West Still Grasping at Straws as Ukraine’s Military Situation Becomes More Dire

7 July 2024 by Larry Johnson

If you want to know what the politicians and deep-staters are thinking in Washington, D.C., you should read Politico. Logic is not their strong suit, but the editors certainly have their formerly ink-stained fingers on the pulse of official Washington and the Politico articles on salient issues, such as the war in Ukraine, generally present an accurate picture of official Washington perceptions.

Consider their latest article on Ukraine — Russian troops push back Ukraine’s underequipped soldiers. Did you catch the central theme? Lack of Western military supplies explains Ukraine’s latest setbacks on the battlefield.

Ukrainian forces are pulling back along parts of the frontline under fierce Russian pressure; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed the difficult situation on a lack of weapons for his soldiers.

That’s likely to increase pressure from Kyiv during next week’s NATO Washington summit for its allies to speed up arms deliveries.

“This is not a stalemate, but a problematic situation,” Zelenskyy told Bloomberg on Thursday. “A problem can be solved if there are tools and desire. We have the desire, but the tools have not arrived. We have brigades without weapons. We have 14 brigades that do not have the appropriate weapons that have already been voted on and talked about.”

Zelensky is lying. Ukraine does not have 14 fully manned, trained brigades just standing around waiting to go into action but are forced to wait for the arrival of promised NATO weapons. Even if NATO weapons arrive, the Ukrainian brigades likely are not trained to use them. We are not talking about pistols and rifles, the weapons the Ukrainians want are air defense systems, artillery with ample rounds and missile systems.

The author of this Politico article, VERONIKA MELKOZEROVA, grudgingly concedes that Russian air assaults are wreaking havoc on Ukrainian soldiers:

The Ukrainian position was made untenable thanks to pulverizing attacks by Russian glide bombs, the press service of King Danylo’s 24th mechanized brigade told POLITICO on Friday.

Russians have been pounding Ukrainian positions with glide bombs, dropping 111 in the last day in addition to more than 4,000 artillery strikes, the general staff reported on Friday.

If Chasiv Yar is captured, Russian forces will be able to launch an offensive against the next series of Ukrainian strongholds guarding their last foothold in the Donetsk region.

It is no longer, “if.” Chasiv Yar has been captured and the Ukrainians are scrambling to find a new defensive position to try to stop the Russian offensive. Ukraine faces a tactically insurmountable problem. Russia is attacking all along the 1,000-kilometer line of contact and Ukraine does not have sufficient trained soldiers to stop them. Russia’s key advantage is air power, which it is using to pummel Ukrainian positions with massive glide bombs. Even if Ukraine could somehow muster sufficient manpower to match up with Russian numbers, it has no solution to stopping the aerial bombardment of their defensive positions.

Ms. Melkorezova fails to grasp this essential point, i.e., that Ukraine has no way to neutralize attacks by Russian fixed-wing aircraft. Ukrainian officials and military officers continue to churn out propaganda about Russia’s “slow” progress on the battlefield. Nazar Voloshyn, a Ukrainian army spokesperson, tried this spin on POLITICO.

Russians have been storming Chasiv Yar for more than six months and, despite the retreat, they have still not taken the town, Voloshyn added. He said that Ukrainian troops have prepared defenses on the other side of the canal.

Voloshyn failed to admit that even in the new “prepared defenses,” Ukraine is powerless to stop the Russian advance. Russia is in no hurry. It is content to inflict massive casualties on Ukrainian defenders while pushing forward cautiously. Despite Western hopes, Russia is not using human wave attacks and risking massive casualties among its troops. This could be dubbed Operation Anaconda. Like a giant snake squeezing the life out of its prey, Ukraine is being methodically strangled. Western reporters, for the most part, refuse to accept that fact.