September 08, 2024
U.S. officials admit that there is no way left for Ukraine to win the war.
The acknowledgment should lead to change in policies. But the U.S. is out of ideas. It will continue to push the downtrodden Ukraine along the Primrose path.
Here is Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin:
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin cautioned on Friday there was "no one capability" that would turn the war in Ukraine in Kyiv's favour after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the West to let his forces use its long-range weapons to strike Russia.
...
"There's no one capability that will in and of itself be decisive in this campaign," Austin told reporters at the end of the meeting.
There are no super weapons left on the shelves that could change the picture. Everything that could be used has been used and failed.
The Kursk incursion was the last but short lived attempt to change the picture.
It did create some illusions ...
The War in Ukraine Is Already Over—Russia Just Doesn't Know it Yet - Reason
A front-line report from the Kursk offensive reveals that in the battle for hearts and minds, Ukraine’s resolve outpaces Russia’s crumbling morale, signaling an inevitable conclusion.
... only to soon be caught up reality:
Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion - CNN
The Kursk incursion has failed.
In the summary of last weeks fighting, as issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense, lists a total of 142 Ukrainian armored fighting vehicles as destroyed or damaged during that week. Of these a full 112 were shot up in the Kursk region. Along the much wider frontline in eastern Ukraine only 30 Ukrainian armored vehicles became casualties.
The Ukrainian military had collected nearly all armored vehicle it had left and pushed them into the Kursk incursion. That last armored fist it had is now gone and a replacement is unlikely to happen.
As armored vehicles become a rarity what are the Ukrainian troops in the east supposed to use for holding the lines?
All that Ukraine has left to use is a terror campaign against Russian proper.
As Ambassador Bhadrakumar observes:
Putin said with quiet confidence that Zelensky “accomplished nothing” from the Kursk offensive. The Russian forces have stabilised the situation in Kursk and started pushing the enemy from border territories while the Donbass offensive is “making impressive territorial gains for a long time.” In retrospect, Zelensky’s Kursk offensive turned out to be a Himalayan blunder, which has taken the war to a tipping point favouring Russia.In this context, the extraordinary first-ever joint piece by the spy chiefs of CIA and Mi6 which appeared in Saturday’s FT shows that beneath word play and hyperbole, the Anglo-American strategy is in a cul-de-sac. Bill Burns and Richard Moore cannot even bring themselves to articulate what Biden’s objectives are despite admitting that “staying the course is more vital than ever.”
Burns and Moore hinted that covert (terrorist) operations by Krylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, are the option left now in the proxy war.What a Shakespearean fall for a superpower!
The FT Burns/Moore piece in question (archived):
Staying the course is more vital than ever. Putin will not succeed in extinguishing Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence. Russia’s actions are a flagrant breach of the UN Charter and global norms. We will continue to aid our brave, resolute Ukrainian intelligence partners. We are proud to do so, and stand in awe of Ukraine’s resilience, innovation and élan.
All things the "brave, resolute Ukrainian intelligence partners" have come up with so far were destructive terror attacks against Russian individuals, population centers and infrastructure elements.
The only thing these attacks achieved was to increase the will of the Russian people to decidedly win the war as soon as possible.
Posted by b on September 8, 2024 at 12:54 UTC | Permalink