President Joe Biden, 80, and Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky have not figured out that the Ukraine War is a stalemate with the Russian Federation. Russia’s 70year-old President Vladimir Putin knows the meaning of a war of attrition, a grinding conflict designed to dishearten the enemy, abandon all the vast plans of future victory. Biden embarrassed himself yesterday in Warsaw, Poland saying that Putin would “never win” the Ukraine War. What Biden didn’t say, an equally prescient revelation, is that neither will Ukraine. If you look at the last year’s of combat, Ukraine has watched its dilapidated infrastructure bombed into the Stone Age, something Zelensky didn’t consider when he decided in March 2022 to take on the Russian Federation. No one told Zelensky he had to go to war with the Kremlin to meet his military objectives.
One years of fighting on Feb. 24 shows that Zelensky lost 25% of Ukraine’s sovereign territory to the Kremlin over the last years. All Zelensky does now is play catch-up, trying to reclaim as much territory as possible before an inevitable peace process ends the conflict. “One year later, Kiev stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” Biden said yesterday in Warsaw’s Royal Palace Gardens. Biden’s words tell the real story of a failed U.S. policy waging proxy war against the Kremlin, wrecking decades of cooperative relations, with generations of Soviet and Russian diplomats, trying to control the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons. Former President Jimmy Carter, 98, now faced with hospice care, dedicated himself to nuclear nonproliferation during his four years in office. Biden watched yesterday Putin cancel the 2010 START treaty, the last U.S.-Russian arms control pact.
When Biden says Putin will never win in Ukraine, he’s not admitting that neither will Ukraine. All the talk about more lethal weapons pouring into Kiev won’t give Kiev a victory over Russia anytime soon. With our without more U.S. weapons, Zelensky faces years of unending warfare with the Kremlin. Biden and Zelensky must hoodwink themselves into success, thinking that Putin did not conquer Ukraine in the early days of the conflict, not hanging on in a clear stalemate. Biden and Zelensky ignored Putin’s demands early on in the conflict, asking Kiev to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and Russian sovereignty over Crimea. Both Biden and Zelensky rejected Putin’s demands and proceeded to fight a bloody proxy war against the Kremlin for the last year. While putting up a fight, Biden and Zelensky have practically destroyed Ukraine, left thousands of civilians homeless.
Biden has been backed by the U.S. media and a bipartisan war hawks in Congress, ready to spend anything, including sacrifice Ukraine, to toppled Putin’s 22-year reign of power. War hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) would sacrifice all of Ukraine to get back at Putin. Biden falls into the same category, beaten by Putin when Obama and Biden funded an eight-year proxy war to topple the Damascus regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Obama and Biden’s proxy war killed over 500,000, displacing 15 million to Turkey, neighboring countries and Europe. So when it comes to vendettas, Biden and Graham would spare nothing to get back at Putin. But when all is said and done, Biden and Zelensky know they can’t win in Ukraine, anymore that Putin can conquer its former Soviet satellite. Biden and Zelensky must tell themselves that war was worth the price.
Biden and Zelensky have sold the war as defending democracy against the Russian tyrant but everyone knows that NATO, not Ukraine, exists to protect Western democracies, including former Soviet satellites. Telling a joint session of Congress Dec. 21, 2022 that Ukraine is not a charity case but an investment in protecting democracy in Europe displayed, for all to see, that Zelensky could sell ice to the Eskimos. Zelensky knows that bankrupt and war-torn Ukraine can’t protect democracy, that’s the job of NATO. Zelensky has begged but got nowhere in his bid to fast-track NATO membership, also rebuffed by the European Union [EU]. Biden’s 64-year-old Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Statff Gen. Mark Miley said Nov. 16, 2022 that there’s no military solution in Ukraine, only a political one. Biden heard the same thing from 52-year-old Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
Countries like Chechnya and Afghanistan know that Russian wars of attrition don’t resolve anytime soon. Both lived through the nightmares trying vanquish the Russian Federation, only to find out it ends badly. Biden and Zelensky continue to pretend that things will turn out differently in Ukraine. All indications, as Haines aays, point, to a stalemate, exactly the scenario Putin wants. Pouring more lethal weapons into Ukraine only prologs the agony for both sides, dug into a destructive war of attrition. If Biden and Zelensky take consolation in battling the Kremlin to loggerheads in Ukraine, then it’s a good excuse. “If neither side can win outright—which I think we can all is not going to happen—then it’s sort of not clear what the path ending the war is, absent some change in policy that helps both sides overcome impediments to negotiation,” said Miranda Priebe, Rand Corporation analyst.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
