At last week’s meeting of NATO leaders in Vilnius, Lithuania, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky looked like a man at the end of his rope. Or, more accurately, in the words of the late gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson, Zelensky looked “like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow money on next year’s crop.” (READ MORE: Does Ukraine Joining a ‘North Atlantic’ Treaty Organization Make Any Sense?)
by GEORGE PARRY | spectator.org
July 16, 2023,
But why? According to the Biden regime and its media lickspittles, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been an abject failure.
In a June 2023 speech in Helsinki, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that, thanks to economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, Russia is “significantly worse off today than it was before the full-scale invasion” and that “many see Russia’s military as the second strongest in Ukraine.” (RELATED: Winkin’, Blinken, and Nod: Biden Administration Fails on Cuba)
“By virtually every measure,” concluded Blinken, “President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic failure.”
Similarly, during a February 2023 press briefing at NATO headquarters, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, authoritatively announced that “Russia has lost — they’ve lost strategically, operationally, and tactically.” And, more recently, he insisted that Russian troops were being “hammered” by Ukraine’s much vaunted counteroffensive.
And, at the beginning of the counteroffensive, retired Gen. David Petraeus predicted in the Washington Post that Ukraine could well achieve an overwhelming “combined arms” victory.
The above are just a few examples of the avalanche of the feel-good, happy talk war news that has been fed to us by the Biden regime and its media adjunct. We have been repeatedly and incessantly told that the Russian army is incompetent and on its last legs and that the Russian economy is on the brink of collapse.
So why was Zelensky moping around Vilnius acting like a potential barricaded man? Does he know something that we don’t?
Consider the following:
Last week, President Joe Biden announced that he was going to supply Ukraine with 155 mm artillery “cluster munitions.” But, in February 2022, when asked about unsubstantiated claims that Russia might have used cluster munitions in Ukraine, White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied, “If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime.”
And indeed nearly 125 nations (not including the U.S. and Russia) have ratified and signed the United Nations Convention which “prohibits all use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions.”
On impact, these munitions randomly scatter bomblets over a wide area. But in the Gulf War, the U.S. military learned that a small but significant percentage of the bomblets fail to explode on impact. Consequently, these “dud bomblets” pose a threat of death or serious bodily injury to civilians — including all too often children — who may come into contact with them even after hostilities have ceased. Nevertheless, on CNN, President Biden explained,
This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that [155 mm artillery] ammunition, and we’re low on it. And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to — not permanently — but to allow for this transition period while we get more 155 weapons, these shells for the Ukrainians. (Emphasis added)
Wait, what? After $100 billion in aid to Ukraine, our massively financed military-industrial complex has run out of the non-cluster 155 mm artillery ammunition which has been critical to Ukraine’s war effort? Is the U.S. and NATO cupboard bare? Is that why Biden has decided to venture into war crime territory by transferring to Ukraine our aging and deteriorating stockpile of 155 mm cluster munitions?
Is the situation that desperate?
Apparently it is. Despite being supplied with U.S. M142 HIMARS rocket systems, Bradley fighting vehicles, M777 155 mm artillery howitzers, German Leopard 2 tanks, German Marder 1 infantry fighting vehicles, British Challenger 2 tanks, British cruise missiles and all of the other NATO Wunderwaffen, Ukraine’s counteroffensive has sputtered to a near standstill without breaching even the first of the three defensive lines erected by the Russian military. In short, Russia remains firmly in control of significant areas of eastern Ukraine where the population is comprised of ethnic Russians who reportedly were subjected to bloody persecution by Ukrainian authorities prior to the invasion.
Could it be that Ukraine has not been winning the war and has no real prospect of regaining the territory occupied by the Russian army? Is it possible that the economic sanctions haven’t brought Russia to its knees? Are the U.S. and NATO running out of money, materiel and weapons? (RELATED: West Plans to Send Ukraine Modern Tanks)
Have we, the American people, been lied to by the Biden regime and its media amen corner?
And if Ukraine’s counteroffensive continues to founder, will Biden double down on his regime’s failed strategy by sending American combat troops into the war?
What is actually happening in Ukraine and where do the hidden figures who feed the teleprompter of our senescent wax dummy of a president plan on taking us?
George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor. He blogs at knowledegeisgood.net.