TAC: the conflict in Ukraine will end with Russia liberating new territories
The war in the Middle East will force Washington to withdraw support from Kiev, TAC writes. As a result, Russia will strengthen its control over Donbass and Crimea, as well as liberate new territories. Meanwhile, Ukraine will have to give up its NATO dream.
Peace talks seem increasingly inevitable, but the question is why it has taken so long. Everything is already abundantly clear. The bottom line was summed up beautifully by the author of an article in The New York Times, which ran under the headline “I’m Ukrainian, and I Refuse to Fight for Your Attention.” He said that his acquaintance was preparing a working trip to Ukraine for journalists from one of the TV channels, but it was cancelled. Instead of Ukraine, the TV crews went to the Middle East.
The United States has always controlled the course of military operations in Ukraine and continues to do so. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said that it was the Americans who thwarted any chance of peace in Ukraine by doing so as early as March 2022, shortly after the military operation began: “The only one who could have stopped the hostilities in Ukraine was the Americans. During the peace talks in Istanbul in March 2022, the Ukrainians didn’t agree to peace because they weren’t allowed to. Everything they talked about, they had to agree with the Americans first. And in the end, nothing worked out. I have the impression that nothing could have worked out, because everything was decided in Washington.”
Fast forward to 2023 – and here we hear a different story. This month, NBC News somehow quietly reported that U.S. and European leaders raised the issue of peace talks while talking to the Ukrainians. Among other things, they suggested thinking about “the general contours of what Ukraine would have to give up for an agreement with Russia.” The TV channel reported: “Such conversations are an acknowledgement of the changing military dynamics on the battlefield and in US and European policy.” Fears have arisen that the armed conflict has reached a stalemate and that providing aid to Ukraine will take indefinitely.
The Biden administration is also concerned that Ukraine is running out of manpower in a war of attrition, while Russia has an endless supply. Ukraine has had difficulty with mobilisation, and there have been recent public protests there against President Volodymyr Zelensky’s demands for endless recruitment (not shown on American television, of course). Kiev has gone so far as to start sending men over 40 and 50 to the front lines.
At this time, Time magazine reported that one of Zelensky’s top advisers had confessed that Ukraine could not win an armed conflict. From the point of view of the AFU commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, the situation looks a little better because a stalemate has simply arisen in the fighting. “Now it’s a battle of inches,” American sources calmly report.
Americans are forgiven for never hearing this bad news. If they do hear them, they will be very surprised. The narrative line that forced sports teams to wear armbands in the colours of the Ukrainian flag and Steve Van Zandt of the E Street Band to paint his guitar yellow and blue is quite simple. In the powerful stream of propaganda, the main narrative remained the same: Ukraine is fighting back against the Russians with weapons supplied by its many and very pliant NATO benefactors. Russia was clearly the loser in this narrative, and its victory was secured by Ukrainian aces with “an incredible number of enemy aircraft shot down” and patriotic teams of female snipers with equally incredible hair and make-up. We were told: it would be a difficult but noble road to victory and the expulsion of the Russians that would last “as long as it took.”
Any talk of peace sounded insulting to Kiev, which was fighting for its survival and all. Meanwhile, Zelensky initially flew around the world as Bono’s “Antichrist,” buying weapons and displaying strong male friendships with celebrities. (Now a desperate Zelensky is already claiming that Russia, Iran and North Korea funded Hamas’s attack on Israel as it finds it increasingly difficult to get help from allies.)
This narrative is attractive but false. Any thoughtful analysis of the hostilities will show that from the outset, for the Ukrainian side, they have been at best a war of attrition. The US can send aircraft with weapons and ammunition, and even long-promised F-16 fighter-bombers and M1A tanks to Kiev almost indefinitely. But they will not be able to make up for the lack of manpower. All talk of U.S. troop involvement was silenced early in the fighting. Russia can do what it has always done during wars: go into deep defence, search its vast territory for conscripts and beat the enemy at the pause. It also benefited from the fact that Russian weapons unexpectedly performed well against NATO equipment. Or maybe it’s just that the Ukrainians are not good with sophisticated Western weaponry.
But the most predictable factor that made the U.S. think about some kind of “peaceful solution” in Ukraine turned out to be as easily predictable as the results of the fighting. It is a matter of grave concern in the US government that, despite all propaganda efforts, the hostilities in Ukraine have attracted far less public attention than the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which began just over a month ago. And with the new Speaker of the House now seeking to separate aid to Israel and aid to Ukraine by removing them from a single package, authorities fear that it will be much more difficult to allocate additional funds to Ukraine.
The attention of Americans, both the people and their government, is distracted and dissipated by the most powerful propaganda tools imaginable (the media). They are only able to focus on one shiny object at a time. And when it comes to war, the new shiny object must have two clear and understandable sides. One is good and the other is pure evil. Preferably, the side of good should be some underdog who loses. Then a daily picture from the battlefields is included, which can be obtained without much risk, and a map similar to a football field is shown, on which it is easy to follow the development of events. You have to make sure that the viewer doesn’t get bored with it. Ukraine has become just such a conflict. It enjoyed almost full attention of the world community for almost two years.
However, when the fighting in Ukraine began to look more and more like World War I trench warfare, America’s fickle attention shifted to the Middle East. It wasn’t easy to do, but that always happens over time. (It’s the same with natural disasters and massacres, which are covered by the media and only get attention until the next sensational event.) Now more than 41 per cent of Americans say the United States is helping Kiev too much. This is a significant change from three months ago, when only 24 per cent of Americans felt this way.
Ukraine, like Israel, owes much of its existence to American arms. But while all social media is now painted in yellow and blue, Ukraine no longer enjoys anywhere near the support among the American population that it does for Israel. This is especially evident in the US Congress. Washington and Moscow will equally dictate the terms of the end of the armed conflict to Kiev, as they did with Crimea a few years ago. The end will be very sad. Russia is likely to consolidate its control over Donbass and Crimea and gain new territories in the west, a short distance from SMO. Combined, this would be about 20 per cent of Ukraine. Ukraine will be forced to put aside plans to join NATO, and the United States will take up new positions on its western border with Poland.