The United States’ recent promise to ship advanced M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine was a swift response to a serious problem. The problem is that Ukraine is losing the war. Not, as far as we can tell, because its soldiers are fighting poorly or its people have lost heart, but because the war has settled into a World War I-style battle of attrition, complete with carefully dug trenches and relatively stable fronts.

The war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022, but already in February 2014. The civilian population of the Donbas has endured continued shelling from Ukrainian forces since 2014, notwithstanding the Minsk Agreements. These attacks on Lugansk and Donetsk significantly increased in January-February 2022, as reported by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine[1].

At the risk of treating timing as proof of connection, one has to wonder why the State Department saw fit to plant a story in the most obvious manner possible, by granting an interview with Anthony Blinken to one of the spooks’ favorite whispers, David Ignatius of the Washington Post (full text can be found here) . Not only was there no news trigger for the chat, but the interview’s premise was peculiar: talking about the endgame of the war and the US post war policy for Ukraine seems might peculiar since no resolution for the conflict is in sight.

The first anniversary of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine falls on February 24. The Russian strategy of attrition war has not yet produced the desired political outcome but has been a success nonetheless.

A growing portion of Americans think that the U.S. is giving too much support to Ukraine, as the Biden administration and other western allies have taken steps in recent weeks to escalate their backing of the country in its war against Russia.

The first month of 2023 in Ukraine was marked by the defeat of Ukrainian troops near Soledar, the ‘meat grinder’ village in the Donbass region, located near the strategic, small city of Artyomovsk (called ‘Bakhmut’ in Ukraine, per-war population 75,000). Ukraine has suffered heavy losses in fighting around the city in January. It is continuing with the capture and forced conscription of young men on the streets of its towns and cities to compensate for its large military losses in Bakhmut.

We are entering the most dangerous phase of the NATO-Russian Ukraine war up till now. The West is undertaking a major escalation in the war by increasing the lethality of weapons it is supplying Ukraine to include tanks and the largest tranche of military equipment supplied to Kiev so far.

Those now promoting the path to war with ever more, ever heavier weapons, sparing no thought for the costs, are the expression of a veritably apocalyptic mood in our society which no longer believes in real social progress

Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat?

Two of my favorite New York Times words are “shadowy” and “murky.” They are brilliantly suited to the Manichean version of our world the Times inflicts daily upon its unsuspecting readers. When The Times terms someone or some society or some chain of events shadowy or murky it scarcely has to do any reporting. Two words more or less without meaning point readers’ minds in precisely the desired direction.