By David Sole
In a sharp slap at his proxy, Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden canceled plans to attend a scheduled meeting about Ukraine in Ramstein, Germany set for October 12. The “Ramstein Group” formally known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group includes all 32 member states of NATO as well as 25 other countries who have been encouraging and supporting Ukraine’s war against the Russian Federation over the past two and a half years. The October 12 meeting would have been the 15th in person meeting of the group.
On October 8 the White House issued a statement saying the President needed to stay home to “oversee preparations for and the response to Hurricane Milton…” Biden’s pullout led to the cancellation of the entire affair. This weak excuse should not fool anyone. It comes at a time that Ukraine is losing the war across the line of contact and is unable to fill its military ranks or restock its military supplies.
Ukraine’s President Zelensky had visited the U.S. and Britain in recent weeks in an attempt to get permission and assistance in launching long-range ballistic missiles deep into Russian territory. But neither imperialist power would agree. Biden and Prime Minister Keir Starmer have been supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine for years along with other NATO nations. However, Russian President Putin recently warned that launching these missiles could only be done by direct U.S. and NATO personnel accessing the satellite data and programming the missiles. Putin stated that doing this would put the U.S. and NATO in a state of war with Russia.
The military situation continues to deteriorate for Ukraine. The fall of Ukraine’s “fortress city” of Vuhledar (now known in Russian as Ugledar) has opened the road to the encircling of several other Ukrainian held towns on the way to a major battle for Pokrovsk in the coming days or weeks. There are reports that Ukrainian defenders of another “fortress,” Toretsk, are being withdrawn.
If Pokrovsk falls to a Russian onslaught, the Russians have to decide whether to divert these forces northward to aid in the final push to drive Ukrainian troops out of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). More likely would be to drive straight westward, crossing the border of the DPR toward Pavlohrad and the city of Dnipropetrovsk, which sits on the Dnieper River, a main artery of commerce in Ukraine.
This latter option may be indicated by reports that a powerful Russian army in the south is beginning to move northward along the Dnieper River toward Ukrainian held Orkhiv. Taking Orkhiv would open the way to the large city of Zaporizhzhia, less than 40 miles away. An offensive push from the southern Russian army and the forces pushing west from Pokrovsk and then southward from Dnipropetrovsk (about 43 miles from Zaporizhzhia) would create a serious military and political crisis for the Zelensky regime.
Cancellation of the Ramstein Group meeting, however, does not mean that the Western imperialist powers are willing to allow their proxy to sue for peace. On the contrary, escalation is the only language they are speaking. NATO member France has pledged to speed up delivery of advanced Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets to Ukraine in the first quarter of 2025. No one considers that these fighters can or will turn the tide of the war.
Ukraine’s population is definitely getting war weary, so much so that finding replacements for those killed or wounded on the front lines is getting harder. Ukraine is turning to aggressive “press gang” tactics. CBC News reported on October 12 “Ukrainian military recruitment officers raided restaurants, bars and a concert hall in Kyiv, checking military registration documents and detaining men who were not in compliance…Officers descended on Kyiv’s Palace of Sports venue after a concert….Video footage … appears to show officers stationed outside the doors of the concert hall intercepting men as they exit. … officers appear to be forcibly detaining some men.”
It should come as no surprise that Ukrainians are reluctant to fight in this proxy war. Corruption across Ukraine has long been rampant. The National Agency for Corruption Prevention issued a report on October 9 analyzing 392 complaints filed by the public. The agency’s report examined those Ukrainian officials. Only one was reported “free of discrepancies and violations.” A startling 30% had the “sum involved exceeding the criminality benchmark of $32,500.” Ukraine is clearly having difficulty convincing its own people that they should kill and die for this corrupt government.
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