WaPo Blame Game: Who Lost UKR?This two part series in the Washington Post is a must read because of what it tells the reader about the abysmal perfrormance of the White House and the Department of Defense. I found it genuinely shocking. I knew Biden, Austin and Milley were bad. I just did not appreciate how bad. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 marking the biggest screw up in history, these guys rate an 11.
The blame game about who lost Ukraine is starting. We know this thanks to the Washington Post, which managed to do some real reporting by publishing a two-part series on Ukraine’s failed counter offensive. Yep, kudos on that. The bad news? The analysis is shallow and repeats many of the false claims made by Ukrainians officials. That’s why I am here. To help you sort out the bullshit. Put on your hip waders. The bottomline is simple — the war is lost and the task of assigning blame is at hand.The key takeaway from this opening salvo is that the West knew early on that Ukraine’s counter offensive was not going to work. What is shocking, at least in my opinion, is that clowns like Austin and Milley actually believed they had viable chance to breech Russian lines. The failure of Ukraine is a consequence of two things — first, Ukraine had ZERO fixed wing air power available to employ against Russian positions and second, Ukraine was using inexperienced, poorly trained troops.The Washington Post pieces are:
Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine
and
In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls
Let’s start with the “Miscalculations” piece. There is some misdirection and BS in this piece that you need to take into account.
On June 15, in a conference room at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, flanked by top U.S. commanders, sat around a tablewith his Ukrainian counterpart, who was joined by aides from Kyiv. The room was heavy with an air of frustration.Austin, in his deliberate baritone, asked Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov about Ukraine’s decision–making in the opening days of its long-awaited counteroffensive, pressing him on why his forces weren’t using Western-supplied mine-clearing equipment to enable a larger, mechanized assault, or using smoke to conceal their advances.
Reznikov, a bald, bespectacled lawyer, said Ukraine’s military commanders were the ones making those decisions. But he noted that Ukraine’s armored vehicles were being destroyed by Russian helicopters, drones and artillery with every attempt to advance. Without air support, he said, the only option was to use artillery to shell Russian lines, dismount from the targeted vehicles and proceed on foot. . . .
The meeting in Brussels, less than two weeks into the campaign, illustrates how a counteroffensive born in optimism has failed to deliver its expected punch, generating friction and second-guessing between Washington and Kyiv and raising deeper questions about Ukraine’s ability to retake decisive amounts of territory.
Reverend Mother, the gig is almost up. Even "Quad D" Denys the Menys has apparently taken some time off to rethink how to rebrand given that there just isn't much grifting left in the ol' Ukraine propaganda business.