The release of U.S. intelligence documents exposes Western disinformation about Ukraine’s “probable” victory in the war.
A headline in The Washington Post last week was alarming to someone who has only seen coverage of the Ukraine war in Western media: “U.S. doubts Ukraine counteroffensive will yield big gains, leaked document says.”
Essentially, what mainstream media reported about Ukraine has been a deceptive narrative, implying that Ukraine is winning the war and is about to launch an offensive that will lead to a final victory. According to the story, Western media audiences have been misled about the war’s course.
In the second paragraph of the article, it is made very clear that the leaked documents clearly show that the much anticipated Ukrainian offensive will be a complete failure — “a marked departure from the Biden administration’s public statements about the vitality of Ukraine’s military.”
As reported by The Washington Post, the leaks are likely to “embolden critics who feel the United States and NATO should do more to push for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.”
The process has already begun in that regard. In an article published in Foreign Affairs, former State Department officials Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, point out that “it is difficult to feel sanguine about where the war is headed.”
In “The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine: A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table,” they state the following:
“The best path forward is a sequenced two-pronged strategy aimed at first bolstering Ukraine’s military capability and then, when the fighting season winds down late this year, ushering Moscow and Kyiv from the battlefield to the negotiating table.”
“The article does not mention the leaks, though it was published after the disclosures made clear that the Ukrainian offensive, intended to break through Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, would fail,” according to a Zero Hedge report.
Filled with the usual talk about Ukraine having better “operational skill” than Russia, and that the war will end in a “stalemate,” the piece represents an emerging strategy in the West: namely that before negotiating, Ukraine needs to launch its offensive to gain back some territory, “imposing heavy losses on Russia, foreclosing Moscow’s military options, and increasing its willingness to contemplate a diplomatic settlement.”
But that is a tall order. Moscow would be unlikely to negotiate at the end of the Ukrainian offensive, particularly as the article admits the “Russian military’s numerical superiority” and that Ukraine is “facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.”
One month after Moscow intervened in Ukraine, Moscow was ready to cut a deal with Kiev, but the West, who is determined to prolong the war in order to weaken Russia, quashed the deal. As Ukraine is at its weakest moment and Russia is poised to make significant gains on the battlefield, why would Moscow accept a deal now when Ukraine is at its weakest moment?
According to the Foreign Affairs article, “This diplomatic gambit may well fail. Even if Russia and Ukraine continue to take significant losses, one or both of them may prefer to keep fighting.”
“Come the end of this fighting season,” as it is stated in the article, “the United States and Europe will also have good reason to abandon their stated policy of supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes,’ as U.S. President Joe Biden has put it.”
How will things progress from here? What will it take to get there? “NATO allies would start a strategic dialogue with Russia on arms control and the broader European security architecture.”
“Incredibly this is what Russia was asking for before its February 2022 intervention and it was rebuffed by NATO and the U.S. Now a Foreign Affairs article is recommending it,” Zero Hedge continued in its commentary.
Is there no better sign that Ukraine has lost this war?
The strategy of Ukraine going ahead with an offensive it knows will achieve little is Kiev’s last gasp — unless delusional neocons continue to outmaneuver the realists in Washington.
Most importantly for the West, the failure of this last-gasp attempt would serve as a way for it to escape the disaster it has created for itself: namely, the backfiring of the economic war on Russia; the failure of the information war in the non-West and ultimately defeat on the battlefield in its proxy war.
There has already been a signal from French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who are both pushing this strategy, that it is all over for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy. The Wall Street Journal provided this information.
“And then ten days later U.S. intelligence provided a story to The New York Times that a pro-Ukraine “group,” and possibly the Ukrainian government itself, was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, a way of distancing the U.S. from Kiev as the exit ramp looms into sight,” Zero Hedge adds.
