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titanic ukraine is lost like a plane crash in the andes......The long-simmering conflict between Ukraine’s two most important figures – that is, President Vladimir Zelensky, and its military commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny – is escalating. The usual denials ring hollower than ever, especially the usual attempts to blame “the Russians.” The knives are out in Kiev: Once Ukraine loses the war, its elites will eat each other alive BY Tarik Cyril Amar
Zelensky has spoken of his “working relationship” with his top general; and he won’t comment on their conflicts and the incessant rumors about Zaluzhny’s impending dismissal, because that would “help the enemy.” In politico-talk, that is the equivalent of admitting that your marriage is ready for divorce and maintained merely not to feed the neighbors’ gossip. If Churchill once joked that Soviet high politics resembled bulldogs fighting under a rug, he would have found Kiev’s military-civilian wrangling intriguingly bereft of any cover at all. Only a few weeks ago, Zaluzhny and Zelensky clashed publicly when the general admitted that the war against Russia had become a “stalemate.” In reality, that was an understatement, but it was still too much realism for the president. The latest sign of how intense the infighting has become is a wire-tapping scandal. On 17 December, one of Zaluzhny’s offices was found to be bugged. According to the Ukrainian authorities, the device was not working, and its origins could not be identified, both of which are politically convenient assessments. More listening devices were discovered in the offices of Ukraine’s General Staff. Tellingly, Ukrainian media has not responded by unanimously blaming Russian espionage. Instead, speculation about internal power struggles is common, including suspicions that the bug was to serve only as a prelude to future AI-generated deep fakes of Zaluzhny’s voice. Yes, that’s how much trust there is in the Ukrainian political sphere. Other commentators connect the bugging attempt to a recent murky affair involving the sudden death of Major Gennady Chastyakov, a top Zaluzhny aide. Officially labeled an accident, Chastyakov’s bizarre end, involving a birthday present of a bottle of Whiskey and live hand grenades, makes more sense as an assassination. Some suggest that the wiretap was an attempt by team Zelensky to discredit Zaluzhny and the General Staff – for instance by insinuating that the counteroffensive failed due to leaks from the armed forces command. Others, again, see the military, and maybe its intelligence service under the sinister Lieutenant General Kirill Budanov, behind a false-flag operation to smear the president and his men. Who knows? The point is that this type of speculation now comes naturally in Ukraine. It is not hard to guess at some of the background of this scandal: Ukraine’s elite is under increasing pressure. There is a looming defeat in the war with Russia. Zelensky, as well as Aleksey Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, have admitted the failure of this summer’s counteroffensive. Meanwhile, in the West, even the Washington Post, a mouthpiece of US foreign-policy militancy, has recently struck a sober tone. A detailed piece of reportage has revealed that the counteroffensive fiasco really consisted of not one but two strategic failures. First – and quickly – the NATO tactics playbook imposed by the West proved unworkable; then, and over a longer period of slow, grinding decimation, the Ukrainian attempt to replace NATO fantasies with some of their own also got, literally, nowhere. War retains its element of Clausewitzian chance and unpredictability – a deadly game of neither, in the old master’s words, chess nor Roulette, but of cards – but Kiev’s hand is now weaker than ever. At the same time, Ukraine’s so-called friends are getting ready to cut their losses. It is true that Zelensky has just been thrown the largely symbolical sop of formal EU entry negotiations. And, depending on how various quid pro quos will work out (or not) – between the White House and the Republicans in the US, and between Hungary’s Viktor Orban and the rest of the EU – Kiev may still even receive one more round of large-scale aid. But even now, some EU leaders are already hedging. Ireland’s Leo Varadkar could hardly wait to stress that Ukraine won’t be a full member any time soon. If ever, one should add. And regarding the money, what really matters is the fact that the flow of aid is now up for fierce contestation. Helping Ukraine is no longer a sacrosanct cause. Against the background of the counteroffensive’s comprehensive failure, the West’s proxy war investment will end one way or the other, and if not soon, then not much later. President Joe Biden’s language has shifted from “as long as it takes” to“as long as we can.” That is remarkably honest, for Biden. It’s aid game over, if not today, then tomorrow. And remember what this was all about, NATO membership? Zelensky has now come to admit that that would be a nice thing, but it’s not happening. “They are not inviting us.” All “signals” to the contrary, he has finally understood, are “nonsense” about “somewhere, sometime” and “nothing concrete.” He has also rejected odd recent speculation about just a “part” of Ukraine joining (because Kiev and the West won't acknowledging territories claimed and controlled by Russia as Russian anytime soon). In short, he sounds exactly like people who were derided as Russia stooges only, it seems, yesterday. What a message for the families of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead because the Zelensky regime could not conceivably concede Ukrainian neutrality before February 2022, or for that matter, in March or April of that year. What a price to have paid for a narcissistic comedian’s flat learning curve. Some “Servant of the People”indeed. Western aid is absolutely vital for Kiev. Once the bulk of it is withdrawn, Ukraine will have to make peace on Russian terms or suffer an even worse defeat. Indeed, its government may face collapse or rebellion – Ukraine is after all, a country of Maidans – and the state may lose elementary capacities, such as keeping its bureaucracy paid, not to speak of more ambitious programs. Against this background, the mounting tension between the generals and the politicians is no surprise. Someone must be blamed for the counteroffensive’s failure and unnecessary losses, for the fact that Kiev has trusted “friends” who have – very predictably – used Ukraine as a pawn on their grand geopolitics chessboard, and for, last but not least, the fact that peace was not made when it was within reach in spring 2022. Not to mention missing opportunities to entirely avoid the war. Zelensky is no slouch at the blame game. He has pointedly remarked that Zaluzhny “must answer for results at the front,” while he’s expecting “solutions” and “very concrete things on the battlefield”from the military. As if war was a matter of “bad service” by the soldiers. But Zelensky’s rivals and would-be successors can give as good as they get. If the days when aid for Ukraine was sacrosanct in the West are over, so is Zelensky’s status as an untouchable war leader at home. The former boxing champion and now mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, is sensing a knock-out and has publicly accused the president of authoritarianism and failures in the war. He has also stressed that once the fighting is over, everyone, including the president, will have to answer for their mistakes. What a prospect, especially when it’s a lost war. Churchill, with whom Zelensky’s performance has absurdly been compared, lost an election even after winning one. Clearly, there is blood in the water of Ukrainian domestic politics and the sharks are circling. Zaluzhny, meanwhile, has gone on the offensive, too, not against the Russians, but his own president. The general could not the courage to mention that he didn't quite agree with Zelensky’s purge of military-mobilization officials in August. Now Zaluzhny says these people were “professionals” who knew their jobs. Surely, he can’t be implying that the president who fired them does not! Behind this crude swipe at his boss, the commander-in-chief is broaching a serious issue. Mobilization, like aid from abroad, is a Ukrainian Achilles' heel under extreme tension. It is slowing down badly, as has been acknowledged by, for instance, Sergey Rakhmanin, an influential journalist who is also a member of parliament and of its Committee on Matters of National Security, Defense, and Intelligence. Meanwhile, the army is asking for another 450,000 to 500,000 fresh recruits. How they will find the equivalent of roughly €12 billion to finance this fresh mobilization round, if it happens, is unknown. Zelensky is reassuring the public that he won’t sign a law to mobilize women, but that he is open to lowering the draft age. What Ukraine’s most influential weekly, Zerkalo Nedeli, calls the most important questions, namely demobilization and leave, remain unanswered. What is making recruiting fresh cannon fodder harder is the fact that two things are becoming obvious, no matter what Ukraine’s thoroughly controlled media does to cover them up. The war is being lost, and sacrificing ever more men and women is not only in vain but, actually, rather treasonous, because it does not serve Ukraine's future interests. Peace would – preferably one concluded more than a year ago. Instead, this is a sacrifice that serves the strategies of American neocons and their European followers. And, on top of that, those strategies are failing. Kiev’s elites are staking out their positions for the end game. Not of the war against Russia, but against each other once the fighting ends with bitter popular disappointment. Their ruthless fractiousness is nothing new, it's just a reversion to normal. But independent Ukraine has never experienced what is likely to come soon – a perfect storm of large-scale defeat, being abandoned by “allies” who have bled the country dry, and widespread dissatisfaction as never before. A Maidan might not be enough this time. https://www.rt.com/russia/589463-ukraine-zelensky-valery-zaluzhny/
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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.
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SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/news/589551-ukrainian-officials-admit-losing/ Ukrainian officials privately admit they’re losing – BILD editorReality is different from public statements, a German journalist who just visited Kiev has said SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/news/589545-eu-nation-f-16-kiev/Ukraine to get first F-16s
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Ukraine cannot exist as a monoethnic and monocultural state in its 1991 borders, which is the essence of what the government of President Vladimir Zelenksy seeks in the conflict with Russia, his former aide Aleksey Arestovich said in an interview on Friday.
Speaking to journalist Yulia Latynina, the ex-official declared the nationalist Ukrainian project “dead,” stating that Kiev is unable to find people willing to fight for it. He claimed that 30% to 70% of troops on the front line refuse to go into combat and seek opportunities to desert. According to Arestovich, the refuseniks “have passed a sentence on this system, they have sealed its end.”
Zelensky’s statement that the Ukrainian military leadership wants to mobilize up to 500,000 people for the war effort appears to be a form “trolling” by the commanders, Arestovich said. The target is absolutely unrealistic, he claimed. With Kiev ramping up the pressure on draft dodgers, they will soon stop running from conscription teams and start shooting at them, the ex-official predicted.
People of cultures other than Ukrainian, be they Russian or something else, do not want to fight for a monoethnic Ukraine because Kiev discriminates against them, the commentator noted. The same is true for people who live in territories under Russian control, which Kiev wants to take back by force.
Ukraine “has nothing to offer to the residents of Donbass and Crimea, except for a second-rate citizen status,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians who support the monoethnic project may have other issues with the government, be it a grudge over an unfair economic system or lack of political liberties.
“We live in a country of prohibitions, a country where freedoms are suppressed… where you are caught and forced into the army. Who would want to fight for such a nation?” Arestovich asked.
He claimed that only by radically reforging itself as a multiethnic and multicultural nation, as befits its democratic composition, and putting its national interest first can Ukraine have a future. Such a Ukraine could convince people to live and die for it, rather than seek opportunities to flee.
That kind of Ukraine could also reach a deal with Russia and the West on a viable European security architecture, thus eliminating the cause of the current conflict, he argued.
https://www.rt.com/russia/589526-arestovich-monoethnic-ukraine-dead/
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MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:
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.
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panic in brussels....
By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost
“Putin’s Russia is closing in on a devastating victory. Europe’s foundations are trembling.”
This was the headline atop a Dec.9 commentary in The Telegraph, the farthest right of the major London dailies. The subhead elaborated the theme in yet graver terms: “Kyiv’s counteroffensive has ended in failure. This could be NATO’s Suez moment.” The piece that followed included all sorts of goodies in this line.
It is not official, not yet, that Ukraine’s grand counteroffensive, the great Russophobic hope of the Zelensky and Biden regimes earlier this year, has proven a bust and that defeat is in the offing. The closest we have to such an admission came from Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month, when the Ukrainian president declared that the counteroffensive “did not achieve the desired results.” I loved that moment, to be honest. It reminded me of Emperor Hirohito’s famous declaration on August 15, 1945, when he announced the surrender on Japanese radio. “The war,” he told his desperate subjects, “has not necessarily progressed to our advantage.”
O.K., let’s leave Zelensky to Zelensky, Joe Biden to Joe Biden, and Antony Blinken to Antony Blinken. We can count news of failure unofficially official when mainstream media start dropping such news on their readers and viewers. The Telegraph, so far as I know, was the first big daily on either side of the Atlantic to make such blunt admissions. Others have already followed, if in gentler, more oblique language—in Zelensky-speak, this is to say.
A significant moment may be upon us. What will follow once it is acknowledged that the Nazi-infested crooks in Kyiv have failed? President Biden, as is his consistently unwise wont, radically overinvested in the proxy war he chose to start with the Russian Federation as soon as he took office three years ago next month. Having defined the Ukraine conflict as a war in the name of democracy and freedom —“values” rather than interests, this is to say—he has left the U.S. and its European clients no room for compromise and nearly none even for negotiation. What is the next move when defeat is too obvious any longer to deny?
If we are about to enter uncharted territory, will it prove dangerous ground? It may, but this is not yet clear. It will be uncertain and probably unstable: This we know. Of the many things I do not like about this circumstance, I will mention a few straightaway. Biden may be the stupidest president of the postwar era on the foreign policy side: He exhibits no capacity whatsoever for nimble or imaginative thought. He is a warmonger of long standing, an election year is upon us, and he is by now in obvious danger of being impeached. His mental incompetence, atop all this, is plain for all to see.
There are also the national security people around Biden to consider. With the exception of CIA Director William Burns, who seems to dedicate himself to his career advancement, these are lockstep ideologues who share a Manichean vision of the world and how it works. And we had better think long and hard about these people now. I urge this because of an item in Politico two weeks back. The piece reported on the policy cliques’ thinking after recent Houthi attacks on U.S. warships in the Red Sea. Some officials urge a vigorous response, but the reigning view favors restraint for fear of enlarging Israel’s barbarity in Gaza into a wider war.
Then, well down in the story, this paragraph:
The military’s job is to present a variety of options to senior commanders, but the ultimate decision is up to the president and the administration’s political appointees. In multiple high-level meetings this week, the Pentagon has neither briefed President Joe Biden on options to strike Houthi targets nor recommended that he do so, two of the officials said. All were granted anonymity to detail sensitive internal deliberations.
The jaw drops. It is not uncommon for the mainstream media to bury vitally important news that reflects poorly on The American Way. In this case we appear to be on notice that the commander-in-chief is no longer commanding because, as Politico suggests, those around him think he is too trigger-happy and they would rather not hear from him. The topic is the Middle East, but netting out this extraordinary revelation, we can no longer be certain who is running the Biden regime’s Ukraine policy—or any other policy, for that matter.
Do we count this as some kind of palace coup? Don’t let the question surprise you: The Deep State did this kind of thing to Biden’s predecessor time and time and time again. In Biden’s case, it may be no bad thing if he is cut out of the thinking on Ukraine to one or another extent, given his retrograde obsession with Russia as the root of all evil. But the thought of the president’s lieutenants, with their cowboys-and-Indians sensibilities, deciding what comes next in post-failure Ukraine is not soothing.
■
Less than a week after Daniel Hannan published his biting commentary in The Telegraph, The New York Times came across with a pair of pieces, a sort of one-two punch, that are four-square out of character for a newspaper that has spent the past 23 months trying to persuade us that Ukraine was on the way to triumph against those brutal—always brutal—Russians. The first of these, ‘“People Snatchers:’ Ukraine’s Recruiters Use Harsh Tactics to Fill Ranks,” appeared Dec. 15. In it, Thomas Gibbons–Neff describes how plainclothes goons have taken to kidnapping draft-age Ukrainian men, some with mental or physical disabilities, and forcing them into the military induction process. This is sometimes done at gunpoint. People are taken off the streets, at factory gates, from inside shops.
Gibbons–Neff’s work is too often compromised, as noted previously in this space. But this is very good reporting. Here is a passage from his piece, published after he reported from numerous Ukrainian cities and towns:
Recruiters have confiscated passports, taken people from their jobs and, in at least one case, tried to send a mentally disabled person to military training, according to lawyers, activists and Ukrainian men who have been subject to coercive tactics. Videos of soldiers shoving people into cars and holding men against their will in recruiting centers are surfacing with increasing frequency on social media and in local news reports.
The harsh tactics are being aimed not just at draft dodgers but at men who would ordinarily be exempt from service — a sign of the steep challenges Ukraine’s military faces maintaining troop levels in a war with high casualties, and against a much larger enemy.
Lawyers and activists say the aggressive methods go well beyond the scope of recruiters’ authority and in some cases are illegal. They point out that recruiters, unlike law enforcement officers, are not empowered to detain civilians, let alone force them into conscription. Men who receive draft notices are supposed to report to recruitment offices.
We are reading here about a desperate regime that has sent too many of its able-bodied to their deaths and is now running out of bodies.
A day later, Carlotta Gall, with several colleagues sharing the byline, published “Ukrainian Marines on ‘Suicide Mission’ in Crossing Dnipro River.” Here we read about incensed grunts at the front condemning the Kyiv regime’s incessant propaganda as to the military’s progress against Russian forces. Again this is very effective reporting:
Soldiers and marines who have taken part in the river crossings described the offensive as brutalizing and futile, as waves of Ukrainian troops have been struck down on the river banks or in the water, even before they reach the other side …
In the case of the Dnipro, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other officials have suggested recently that the marines have gained a foothold on the eastern bank. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a statement last month claiming they had established several strongholds.
But marines and soldiers who have been there say these accounts overstate the case.
“There are no positions. There is no such thing as an observation post or position,” said Oleksiy, who withheld his last name. “It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It’s impossible to move equipment there.”
“It’s not even a fight for survival,” he added. “It’s a suicide mission.”
Gibbons–Neff and Gall, as the archives show, know very well where the fence posts lie, beyond which they have dared not stray as they have reported from Ukraine. We have to conclude now that the fence posts have moved. The Times is not yet prepared to state plainly that Kyiv is not far from defeat. But, in that way, The Times thinks American readers must be gently prepared for bad news, as if we are a nation of kindergartners—well, let’s not “go there”—we are being so prepared.
A few days before publishing his piece from the field, Gibbons–Neff gave us a report of the kind we have come to expect of him. “U.S. and Ukraine Search for a New Strategy After Failed Counteroffensive,” published Dec. 11, is written in the cotton-wool English The Times has long favored, leaving us with the familiar impression we are being told something but we do not know quite what:
The Americans are pushing for a conservative strategy that focuses on holding the territory Ukraine has, digging in and building up supplies and forces over the course of the year. The Ukrainians want to go on the attack, either on the ground or with long-range strikes, with the hopes of seizing the world’s attention.
In plain English, the kind you and I speak: The Biden regime has no idea what to do in the face of failure, but, as failure cannot be admitted, it must be dressed up as a new strategy. Kyiv would dare not do anything without the Biden regime’s permission—stealing most of the aid and military equipment the U.S. sends being the exception—but it must look as if it is fighting the life-or-death fight because the Zelensky regime is balancing on the head of a political pin at this point.
You have to love the Big Guy’s comment as these new realities take shape. “We can’t let Putin win,” Biden said in Congress as he pleaded for a vote authorizing a new round of aid. Is this big-time geopolitical strategy or what?
I hear a little Lady Macbeth in that remark in that Biden doth protest a touch too much. If “Putin” was not somewhere on the road to victory in Ukraine, there would be no need to say such a thing, would there? As it is, Zelensky flopped during his most recent trip to Washington, the new aid package did not pass, Hungary just blocked the European Union’s proposed new assistance, and Ukraine is altogether yesterday’s flavor as the reality of failure emerges from the mounds of, please excuse the language, bullshit that have propped up Western enthusiasm all these months. Israel may be genociding the Palestinians of Gaza, but at least here is the gruesome prospect that it will succeed and the West will for once prevail.
■
Until recently the orthodoxy required that “Putin’s Russia,” meaning the Russian Federation, was losing a war it waged with drunks, incompetent officers, and baby-snatchers. All of a sudden we read that Putin’s Russia has made the most of the sanctions regime the West imposed upon it and has a large, clear advantage on the battlefield—more soldiers, more artillery, more everything. In his year-end press conference last week, the Associated Press reported “an emboldened, confident Putin” announced that the war will end when Russia has achieved its objectives and these —the demilitarization and de–Nazification of Ukraine—have not changed. So does “the narrative evolve.”
Telegraph writer Daniel Hannan remarks that if any prospect of peace talks arises between Kyiv and Moscow, or between Kyiv and its trans–Atlantic backers and Moscow, “we risk a Suez-level disaster for the Western democracies.” Hannan, a Tory and a former member of the European Parliament, referred, of course, to Egypt’s defeat of British, French and Israeli forces after Gamal Abdel Nasser’s decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. It was an historic humiliation for the British and French.
“While we are not ourselves at war this time,” Hannan writes, “we are so invested in the Ukrainian cause that a Russian victory—and absorbing conquered territory is a Russian victory, present it how you will—would mean a catastrophic loss of prestige for the West and the ideas associated with it: personal freedom, democracy and human rights.”
Hannan has the magnitude of the balance of power in Ukraine exactly right. Joe Biden appears to be primarily concerned with going down as the worst president in postwar American history, and he seems to me to have little chance avoiding this distinction. But the larger significance here cannot be missed. Biden cast the campaign against Russia via Ukraine as his Great American President moment, and the rest of the West foolishly followed.
Now comes the bitter task of acceptance. It leaves us, for now, in a twilight zone. We have to hope that Joe Biden, as his political fortunes crash, is indeed cut out of the West Wing conversation such that he cannot make some desperate move to salvage himself. Go, Deep State, go, strange as the thought is.
None of what is now acceptable to say about the West’s failing fortunes in Ukraine can be at all news to those who have looked past the propaganda these past two years. The significance of the moment is in large part in the collapse of the propaganda. The Atlantic world rarely accepts the truths of the 21st century, typically denying them outright or blurring them beyond legibility. But this is always a question of expedience, it seems to me, and can in no case be sustained indefinitely.
“I was one of those who expected Ukraine to break through to the Sea of Azov, a move that might well have ended the war,” Hannan writes in a passage I find amusing. “Why did I get it wrong? I had been talking not only to Ukrainians, but to British military observers with direct knowledge of the battlefield.”
My dear Hannan, in your question lies your answer, as so often proves the case. You had been talking to Ukrainians and British military observers.
TO MY READERS. Independent publications and those who write for them reach a moment that is difficult and full of promise all at once. On one hand, we assume ever greater responsibilities in the face of mainstream media’s mounting derelictions. I take up this very topic in the commentary you have just read. On the other, we have found no sustaining revenue model and so must turn directly to our readers for support. I am committed to independent journalism for the duration: I see no other future for American media. But the path grows steeper, and as it does I need your help. This grows urgent now. If you are already a supporter, big thanks. If you aren’t, please, to sustain my continued contributions to ScheerPost and in recognition of the commitment to independent journalism I share with this superb publication, join in by subscribing to The Floutist, or via my Patreon account.
https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/20/patrick-lawrence-what-ukraine-is-not-winning-the-war/
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SEE ALSO: undeviling putin.....
MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:
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.
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sacking the wrong guy...
Reports that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is planning to fire the country’s top general Valery Zaluzhny are further proof that the country’s leadership is in disarray, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
Several Western and Ukrainian media outlets reported earlier this week that the Ukrainian leader had asked Zaluzhny to resign from his post and become the head of the country’s National Security and Defense Council – an offer he is said to have declined.
Kiev’s censorship body, the Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security (CSCIS), has dismissed these reports as “untrue.” However, the New York Times said on Tuesday that the dismissal process had simply been slowed down amid a flurry of media leaks. The absence of an obvious replacement for the veteran general was also a reason for the delay.
Zelensky and Zaluzhny fell out after the general wrote an article in November, describing the battlefield situation as a “stalemate” – an assessment rejected by the Ukrainian president. Zaluzhny’s comments came amid Kiev’s botched counteroffensive in which Ukraine suffered catastrophic casualties while failing to breach Russian defenses, according to Moscow.
Commenting on the speculation surrounding Zaluzhny, Peskov said on Wednesday that Moscow was closely following the developments. “There are still a lot of questions. But one thing is clear: the Kiev regime has a lot of problems, everything is going wrong out there.”
He added that Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive had led to “a growing rift among the Kiev regime’s officials, both in the top military and civilian leadership.” Peskov also predicted that these divisions would only deepen as Russia’s military campaign continued.
Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also commented, suggesting that the situation around Zaluzhny shows that Ukraine has plunged into “agony.” “This is the final collapse of the statehood, of the entire governance system,” she said.
https://www.rt.com/russia/591605-kiev-regime-many-problems-peskov/
ZELENSKY SHOULD BE THE ONE TO GO....
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zelensky out?
Ukraine is going through a crisis in civil-military relations which will have a tremendous impact on how it goes forward regarding the ongoing conflict with Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly summoned the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valerie Zaluzhny, to a meeting on Monday, January 29, 2024, where he informed his military commander that he was being relived from his position. According to accounts that have appeared in western media, Zaluzhny refused to step down. As of Friday, February 2, 2024, the precise status of General Zaluzhny remains uncertain amid a swirl of rumors regarding his imminent dismissal.
The rift between Zelensky and Zaluzhny represents a serious blow to one of the fundamental principles which underpins democratic society—a civil-military relationship predicated on the simple proposition that a democratically elected civilian leadership is the final authority on all matter, including military, and in the case of disputes between the civil and military leadership, civilian authority retains supreme authority.
If the reports of what is tantamount to a refusal to obey the lawful order of his civilian commander in chief are true, General Zaluzhny has opened a pandora’s box which, if left unresolved, could lead to the rapid unravelling of Ukraine’s civilian-controlled government and open the door for the emergence of a government that is either subordinated to the will of the Ukrainian military, or which has been replaced by a military junta. Neither bodes well either for the sustainment of the notion that Ukraine functions as a democracy along the lines of its European and American allies, or for the prospects of stable governance for Ukraine at a time when it faces unprecedented economic, military, and foreign policy challenges.
History is replete with examples of civil-military disagreements during times of war. American history is home for two premier examples—the split between George McClellan and Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, and the disagreements between Douglas MacArthur and Harry Truman during the Korean conflict. However, in both cases when the civilian authority demanded that the military authority resign, the military authority complied.
Zaluzhny, it appears, refused to step aside, taking the issue of military defiance of civil authority into unchartered territory.
Managing civil-military relations is a complex process that balances the advice the military provides to its civilian masters with the actual oversight provided by the civilian leadership over military affairs. Given the disparity that exists fact-based military reality and the simplified and often politicized fiction that civilian leadership embraces, rifts are not only to be expected, but are in fact a reality that must be anticipated, and mechanisms put in place to keep them from erupting into crises. One of the biggest problems faced in the civil-military relationship is that of agenda control and information management. While disagreements can and will emerge between military leaders and their civilian masters over military issues, the military can never lose sight of the fact that if the civil-military relationship is to succeed, the military cannot possess an agenda that deviates from that of its civilian leadership. Nor should the military take advantage of the fact that it in large part dominates the flow of information to society about military matters to use the media as a tool to articulate its own agenda.
In the case of the Zelensky-Zaluzhny split, the record seems to reflect that Zaluzhny has, for some time now, been engaged in activities which point to his having an agenda that not only deviates from that of his commander in chief, but in many ways is designed to be in opposition to his commander in chief—an agenda which paints Zaluzhny as a political competitor to Zelensky. Again, the examples of George McClellan and Douglas MacArthur point to the fact that such actions are not unique in the history of civil-military relations in democracies. However, in both of those circumstances, the military commanders resigned their positions when ordered to do so, and continued their political opposition in the civil arena, without the active backing of a military which was obligated to remain loyal to its civilian leadership.
Zaluzhny, however, has refused to step aside, taking his differences with Zelensky into a political arena which, if he remains as a military commander, will be corrupted by his presence.
There have been indicators that the Zelensky-Zaluzhny split was headed in this direction. Back in November 2023, Zaluzhny gave an interview with The Economist where he openly challenged Zelensky’s view regarding the state of the conflict with Russia, likening it to a stalemate that suggested the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023 had failed. Zelensky, anxious to retain the confidence of his American and European benefactors, rejected Zaluzhny’s version of events, leading to the first public split between the two, and opening the door to speculation about Zaluzhny’s political ambitions. Zaluzhny continued this trend of projecting a rift with his president by publishing an essay with CNN on February 1, 2024, where he questioned Zelensky’s approach toward mobilization while presenting himself as the sole source of military wisdom when it came to preparing the Ukrainian military for the next phase of the conflict with Russia.
A recent social media post by Andriy Stempitsky, a founding member of the neo-Nazi Right Sector’s* paramilitary forces (recently converted into the 67thBrigade of the Ukrainian Army), shows him with General Zaluzhny, a Right Sector flag and the portrait of Stepan Bandera displayed on the wall behind them. Zelensky’s history with the Right Sector is not a pleasant one—the head of the Right Sector, Dmitri Yarosh, once called Zelensky an “inexperienced politician” who would “hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk [the main street of Kiev] if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the [Maidan] Revolution and the War [in the Donbas].”
The meaning behind the post was clear—if Zelensky were to follow through on his attempt to remove Zaluzhny from power, then Zaluzhny would follow through of the Right Sector’s promise to hang Zelensky as a traitor.This is the state of play today in a nation the collective West has been describing as a model democracy. The crisis in civil-military relations between President Zelensky and General Zaluzhny has exposed the harsh reality that Ukraine is not—and indeed, has never been—a western-style democracy, but rather a nation where weak democratically elected leaders operate under the shadow cast by neo-Nazi groups that threaten the very survival of the presidency should he govern in a manner which deviates away from their ideologically-based positions.That Zaluzhny has so openly aligned himself with the Right Sector when it comes to his disputes with Zelensky is something that should trouble everyone with a vested interest in the outcome of the Russian-Ukraine conflict and drives home the accuracy of Russia’s indictment of Ukraine as a nation under the heel of forces that trace their political philosophy back to the times of Nazi Germany. With Zelensky, this control was done in a manner which sought to disguise the role played by the Right Sector. Zaluzhny’s defiance of Zelensky, and his open alignment with the Right Sector as an extension of this defiance, points to a very troubled future for Ukraine, one which can only be truly resolved through a Russian victory that includes the kind of de-Nazification promised by the Russian leadership.https://sputnikglobe.com/20240203/scott-ritter-is-zaluzhny-getting-ready-to-take-down-zelensky-1116566603.html
ZELENSKY SHOULD BE THE ONE TO GO....
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zaluzhny out?
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s administration has informed the White House that the decision has been made to fire the head of the army, General Valery Zaluzhny, the Washington Post revealed on Friday.
A major rift between the two became public following Ukraine’s failed summer counteroffensive, and amid the growing reluctance of Western sponsors to continue funding Kiev’s war efforts.
White House officials accepted the president’s decision, neither supporting nor opposing it, two of the newspaper’s sources said.
The move to inform Washington of Zelensky’s decision ahead of any formal decree or announcements to the media highlights the position of the US as Ukraine’s most powerful military and political sponsor. Washington has provided Kiev with more than $77 billion in aid, more than 60% of which is in military assistance, according to statistics from Germany’s Kiel Institute.
https://www.rt.com/russia/591752-zelensky-tells-firing-general/
ZELENSKY SHOULD BE THE ONE TO GO....
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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
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nazi vs idiot....
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who has reportedly been attempting to fire his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, could find himself out of a job before the nation’s top military commander, considering that the latter is backed by armed neo-Nazis, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson has argued.
Amid widespread reports that Zelensky had unsuccessfully tried to sack Zaluzhny, Ukrainian and foreign media described a tense meeting between the pair, with the general reportedly rejecting a call to resign voluntarily and the president hesitating to remove him under pressure from military top brass. Zelensky has since told the press that a major overhaul of the military command was imminent.
In conversation with Nima Alkhorshid, the Brazil-based host of the YouTube channel, Dialogue Works on Sunday, Johnson claimed the soap opera would be hilarious “if hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians weren’t dead and maimed.”
The guy with the gun usually wins and last time I checked Zaluzhny’s got more guns than Zelensky,” Johnson said.
Comparing the two men, he said the general should not be seen as a “great guy.”
“I don’t want to present Zaluzhny as some sort of military genius or really a good-hearted man,” the commentator remarked. He is “a bit of a scumbag” who “embraces the neo-Nazi ideology,” Johnson claimed.
”He’s been very careful to not insert the most ideologically driven troops – the Azov and the Kraken units – into the front lines where they get killed, because he wants to preserve them. Instead, he is sending the cannon-fodder guys.”
Whether or not Zaluzhny shares the radical nationalist ideology of the Ukrainian far-right is hard to tell from his public statements, but he is believed to have considerable support in those circles.
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https://www.rt.com/russia/591948-zaluzhny-zelensky-nationalist-allies/
MEANWHILE IN FASCIST JAPAN:
Scandal-hit Ukraine-born Miss Japan winner gives up crownKarolina Shiino, whose victory caused controversy over her heritage, apologized after her relationship with a married man was revealedhttps://www.rt.com/news/591928-miss-japan-relinquishes-title/READ FROM TOP.
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