With Russia ‘on the march’ in Ukraine, the US pulls awayThe White House admits that its $61 billion proxy war infusion failed, while handing Zelensky a new humiliation.
Just two months after winning $61 billion in Congressional funding for the Ukraine proxy war in May, the Biden administration claimed that its lifeline was already paying off. New American weaponry, US officials assured the New York Times in July, “is strengthening Ukrainian defenses and halting Russia’s territorial advance.” As a result, they concluded, “Russia is unlikely to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in the coming months,” and “demanding that negotiations [with Moscow] begin now would be a mistake.” It has only taken another few months for these same officials to acknowledge that they were mistaken. “American military and intelligence officials have concluded that the war in Ukraine is no longer a stalemate as Russia makes steady gains,” the Times now reports. In October, Russia made its largest territorial gains in more than two years. Accordingly, this summer’s US assessment that Western weapons had stymied Russia “proved wrong.” Or as one senior US military official observes, the Russian military is currently “on the march.” By contrast, according to Pentagon estimates, Ukraine only has enough troops to fight for another six to 12 months. With Russia on the march and Ukraine out of manpower, the Times and other establishment media outlets are acknowledging more frontline realities long kept from Western audiences. In eastern Ukraine, a volunteer helping with evacuations shared an observation with the Times that had previously been confined to a tiny sliver of alternative media. “Soon, there may be no one left even to use the weapons they give us,” the volunteer said, “because all our Western partners want is for us to fight until the last Ukrainian.” On the ground in the same region, BBC News heard similar a lament. In areas “across Ukraine’s south and east, we find a growing number of people who want the war to end immediately,” the BBC reports. “...There’s a feeling here that Ukraine should have negotiated at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, to prevent the death and destruction they’ve seen since.” In fact, Ukraine did negotiate with Russia at the beginning of the invasion, which resulted in a nearly completed peace agreement by April 2022. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky walked away from those talks under pressure from his US and UK sponsors, who wanted to use Ukraine to bleed Russia -- no matter how much death and destruction ensued. With his country steadily losing its ability to serve Washington’s goal, Zelensky is learning new reminders of his place as an expendable proxy. After shunning the Ukrainian leader’s “Victory Plan,” the Biden administration has handed him the additional embarrassment of leaking key details. Speaking to the Times, multiple US officials “expressed some exasperation” with Zelensky’s plan, “calling it unrealistic and dependent almost entirely on Western aid.” That includes a request, they disclosed, for the deployment of US Tomahawk missiles in Ukraine – a far more powerful weapon than the long-range ATACMS already delivered. Zelensky’s demand was totally “totally unfeasible,” a senior US official said, in part because it would mean “jeopardizing missiles earmarked for potential problems in the Middle East and Asia.” After once claiming that Ukraine was the frontline for the future of the liberal order, the White House has apparently decided that other “potential” hegemonic flashpoints now take precedence. According to the Times’ anonymous US sources, Zelensky was also “stunned” when Biden denied his request for permission to launch long-range strikes with US weapons deep into Russia. Speaking to reporters, Zelensky did not hide his frustration at the US leak of his rebuffed demands. “This was confidential information between Ukraine and the White House,” he complained. “How should we understand these messages? So, it means between partners there’s nothing confidential?” Yet nearly three years into Russia’s invasion, Zelensky has had ample opportunities to learn that the US is not his “partner.” Instead, the US has acted as a patron with one interest: not defending Ukraine and its long-term well-being, but using it to “weaken” Russia. The Biden-Zelensky row over the Tomahawks reveals yet another aspect of the cynical US game in Ukraine. Just as it dangled an “open-door” NATO invitation for Ukraine as a provocation to Russia, the US refused to negotiate with Moscow over the status of the Tomahawks only to deny them to Ukraine anyway. When Russia sought a comprehensive security deal with the US and NATO in negotiations prior to its Feb. 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin specifically sought to address the potential deployment of the Tomahawks. If stationed in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin warned in a Feb. 21st speech – just three days before invading -- “the flying time of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Moscow will be less than 35 minutes... like a knife to the throat. I have no doubt that they hope to carry out these plans.” Putin may have come to that conclusion because of an overlooked White House about-face. A Kremlin readout of a Dec. 30th 2021 call between Biden and Putin stated that Biden had given assurances that “Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.” But on Feb. 12th, the Kremlin declared that the US line had changed: with “regards to non-expansion of NATO” and the “non-deployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory,” a Putin aide claimed, “we have received no meaningful response.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov subsequently asserted that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at a Jan. 21st meeting in Geneva, informed him that from the US perspective, intermediate-range missiles like the Tomahawk – no longer banned under the INF treaty killed by Donald Trump -- could “now be deployed in Ukraine.” According to Lavrov’s account, Blinken relayed that the only room for compromise on US missiles in Ukrainian territory would be that Biden was “willing to limit their number.” (In the West, this pivotal episode was documented by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, but otherwise widely ignored.) With White House officials now making Zelensky’s request for Tomahawks public, they have inadvertently revealed a new aspect of their machinations in Ukraine: refusing to negotiate over the banning of Tomahawks to help bait Russia into invading, only to deny Ukraine those very same missiles anyway -- after nearly three years of devastating war. In establishment media, the conventional narrative is that Tuesday’s US presidential election carries high stakes for Ukraine’s future, with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump said to represent radically different visions for the proxy war with Russia. The reality is likely far less dramatic. The Biden administration is already signaling that no matter who next occupies the White House, the US abandonment of a Ukrainian client that has outlived its utility is already set in stone. And so long as he keeps relying on the same “partners” who instructed him to abandon a peace deal with Russia, Zelensky faces more humiliations from his fateful mistake. This post is only for paid subscribers of Aaron Mate. © 2024 Aaron Maté |