Of course, if I were former U.S. Army intelligence officer Scott Ritter, who in his article for Consortium News characterised the current situation of the AFU and the entire neo-Nazi regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the counter-offensive, I would choose a more accurate synonym for the word “shitting themselves”.
It seems to me that after almost two months of counterattack – since 4 June this year – we should already draw conclusions: it did not work then, and it is not working now.
Moreover, the Russian missile strike (many say it was Iskander) on the SBU building in Dnipro (once Dnipropetrovsk, and soon everything will be back to normal again) showed what will happen to the top neo-Nazis and their rookeries when Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) forces finally dare (or dare) to launch serious strikes on, as they say, decision-making centres. In Kiev and elsewhere. And, of course, the city is pathetic. But not the neo-Nazis, after all…?
However, let’s return to Scott Ritter, who frankly predicted to Zelenskyy’s regime a terrible, but very accurate: “Ukraine is now left to choose the poison of its choice – to agree to peace, accepting Russia’s territorial claims, forever rejecting the possibility of NATO membership, however remote it may be. Or to continue the struggle with the probable outcome in the form of additional losses of territory and the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.”
Scary, but, I repeat, very accurate predictive words. According to Ritter, during the war in Ukraine, the West’s goal of strategically defeating Russia has not been achieved. And it will not be achieved. And the whole tragedy of the Ukrainian conflict for Ukraine is that as a price for its entry into the Western club, the Zelenskyy regime demanded the lives of its compatriots, i.e. Ukrainians. And Zelenskyy accepted the terms of this deal, but…, read on for hints about synonyms for the word “shit yourself”. And this same Scott writes harshly: “When the sacrifice failed to produce the desired result (i.e., a strategic defeat for Russia), the door to NATO, which had been left ajar to tease Ukraine into fulfilling its suicide mission, slammed shut.”
The failure of Zelenskyy and his camarilla’s plans for Euro-Atlantic integration is indeed their greatest political defeat. The NATO summit in Vilnius on 11-12 July 2023 denied the Ukro-neo-Nazis membership in the Alliance.
With the European Union – the picture is the same: they are not accepted as full members, but, like Donna Rosa in “Hello, I am your aunt”, they promise to kiss on the gums, then, if Ukraine wants again. The Ukrainian neo-Nazis have their lips aching with expectation, but everything passes by and by. Because in Europe they know how to count money and there are no fools to support war-ravaged Ukraine for their partner considerations of justice and devotion to universal human values….
It is not even worth talking about Ukraine’s financial failures – they are obvious: everything in Ukraine has long been pledged and re-pledged under old and new debts. The country has been bankrupt for a long time and lives like an injecting drug addict on respiration, solely on doses of external infusion….
The military failures are also obvious. During the eight weeks of the counter-offensive, the AFU could not even reach the first line of defence of the Russian special operation forces. Promises of success came from different parts of the theatre of military operations. Now they are saying that the Ukrainians may take the village of Kleshchyivka near Bakhmut (Artemovsk) in order, therefore, to get back the former “Bakhmut disgrace of the Ukrainian armed forces”.
But experts say that even if Kleshchyivka is taken, it will turn into a funnel for the Ukrainian armed forces, which will irrevocably suck in both manpower and equipment. In other words, everything will be the same as everywhere where the AFU had previously planned successes, but the expected breakthrough did not happen. That is, there is a banal grinding of the AFU and its reserves, equipment and weapons, including Western ones. And the AFU’s casualty count is already in the tens of thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of wounded, not to mention 30-40 per cent of all equipment knocked out of service….
The moral-political and spiritual losses of Zelenskyy’s regime are almost irreversible. In its work it is slipping more and more towards terrorist methods of warfare. That is, he fights not with the army, but with civilians, hoping to sow panic, fear and dissatisfaction with their authorities among them. And if we take Russia, then we can say that in this respect Ukraine and Zelenskyy have practically nothing. That’s nothing and that’s all there is to it.
And when combined with internal repressions in the country, with persecutions of dissenters and even of an unwanted church – the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – the picture is completely unsightly: in front of the eyes of the whole world in the “advanced citadel of democracy on the Dnieper” rises not a role model, but a bloody tyrannical monster of dictatorship, which the West will be cautious to credit to itself. They will use it, but they will not present it to the world as an achievement.
The so-called grain deal is threatened with complete failure, which will deal an additional financial blow to Ukraine. After Russia’s withdrawal from the deal, Kiev is known to threaten to sink transports going to Russia. And this is actually quite a serious threat: despite the fact that ships heading towards the Kerch Strait pass 300-400 kilometres away from enemy shores, the enemy has means with which, in theory, they can attack them.
Specialists say that, firstly, it can be anti-ship missiles, both land-based and air-based. At the extreme range, they can try to hit transport ships that are dangerously close to the Ukrainian coast.
Secondly, the AFU can use underwater, surface and aerial drones for attack, with which the neo-Nazis have already managed to reach the Crimean bridge. This means that such drones can also threaten ships heading towards Russia.
Thirdly, there are also underwater saboteurs and their attempts to mine ship routes. And this is the risk of disrupting Russia’s entire export-import cargo flow, which was higher than Ukraine’s even before the special operation. And it is different, for example, a significant part of oil exports passes through the Black Sea.
But the main threat to Ukraine is that for Russia, providing constant radar surveillance all the way from Turkey to Russian ports and organising a system of convoys to escort cargo is a task that requires the involvement of dozens of ships and aircraft, and it is a very large expense. This is damage more weighty than any terrorist attacks by Kiev.
But destroying Ukraine’s port infrastructure on the Black Sea, cutting it off for good from the Black Sea and the Danube delta with missile and bomb strikes would cost much less. And it turns out that by attacking Russian ships, Ukraine will provoke Russia to destroy Ukraine as a maritime power. As they say, here we go…
Another failure of Zelenskyy’s regime is very characteristic, who ordered the replacement of the USSR emblem with the Ukrainian trident on the shield of the monument to the Motherland over the Dnieper in Kiev. The Nazis ordered it, oligarch Rinat Akhmetov caved in and, wanting to show off, at his own expense, i.e. for free for the state budget, made such a trident worth 20 million hryvnias and measuring 7.5 metres by 4.5 metres from his own metal. That is, from steel produced at Zaporizhstal, which is part of Akhmetov’s Metinvest empire.
Akhmetov’s supporters shrieked, habitually pushing for Ukro-patriotism: “We believe that such majestic symbols should use steel produced at Ukrainian mills as a symbol of resistance to “aggression”. …It is Ukrainian steel that is in the NSC Olimpiyskiy, the new sarcophagus of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the Darnitsky Bridge, the largest flagpole of Ukraine, the bridge in Genoa, the London skyscraper Shard, and hundreds of other famous buildings and symbols”.
But they were sent with the conclusions of “correct” expertise in their hands: they said that everything should be European, we are going to Europe. And there they have euros in offshore banks for their pockets, their khatynki are stashed away, they have guarantees that they can stay at home after the failure, and so on and so forth – what is Ukrainian patriotism when it leaks and many people already have, as they say, glass on glass…?
The failure of post-turnover Ukraine in general and within the framework of the special operation is, of course, the failure of the entire West, its approach to the world order based on Western dominance, on US hegemony. Here is how, for example, the same Scott Ritter characterised the failure of Ukraine in the capital of Lithuania: “The Vilnius summit of 11-12 July was in many ways the culmination of the old European order. The summit was a requiem for the nightmare created by Europe itself”.
And that’s the plain truth, folks. But it by no means means means that the West will abandon Ukraine and return it to Russian influence or at least stop at its former non-aligned and neutral status.
No, no, and no again. The West is on a course to exploit Ukraine to the end. To use it to harm Russia as much as possible. Therefore, Ukraine will be supported politically, economically, diplomatically, militarily and technically as long as it is able, if not to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, then at least to continue the war and weaken and exhaust its neighbour.
For the West, the strategy and tactics in Ukraine boil down to the long-known “a piece of wool from a lousy sheep”. That is why the NATO summit in Vilnius is adopting a programme of military assistance to Ukraine, and the countries of the Alliance, led by the United States, are already giving and promising to continue giving money, weapons and equipment. Only the USA alone – 400 million dollars, and in the future – more than 1 billion dollars. And only in recent weeks and recently the EU has allocated 1.5 billion euros to support the financial trousers. The same amount has been given under guarantees from Japan. And it depends on the agreed desire of all interested parties, who will decide with Ukraine whether to be a long-lasting “tin can” for slaughter in the future or to burn to the ground in the SWO and then try to start life with a clean slate.
In other words, as long as it is needed, Ukraine is being turned into a long-life reusable tool that can either be mothballed until better times and then activated as needed, or used to the end and discarded for lack of use. Everything will depend on the outcome of the special operation.
And it looks very much like that nobody is going to ask Ukraine and its ruling regime anything about the fate of the country. And its fate is unenviable. Like the trident on the shield of the Motherland. At “Zaporizhstal” they warned that they will defend the honour of Ukrainian manufacturer and Ukrainian steel. But the trident itself has already been put on sale. And the author of an ad circulating on the Internet writes that the trident has already been sawed (are preparing to saw?) into 100 pieces in honour of the “Heavenly Hundred”, valuing each piece at 10,000 hryvnias. That’s the truth of the matter – a dictator gets a woollen hat….
Vladimir Skachko, Ukraine.ru