Ukraine: Zelensky and the FT noise machine
Cross-checking shows Cognitive Warfare is still in its infancy
Robert Clark, Director of the Defence and Security Unit at Civitas, recently claimed “The Ukrainian government likely won’t speculate much even once the main offensive is underway.” Unfortunately for Clark, the Ukrainians have just thrown egg on his face.
Zelensky couldn’t keep his mouth shut and has again pinned himself in a corner. Even the FT characterises him as “pleading” for more weapons. To read the FT directly, download this Firefox .xpi extension, open with Firefox and then access the page.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted his military’s counteroffensive against Russian forces was about to “gain pace”, as he sought to reassure western governments that have grown alarmed at the slow progress of the operation.
The weeks-old effort to push back Russian forces in Ukraine had begun later than Kyiv had hoped, said Zelenskyy, due to insufficient munitions, armaments and properly trained brigades, which had given Russia time to lay mines and build defensive lines. But momentum on the front was about to shift, Zelenskyy added, while reiterating his call for allies to supply more long-range missiles and advanced fighter jets.
With his own words, Zelensky has committed sins: contradicting the previous narrative; admitting logistics failures that are cumulative and persistent; blaming third parties for the independent actions of the enemy; admitting dependence of future success on supplies that cannot be provided at scale or in time to be sufficient.
This is exactly the kind of speculation that wise old Robert Clark said Ukraine would not engage in. Whoops, there goes another propagandist hack! Nice one, Vlad. Another journo bites the dust at the hands of the Ukrainians. Bloodless, this time.
“We are approaching a moment when relevant actions can gain pace because we are already going through some mines locations and we are demining these areas.”
Even though war is not actually fought via soundbites, saying this is pointless. In case Russia didn’t know how any progress was being made, it now knows to simply deploy more mines in the areas that have been demined. How about they fire remote mine weapons behind the advancing Ukrainian demining crews and other forces, then fire lots of artillery and weapons at them to cement a case of “damned if they do, damned if they don’t”.
This is the level of utter nonsense and childish bile that the most expensive newspaper in the UK decides to feed to its readers and Zelensky decides to feed to the pandering western press.
Like recent DT output, this article essentially ridicules Zelensky’s claims by setting it against contradictory output from the US State Department that is built on the words of Gen. Milley:
Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, told the audience in Colorado that the results of Ukraine’s military effort would only become clear once Kyiv had fully committed its forces.
“It is at that moment when they make that commitment that we will really see what the results of the counter offensive will be,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan added that Ukrainian emphasis on securing supplies of advanced fighter jets for the counteroffensive was misplaced, because strong Ukrainian and Russian air defences had prevented air power from playing a significant role in the conflict, Sullivan said.
“The view of our military commanders is that the notion that F-16s would play a decisive role in this counteroffensive given that fundamental reality . . . They have a different view than what you have heard from some Ukrainian voices,” he said.
While officials projected an upbeat outlook for Ukraine’s military progress in public, many were less sanguine in private.
Sullivan wants us to believe that what remains of Ukraine’s forces are not fully committed to the biggest offensive it can muster. It can’t do more than this, which is why Zelensky is pleading for weapons.
The biggest giveaway of it all is that practically no one in the West is explicitly talking about the actual numbers of troops Ukraine has. Heavy casualties are admitted but no one is talking about troop replenishment. Even a 24-hour-a-day pro-Ukrainian group of clueless amateurs go nowhere near the “how many men has Ukraine got left who can fight effectively”. They don’t dare to take questions based on Western press output asking “what is the metric by which you’ll have judged Ukraine to have won and how will it achieve that metric?”, never mind something as simple as “if this is a war of attrition, how many men who can effectively fight does Ukraine have and what is their loss rate?” The self-delusion is as strong as it was in COVID. Humans don’t change, do they?
Fortunately, the FT article draws to a close with a reassuring message from “Senator Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee”:
“I’m tired of hearing about escalation. Stop talking about escalation. If you don’t escalate, you’re gonna lose,” he said. “I want [Vladimir] Putin to wake up in the morning worried about what he’s going to do that’s gonna cause us to escalate instead of us wringing our hands.”
The “sheer magnitude” of American assistance made it clear that the US was “prepared to take risk and we will continue to be prepared to take risk to provide support to Ukraine”, Sullivan said. He also hit back at critics who said worrying about Russian nuclear escalation was a sign of weakness. “It is responsible for every member of Nato, including the United States, to think about the Russian reaction when we choose to do something because that matters for our security, it matters for global stability.”
It is remarkable to see someone described as being at the top of foreign relations demand unchecked escalation against an enemy who possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. It goes without saying that constant, unchecked and limitless escalation leads directly to a no-win situation. Foreign relations is concerned, in part, with negotiating outcomes of benefit, either zero sum or mutual. Exactly how could this top foreign relations Senator achieve that if his attitude is essentially, “fuck the guy with all the nukes, let’s keep going otherwise we’re gonna lose!”
For that attitude and belief to stand, one must either believe that nuclear escalation is impossible or survivable. No sane person believes either of those things. While VST has explicitly stated it does not believe that Russia will ever initiate a nuclear war, it will still retaliate against a nuclear strike. Provided that it can retain stable control over its armed forces for the defence of its borders and adequately arm itself, on paper it is unassailable in conventional terms while NATO and the USA officially remains at peace with Russia. On that basis, it does not need to initiate a nuclear war, even if it must slog through blood and mud to preserve its sovereignty. It is not the first time, which is exactly a lynch pin of Russian reality that undergirds its stated actions and objectives. The West isn’t listening and doesn’t care, and that’s largely the problem.
At times of heightened and even lowered nuclear tension, numerous nuclear near misses have occurred for the most mundane and the most fraught reasons, including basic technical failures and complex human failure. Despite this, Risch doesn’t give a rat’s ass and wants to crank the handle.
Odds on, it’ll be a Western screw up in manpower or equipment that does us all in. Why? Because USEUNATO’s entire setup is far more complicated at every level than Russia’s. Nations, languages, cultures, perceptions, weapons systems are all more disparate, different and complicated. Even the command structures are just more complicated by design. Increasing complexity leads to increasing failure and error cases. This is contradicted by the Russian sub incident during the Cuban missile crisis, but this time around my money’s on the West. It has already screwed up across the board and is on to lose. Losing in a corner (that you made for yourself) causes highly unpredictable and extremely dangerous behaviour, as Sun Tzu taught.
Fortunately, Jake Sullivan was quoted as confirming what we already know and stating the obvious, despite whatever Risch thinks should happen.
"Basic US position in this comes down to single clear point, which is: we are going to support Ukraine without having US boots on the ground and American soldiers fighting Russian soldiers and that will remain consistent throughout the course of this conflict," Sullivan told the NBC News broadcaster on Sunday.
He added that it is not in the interest of the US to "end up in World War 3 with Russia."
World War 3 isn’t in the interests of the USA? Wow. There’s a revelation that does not appear to comport with any of its actions that pursue the outbreak of World War 3. If 40+ nations are fighting the world’s largest nation by landmass that, by past definitions, probably constitutes World War 3. Sullivan got the memo, burned it and carries on.
Hey, in case you guys at the back can’t see what’s happening down here on Jake Sullivan’s desk, he’s got his collection of Citadel Miniatures from Games Workshop out and he’s simulating World War 3. Don’t worry, Risch is the Blue team and he’s winning in every scenario. Not long now until “mission accomplished”.
The expensive FT has a page that, via nifty scroll-triggered graphics, purports to show the truth of what’s going on on the frontline. It shows what VST has mocked before - micro changes of zero relevance on a massive, deep and wide battle zone. It’s a pitiful attempt at “news” that generates cognitive dissonance when taken with the once sweet but now increasingly bitter faecal bacteria pills it doles out for those in the queue for Ukraine War Propaganda.
As VST has said all along, Ritter, MacGregor and Berletic along with The Duran, have adequate military and political skills and have called the war more correctly that anything VST has bothered to look at in the Western press, while being willing to admit what they don’t know or got wrong and why. The Western press is now copying their analysis that’s nearly a year old. The USA and allies are admitting that Ritter, MacGregor and Berletic were right.
When truth and narrative meet after being apart for so long, you can expect a hard landing. Let’s just hope that the most openly corrupt President of the USA disarmed his weapons before he slams into the carrier deck while muttering, “Missy… Mishing… Ahhh you know what I mean!”
Those that give up freedom fit security neserve neither. The Ben quote is bookends by Spiro T Agbey and the Nattering Naboobs of Negativity chatter !!?