separate report recently prepared by the National Intelligence Council offers a similar view.
This newly disclosed assessment, the Post observes, offers “a marked departure from the Biden administration’s public statements about the vitality of Ukraine’s military,” and will accordingly “embolden critics who feel the United States and NATO should do more to push for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.”
If its numbers are authentic, another document reveals that the Pentagon has offered starkly different casualty figures in public than it has in private. According to one slide, the US estimates that the rate of Ukrainian and Russian losses is at a 4:1 ratio: for Russia, up to 17,500 forces killed, compared to as many as 71,500 Ukrainians. By contrast, US military officials have publicly claimed that more than 200,000 Russians have been wounded or killed, double the number they’ve given for Ukraine.
This purported hidden casualty count comes as major US media outlets are increasingly acknowledging Ukraine’s heavy toll. “Ukraine needs more soldiers — and fast,” the Washington Post reports. “Kyiv is preparing for an imminent assault on Russian occupying forces, and while Ukraine does not disclose its casualty counts, commanders in the field have described large losses.” In its ongoing defense of Bakhmut, the New York Times notes, “Ukraine’s army deployed many soldiers... that it had hoped to hold in reserve for a counteroffensive anticipated in the coming weeks or months, and its forces have sustained heavy casualties.”
These assessments of the Ukrainian military, in leaked documents and public reporting, offer new confirmation that the Biden administration has fueled the Ukraine proxy war despite knowing that it would yield little in battlefield gains. The White House’s hostility to negotiations is so devout that it has even openly opposed China-led calls for a ceasefire -- regardless of whether its Ukrainian ally feels the same. “What seems to be appealing on the surface – who wouldn’t want the guns to be silent – can also be a very cynical trap that we have to be very, very careful of,” Blinken said last month.
Not everyone shares Blinken’s reticence. “I’m a little confused as to why the diplomatic arm of the United States is one of the least interested parts of the government in diplomacy,” former Obama administration official Jeremy Shapiro recently complained. The answer is straightforward: the U.S. is led by “diplomats” with no interest in diplomacy, or in defending Ukraine. Instead, their primary objective is to use Ukraine to “weaken” Russia.
The guiding strategy of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian has not only sabotaged diplomacy since the invasion began, but also efforts that could have prevented it. This has been newly confirmed with yet another high-level admission that NATO states had no interest in ending Ukraine’s post-2014 civil war, which played a major role in Russia’s February 2022 invasion. In a call with Russian pranksters posing as former Ukrainian president Ukrainian Petro Poroshenko, former French President François Hollande claimed that the 2015 Minsk accords that he helped broker were in fact a ruse.
“Everybody thought that Putin wanted to win time,” Hollande said. “No, it was us who wanted to buy time to give Ukraine an opportunity to recover and improve its military capabilities.” Hollande’s remarks follow a similar claim from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year. Whether Hollande and Merkel have made candid admissions of their real aims, or are merely pandering to prevailing Cold War militarism, their comments underscore that NATO leaders officially treat diplomacy in Ukraine as a cynical trap.
And whereas Blinken and other White House officials insist that Russia isn’t serious about talks, the trove of leaked US documents offers a different assessment. “Leaked Pentagon documents said that, according to U.S. intelligence, Russia’s Foreign Ministry supported [Brazilian President] Lula’s plan to establish a club of supposedly impartial mediators to settle the war in Ukraine,” the New York Times reports. Rather than seize on Brazil’s Russia-backed initiative, the US and Ukraine instead “see Brazil’s plan as far-fetched,” the Times adds.
In his defense, Zelensky faces the longstanding obstacle of a powerful far-rightdeeply embedded in his national security establishment, one that has threatened both his political future and his life if he makes peace with Russia and its eastern Ukrainian allies. As Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, explained this month, Zelensky’s embrace of talks with Moscow would be an act of “political suicide” and result in the “political assassination of our president.”
US and allied NATO leaders sabotaging diplomacy from afar can claim no such political constraints. In fact, they have chosen to continue fueling the Ukraine proxy war in spite of shifting public opinion at home. The White House, the New York Times reported last month, has “worryingly” eyed polls that “show public support for arming the Ukrainians softening,” amid “growing taxpayer fatigue with shipping tens of billions of dollars overseas,” which “may undercut the war effort before Moscow can be defeated.”
As its own leaked assessments newly underscore, the White House has poured tens of billions of dollars into the war effort despite knowing that Russia cannot be defeated, and that Ukraine is being decimated. There are no indications of a change in course. Speaking to reporters this week, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin claimed that Ukraine “feels that they’re in a pretty good position.” As for the US, “we’ll stay focused on continuing to generate security assistance capability so that they can continue to be successful.”