James De Burghe July 2024
Zelensky, in one of his latest begging letters to the west, claims that he has 14 brigades of new troops ready to attack the Russians if they only had the weapons that the west had promised. If we assume that he is telling the truth, which on his track record so far is unlikely, that would mean that he has 70,000 soldiers sat idle for want of weapons, itself unlikely in view of the huge Ukrainian losses in the south and south east of the country, where raw recruits 3 days fresh from conscription have been captured by Russian forces. Nevertheless 70,000 is a big enough figure to awe the west, not many western European nations could muster 70,000 active fighting troops. It is enough to fool some of the people all of the time and so Denmark sends its entire stockpiles of heavy weapons and munitions to Zelensky and France, Britain, Holland, and Germany double down on their promises of more weapons, more munitions, and more cash. Nobody dares comment that only a week previously Zelensky has boasted of conscripting 30,000 men a week, when the real figure was around 9000 per month.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine the vendors of luxury cars, luxury watches and high end jewellery continue to enjoy there near three year boom as the Ukraine elite seem to have endless millions to spend on these luxuries as well as buying multi million properties in France, Spain, Monaco, and the USA. This despite the country being bankrupt and entirely dependent upon foreign aid to pay its soldiers, civil servants and old age pensioners. The amounts paid by foreign donors are based upon figures provided by the Ukrainian government which include the full salaries of civil servants, teachers, doctors, nurses etc. Ukraine receives the money and then promptly halves the salaries of these workers and the world receives no indication of where the surplus cash has gone, it vanishes like an ice cube in a hot oven. Then of course there are the weapons that vanish in a similar manner only to turn up months later in the hands of drug cartels or terrorist groups. In a vague and offhand way the west reluctantly admits there are problems with corruption in Ukraine but goes into self denial mode when the real scale of this corruption is made known. The four hundred million dollars paid to Ukraine to build defence works around Kharkov vanished in its entirety not even minefields were laid and the Russians were able to walk in and annihilate the Ukraine conscripts defending the area.
That brings us back neatly to the beginning, will 70,000 new raw recruits make any real difference on the battlefield? The figure below shows Ukrainian and Russian losses for the first half of 2024.
Even during the first week of July Ukraine lost the equivalent of three brigades.
The reality is quite clear Ukraine has lost this war and the US/NATO plan to bring Russia to its knees has failed. All that remains to be seen is whether or not the US and NATO will have the sense to call it quits before Ukraine is finally removed from the map or whether their collective neocon ideology will drive them into a frenzy that destroys western Europe or worse still a nuclear holocaust that destroys the world.
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