“..he called on his audience to see Ukraine as a laboratory where the West can develop its future military technology..”
• Zaluzhny’s Message Pleasing For Western Elites, Terrifying For Ukrainians (RT)
[..] Zelensky’s Ukraine, as represented by his former rival and current ambassador Zaluzhny, is the wet dream of the West’s mobilizers: a personalistic, at best semi-authoritarian regime, with no free media or opposition. And the fact that they have no shame in calling that sort of state a “democracy,” complete with the usual “vibrant” civil society, proves that they would not hesitate to do the same at home. If Zaluzhny’s ideas about what should be done to society are stunningly imitative, his take on the military meaning of the Ukraine War seems at least more original, if a little bombastic. He believes that the “changes which were invented on the battlefields of the Russian-Ukrainian war” are very likely to “determine the outlines of wars and the art of war in the 21st century” and to “become the foundation of the entire global security system of the future.”
Zaluzhny is probably wrong on the facts there. As I have long argued, the genocidal slaughter committed by Israel in Gaza is more likely to leave a deeper imprint on the future of “warfare” (for want of a better term). We are already seeing attempts to derive “lessons” (all the wrong ones, rest assured) from it by Western think tanks such as the RAND Corporation and, indeed, the very same RUSI where Zaluzhny gave his speech. But let’s set that aside and focus on what the former commander-in-chief believes to be the main military lesson of the Ukraine War. Driven by the need to survive on the battlefield, Zaluzhny argues, Ukrainian forces have invented and applied new technologies while adapting their structure and tactics to them. For him, this war therefore marks a transition, starting and foreshadowing decisive future developments. In particular – and this is a key phrase in his sales pitch – these technologies are supposed to offer a way to “fight and win against stronger armies in the 21st century.” (By “stronger,” the general here clearly must mean “larger,” because if he literally meant “stronger” – as in also technologically stronger – his statement would be self-contradictory and absurd.)
Now compare this with what the new chief of the UK General Staff, General Ronald Walker had to say at the same RUSI Land Warfare Conference. Walker also delivered a stern warning about a dangerous world out there, i.e. Russia and China, and promised to triple the effectiveness (“lethality”) of British forces within a few years, without asking for more men. His miracle fix to do so: new technology that, Walker says, will enable his army to defeat much larger forces. See a difference compared to Zaluzhny’s promises? No? Exactly. Once again, the obliging Ukrainian delivered exactly what his Western listeners wanted to hear. By now, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has publicly agreed with Walker. Congrats, General Zaluzhny: bullseye in crowd-pleasing. Yet, once again, there is a less farcical side to Zaluzhny’s somewhat crude opportunism.
In essence, he called on his audience to see Ukraine as a laboratory where the West can develop its future military technology. Ukraine, he admitted, cannot “scale up” its inventions and innovations made in the midst of battle. Yet its Western “partners” – “users” would be a better, more honest term – have the resources needed for such upscaling, “but there is no applied and practical field to test them.” In other words, Ukrainians can keep dying, while the West can field-test new military technologies. And make no mistake: Zaluzhny does not believe that fewer Ukrainians will be needed because the new technologies will replace them. The whole meaning of his labelling the current war merely “transitional” and not yet one of “the future” is to strand Ukraine in the worst of both worlds where, as he admits, “the only way out may be to increase the number of human resources involved in hostilities.”
And there you have it. Ukraine’s real future, according to Zaluzhny, is one where more Ukrainians will be fed into the meatgrinder of a losing war, but on the upside, the meatgrinder will be constantly modernized and updated with the newest ways of killing and dying, compliments of the West. It is one thing that this fantasy of a forever war as a forever laboratory will not come to pass. It is another that it is the real message – if you pay attention – of Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief and current ambassador in London, and future who-knows-what, when speaking to an elite Western audience. One of Ukraine’s tragedies is being abused by the West; the other being betrayed by its own leaders.
