Down to the last Ukrainian

The situation in Ukraine looks to be a lot worse than is generally being reported, I don’t follow the day-to-day ebb and flow of the capture of unpronounceable villages in Eastern Ukraine, but I did recently read the Inspector Generals’ report to Congress¹. This report is produced by a branch of the U.S. government so is going to be hard to dismiss it as “Kremlin propaganda”. President Trump’s recent decision to suspend military aid has of course made the situation even worse. Based on the report’s findings it would seem that Ukraine needs a peace settlement as soon as possible. The Russian side seems prepared to settle on Russian terms including Ukraine’s neutrality and acceptance of the referendum results in the four formerly eastern Ukrainian regions.

Rather than see sense, the progressive European and British political class seems to want to keep funding Ukraine whilst completely ignoring on-the-ground realities. Like all major progressive political projects like open borders, net zero and cultural Marxism the decision to prosecute a proxy war with Russia will likely inflict enormous damage on what remains of Western societies.

If it looks like a proxy war then it’s a proxy war

From the outset, using Ukraine as a bludgeon to beat Russia with was always going to end badly for Ukraine. It appeared that many in the Washington Deep State understood this, but didn’t care so long as Russia was degraded².

I don’t claim to know anything about military matters, occasionally small forces can defeat large forces, as happened in the Soviet Finnish Winter War but the laws of conflict suggest that a significantly larger force will eventually beat a smaller force. This cold hard logical allowed the great Professor Mearsheimer to correctly predict in 2015 that Ukraine’s decision to take a hard-line approach with Russia meant that “the end result is that their country is going to be wrecked.”

Of course, the Ukrainians have fought very courageously especially given the enormous military disparity particularly in air and sea power. But some hard realities are now being to emerge and that is despite the provision of EUR 128 billion in military aid (allocations basis) from the West³. Russia is still moving westwards and gaining ground, in fact according to this chart, the rate of acquisition of Ukrainian territory is steadily growing⁴.

The Inspector General’s report includes some stunning statements including this “Additionally, the number of Ukrainian deserters may be more than 100,000. Ukrainian commanders told reporters that, in some cases, entire units abandoned their posts, leaving defensive lines vulnerable and accelerating territorial losses.”

To put that number into context, the entire armed forces of the United Kingdom were around 153,000 in 2020 and Ukraine’s entire pre-war armed forces were around 298,000.

It is possible to create an estimate for total Ukrainian losses from the report covering dead, seriously wounded, missing in action plus the 100,000 deserters referred to above. This gives a total estimated loss of 363,000 Ukrainians dead or incapacitated.

The report acknowledges that the Kursk operation where Ukrainian forces invaded the Southwest corner of Russia in order to slow Russian advances down and to create a bargaining chip to swap for parts of occupied Ukraine has failed. “Ukraine’s Kursk incursion did not achieve its objective of stopping Russia’s incremental advances along the Donetsk front in Ukraine.”

Perhaps the most significant statement though is that the best that the Ukrainians can hope for is to slow down Russian advances “Ukraine’s maneuver forces conducted a theatre-wide area defense, using terrain and obstacles to blunt and counter attacking Russian formations while ceding terrain. However, the UAF remains unable to counterattack Russian forces at scale or resume a theatre-wide offensive posture.”

This bleak assessment is particularly surprising given the U.S. government has an incentive to produce a rosy picture.

France and the United Kingdom to the rescue?

In the last few days, President Trump has dramatically paused the flow of U.S. military aid to Ukraine. That is not something that I predicted given that the proxy war aim of degrading Russia was a widely accepted objective in Washington. I suspect that the move may be more to do with a personal animosity towards Ukraine which was closely involved in one of the impeachment cases against him and because Ukraine was largely a Democrat project.

The U.S. accounted for 50% of the EUR 128 billion in military aid provided to Ukraine, based on figures from the Kiel Institute. Even the most biased war mongering Western “think tanks” have had to acknowledge that the withdrawal of U.S. support is an existential threat for Ukraine⁵.

In terms of troop numbers, the involvement say of the United Kingdom would not represent a major threat for Russia given that the entire armed forces of the United Kingdom (153,000) are less than half of the losses that Ukraine has already suffered (363,000 estimated above)⁶. Also the involvement of North Korea troops on Russia’s side would seem to have changed the calculus somewhat as the country has the third largest armed forces in the world at just under 1.5 million people (even if poorly equipped).

A busted flush

I explained in that last post, that progressives view Ukraine versus Russia as some kind of cosmic struggle between Saint Zelenskyy and Dark Prince Putin⁷. As such the progressives are willing to ignore any basic facts or logic in their desire to virtue signal. Europe could possibly fill the financial gap left by the U.S. and perhaps delay a Ukrainian loss until say summer 2025. Adding some boots on the ground would push that date back to maybe 2026, but to turn the tide against Russia would require the whole of EU. However, every survey I have seen shows very strong opposition to getting involved militarily in Ukraine⁸.

Even in the unlikely event of EU mobilising a large number of troops, Russia could then seek to involve more North Korean troops and of course escalate to tactical nuclear weapons.

My understanding is Russia will continue to insist on a number of key terms (which are likely to get more onerous as they move westwards). These terms include.

• Neutrality for Ukraine.

• Recognition of the referendums that took place in the four oblasts.

• Move NATO offensive weapons back away from strike distance of major Russian cities.

• Release of Central Bank and other assets.

It is important to remember that although the Trump administration’s stated policy is simply to avoid pointless Russian and Ukrainian deaths it is useful to remember that their recent federal budget proposal includes increased miliary spending. I am guessing that the money being used in the proxy war against Russia will be diverted to new proxy wars either against China or Iran. I don’t believe that President Trump is a bleeding-heart peacenik.

European Leftists will likely keep the war going, but based on the Inspector Generals’ report they will shortly run out of Ukrainians.

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Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was one of the first people to highlight the flawed nature of the Imperial COVID model, he is a founder of the Thinking Coalition which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach (www.thinkingcoalition.com)

1. https://www.stateoig.gov/uploads/report/report_pdf_file/oar_q1_dec2024_final_508_2.pdf

2. https://cepa.org/article/its-costing-peanuts-for-the-us-to-defeat-russia/

3. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/

4. https://x.com/TopLeadEU/status/1866059927329935568

5. https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukraine-now-doomed

6. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.TOTL.P1

7.

8. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2023-01/Global%20Advisor%20-%20War%20in%20Ukraine%20.pdf