Elon Musk has been copping a lot of flak, the last few days, for suggesting a brokered peace deal in Ukraine. Which is a bit odd, really: because brokered peace is almost always how modern wars end. It’s almost as if a great many people want the war to grind on, costing thousands of lives and sucking up billions in Western taxpayer-funded armaments.
Six months ago, I asked this very question: How Does This Ukraine Thing End? Washington clearly doesn’t want it to — certainly not in a hurry. The Deep State really, really missed their Forever Wars. Even better, this one isn’t sending American boys home in boxes, it’s sending tens of billions of US taxpayer’s dollars to Ukraine in unmarked bags — and a whole lot of other peoples’ boys home in boxes.
The narrative at the moment is that the plucky Ukrainians are sending the wicked Russkies packing, but celebrations of Putin’s defeat may be decidedly premature. Because, if there’s one thing that emerges murkily through the fog of propaganda, it’s that Ukraine has so far done a pretty shit job of defending itself. Sure, that’s not what the media and politicians are telling us, but when have they ever told us the truth about a war before?
On the other hand, if you know how to read a map, you will see that Russia has annexed four areas of Ukraine that are roughly the size of Hungary or half the size of Great Britain.
Admittedly, that has changed somewhat in the recent offensive, but war is fluid by nature. And the fact remains that Ukraine has a lot of ground to recover, if they ever do.
By any measure, losing 15 percent of your territory is a bad result. It is even worse when you look at the military situation to start the war.
Again, the media-political narrative is of plucky little Ukraine-David standing up admirably against Russia-Goliath. The statistics say otherwise.
Ukraine had an official army of just over 600,000 men, with about half capable of combat […] Ukraine started the war with the second-largest army in Europe, and it had been fighting in the Donbas for eight years. Added to this were the ultranationalist militias that formed in 2014. These were created in the wake of the revolts in the Donbas, which were in response to Washington toppling the Ukrainian government in one of its many color revolutions.
These ultranationalist — or, more accurately, neo-Nazis — numbered in the tens of thousands. Their numbers were bolstered, a’la ISIS, by foreign fighters and American training and funding.
Adding it all up, the best expert analysis says the Ukrainians started the war with about 400,000 men ready to fight. This is why the Russians decided to start their special military operation when they did. Their analysis said the Ukrainians were planning an offensive into the Donbas in the spring.
Paranoid? Sure — but, as I also wrote months ago, Russian history for half a millennium has taught its leaders to be rightfully paranoid about invasion.
But what about that mighty Russian war machine?
Do the math and the Russian side of the war had about 200,000 men at the start of the operation and the Ukrainians had about 400,000. Further, the Ukrainians were dug into massive fortified complexes all along the line of contact. They had been pouring concrete since 2014, much of it around old Soviet defenses, built to prevent the West from ever attacking Russia through the Donbas.
It is an article of faith in modern military doctrine that an attacker requires at least a 3:1 advantage over a defender.
Instead, the Russians had a 1:2 disadvantage. So, despite having “numerical superiority, better defenses, home-field advantage, and hundreds of billions in support from the West”, Ukraine lost a massive amount of territory, possibly 40% of their army, and a great deal of those tens of billions worth of weaponry that Western taxpayers paid for.
The question is why have the Ukrainians done so poorly in this war? Probably the biggest reason is corruption. Long before the war started, long before Washington toppled the government in 2014, Ukraine was known as one of the most corrupt places on earth. The corruption was legendary. An army’s effectiveness reflects the society that backs it and, in this case, that society has African levels of corruption.
What about the territorial gains in recent days?
Once the Russians figured out that Washington would block any peace deal and the Ukrainians would not abandon indefensible positions, they shifted their tactics to grind down the Ukrainian army with their air power and artillery. If the Ukrainians mounted an offensive in one area, the Russians would fall back and commence shelling the Ukrainians taking up the new positions.
Takimag
So, it’s a matter of “watch this space”. Perhaps they’ll hold what they’ve retaken, or yet more Ukrainian lives will be frittered away to pander to Zelensky’s ego and Washington’s greed.
In the end, though, a peace will be negotiated. Sooner or later. It would have been sooner: Zelensky was open to making a deal, early in the conflict, until the Biden White House convinced him otherwise. Even just a few months ago, a Turkish-brokered peace agreement — guaranteed Ukrainian neutrality in exchange for Russian withdrawal — came close to going through. Both leaders were agreeing to meet.
But now Zelensky is back to singing Biden’s regime change song — in exchange for expedited NATO membership. Which would be, ipso facto, a trigger for world war.
But hey, at least the warbucks will keep rolling in.