Remember Ukraine? That little war that we were told was going to see the triumph of “Muh Democracy!”, led by a diminutive would be dictator, over the latest incarnation of Literally Hitler, Vladimir “Vodka Man Bad” Putin and his unwashed hordes of Russians? We were told that Ukraine was definitely on the cusp of victory time and again, and that Putin was dying of cancer, or about to be arrested in a palace coup, or perhaps on the verge of being smitten by a stray meteor. Even some of /ourguys/ were jumping on the Slava Ukraini! bandwagon.
Yeah, that has kind of faded away. Now Ukraine is like a beloved, aged sportsball player that can’t compete anymore but no one will tell them because we don’t want to admit they are embarrassing themselves. The main difference is that instead of an middle aged guy limping down a court, thousands of young Ukrainian men (and not so young men, and women….) are dying in droves in an unwinnable war because no one will admit that Ukraine isn’t going to pull this off.
One of the few bloggers still paying attention is the Zman and he has been a lot more realistic without slipping into Russophile cheerleading, compared to others I could name (looking at you Saker). Something he wrote yesterday in his post Orphan Child really caught my attention, emphasis mine:
The news from the battlefields is uniformly bad for the Ukrainian army. The West is slowly coming to terms with the reality of the much publicized counter-offensive, which ended in disaster soon after it was launched, but the West spent the last few months in denial. Ukraine does not publish numbers as far as casualties, but independent guessing suggests they lost between seventy and one hundred thousand men in the counter-offensive.
The counter-offensive, starting later than anticipated, only lasted for a few short months, and in that time Ukraine wasted as many as 70,000 to 100,000 poorly trained young men and gained nothing of any significance. I wrote in a comment:
“…independent guessing suggests they lost between seventy and one hundred thousand men in the counter-offensive”
That is just in the “counter-offensive”. In Vietnam during the entire conflict the U.S. total KIA number is around 47,000 combat deaths, this in a nation that had over 200 million people at the time. Ukraine lost around twice as many young men, in a single year, out of a nation of only 33 million. This is a demographic disaster for Ukraine that can only lead to even more child trafficking and prostitution as the female population of Ukraine will be missing hundreds of thousands of potential husbands.
In less than a year, a country with 1/6 the population of the U.S. had around twice as many young men killed as the U.S. did in more than a decade? Not to mention the tens of thousands killed prior to the ill-fated counter-offensive.
The end is in sight in Ukraine and hopefully soon, even though they are still making ridiculous demands like this:
A particularly striking request made by Zaluzhnyi was for 17 million shells, a number that reportedly surprised Austin due to its enormity, as it exceeds the total number of shells available globally.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/zaluzhnyi-s-bold-ask-17-million-shells-and-400-billion-for-ukraine-s-liberation/ar-AA1kY5KF
All your artillery shells are belong to us. This in a nation running out of cannon fodder but they are still talking about reclaiming the territory they have lost when they should be frantically negotiating to keep the territory they have left.
Pravda-on-the-Potomac, more commonly known as the Washington Post, has been running stories like these:
The second article had this grim recounting:
Soldiers in the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade waited for nightfall before piling — nervous but confident — into their U.S.-provided Bradley Fighting Vehicles. It was June 7 and Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive was about to begin.
The goal for the first 24 hours was to advance nearly nine miles, reaching the village of Robotyne — an initial thrust south toward the larger objective of reclaiming Melitopol, a city near the Sea of Azov, and severing Russian supply lines.
Nothing went as planned.
The Ukrainian troops had expected minefields but were blindsided by the density. The ground was carpeted with explosives, so many that some were buried in stacks. The soldiers had been trained to drive their Bradleys at a facility in Germany, on smooth terrain. But on the mushy soil of the Zaporizhzhia region, in the deafening noise of battle, they struggled to steer through the narrow lanes cleared of mines by advance units.
The Russians, positioned on higher ground, immediately started firing antitank missiles. Some vehicles in the convoy were hit, forcing others behind them to veer off the path. Those, in turn, exploded on mines, snarling even more of the convoy. Russian helicopters and drones swooped in and attacked the pileup.
Troops, some experiencing the shock of combat for the first time, pulled back to regroup — only to attack and retreat, again and again on successive days, with the same bloody results.
“It was hellfire,” said Oleh Sentsov, a platoon commander in the 47th.
By day four, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, had seen enough. Incinerated Western military hardware — American Bradleys, German Leopard tanks, mine-sweeping vehicles — littered the battlefield. The numbers of dead and wounded sapped morale.
The official propaganda organ of the D.C. elites is doing a post-mortem on why Ukraine (and the U.S.) lost. That means it is all but over, as it was inevitably going to be since this thing kicked off. The article closes with this:
On Nov. 1, in an interview with the Economist, Zaluzhny acknowledged what had been previously unutterable — the war had reached “a stalemate.”
“There will most likely, he said, “be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
Even Ukraine understands it is over and now they will have to come to the negotiating table with their sponsor about to cut off their funding and Russia in a position of dominance, a much worse place than if they had negotiated a peaceful solution before this started.
Maybe the goal was simply to denude Ukraine of fighting age White men, leaving behind a Slavic shiksa playground for Zelenskyy and his tribe in a reformed Pale of Settlement. Or maybe it really was all about a money grab for the U.S. military-industrial complex, the Big Guy and Zelenskyy. Regardless, is has been a devastating demographic disaster for a nation that was already a basketcase and America is largely to blame for those deaths.
Biggest lesson of the war; NEVER EVER give up your nuclear weapons. With the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine came into possession of some unknown number of Soviet nuclear weapons. Ukraine bargained away their Soviet nukes for Russian promises of not attacking Ukraine, and an American promise to defend Ukraine. Russia, as always, broke their agreements. And Obama failed to keep our promise to defend Ukraine when Russia seized the Crimea in 2015. Putin didn't resume the offensive while Trump was in office, but shortly after Dementia Joe took ... "control" probably isn't the right word ... Putin attacked again. Hence the current standoff.
Earlier, Libya once had a nuclear program. Ghedaffi gave up his nuclear program, only to be promptly betrayed by Obama and Hillary, and Libya is STILL a disaster.
Never, EVER, give up your nuclear weapons!