Ukraine’s 45-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back his expected date of victory over the Russian Fderation to July 2024, assuming that the U.S. supplies Ukraine with enough cash-and-weapons, especially F-16 fighter jets. When Zelensky asked and got U.S., British and German tanks and armed personnel carriers in May, he said the war would be over by year’s end. Now the overly optimistic Zelensky pushes the date out a year into the middle of the 2024 U.S. election. Zelensky has no clue when, if ever, he’ll drive Russian troops out of Ukraine. Zelensky recently railed against U.S. and European press reporting about the slow pace of his vaunted counteroffensive, something he said would end the war by year’s end. Now it looks like his time horizon has been extended by at least eight months, but, more importantly, another arbitrary deadline having zero predictive power.
Zelensky faces a relentless Russian assault, not at Zelensky says, to conquer Ukraine, but to diminish the threat to the Russian Federation of endless arms supplies from the U.S. and NATO. Zelensky ranted yesterday about NATO’s refusal to fast-track Ukraine for NATO membership, citing 80-year-old President Joe Biden who said Ukraine needs to end the war with the Kremlin before considered for NATO membership. Biden’s words were a slap-in-the-face to the overly zealous Ukrainian leader that thinks the sacrifice made by Ukrainian soliders were to protect European democracy. Biden has said a much, about how Ukraine defends in its battle with the Kremlin European democracy. Not one NATO country believes that bankrupt, war-ravaged Ukraine defends anyone other that Ukraine from the 18-month-old Russian invasion.
Zelensky changed his tune after calling NATO “weak” for not admitting Ukraine into the alliance. Told Ukraine could join the alliance until the war is over, Zelensky refuses to move the conflict to the peace table, rejecting any-and-all peace proposals that don’t demand all Russian troops leave Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin, 70, has no intent of leaving Ukraine, especially in Crimea and in Donetsk and Luhansk, two Donbas provinces where Russia has had troops since 2014. U.S. and NATO officials want to deny history that a Feb. 22, 2014 CIA-backed, pro-Western coup toppled the pro-Kremlin government of Viktor Yanukovych. Putin, who hosted the Sochi Winter Olympics at the time, was forced to annex Crimea March 1, 2014 a week after the Sochi games ended.. Ukraine’s pro-Western government knows there were consequences to the CIA-backed coup.
Putin’s Feb. 24, 2022 invasion would never have occurred had Yanukovych still been in power. So when NATO considers recent history, they should note that Putin’s invasion was a consequence of the Feb. 22, 2014 Maiden Revolution, the pro-Western coup that drove Yanukovych from Kiev. U.S. and NATO officials state inaccurately that Putin wants to conquer Ukraine, erase Ukraine’s sovereignty, when it fact he wants the U.S. and NATO to stop supplying Kiev lethal weapons to attack Russia. U.S., NATO and Kiev sell the war as a Russian land-grab, when Putin warned for months before the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion that he wanted to discuss with Biden new security arrangements. Biden ignored Putin’s requests for months until after the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion. Biden’s funding for the Ukraine War has wrecked decades of détente with the Russian Federation, leaving U.S.-Russian relations in shambles.
Zelensky changed his tune at the Vilnius NATO summit, after British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said he showed no gratitude for the U.K.’s help in Ukraine’s war effort. Once Zelensky accused NATO of being “weak” for not admitting Ukraine, Zelensky did an about face, expressing thanks for U.S. and NATO support. Ukraine’s 42-year-old Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, usually on the same page as Zelensky, said he hoped F-16 would be complete in March 2024. “Traiing [for the F-16s] should begin in August, possibly early September,” Kuleba said. “I think that if by the end of first quarter next year, the first F-16 fly in Ukraine air, piloted by Ukrainian pilots, then it will be according to schedule,” saying nothing of any concrete timetable for winning the Ukraine War. Kuleba mirrors the dismal reality that there is no real timeline for Ukraine to end the war with Russia.
Ukraine hopes by the time of the next NATO summit in Washington, D.C. next year, Ukraine will make enough progress on the war to warrant NATO membership. But if Ukraine hasn’t ended the war, it’s unlikely that NATO would extend any kind of membership. Even with an end to the Ukraine War, NATO would have to determine whether membership would trigger another Russian attack. Zelensky, Kuleba and his top general Valery Zaluzhny don’t want pressure from the West about when the war would eventually end. “This is not a show,” Zaluzhny said. “It’s not a show the whole world is watching and betting on anything. Every day, every meter is given by blood,” Zaluzhny said offering no guarantees of any timelines. U.S. lawmakers, looking calculate billions in expenditures to Ukraine, need to know how much the U.S. Teasury must pay in the foreseeable future.
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 an Operation Charisma.
