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Update on Ukraine

It has been a long time since I commented on the progression of the Russia-Ukraine war. Hopefully, most of you have kept up with the news on your own.

Russia continues to advance and the Ukrainian armed forces retreat a few kilometers here and there, losing a tree line or fortified position each day along the line of contact. Russia’s tactic is to go slowly and carefully so as to minimize their own casualties. Modern warfare now has been altered forever by the use of drones. No longer can an army concentrate its forces with a massive army to invade its enemy, because surveillance drones will now spot them, and hundreds of drones could then devastate the troops, tanks, and vehicles as they approach.

More and more, warfare is electronic in nature. Drones are relatively cheap to make, but they are also very effective.

Both sides in the conflict must be careful not to send a large force together, because cluster bombs would destroy them all immediately. Cluster bombs themselves were made illegal after the Gulf War, because so many of them did not explode. Children were picking them up after the Gulf War and were being killed by them. However, when the US ran out of artillery shells to send to Ukraine, Biden sent them cluster bombs. Russia then responded in kind.

Last year Ukraine invaded Russia proper in the Kursk region, attempting to get control of a Russian nuclear power plant. They failed to get the power plant, but they managed to retain control of many small villages and forests in the region. Russia seemed unprepared for this, because they did not figure that the Kursk region would give Ukraine any advantage. But Ukraine wanted to use Kursk as a bargaining chip. They knew they would have to negotiate at some point and wanted to have a stronger negotiating position.

This, however, backfired on them, because that territory proved to be a major killing field, where a large number of Ukrainian troops met their fate. In the past two months Russia took back all of its Kursk territory, leaving Ukraine with no bargaining chip. Meanwhile, reserve troops that could have been sent elsewhere died in Kursk, leaving the other battlefronts more vulnerable.

NATO advisors do not care about Ukrainian losses. They only care about making war on Russia to break it up into five separate countries that European corporations could strip of its vast natural resources. This has been US policy for decades. They partially succeeded with the breakup of the Soviet Union; now they want to finish off the Russian Federation as well. This is behind NATO’s expansionist policy, even though they had promised not to move “one inch” east in 1991. Promises made; promises not kept. Lying is a war strategy for those who have no honor.

Six weeks into the war, Ukraine and Russia initialed a peace plan in Istanbul that was favorable to Ukraine. But the UK’s Boris Johnson flew to Kiev and told Zelensky to refuse to sign it. He was told that NATO would help him with all necessary means to defeat Russia. The war could have ended in early April 2022, but instead it has dragged on for 3 more years. As the years passed, Russia took more and more territory, leaving Ukraine in a weaker position.

The terms for peace in 2022 are no longer feasible in 2025, and as long as Ukraine still insists on the right to join NATO, the war will continue. Russia does not want NATO’s nuclear missiles just a few hundred miles from Moscow. Back in 1962, when the Soviet Union sent nuclear missiles to Cuba, the US nearly went to war with them. The US did not recognize Cuba’s right to host nuclear missiles 90 miles off the coast of Florida; but now they think Ukraine should have the right to host nuclear missiles on the Russian border. The US does not operate on principle; it is all political nonsense designed to defeat Russia militarily.

Right now, there is a silly peace summit taking place in Istanbul once again. President Zelensky is being pressured by Donald Trump to come to the table and end the killing. So he has consented, as long as President Putin personally comes to Istanbul. He knows that Putin would not agree to this, because peace agreements require time for deputies and representatives to hammer out most of the details before national leaders sign them.

Secondly, Zelensky is hypocritical, because in September 2022 he induced the Ukrainian Duma (parliament) to amend the constitution to read that it is illegal for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia as long a Putin is president. Hence, Zelensky cannot legally negotiate with Russia. Any agreement could be trashed later on the grounds that it was illegal from the start.

Thirdly, Putin cannot trust Turkish president Erdogan, who has managed to betray almost everyone. Erdogan would sell his own mother for 20 pieces of silver (dimes) if it were even slightly advantageous to him personally. Turkey is also a NATO country, so it cannot be counted upon to be neutral or reliable or even honorable.

So the present “peace talks” are doomed to failure from the start. But Zelensky spins this by claiming that “Putin does not want peace.” In fact, it is Zelensky and his European hardline backers that do not want peace. Putin’s demands have been consistent since the start of the war. First, Ukraine must recognize the right of self-determination of Crimea and the other former Ukrainian territories who voted overwhelmingly to break away from Ukraine after the US-led coup in 2014. Later, they held a public referendum and voted overwhelmingly to join the Russian Federation. After all, the vast majority of the people in those districts were ethnic Russians.

Second, Ukraine must stop persecuting its Russian population. Third, Ukraine must eliminate its Nazi government, particularly the Azov brigade which has controlled the country since 2014. Putin refers to this as “de-nazification.” To Putin, this war is a continuation of World War 2. Russia is fighting the Nazis once again.

Fourth, Ukraine must end its ban on the Russian Orthodox Church and give the people back their religious freedom.

Fifth, Ukraine must hold elections that were cancelled a year ago. Zelensky has been ruling as a dictator rather than as a president. He has banned all opposition parties and jailed his critics. Zelensky has done everything that he has accused Putin of doing. More hypocrisy.

After the 2014 coup, the new Ukraine government, subservient to the US and Europe, banned the Russian language, culture, and even the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian people in eastern and southern Ukraine then revolted. The US government always supports self-determination as long as the rebels submit to US hegemony. The US government spins this as a support of democratic principles, but in fact it is pure political hypocrisy.

So what lies ahead in Ukraine? Russia will continue the war until all of its objectives have been met. The most important of these, of course, is that Ukraine cannot join NATO, because that alone is an existential threat to Russia itself. But Zelensky and European leaders absolutely refuse to concede this point. Hence, the war will continue until Ukraine is reduced to a “rump state,” as they call it, greatly weakened, diminished, and having no outlet to the Black Sea.

As Ukraine becomes weaker, Russia continues to become stronger. Sanctions have made Russia more self-sufficient. Ukraine becomes more and more dependent on the West.

Even then, if the Rump State of Ukraine continues to insist on the right to join NATO, Russia will simply destroy it to prevent NATO’s nuclear missiles from being deployed there. At the moment, there is no end in sight to this war. In my view, the war will not end until the West fully runs out of weapons to supply Ukraine, or perhaps Ukraine will simply run out of men.