After Bakhmut [Ukraine War] | The American Conservative

[Hawkeye10]

The Ukrainians destroyed Ukraine, for nothing.

Russia has never been better but they are not going to do this again.....this problem gets solved now.

[Hawkeye10]

The Ukrainians will end up with a worse deal then they almost signed last year, would have signed last year if what little remains of the UK and failing America had not sabotaged the peace agreement..

[Hawkeye10]

On the other hand as I point out often stupid SHOULD hurt....that is justice.

[Hawkeye10]

As I have pointed out recently I generally have a good deal of pity for the stupid, depending on how they got that way, and whether they are cruel or not....but the learning is essential.

Pain is a wonderful teacher of last resort.

Buckle Up America.

Here it comes.

[Hawkeye10]

Pity but not sympathy.

And fuck empathy.

[Hawkeye10]

The WOKE are awesome: "You cant possibly comprehend their life experience. You must feel their pain as if it is your own"

And people not only take their gibberish seriously, they repeat it claiming it as truth.

This is insanity, this gets punished, buckle up.

[anonymoose]

Russia is doing the best they have in a very long time. What remain of Ukraine will likely be rebuilt by the Chinese, but that requires the Ukrainians to get their heads out of their asses.

If Russia “wins” I can definitely see China rebuilding Ukraine. But Russia won’t win and neither will Ukraine .
Nobody will win this thing and the big loser will be Ukraine.

[Hawkeye10]

If Russia “wins” I can definitely see China rebuilding Ukraine. But Russia won’t win and neither will Ukraine .
Nobody will win this thing and the big loser will be Ukraine.

Russia is winning.

China is winning

America is not just losing but is in collapse, and to a point that is OK....stupid should hurt.....willful insanity should hurt a lot.

[Hawkeye10]

Callous disregard for truth/reality SHOULD get your ass kicked.

Do not forget that you were warned.

[Phoenyx]

No question there were a lot of mistakes made even before 2014, that was just one of many.

Agreed on prior mistakes, but I think we can agree that there's a pretty clear path from Viktor Yanukovych's ousting and where we are today.

I just finished reading this book, a quick read. You'd like it since it goes along with your narrative.

I searched the internet for articles from the author of your book, Benjamin Abelow and he is certainly on the same page as I am on a fair amount of things. However, based on what he's said elsewhere, it seems that he thinks that Russia could have handled things in a better way, one not needing their intervention in Ukraine. I don't see this better way that he seems to believe in. I got this from a quote from an interview he gave to Real Change:

**
[Real Change:] On the theme of truth, assuming that if we take the case that you make in the book as truth, what does it matter who got us here if we’re here? This is a hard one to formulate, because it sounds like I’m saying, “Oh, who cares?” But what I’m trying to ask is what is the importance of knowing how we got here to getting out of it or to coming to a better resolution than we’re heading towards?

[Benjamin Abelow:] I think I see where you’re going, and I think it’s an important question. Here’s what my response would be: When one has a certain understanding of a situation about what is going on or how one got there, it has very direct consequences for what steps one should be taking and what steps one thinks one should be taking in the future. So in my book I discuss how narratives shape policies. That if, for instance, if one believes that this war was started as an unprovoked land grab by a new Hitler or a new Stalin who is trying to rebuild the Russian empire or the Soviet empire in some way, and that that person is basically an unhinged madman who understands nothing but sheer military power, and that that person cannot be constrained in any rational way, and that that person is not acting out of any valid security concerns, however dangerous and misguided their actions might be, that leads to certain consequences. It means that any form of negotiation and compromise gets automatically understood as appeasement, just like Chamberlain in Munich when he negotiated with Hitler.

So if you think you’re negotiating with Hitler, any compromise is going to be understood to be appeasement. In contrast, if you come to, by an act of let’s call it “strategic empathy,” place yourself in the other side’s shoes and try to understand what valid security concerns they might be trying to address, even if their method of addressing it is dangerous and harmful and destructive and violent, then it leads to different conclusions.
**

Source:
A path to peace: Author Benjamin Abelow on ending the war in Ukraine | realchangenews.org

Problem w/ correcting past mistakes by the West is that it would ignore serious proximal mistakes made and being made by Russia. They're like a jilted lover who somehow thinks he/she will get their ex back by stalking and harassing which only further alienates the ex.

I've seen that argument before from a youtuber I generally like (I forget his name). I don't buy it though. I think that Putin's stated reasons for starting their military intervention in Ukraine were as he said: for Russia's security and to defend eastern Ukrainians who had been getting killed by the Ukrainian military for the past 8 years. The timing coincided with a fresh assault by the Ukrainian military against the people of the Donbass region.

Ukraine and Russia are done.

I certainly think that the Ukrainian people have taken a very heavy toll in this war. As to Russia, certainly it has been hard, especially for the Russians actually doing the fighting in Ukraine, but I think that they're doing a whole lot better than Ukraine on the whole.

And who will rebuild Ukraine no matter who wins? Certainly not Russia.

Actually, they've already begun. Here's an example, and this clearly isn't by a publication that is sympathetic to Russia:

After months of bombing, Russia starts rebuilding Mariupol | elpais.com

I'm now in the process of reading this one.

I took a look at the description of that book. Here's the last line of it: "With its panoramic view, Overreach is an authoritative, unmissable record of a conflict that shocked Europe to its core." I have to point out here that John Mearsheimer predicted this war years ago:

**
Analysis & prediction on Ukraine from 6 years ago: “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path & the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked.” -John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago
**

Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsin...m_6_years_ago/

There's no shortage of books on the subject of this conflict. Very complicated.

It's complicated, sure, but I think I've got the pieces fairly well understood at this point. I think Mearsheimer said it pretty well fairly recently. indi.ca lays it out in an article he published a few days ago:

**
A Bloodbath

Since resolve is roughly equal on the Russian and Ukrainian side and actually drained by the Americans, all that’s left is population and artillery. Here, as mentioned, Ukraine is fucked. Russia wins by sheer attrition, but it’s a terrible victory which merely moves their NATO problem a few years forward and few oblasts over. If you go by Western propaganda Putin started this war for fun, but if you follow the record, he actually did everything he could to avoid it. As Mearsheimer said in response to a question (and as anyone can look up)”

No, I don’t think he had any other options. I do believe that Putin was deeply committed to finding a negotiated settlement to the problem. As I said to you in my formal comments, he was deeply committed to the Minsk agreement because what he wanted to do was shut down the conflict in the Donbass so he would not have to invade. With regard to NATO expansion, EU expansion, and the efforts to make Ukraine a western bulwark on Russia’s borders, he went to great lengths to explain to the West why that was unacceptable. On December 17, 2022, he sent a letter to Biden and to NATO saying that they have to do X, Y, and Z so we can find a solution to this problem, but we refused to go along. I think that Putin was left in a position where he felt he had no choice. To answer your question, there was no other way to deal with the problem. So, I think he, with great reluctance, invaded Ukraine.

To people who say this violates the ‘rules-based order’, what is that exactly? Under the ‘rules-based order’ America ‘pre-emptively’ attacked Iraq, and Iraq is nowhere near America. Ukraine is right next to Russia and hostile troops were amassing there. The example America and NATO have set is to attack wherever you feel like based on completely made up threats. Russia more than anyone is following the rules based order because they actually were threatened by NATO and complained about it for decades.
**

Source:
https://indica.medium.com/why-russia...n-c443fc7f4e7a

[Walt]

If Russia “wins” I can definitely see China rebuilding Ukraine. But Russia won’t win and neither will Ukraine .
Nobody will win this thing and the big loser will be Ukraine.

Russia has been rounding up Russians supposedly spying for China, so there is no chance they are letting China anywhere near Ukraine, if they conquer Ukraine. Besides, the Chinese really do not want to be part of a genocide they do not profit from.

As with any genocide, there would first need to be a destruction. That lasts for about a generation. The rebuilding would happen after that. Obviously, it would be slow going.

Republicans are fond of pointing out that the Russians will "spare" the Ukrainian children. The fact remains that Ukrainian children have been sent into the Russian orphanage system, which has extremely high mortality. The Ukrainians fight because surrender is far worse than fighting.

[anonymoose]

The Ukrainians fight because surrender is far worse than fighting.

This is true.

[Nordberg]

In the end, Russia has made a friendly neighbor into a permanent enemy. Look at the cities and infrastructure they have destroyed. How many Ukrainians have died? Ukraine will not just let it go. Russia had nothing to win.

[anonymoose]

. 'More alarming every hour': Russians admit Ukraine gains

The Ukrainian army claimed to be gaining ground Monday along a wide front in the Bakhmut area.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner mercenaries were credited with seizing Bakhmut after months of battle, had harsh words for Russian regular troops assigned to hold the area. He said a nearby settlement had fallen and troops were abandoning their posts.

Pro-Russia military blogger Semen Pegov, known as WarGonzo, wrote that "news from the frontline ... is getting more alarming every hour." Pegov added that "the Armed Forces of Ukraine, unlike yesterday, are operating much more harmoniously and organized."

Alexander Khodakovsky, deputy head of the Russian national guard in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, warned that "the enemy managed to put us in a difficult position."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...s/70288023007/

[anonymoose]

Found this article via antiwar.com today, and thought it was well worth the read. Thinking others may also find it educational and perhaps worthy of a comment or 2. Quoting the introduction of it...

**
Russia turned Bakhmut into the graveyard of Ukrainian military power. What comes next?

Douglas Macgregor [U.S. Colonel, retired]

May 23, 2023

Until the fighting begins, national military strategy developed in peacetime shapes thinking about warfare and its objectives. Then the fighting creates a new logic of its own. Strategy is adjusted. Objectives change. The battle for Bakhmut illustrates this point very well.

When General Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin, commander of Russian aerospace forces, assumed command of the Russian military in the Ukrainian theater last year, President Vladimir Putin and his senior military advisors concluded that their original assumptions about the war were wrong. Washington had proved incurably hostile to Moscow’s offers to negotiate, and the ground force Moscow had committed to compel Kiev to negotiate had proved too small.

Surovikin was given wide latitude to streamline command relationships and reorganize the theater. Most importantly, Surovikin was also given the freedom of action to implement a defensive strategy that maximized the use of stand-off attack or strike systems while Russian ground forces expanded in size and striking power. The Bakhmut “Meatgrinder” was the result.

When it became clear that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government regarded Bakhmut as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to Russian military power, Surovikin turned Bakhmut into the graveyard of Ukrainian military power. From the fall of 2022 onward, Surovikin exploited [Zelensky's] obsession with Bakhmut to engage in a bloody tug-of-war for control of the city. As a result, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers died in Bakhmut and many more were wounded.

Surovkin’s performance is reminiscent of another Russian military officer: General Aleksei Antonov. As the first deputy chief of the Soviet general staff, Surovikin was, in Western parlance, the director of strategic planning. When Stalin demanded a new summer offensive in a May 1943 meeting, Antonov, the son and grandson of imperial Russian army officers, argued for a defensive strategy. Antonov insisted that Hitler, if allowed, would inevitably attack the Soviet defenses in the Kursk salient and waste German resources doing so.

Stalin, like Hitler, believed that wars were won with offensive action, not defensive operations.

Stalin was unmoved by Soviet losses. Antonov presented his arguments for the defensive strategy in a climate of fear, knowing that contradicting Stalin could cost him his life. To the surprise of Marshals Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Georgy Zhukov, who were present at the meeting, Stalin relented and approved Antonov’s operational concept. The rest, as historians say, is history.
**

Full article:
After Bakhmut | The American Conservative

Ukraine counter-offensive: Kyiv says it has liberated villages in Donetsk region
Ukraine says it has liberated three villages in the south-east of the country in the first victories of its much-anticipated counter-offensive.
Footage on social media showed Ukrainian troops celebrating in the neighbouring settlements of Blahodatne and Neskuchne in the Donetsk region.
Kyiv's deputy defence minister said nearby Makarivka was also taken.
On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that the counter-offensive had begun.
These three settlements would be the first liberated since his comments, but not the first that Ukraine has recaptured since Monday, when pockets of its forces began to advance in the country's south.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65873831