By David Sole
On Tuesday, December 12 U.S. news media dutifully reported on a “declassified intelligence report” that supposedly shows that Russia is losing badly in the Ukraine war. This unattributed document sharply contradicts all other reliable sources but conveniently was made public just as Ukraine’s President Zelensky made a visit to Washington, D.C. seeking more military aid.
Among the fantastical claims in this report is that the war “has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began” and “that Moscow’s losses in personnel and armored vehicles … have set back Russia’s military modernization by 18 years.”
Zelensky made his appearance in D.C. where he met with President Biden and a group of senators. This visit contrasts sharply with prior visits where Zelensky was given a chance to speak to a joint meeting of both the House and Senate. In fact the Republicans have been blocking further massive funding for both Ukraine and Israel amounting to over $110 billion. They are not, however, opposed to these two U.S. imperialist proxy wars but simply want more funds for curbing immigration at the southern border.
President Biden did scrounge up for Zelensky a token $200 million in emergency aid. The “intelligence report” clearly was a propaganda maneuver to try to push through the larger spending package.
The New York Times, just one day earlier, published a broad review of the Ukraine proxy war completely contradicting the “intelligence report.” The Times has been a strong supporter of the Ukraine war and usually closely follows the State Department propaganda line. But the magnitude of the Ukrainian failure in its “Spring Offensive” that dragged on for 5 months cannot be ignored.
The article admits that the “monthslong counteroffensive failed in its goal of retaking territory lost to the invading Russian army.” On the other hand “The Russian military … is rebuilding its might. Moscow now has more troops, ammunition and missiles, and has increased its firepower advantage with a fleet of battlefield drones.”
In a new development “The United States is stepping up the face-to-face military advice it provides to Ukraine, dispatching a three-star general to Kyiv to spend considerable time on the ground.” A ‘new strategy” is supposedly being developed to reverse the dire situation Ukraine finds itself in.
Unlike the phony “intelligence report” the Times reports “Ukrainian hospitals are already filled with injured soldiers. Ambulances moved back and forth from the front throughout this year’s counteroffensive. Ukraine has not released official numbers of its war dead, but the losses, officials concede, have been steep.” For example “The 47th Brigade, one of nine trained by the United States, took huge losses” in the battle for Robotyne, with “scores of soldiers hurt or killed. Their Bradley fighting vehicles, and other units’ Stryker armored personnel carriers and German Leopard tanks, were destroyed.
Ukrainian troubles also include difficulties replacing the big battlefield losses. “Recruiters have become increasingly aggressive in their efforts to replenish the ranks, in some cases pulling men off the streets and whisking them to recruiting centers using intimidation and even physical force.”
Ukraine faces a lack of willing and trained personnel, a shortage of ammunition, political division between Zelensky and his military commanders and growing opposition in the West to supplying heavy equipment. Desperate measures are sure to widen the political crisis in Ukraine as well as the crisis facing the intransigent neo-con plans of the Biden administration. A growing defeat in Ukraine cannot help but damage Biden in the coming 2024 election.
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