When Russia re-invaded Ukraine in 2022, my immediate reaction was the fall of Ukraine. My argument back then was that Russia’s army was simply too big to stop, and Ukraine was too unprepared. Moreover, I did not think the Western alliance would be cohesive and forceful enough to support Ukraine. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised that all my predictions failed to materialize. Until now.
According to NBC News, “After successful campaigns to retake territory in eastern and southern Ukraine just over a year ago, Kyiv and its Western allies spent much of the first part of 2023 gearing up for a major counteroffensive. It was touted by military observers as a potentially decisive campaign to return occupied Ukrainian territories that might even threaten the Kremlin’s hold on the prized Crimean Peninsula, which has been under Russian control since 2014. But since the counteroffensive was launched in June, Ukraine has made only modest gains against heavily fortified Russian defense lines, leaving the war largely deadlocked as the fighting season nears an end. … The United States provides both Israel and Ukraine with military aid, and the breakout of a new war has raised fears about whether artillery shells and air defense missiles, once intended for Kyiv and already in short supply, would be diverted to Israel. Aid for both countries faces an uncertain path in the deeply divided Congress, and Ukraine was already facing a shortfall on what it was promised by the European Union.”
Add to this that Russia is clearly on a war footing, while the rest of the world — in particular NATO — is still in ho-hum mode. I’ve talked about this before from the beginning of the war, and that is why I have been very critical of Biden about his leadership at home on this matter: He has failed to mobilize America’s military-industrial complex, and so has Europe. (Indeed, he has been a consequential and invaluable leader on the world stage in helping the Western alliance come together behind Ukraine, but his ability to convince Americans at home has been weak, which is probably less his fault than it is having to preside over a supremely stupid, stupid electorate that is unable to apprehend the importance of the Ukraine-Russia war.) From the start, America and other allies have been spoon-feeding military hardware to Ukraine while routinely rejecting Ukraine’s requests (e.g., tanks and combat jets) until it’s too late. For months, the allies said Ukraine couldn’t have tanks; they eventually relented, but it was too late for their counteroffensive. The same can be said about fighter jets, which allies rejected for over a year until they said okay, but now it’s too f***ing late. Ukrainians needed all this sh*t 22 months ago, but noooooo! Western allies knew better than Ukraine, forcing them to constantly come hat-in-hand pleading for every scrap of military hardware, for every bullet, missile, rocket, armored vehicle, air defense system, and now, only more recently, tanks. But the damage is done because NATO and other allies have essentially given up — as I knew they would. And as I have been saying from the beginning, America and other allies have never been interested in Ukraine winning and Russia losing. The Western mindset has always been not to piss off Russia and to do just enough to keep Ukraine from losing! Full stop!
If there is one thing Putin understood more about the West than the West understood about themselves, then it is this: They could not hold the alliance together. And he was right. Granted, it took longer than he expected, but right on cue, allies have lost interest, led by America, which can’t get its f***ing act together to authorize more funding for Ukraine. (I expected nothing less when voters gave RepubliKKKlans control of the House!) So, now I’m back to saying Ukraine is going to fall. Perhaps it may not fall entirely, but I think eventually Russia will regain the upper hand to maintain a stalemate, and then they’ll just slowly start chipping away at the rest of the country as the world moves on because I live in stupid f***ing hell. What I think will ultimately happens is that Russia infiltrates Ukraine’s politics (again) to install a Russian-backed president, who will combine the country with (turn it over to) Russia a la the days of the U.S.S.R. And Ukrainians, being exhausted by years of war, will do nothing to oppose the “merger.” In the end, people just don’t f***ing care. (As I always say. Give them long enough, and people simply give up. And Putin and other dictators understand this.) And worst of all, people across the world seem to be utterly enamored with dictatorships, which is why autocracy is rising worldwide while democracy is on the back foot. People of the world are simply too stupid, too apathetic, and too f***ing lazy to do the hard work of maintaining a democracy, so dictators step in to fill the void. Welcome to stupid humanity!