Understanding the Scale and Brutality and the Global Stakes of the War in Ukraine

by Larry Johnson

Take a good look at the map above. It shows clearly that fighting is taking place from the Black Sea in the south to the border of Belarus in the north. That is roughly 1,000 miles. Now, ask yourself, who has the manpower, weapons and resources to press the fight along this broad front? Simple answer, only Russia.
 
Russia still has at least 500,000 troops in reserve that have not been committed to the battles. Ukraine does not. Ukraine is running out of artillery shells and neither the United States nor NATO have the ability to replace and sustain Ukraine’s rate of fire, according to the Washington Post and the New York Times. Russia, notwithstanding Western claims that it too is running dry, continues to show otherwise:

Russian Forces launched a massive kamikaze drone strike against targets in Ukraine this evening.
 
Targets have been hit  in #Novomoskovsk in #Dnepropetrovsk region, #Konstantinovka, #Dnepropetrovsk and #Kiev region. Explosions have also been reported in #Zhytomyr, #Rovno, #Khmelnytsky and #Volyn region.

The situation on the ground, as I reported in my previous post, is beyond grim.

Ukraine has demoted a top battlefield commander after he admitted his unit had been decimated in fighting around the city of Bakhmut.
 
The battalion commander, known by his call sign Kupol, gave an unusually frank assessment of Ukrainian losses in an interview from the front lines earlier this week.
 
He revealed that all of the original 500 soldiers in his unit had either been killed or injured, a rare acknowledgement from inside the Ukrainian ranks, where losses are kept strictly confidential.
 
The Ukrainian high command is at pains to present a positive spin on the increasingly bloody defence of the East. US officials have estimated that the Ukrainian army may have taken 120,000 casualties compared to 200,000 by the Russian army.
 
Kupol told the Washington Post this week that the Ukrainian army training was often poor and that some of the rookie replacements didn’t know how to throw a hand grenade or fire a rifle.

No amount of spin can cover up the catastrophic casualties Ukrainian troops are suffering because of unrelenting Russian artillery strikes. Demoting officers who dare to tell the truth about the situation is but one more symptom of the growing dysfunction and ineffectiveness of the Ukrainian military.
 
There also is the canard that Russian soldiers are incompetent and the Ukrainians are masterful warriors. More nonsense. Watch the following video. You will see a Russian soldier, Alexander Maltsev, creep up on the bottom of the screen on a well defended Ukrainian trench. He is outnumbered at least six to one. Also pay close attention to the Ukrainian soldiers. They are clearly poorly trained and undisciplined. Look at them firing their riles using the old “pray and spray” method — i.e., hold the rifle above your head, do not aim and empty your clip. Maltsev, by contrast, does it right. He aims and makes accurate shots, killing at least two of the Ukrainian troops and taking the rest as captive. Shades of Sergeant Alvin York.
 

 
The war is not just being fought on the battlefield. On the eve of next week’s summit between Russia’s President Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping the International Court at the Hague announced a false, unfounded indictment of Putin for alleged crimes against children. Pure garbage, but smearing people is the only weapon the West apparently has left to launch against Russia. The Western media was filled with reports declaring Putin is a War criminal and stating that foreign leaders should shun him. Curious thing about indictments — they are allegations of criminal conduct and must be proven in court. But most in the West are not waiting for that judicial process to run its course, they already have decided that Putin is guilty as charged.
 
This will have no detrimental effect on the Putin/Xi summit next week. If anything, it will remind Xi that the so-called “rules based international order” is a one-way street that is only used to serve the interests of Washington. Like the American founders in 1776, Putin and Xi understand that if they don’t hang together they will hand separately if the West gets its way.
 
Russia’s incredible Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, called out the staggering hypocrisy of the West in leveling such charges:

The experiments of the “enlightened West” on sex change in children, the persecution of doctors who believe that there are only two sexes, the perverted interpretation of juvenile law, the destruction of the institution of the family, the replacement of “mom” and “dad” with degenerate terms “parent A” and “parent B”, the propaganda of perversions among minors – all these are not annoying accidents, but a large-scale policy in NATO-centric countries. And those states that, like Hungary, are trying to resist within the Alliance, are being subjected to real persecution.
 
Sanctions and harassment against Leonid Roshal (Noted pediatritian, Chairman of International Charity Fund to Help Children in Disasters and Wars) and Maria Lvova-Belova (Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia) are signs of the dehumanization of liberal dictatorships.

Zakharova’s comments will resonate with parents in the Western world who still believe in science, particularly biology, and are fighting against the deviant agenda trying to erase the reality of the differences between men and women.

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