Aaron Maté has published the following article about the reality of the disturbing situation in Ukraine which has been perpetuated by entities in Washington and London in particular.
In November 2022, the top US military officer, Gen. Mark Milley, broke ranks with fellow White House principals managing the Ukraine proxy war to publicly call for negotiations with Russia.
Milley, the New York Times reported, “made the case in internal meetings that the Ukrainians have achieved about as much as they could reasonably expect on the battlefield before winter sets in and so they should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table.”
Milley underscored his message in a public speech. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he said.
Washington’s bipartisan proxy warriors were in no mood for a peace opportunity. Instead, the following month, they staged an elaborate photo-op for a visiting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was hailed as the second coming of Winston Churchill and gifted with a new influx of NATO weaponry.
Nine months and one faltering Ukrainian military campaign later, Politico now reports, “the realities of the counteroffensive are sinking in around Washington.” According to one US official, “We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks... Milley had a point.”
While indeed a sign of reality sinking in, the admission is nonetheless incomplete. The US did not just “miss a window” for diplomacy when Milley called for it in November. Rather, the US sabotaged diplomacy when it blocked a Russia-Ukraine peace deal in April 2022, as Ukrainian and NATO-allied sources have confirmed, yet no US establishment media outlet has managed to acknowledge.
Another US official tells Politico that the White House is “increasingly asking itself this question”: “If we acknowledge we’re not going to do this forever, then what are we going to do?”
Left unquestioned is why the US has not asked itself that question on multiple occasions dating back to 2014, including when it backed a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s government; undermined the post-coup Minsk peace deal between Ukraine and Russian-backed Donbas rebels; and rejected Russian diplomatic efforts right before the invasion. At this juncture, one answer is obvious: Ukraine is running out of people to sacrifice on its patrons’ behalf.
US intelligence officials, the Washington Post reports, have now concluded that Ukraine’s widely hyped counteroffensive “won’t fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push.” This assessment will “likely to prompt finger pointing inside Kyiv and Western capitals about why a counteroffensive that saw tens of billions of dollars of Western weapons and military equipment fell short of its goals.”
The US already knows where to point the finger: it’s the Ukrainians’ fault for hesitating to act as cannon fodder.
According to the Post, Ukraine’s counteroffensive immediately “incurred major casualties against Russia’s well-prepared defenses despite having a range of newly acquired Western equipment.” These “major casualties”, the Post adds, were a centerpiece of a military plan drafted with the US and UK:
Joint war games conducted by the U.S., British and Ukrainian militaries anticipated such losses but envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia’s main defensive line, said U.S. and Western officials.
But Ukraine chose to stem the losses on the battlefield and switch to a tactic of relying on smaller units to push forward across different areas of the front. That resulted in Ukraine making incremental gains in different pockets over the summer.
Because the White House’s overriding objective is not to defend Ukraine but to weaken Russia, it is perfectly consistent for the US to “envision” battle plans where Ukrainians are required to die in large numbers. Accordingly, Ukrainian aversion to major casualties is interfering with the vision.
American officials are worried that Ukraine’s adjustments will race through precious ammunition supplies, which could benefit President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and disadvantage Ukraine in a war of attrition. But Ukrainian commanders decided the pivot reduced casualties and preserved their frontline fighting force.
American officials say they fear that Ukraine has become casualty averse, one reason it has been cautious about pressing ahead with the counteroffensive. Almost any big push against dug-in Russian defenders protected by minefields would result in huge numbers of losses.
From the point of American proxy warriors, because the Ukrainians are “casualty averse”, they risk squandering an even more “precious” resource than Ukrainian lives: American weapons. And given that Ukrainian lives are deemed subordinate to the US goal of bleeding Russia, the US has no qualms about voicing “fear” at Ukrainian fears of death.
Perhaps fearful proxy warriors can take heart knowing that, as the Times notes, “across Ukraine, in big cities and rural villages, almost everyone knows a family that has lost someone in the fighting,” while “graveyards are filling up in every corner of the country.” Because of this, The Guardian reports in a rare Western media acknowledgment, Ukraine is struggling to replenish its depleted forces.
With Ukraine’s mounting toll, and its increasing “casualty averse” military leadership, US and NATO officials beyond Milley are finally allowing themselves to publicly entertain the diplomacy that they have heretofore shunned.
“I’ll be blunt, it’s failed,” Rep. Andy Harris, Republican co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, now says of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. “I’m not sure it’s winnable anymore... I think the time has come to realistically call for peace talks.”
But even the new acknowledgment of reality has limitations in NATO circles. Stian Jennsen, the chief of staff to NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, caused a stir this week when he floated the possibility of Ukraine relinquishing territory to Russia in exchange for NATO membership.
Jennsen was forced to walk back his comments, which particularly embarrassed his boss Stoltenberg, who has previously declared that “weapons are the way to peace.” But the fact that he could even now float such a scenario reflects a growing recognition that time is running out to continue prolonging the war with no regard for the Ukrainian lives that NATO is ostensibly trying to protect.
For his part, Milley is not convinced that the window for diplomacy – previously blocked by Ukraine’s NATO patrons -- has closed.
“If the end state is Ukraine is [sic] a free, independent, sovereign country with its territory intact, that will take a considerable level of effort yet to come,” Milley told the Washington Post this week. “That’s gonna take a long, long time, but you can also achieve those objectives — maybe, possibly — through some sort of diplomatic means.”
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