William Galston uses his Wall Street Journal column to throw shade on the objectives that Ukrainian President Zelensky has stated as his objectives:
As Ukraine begins its long-awaited counteroffensive, the issue of what comes next has moved to the center of discussions within the coalition. Officially, the allies are committed to aiding Ukraine for “as long as it takes.†The underlying question: As long as it takes to do what? For President Volodymyr Zelensky, the answer is clear: As long as it takes to clear Russian troops from internationally recognized Ukrainian territory. For the alliance, I suspect, the answer is different: As long as it takes for Ukrainian troops to regain as much territory as possible, with the outcome of the current counteroffensive defining a possible perimeter.
Put simply, I believe that 2023 will be the decisive year for the war—and that by the end of the year, support for a cease-fire as a prelude to negotiations will become too strong to resist, even if some Eastern European allies doubt the wisdom of this course. I find it hard to believe that the coalition is prepared to maintain its current level of effort for a trench-warfare conflict lasting as long as World War I.
This hard reality will be a bitter pill for most Ukrainians, who are committed, understandably, to liberating every square mile of their territory. Mr. Zelensky has encouraged his people to believe that this goal isn’t only right but also possible. He can’t persuade them to accept less, unless his country receives binding interim security guarantees along a credible path to accelerated membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
I have no idea how anyone can arrive at a reasonable assessment of what is going on in the war in Ukraine. If you read one set of sources, the Ukrainian counter-offensive now under way is succeeding famously; another set of sources declaims that the counter-offensive is already over, accomplishing little.
The Russians are claiming that during the current counter offensive the Ukrainians have lost 13,000 killed (plus unstated wounded, likely something on the order of 25,000) and 246 tanks (tanks, not IFV, armored Humvees…) of which 13 are German Leopards.
The Ukrainians have used US and UK supplied missiles to destroy the bridges between Kherson and Crimea. Lavrov has stated previously that in such an event Russia would regard the US and UK as active participants in the war.
Recently, several Russian leaders have said that the Ukrainian border must be moved back out of range of NATO-supplied weapons. In the case of F-16’s, that means the Polish border and no Ukraine. The Russian leaders are openly speculating about the annexation of most or all of Ukraine, or, at least, of reducing Ukraine to a small Russian puppet state. Most of Ukraine would revert to Russian rule.
It sure looks to be a SHTF summer.
PS. Less than 24 hours after Blinken assured Xi that the US does not support independence for Taiwan, which merely repeats our 50 year old policy, Biden goes out of his way to insult Xi, and erase Blinken’s diplomacy.
We have a government that is chaotic and delusional. The American people are in serious danger from the actions of the “Biden” regime.
President Biden has always been a loose cannon and frequently a “gaffe machine”. If we weren’t aware of that when he was elected, we certainly should recognize it now.