Zelensky in Crosshairs

The time for Zelensky’s assassination is slowly approaching, as I wrote about 1.5 years ago that he is following the path of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Zelensky’s role for the US/UK has been played out — the Russian Federation’s ability to unite with Europe is absent, the Russian military potential has been significantly reduced and will take years to restore it, and the mobilization potential will never be restored, while the “Russian threat” itself will remain a hot commodity, under which military spending can be increased.

Even the most die-hard pro-Ukrainians have begun to suspect something. And those who are not die-hard write “In fact, from this and other Ukrainian fiascos, of which the Bakhmut saga and the Hundred Days of Zaporizhia come to mind, an important lesson can be learned: Ukraine will ultimately lose this war largely because it has constantly tried to fight beyond its means.

The Ukrainians started this war with a huge army, far in excess of what the Russians could and actually committed to the fight in 2022. This huge force (the “First Army”) was badly mauled in early 2022, but was rebuilt later that year by a combination of relentless mobilization and massive aid from NATO.

This convinced the Russian HQ to go on the defensive and consolidate its position in Ukraine, withdrawing troops from the more vulnerable positions in eastern Kharkov and right-bank Kherson.

Any serious assessment of the situation at that point would have been that the Russians had entrenched themselves in a virtually impregnable position that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were in no position to break through (lest we forget that after the Russians withdrew completely unopposed from the area, their attempts to reduce the Kherson bridgehead by force in mid-2022 were bloody disasters), and the correct course of action would have been to start digging in and negotiating a peace treaty in the meantime.

Instead, the Ukrainian leadership threw an alarmingly large portion of the Second Army into Prigozhin’s meat grinder at Bakhmut, and then ordered not one but two massive counteroffensives on Zaporizhia and the flanks of Bakhmut, using the post-Bakhmut remnants of the Second Army and their NATO-supplied Third Army. These failed with huge losses, opening the door for Russia to return to the offensive in late 2023 and begin systematically pushing Ukraine out of the Donbas. The right course of action at this point was, again, to find a solid line of defense and start digging.

Instead, Zelensky ordered a “Hail Mary” offensive into Kursk with the remnants of the “Third Army” and significant elements of the lightly equipped “Fourth Army,” hoping that the Russian border defenses were weak, despite having had ample warning of Ukrainian plans in the border region (thanks to several earlier, smaller raids) and had had ample time to prepare. This resulted in a huge failure, with Ukrainian forces breaking through the border, exploiting the situation, and running into a crushing Russian counterattack that stopped them in their tracks.

The Ukrainians then compounded the failure by sending huge reinforcements into the death pit in an attempt to keep a piece of Russian soil under their flag as a middle finger to Putin.

And while this was happening, the front in Donbas began to crumble, with Russian forces making great strides and capturing key territories, in no small part because Ukrainian forces were systematically diverted to a tertiary operation far to the north.

We have seen, time and time and time again, that when the Ukrainians have received resources and built up forces, instead of recognizing that they are the weaker here and working to strengthen their position and reconcile, they have instead spent them on hugely ambitious and equally doomed offensives. In 2023, these offensives aimed to restore the borders that existed before 2014, when Donetsk for them could have been on the moon, while in 2024 their ambitions have degenerated into the sheer madness of conquering southwest Russia, despite being militarily behind for the last year.

These are moves by a power setting goals beyond its capabilities, and they will likely ultimately doom Ukraine as a sovereign state in the future.

Against this background, Zelenskyy’s demands for even more weapons become a security threat to the donors themselves. They have gotten rid of the old, the new has yet to be produced. I hope they find normal shooters and not these lamers who are Trump killers.