by Larry Johnson

 

This is the article I intended to write but Michael Vlahos beat me to it. Why try to reinvent the wheel when Michael makes a perfect one? Vlahos wrote, The Ukrainian Army Is Breaking. Here are the highlights (I encourage you to read his entire article.)

A defeated army and a broken one are two different things. An army merely defeated in battle can often make successful withdrawals, reform itself, and reconstitute its strength—as Rome did after its humiliation at Cannae, eventually destroying its great rival, Carthage. But when whole armies break, when they lose their will to fight, the whole nation can likewise break. That is what happened to the great empires in World War I. It is also the fate awaiting the Ukrainian army. . . .

The first negative-feedback bellow is when a war that began full of high hopes seems suddenly unwinnable. Early victories are now old memories. More battles are lost than won, and the costs of battle keep rising to the very threshold of human endurance—and then rise again. The second is when external support from friends and allies begins to evaporate. This is an especially acute negative factor if allied support is the emotional foundation of the army’s belief in ultimate victory. Third and finally, those who initiated the war, those who promised a road paved with victory, and who vowed that the world would support the army until victory was won—no matter how long it takes—are increasingly seen as liars and deceivers. The army—the entire nation—has been betrayed by its leaders. 

All this has descended on Ukraine in the past six weeks.

There have been no victories—not even bloody and debilitating wins like in the Fourth Battle of Karkhov—for nearly a year. Western leaders still profess that their support will continue. Yet the Western Alliance now admits it didn’t give Ukrainians nearly enough good stuff for even modest tactical gains in their ongoing, sacrificial offensive—and knew it going in. And increasingly, Ukrainian unit-level commanders are accusing higher leaders of simply using them as cannon-fodder to satisfy NATO overlords. Not just platoons, but larger units are surrendering to Russian forces. Morale is cratering. . . .

Yet in casualties-to-population terms, Ukrainian military losses, after more than 500 days of war, are approaching those sustained by Germany in World War I over more than 1,500 days. This is a catastrophic attrition rate, compounded by all three negative feedback loops that can break an army and a nation. Throughout the spring and summer, Ukrainian forces were thrown into battle and ground down. By autumn, the fighting army will have been spent—the tragic fate of Ukraine’s Best in 2023. By September, what is left will be twisting, and bending toward breaking, in the remorseless winds of war.

Without massive combat air support, mobile artillery and mobile air defense, Ukrainian troops are sitting ducks and cannot breach the Surovikin defensive lines that were built starting last October. The bravery, the will to fight and the desire for victory on the part of the Ukrainian forces are not enough to overwhelm Russia’s integrated defense, which employs ISR, artillery, air strikes, tanks and ground forces in a coordinated operation. Any large movement of Ukrainian forces is detected by Russia and the attacking Ukrainians are met with a barrage of bombs, missiles and shells. Ukraine’s ground forces have paid a terrible price and Kiev does not have the manpower resources to replace its losses.

It appears that the Ukrainians are trying to re-group, but there is no clear strategic plan to defeat the robust Russian defenses. August is likely to be the decisive moment in the war in Ukraine — the forces Ukraine assembled for the long-awaited counter offensive have been decimated and Ukraine now confronts the dilemma of trying to replace losses in men and material without having time to train a new army that is capable of continuing the fight. I believe that this means that Zelensky’s days in power are numbered.

 

https://sonar21.com/michael-vlahos-says-it-all-about-ukraines-loomng-disaster/

 

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Came to Power in Carefully Planned Operation Coordinated by Western Intelligence Services, Says Former U.S. Diplomat

 

By

 Jeremy Kuzmarov

 

Secret Meeting with British MI6 Head Richard Moore Points to the Likelihood That Zelensky Is a British Intelligence Agent 

In October 2020, on a visit to London, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Sir Richard Moore, the head of the British intelligence service, MI6.

 

The usual diplomatic protocol is for a visiting foreign head of state to meet with his counterpart, which in this case would have been Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

According to Andriy Mishin, a former employee of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the meeting signified that Zelensky was a professional intelligence agent and that Moore was his direct handler, telling him what to do.

Since the commencement of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, Zelensky has surrounded himself with British—not Ukrainian—security guards. Photographs captured these guards with the Ukrainian flag sewed backwards on their uniforms, which under ordinary circumstances would lead to them being shot.

When he visited the Vatican in May 2023, Zelensky snubbed Pope Francis by giving him an artifact with satanic imagery[1] and spent most of his time with a British Bishop, Paul Gallagher. Present at the meeting was Sir Richard Moore, his alleged handler.

Agent Zelensky

Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter has produced a new documentary, Agent Zelensky, which details Zelensky’s relationship with Moore and MI6.

Part I of the documentary includes an interview with J. Michael Springmann, a former State Department employee at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who stated that Zelensky’s rise to power in Ukraine was the result of a “carefully planned operation by Western intelligence services.”

After winning April 2019 elections, Zelensky has effectively done the West’s bidding by triggering a war with Russia and using Ukrainians as cannon fodder in an attempt to induce a Vietnam type quagmire that would undermine Russia’s economy and government.

Zelensky has fulfilled his function as an agent of the West further by a) passing laws that discriminate against Russians; b) enabling foreign takeover of Ukrainian land; and c) allowing the Wall Street financial house Blackrock to dictate Ukrainian economic policies.

According to Ritter, Zelensky has transformed Ukraine into an “experimental playground”for new U.S. and Western weapons systems, neo-Nazi mercenaries, and military related research in biolabs whose existence was admitted by top State Department official Victoria Nuland.

A recent article in Newsweek points out that the CIA has shuttled weapons into Ukraine using a “gray fleet” of commercial aircraft that crisscrosses Central and Eastern Europe, sent personnel into Ukraine on secret missions, and assisted Ukrainians with new weapons, all while using Poland as its clandestine hub to coordinate its operations inside the country.

The CIA has additionally worked closely with the Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU), which, following Zelensky’s banning of 12 political parties, has carried out a Phoenix style campaign extending into Russia in which Zelensky’s opponents have been jailed, tortured and in some cases assassinated.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S.-UK goal has been to use Ukraine as a club to beat and weaken Russia and project Western power into Central Asia, whose control was long viewed as key to world domination.

During meetings to discuss the Minsk peace agreements, which would have resolved the Ukraine-Russia conflict by granting special status to Donbas, Zelensky basically laughed in the face of Vladimir Putin, who had agreed to implement the accords.

Since that time, Zelensky has arrogantly paraded himself in Western capitals demanding more and more weapons for use in the war against Russia that has decimated his own people and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

 Servant of the People

Ritter’s film emphasizes how Zelensky was in essence a Manchurian candidate whose rise to power was scripted by very powerful people as if in a Hollywood movie.

From 2015 to 2019, Zelensky starred in the Ukrainian television drama “Servant of the People,” in which he played a high school teacher, Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko, whose monologue against corruption catapults him to fame and then the presidency of Ukraine.

In Zelensky, Ukrainians believed that they were electing a clone of Holoborodko.

However, they were largely unaware at the time of Zelensky’s close ties to Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kholomoisky, who owned Ukraine’s largest oil and gas company and bank, and bankrolled Zelensky’s political ascendancy in exchange for staying out of prison.

Zelensky was involved in fraudulent financial schemes with Kholomoisky that only came to light with the release of the Pandora Papers, which revealed that Zelensky transferred $41 million to two off-shore companies that he owned.

This off-shore wealth enabled Zelensky to allegedly purchase a $34 million mansion in Miami, a seaside home for his parents in Israel, a $3.8 million apartment in London opposite the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and seaside resorts in Georgia and Crimea.

During his 2019 presidential campaign, Zelensky paid $70,000 to an American public relations firm, Signal Group, to burnish his likeness to the character that he played in “Servant of the People.”

Zelensky’s campaign was managed by American public relations specialists Andrew Mack, Stephen Krupin, a former Obama speechwriter, and Shai Franklin.

There were parallels between Zelensky’s campaign and Barack Obama’s carefully choreographed 2008 campaign, in that Obama was also packaged by his handlers as an outsider who would restore integrity to government.

Like Zelensky, Obama was in reality a hollow fraud who lied about his family background, had deep ties to American intelligence, and betrayed his campaign promises—in his case, by expanding Bush’s War on Terror and displaying fealty toward large banks and financial institutions.

Zelensky’s campaign pledge to fight corruption in Ukraine was exposed as phony when his administration siphoned off money from COVID relief and cancer research funds into a massive road-building boondoggle.

Mykola Azarov, Ukraine’s former Prime Minister, said that “we thought systematic corruption under Poroshenko [Zelensky’s predecessor] couldn’t get worse, but Zelensky surpassed him; there are no standards now [and] no principles at all [in the government].”

During the 2019 election campaign, Zelensky called for a cease-fire in the Donbas which had been shelled for five years after the 2014 Maidan coup. But Zelensky reneged on that pledge too and provoked the war with Russia while displaying an eagerness for Ukraine to join NATO.

According to Ritter, Zelensky’s tenure as President of Ukraine is the capstone of a decades-long plan by the U.S. and UK to remake Ukraine into a Russophobic society that could be used as a tool to weaken and destroy Russia.

Agent Zelensky quotes Victoria Nuland bragging about the U.S. spending $5 billion in Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union. It also discusses the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko, who came to power in a U.S.-backed color revolution after being seduced by an American woman, Kateryna, who became his wife.

A key feature of Yushchenko’s presidency was his rehabilitation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which had collaborated with the Nazis during World War II against the Soviet Union and was supported by the CIA.

Yushchenko designated as national heroes such fascist collaborators as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych whom Zelensky has also praised.

In 2010, Yushchenko was defeated in elections by Viktor Yanukovych, who allied Ukraine with Russia and stripped Bandera and Shukhevych of their hero status.

This made Yanukovych a target of a U.S. regime-change operation that resulted in the 2014 Maidan coup and war in eastern Ukraine after the people of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces voted for their autonomy.

The brutality of the post-coup regime was exemplified in the violent stamping out of any resistance and massacre of trade union activists in Odessa, about which Zelensky at the time was silent.

Ritter points out that a significant percentage of Ukraine’s political and military elite since the 2014 Maidan coup have received training at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, which helped instill in them a Russophobic outlook.

The SBU has evolved into an adjunct of the CIA, which occupies an entire floor in the SBU’s headquarters.

The CIA, along with British MI6, has helped manage Zelensky’s heroic image in the West, which it aimed to fortify by having him and his wife Olena appear on the cover of Vogue magazine.

According to Ritter, the CIA and MI6 also helped Zelensky in the theatrical staging of the Bucha massacre, which was blamed on the Russians but appears to have been primarily carried out by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.

Bucha is a good metaphor for Zelensky’s political rule which has been an optical illusion. The public was conditioned to believe in the wholesome image of Zelensky cultivated in “Servant of the People.” However, the real Zelensky is a fame-seeking social climber who has condemned his own people to hell in the service of foreign powers.

 

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/08/04/ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-came-to-power-in-a-carefully-planned-operation-coordinated-by-western-intelligence-services-says-former-u-s-diplomat/

 

 

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NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

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CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

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 By Frank Gardner & Jake Horton BBC security correspondent & BBC Verify  

The war in Ukraine has reached a critical point. Where it goes from here could decide the country's future and affect the security of Europe. 

In the 18 months since Russia invaded, the Ukrainians have mostly been on the defensive, preventing Moscow's forces from seizing more territory.

But this summer, Ukraine - with the help of billions of pounds of Western military equipment - has gone on the attack, attempting to expel the Russians from land they previously captured in the east and south of the country.

Two months into this counter-offensive, and with time of the essence before the onset of winter, are Ukrainian troops making any real progress? 

Working with BBC Verify, we have analysed video of the fighting and spoken to experts to try to answer that question. 

One look at a large-scale map of eastern and southern Ukraine shows that not much has changed in the two months since the counter-offensive began. 

 

Russia still occupies nearly one-fifth of Ukraine - including the cities of Donetsk, in the east, and Mariupol, which it captured after months of siege - and its forces are well dug in.

 

In fact, not much has changed in the nine months since November 2022, when Ukraine made its last significant gain, retaking the southern city of Kherson and large areas in the north-east.

But it hasn't all been bad news for Ukraine. 

It says its troops have recently retaken the village of Staromaiorske in the Donetsk region. The BBC has verified video which supports that claim.

Around Bakhmut, in the east, where there has been intense fighting, Ukraine has also regained some small areas that it lost earlier in the summer.

And it has also made small gains in the Zaporizhzhia region in the south - a key area where Ukraine really needs to make a decisive difference. 

 

A Ukrainian push through the swathe of Russian-held territory to the Sea of Azov would disrupt Russia's supply routes and cut off their forces in Russian-annexed Crimea and further west.

The map below shows where ground has been retaken. The large red areas indicate Russian-controlled areas, the purple ones are territory held, or regained, by Ukraine. The black circles show just how heavily the Russians have fortified this region. 

The city of Tokmak, for example, has a ring of fortifications around it - as BBC Verify revealed in May.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66383377

 

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Listen to General Petraeus here

We’re privileged to feature General Petraeus, former Head of the CIA & Four-Star General, on the podcast. The discussion was so compelling that we decided to split the episode into two parts, with the next instalment being released this Tuesday!

In part one of the interview he covers the Ukraine war, including:

• The ‘sheer ineptitude’ of Russia’s campaign design
• How Ukraine has succeeded due to support from NATO & rugged determination
• The risk of nuclear escalation and influence of new technologies in the war
• How and why the conflict may end in 2023

This Episode's Themes and Collaborations

General David Petraeus has held senior positions in the US security apparatus, serving under Bush as Commander-in-Chief of Central Command, then under Obama as Commander of US & NATO troops in Afghanistan (2010-11) and as Director of the CIA (2011-12). After retiring from the military, he established the KKR Global Institute in 2013. 

In the episode, he references his February 2022 interview with The Atlantic, where he suggested that Putin would fail to take Kiev due to a lack of manpower and popular support.

Learn more about the Ukraine war via our interview with General Sir Nick Carter (former Chief of the UK Defence Staff). Or enjoy a historical perspective on the changing world order, courtesy of our episode with Peter Frankopan (bestselling author of ‘Silk Roads’ and Professor of Global History at Oxford University). 

To further explore the money maze, listen to our spin-off series, ‘Curated Podcasts - With Simon Brewer’ (aimed at professional investors). In the latest episode, Simon spoke to Paul Desmarais III, Chairman and CEO of Sagard. He shares the story and future plans of the global alternative asset manager. Out now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube!

 

The Money Maze Podcast is kindly sponsored by Schroders, Bremont Watch Company, Bordeaux Index, Fine Wines & Spirits & Mintus.

 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/general-petraeus-ukraine-china-other-geopolitical-part-simon-brewer?trk=pulse-article_more-articles_related-content-card

 

AS COLONEL MACGREGOR HAS TOLD US FOR A MILLION YEARS, IT WAS NEVER THE INTENT OF PUTIN TO "TAKE KIEV"... GENERAL PETRAEUS IS A LOSER, A WANKER, AN IDIOT WITH A FEW DECORATIONS ON HIS LAPEL. HE IS ONLY RIGHT THAT THE CONFLICT COULD END BEFORE XMAS 2023, EXCEPT IT WON'T END THE WAY HE THINKS. IT WILL END BY COMPLETE ATTRITION OF THE UKRAINIAN FORCES, WHICH MIGHT BE REDUCED TO SIX CLAPPED-OUT F-16 PILOTS AND 29 TRANS-GUNNERS BY THEN....

 

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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia's armed forces have thwarted Ukrainian mechanized brigades' attempts to carry out an attack in the Krasny Liman direction, Alexander Savchuk, the head of the Center Group of Forces' press center, has told Sputnik.
"In the Krasny Liman direction, in the areas of the Torsky section and the forest area of Serebryansky, artillery fire and strikes by the army aviation the Center Group foiled attack attempts by assault groups of the Ukrainian armed forces' mechanized brigades," Savchuk said.
"The enemy's losses amounted to up to 90 militants, and an infantry fighting vehicle, two armored vehicles and two mortars were destroyed."
He added that Russia's air defenses have also shot down four drones, and bombers have stroke two strongpoints of the enemy in the vicinity of Torsky and Serebryansky.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230805/russian-military-thwarts-ukraines-assault-attempts-near-krasnolymansk-1112403504.html

 

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by 
George Beebe

 

No matter how the war ends, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has created the very outcome he most wanted to prevent: a thriving anti-Russian, pro-Western democracy, armed to the teeth with American weaponry, destined at a minimum to become a de facto ally of Washington, if not an official member of the NATO alliance.  

Or so it is thought in Washington and other Western capitals. But, with the sole exception of Ukraine’s deepening and quite understandable revulsion toward Russia, it is much closer to wishful thinking than to reality.  

Let’s begin with the “thriving” part, as it is the foundation upon which the other elements of this narrative rest. According to the last Soviet census, Ukraine had a population of nearly 52 million people prior to its independence in 1992. Its population dropped significantly over the next three decades, as the economic and psychological disruptions of the USSR’s dissolution combined to shorten life expectancy during the tumultuous 1990s, and Ukraine’s birthrate plunged to nearly the lowest in all Europe. 

Factor in Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula with its 2.5 million inhabitants nearly a decade ago, and Ukraine’s population had declined to less than 40 million by 2022. 

Since Russia’s invasion last year, Ukraine’s demographic outlook has worsened even more dramatically. Vast numbers of Ukraine’s citizens — mostly women and children — have fled the war for the European Union and Russia. Reputable demographers peg its current population at well under 30 million. The longer the war continues, the more losses Ukraine will suffer, and the greater will be the destruction of its cities, infrastructure, and arable land. 

This mounting damage is likely to discourage many refugees from returning to Ukraine anytime soon. A European demographic studypublished last year indicated that by 2040, Ukraine’s working age population could fall by a third of its present size, with the number of children declining to half its pre-war level. 

Demography is not necessarily destiny, but such shocking projections bode ill for Ukraine’s economic prosperity and societal dynamism. The future they portend is a vicious circle of decline. Under such circumstances, simply manning a substantial standing army as a counter to much more populous Russia would be a challenge for Ukraine, let alone mastering and maintaining a large arsenal of NATO-standard weaponry. The more resources it must devote to its military, the fewer it will have for launching new commercial ventures and building a productive civilian economy. 

Ukraine’s agricultural sector – one of the bedrocks of its economy — has already contracted dramatically. 

The longer the war continues, the more arable land it will lose to landmines and other damage that will require decades to repair. The smaller its economy, the narrower will be its tax base. As its tax revenues decline, Ukraine will grow less able to support its aging and war-crippled population’s need for social services and become even more dependent on U.S. and European financial support. 

Just how “pro-Western” might this future Ukraine be?  It is, of course, impossible to say with any confidence at present, particularly because anticipating shifts in popular sentiment is inherently even more difficult than projecting population figures.

But here, too, there is cause for concern. As Ukraine’s much anticipated counteroffensive sputters, Ukrainian officials are increasingly voicing accusations that Washington has pushed for attacks but failed to supply sufficient ammunition and air defense, setting up Ukraine for failure. If that counteroffensive collapses altogether and NATO fails to come to the rescue, it is not hard to imagine a “stab-in-the-back” narrative taking root in Ukraine, with hatred toward Russia mingling with resentment toward the West. 

As a rule, wars put strains on democratic liberty. This has proved true even in the United States, including during the Civil War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam, and the Global War on Terrorism. Ukraine has not been an exception. Kyiv has outlawed opposition parties, arrested opposition leaders, closed opposition newspapers and broadcast media, cracked down on religious freedom, and indicated that presidential elections scheduled for 2024 will not be held if the war is still underway.

In many ways, these are understandable reactions to the existential threat posed by Russia. But they give little cause for hope that Ukraine will succeed quickly in escaping the dysfunctions that had long been produced by its corrupt patronage politics prior to the war. 

None of this is inevitable. But the key to avoiding this bleak vision of Ukraine’s future is to end the war as quickly as possible to facilitate economic reconstruction, attract the return of refugees, and allow Ukraine to advance liberal reforms under favorable conditions. Unfortunately, as things currently stand, American policy is making it ever less likely that Ukraine can and will be rebuilt. 

In stating publicly that Ukraine will become a NATO member, but only after the war is concluded, the Biden administration has perversely incentivized Russia to make sure the war does not end, at least not officially. The Kremlin need not wage the war at current levels of intensity to achieve that goal. The mere threat that a wave of Russian missile strikes might destroy a new housing project or a recently rebuilt bridge will discourage investors from providing the hundreds of billions of dollars that Ukraine needs for reconstruction.

Russia may be unable to conquer Ukraine altogether, but it can block Ukraine’s path toward a vibrant future. 

It is a mistake to believe that Ukraine will emerge from the war as a strong and prospering democracy no matter how it ends or how long it takes. The longer it continues, the bleaker will be Ukraine’s future. It is time to combine our defensive support for Ukraine — which is essential to preventing further Russian territorial gains and pushing the Kremlin toward negotiations — with a diplomatic offensive aimed at a compromise settlement. The sooner we do, the better off Ukraine will be. 

 

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/08/10/the-myth-of-a-strong-postwar-ukraine/

 

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NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

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