Posted on 02/24/2025 6:41:30 AM PST by Starman417
This morning, I watched a video of Jeffrey Sachs explaining the facts of life to the EU regarding Ukraine. His speech echoed the sentiments I have been writing about here for a long time now. I don't necessarily agree with Sachs about Israel, but it's a great video about the Ukraine conflict.
The war in Ukraine is at a stalemate and has been for almost three years, except that Russia seems to be gaining ground more and more quickly. Things are not going well for Ukraine. It's a lot worse than the media is portraying.
Soldiers are tired and thousands are deserting
Desertion is starving the Ukrainian army of desperately needed manpower and crippling its battle plans at a crucial time in its war with Russia, which could put Kyiv at a clear disadvantage in future ceasefire talks.Ukraine is running kidnap conscription raids:Facing every imaginable shortage, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops, tired and bereft, have walked away from combat and front-line positions to slide into anonymity, according to soldiers, lawyers and Ukrainian officials. Entire units have abandoned their posts, leaving defensive lines vulnerable and accelerating territorial losses, according to military commanders and soldiers.
Some take medical leave and never return, haunted by the traumas of war and demoralized by bleak prospects for victory. Others clash with commanders and refuse to carry out orders, sometimes in the middle of firefights.
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, media and witnesses reported Saturday.There are three possible outcomes for the war in Ukraine. It goes on unabated and Ukraine likely loses everything, there is a negotiated settlement, or there is real nuclear war.Officers descended on Kyiv's Palace of Sports venue after a concert Friday night by Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy. Video footage aired by local media outlets appears to show officers stationed outside the doors of the concert hall intercepting men as they exit. In the footage, officers appear to be forcibly detaining some men.
Checks were also conducted at Goodwine, an upscale shopping centre, and Avalon, a popular restaurant.
How did we get here? When did Russia become so much more evil? Something changed along the way.
"Jake Sullivan's come back to me, saying you need Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the details to stick. So Biden's willing."Here's more
Click to view video
In response, Putin annexes Crimea.
Pro-Russian groups, supported covertly by Russia, started seizing government buildings and declaring "people's republics" in Donetsk and Luhansk. This marked the beginning of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, often referred to as the War in Donbas. The separatists, backed by Russian military and financial aid, sought greater autonomy or outright independence from Ukraine, fueled by a mix of regional identity, economic ties to Russia, and opposition to the pro-Western shift in Kyiv.The Eastern provinces- which Russia now holds- never wanted to be part of pro-Western government.
The Minsk II Agreement, signed on February 12, 2015, was a diplomatic effort to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces. It built on the earlier Minsk Protocol from September 2014, which had failed to stop the fighting. The agreement was negotiated by leaders from Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany—known as the Normandy Format—and endorsed by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).Then comes 2016. Hillary Clinton destroys relations with Russia with her vile Russian collusion hoax.
Once you understand the causal effect of the Russia collusion hoax on the Ukraine war you realize how fundamental Hillary Clinton was to the bloodshed.Jeff Carlson on X:
The Russia-Collusion hoax fundamentally altered our entire foreign policy - making it impossible to have normalized dialogue with a nuclear world superpower. The political weaponization of Ukraine for Trump's first impeachment was gasoline on the fire.Stephen McIntyre on X:
if the hoax had expired with the 2016 election, it wouldn't have mattered. The hoax matters because of actions taken by Obama administration after the election to expand the hoax through the Intel Community Assessment and its endorsement of Steele dossier hoax and, critically, the actions of Comey and FBI in 2017 to institutionalize the hoax into a special counsel even as the predicate totally collapsed. Comey and FBI have responsibility for the metastasis of a campaign dirty trick into the national flesh-eating disease that sabotaged incoming administration and poisoned international relations for a decade and counting.2016-2020Russiagate is the greatest political scandal of all time for a simple reason: the combined forces of Obama, the sitting president at the time, along with the FBI and CIA, worked to take down President Trump based on something not only fabricated—but fabricated by them. It was an attempted coup by a sitting president against his democratically elected successor. Yet here we are, eight years after the full weaponization of government to remove Trump, and not only has no one been held to account, but vast troves of critical documents remain unreleased.
Russia makes no further aggressive moves toward Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden spent the first anniversary of his inauguration in damage control with his top aides clarifying a blunder over Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine.Hours after suggesting during a press conference that the West might accept a “minor incursion” into Ukraine, Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and senior White House officials moved to clear up the comments amid criticism that Biden appeared to be giving the go-ahead for a small-scale invasion by Russia.
Currently Donald Trump is doing as Barack Obama did- trying to lower tensions and end the war because it is, as Jeffrey Sachs points out, a loser. But when Trump does it, it's awful and he's a Putin puppet. It makes no sense to insult the person with whom you seek a peace agreement but that's where democrat heads are.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net ...
For the same reasons that you don't agree with Sachs about Israel, those are reasons you should not agree with him about Ukraine -- he is not trustworthy, period.
from the article: "The war in Ukraine is at a stalemate and has been for almost three years, except that Russia seems to be gaining ground more and more quickly.
Things are not going well for Ukraine.
It's a lot worse than the media is portraying."
All that kind of talk is lies and nonsense and only means that Sachs has been drinking down the Russian propaganda Kool-Aid.
The reality is that both sides are hurting badly, and Russians attacks are down by around 25% so far this year.
Russians have not gained significant new ground since 2022.
Even for someone pro-Ukraine, we should not promote sheer nonsense. Russia is in a frontal war with Ukraine and NATO. It changed from a decapitation / blitzkrieg in February 2022, to front-line positional war / trench warfare in April 2022. Russia is in the process of destroying Ukraine's (second) army, removing all productive and war-making power from the whole of Ukraine, and eliminating NATO weapons.
Russia still relies completely on volunteers to fight this war. It has not been forced into conscription. It is not hurting badly
Promoting the lies you have for the purpose of continuing this globalist/EU/neocon inspired slaughter is immoral
The real take away is that democrats disastrously play politics with foreign policy. They get a LOT of people killed, turn whole regions over to our enemies, and they sleep fine at night because they are scumbags.
A short list of their disasters: Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Ukraine, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia. If they’d been in power we’d still have the Soviet Union.
The propaganda war is still running hot.
The reckoning that this witch is heading toward will be biblical in scope.
Ukraine war isn’t about ‘freedom’ or ‘sovereignty’ and anyone that tells you that is either foolish or lying. There is no victory for any side, except perhaps those with ties to the MIC.
The war must be stopped, and the filth aired out for the world to see.
Bkmk
Helium filled inferences
A nation's energy security is part of the calculus to a nation's military security. If Russia thinks that the U.S. has less ability/desire to interfere, combined with Russia making some money when their wars increase the price of oil and natural gas, that might be part of Putin's decision to lean a little bit towards invading Ukraine.
Even now, with Trump in office, if we build nuclear power plants we'd have to buy even more uranium from Russia than we're already doing. So if we go full boar on nuclear power, I'm afraid that we'd be in a pickle if Russia decides to hold back on selling us uranium.
She’s the root of a helluva lot of evil, isn’t she?
The Russian laughed when he saw Hitlery’s “re-set” button.
He stated that it actually said “Over-charged.”
Ukraine has reached the same point as the German Imperial Army in 1918. They’re still (mostly) holding on. The troops haven’t totally surrendered across the line, but that might be just around the corner. Time to cut a deal.
We really do need war crimes trials for past secretaries of state. Republicans not exempt, BTW.
I'm seeing a lot of sheer nonsense in your post, so where did you get it, if not from the information sewer pipes of the Kremlin's Ministry for Agitation and Propaganda?
PGR88: "Russia is in a frontal war with Ukraine and NATO.
It changed from a decapitation / blitzkrieg in February 2022, to front-line positional war / trench warfare in April 2022."
"WWI style trench war" and "attrition war" are the normal terms.
Maneuver warfare (as opposed to static "frontal warfare") was launched by: 
PGR88: "Russia is in the process of destroying Ukraine's (second) army, removing all productive and war-making power from the whole of Ukraine, and eliminating NATO weapons."
Ukrainian civilians killed in Bucha, 2022:
The Russians' own battle death-toll is running around three-to-one overall -- and in Russian "meat wave" assaults, up to five-to-one and more -- compared to Ukrainian losses.
Wounded is a different matter, and those numbers typically run three-to-one over KIAs, but "wounded" includes both seriously wounded and lightly wounded -- lightly wounded being able to return to service, at least in some form.
My point is, it's not only Ukrainians who are being attritted in attrition warfare.
Russians are also suffering as much or more, relatively speaking.
Of course, if your information sources are Russian propaganda, you won't know that, right?
On Russia's destruction of Ukraine's infrastructure, there's no doubt it's serious, with over 50% of Ukraine's electric generation and 20% of hospitals hit by Russian attacks, not to mention historical buildings and whole towns reduced to rubble.
However, Ukrainians are good at making rapid repairs and even today, in the cold of winter, Ukrainians still receive over 2/3 of their minimum electricity needs.
Battle of Bakhmut, 2023:
Ukraine's military is a different subject -- it is still roughly 1,000,000 personnel, still adequately equipped & trained and still backed by significant Ukrainian military-industrial capacity.
For examples, in 2024, Ukrainian industry delivered over 1 million air, ground & sea drones, plus 155mm artillery howitzers & ammunition, Neptune & Sapsan missiles.
Overall, Ukraine's military industry is said to supply roughly 30% of Ukraine's needs.
The rest comes from Ukraine's allies.
PGR88: "Russia still relies completely on volunteers to fight this war.
It has not been forced into conscription.
It is not hurting badly"
Of course not, if you believe Russian propaganda.
In reality, Russians have suffered more deaths and wounded than in all its conflicts since 1945 combined, and remember, the Old Soviets abandoned Afghanistan in 1989 after suffering only a small fraction of their losses in Ukraine.
Putin & Solovyov:
As for conscripts, Russians are indeed using conscripts among the 60,000 troops they've deployed in counteroffensives against Ukrainians in Kursk oblast.
As for "volunteers", many Russian troops were "volunteered" as the alternative to lengthy prison sentences for very minor "crimes".
Moscow and St. Petersburg are paying enlistment bonuses that amount to nearly two years of average workers' salaries.
The result is, Russians have been able to replace their average monthly losses in Ukraine.
But so have Ukrainians.
PGR88: "Promoting the lies you have for the purpose of continuing this globalist/EU/neocon inspired slaughter is immoral"
Drinking Russian propaganda Kool-Aid is not only immoral, it's stupidly insane.
Simonyan, Solovyov, Skabeyeva, Nordkin:
By March 1918, the German Imperial Army had defeated the Russians and were transferring over 1,000,000 troops from their Russian front to France.
These new troops allowed Germans to launch several new offensives against Western Allied forces, offensives which took about 1,200 square miles of French territory before the Allied Hundred Days Offensive began to push them back in August 1918.
That 1,200 square miles is roughly what the Russians took from Ukraine in 2024, out of Ukraine's 233,000 total square miles.
Regardless, God bless Pres. Trump for trying to bring peace to Ukraine.
Let's pray he succeeds.
But claims that Ukraine is on the brink of defeat are simply not supported by facts in evidence.
What the facts do support are suggestions that Russia's military is suffering at least as much and, indeed, far more than Ukrainians.
The best estimates I've seen put Russian military deaths overall at three-to-one over Ukrainians, and total casualties at around two-to-one -- meaning more Russian wounded die than Ukrainians.
So also, Russia's economy, on which its war efforts depend, is teetering on the verge of collapse.
Claims that Russians have made steady "progress" are just nonsense since, at a cost of hundreds of Russian casualties per square mile, they've net gained several hundred square miles since the summer of 2022 -- out of Ukraine's 233,000 total square miles of territory.
I agree with every word, except I think you are being far too kind and generous in your evaluation of our Democrats.
lol. Talk about “sewer propaganda “
Hey kettle, this is pot - you’re black!
FRiend, if you can't tell the difference between Russian propaganda and actual facts, then you are not just besotted on Russian Kool-Aid, you're addicted to it.
Thanks. The entire Sachs talk is worth listening to.
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