Slow counteroffensive darkens mood in Ukraine
Slow counteroffensive darkens mood in Ukraine
Nearly 18 months after Russia's invasion engulfed Ukrainians in a brutal war, the national narrative of unity and perseverance is beginning to fray.
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There's the real strategic concern that escalating too quickly will have nuclear repercussions. But the deeper reasons are visible if you view most governments as military industrial corporations stacked under a trenchcoat. The true motivator is that the longer the war continues, the more money will flow from their respective tax payers into their pockets. They don't care about Ukrainian lives, they don't care about Russian lives. The popular support for the war and lack of domestic casualties means they get to ply their trade of death, and they come out smelling like roses. Opposing Russian colonialism is a noble cause, but the nobility belongs to those who are dying in the foxholes, not the warmongers who are squeezing this crisis to get more capital.
Western leaders don't want Ukraine to win. They want Russia to lose. A quick cauterized wound is less damaging than a slow bleed out. Total bankruptcy of the Russian war machine is the objective, the economic elimination of their primary trade competitor.
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He's already made thousands of bad decisions with this conflict. He's a petty little tyrant. He'd do anything to preserve his ego.
Trade competitor?
Russia is still the world's #2 arms exporter. Using supply domestically means that less can be exported, and more importantly, demonstrably under performing compared to western offering reduces demand.
The hesitation to do that still baffles me. Like all the pontification over providing the tanks prior to this. We all knew NATO counties were going to provide these weapons eventually. The constant hand-wringing is so embarrassing and downright disrespectful to the Ukrainians who are sacrificing everything.
I keep hoping for another big gain like Kharkiv and Kherson, but all that time let Russia dig in their fortifications and mine everything, so the line just won't move that quickly anymore.
The way I understand it is Ukraine is trying to cut off the bridges that supply Rusdian forces through Crimea making them route their supply lines through the much more vulnerable regions they've invaded on the main land. Aircraft and long-range drones would've made that task of shaping the battle field easier in the build up to the counter offensive, rather than doing it after everything got put in motion, but they are still slowly doing it.
Hopefully at some point the Russians just won't have the supplies to put up a consistent fight across the whole front line and Ukraine can break through and roll them up. The less optimistic side of me says it's going to be another long winter in Ukraine though.
More half-measures screwing over desperate people
If only we could get the chickenhawks here in the US to care about desperate people and half-measures within our own borders as much as you care for desperate people in a country you only care about because you're told to by your favorite nightly news program. The hundreds of billions in aid we've already sent is more than most countries' entire annual military budget to begin with.
Who said I don't care about our own borders? There's no reason I have to choose one over the other. I can recognize the practical geopolitical importance and moral significance of supporting Ukraine (arguably one of the better uses for all that excessive military spending, as opposed to bombing kids in Iraq) and also acknowledge the humanitarian crisis at our border.
Letting Ukraine fall to fascism will not help orphan migrants and victims of cruel border enforcement, and there is enough wealth in this nation to address both.