by Douglas Macgregor at The American Conservative
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has gone from hero to zero in the space of a few months. The mélange of Western military equipment, from tanks to missiles, in the hands of courageous but unprepared and poorly led Ukrainian conscripts has failed to improve Ukrainian battlefield performance. The resulting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed and wounded are reportedly inducing thousands of exhausted Ukrainian soldiers to surrender. Ukrainian soldiers are tired of dying, and their feelings are justified.
Russian military power rests on the systematic integration of strike assets—rockets, missiles, artillery, drones, and aircraft—with space- and terrestrial-based persistent surveillance. Once Russian forces halted their advance and established a defense in depth in eastern Ukraine, the Russians’ accurate, devastating firepower began swatting the attacking Ukrainian ground and air forces like flies. In the words of a Ukrainian military official, “The sheer number of drones operating in Ukraine, as well as battle-management systems that provide real-time imaging and locations, mean that troops and tanks out in the open have just minutes before they’re targeted.”
Without any serious evaluation of Russia’s true military potential, particularly when committed to action on Moscow’s doorstep in Eastern Europe, Washington’s globalist-neocon leadership assured Zelensky that he and his government would have the financial and military backing of the United States and its NATO allies “for as long as it takes.” Like the Poles in 1939 who thought their flight to London had purchased protection from Germany and the Soviet Union, the Ukrainians swallowed the lies. Yet, geography has made it impossible for Washington to assert its dominance in Eastern Europe.
Thanks to the compliant and supportive Western media, Zelensky and his political backers in NATO promised mountains, but delivered molehills. Claims of Ukrainian battlefield successes from the popular “Ghost of Kiev” to the recovery of Bakhmut turned out to be flatulence on steroids. When NATO members met in Vilnius in July 2023, the mood had changed. Ukraine’s fate, let alone its membership in NATO, would be determined by the outcome of the Ukrainian Army’s celebrated counteroffensive.
As Ukrainian losses mounted and Ukraine’s counteroffensive failed catastrophically,…
_______________