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Notes -
Interesting developments in Ukraine. Very unclear what's going on, but possibly US supported change of leadership within the near future. That's just a guess.
On Friday the 18th, there were two hit pieces on Zelensky, one in FT and another in Spectator. TL;DR on them is: West is disappointed with Zelensky because he appears to be using the cover of war to attack people who were fighting against corruption in Ukraine and using authoritarian means to go after politicians who aren't seen as fully loyal to him.
That's not new - Ukrainians have been muttering about precisely that for years. But Westerners are reading it now, and as has been pointed out, if you're reading it, it's for you..
There were some Ukrainian and one older Politico.EU articles with a similar tone but all much lower profile. Now the Man wants us to know Zelensky is not the greatest hero since Churchill. Why?
Then, on Saturday, in a surprising move, Zelensky called for negotiations. Here's Guardian reporting on it..
Looking at the previous round of negotiations, those were futile. Without concessions that Ukrainians, especially the nationalists find unthinkable, Russians aren't stopping. In addition last week Trump gave Russia some sort of '50 days' ultimatum.. No idea what that means- threatening tariffs on a country that has had 20 rounds of sanctions imposed on it seems odd.
The last time(end of may '25) they tried negotiating there was no agreement (Russians wanted the 4 oblasts, a little land in them they didn't have yet and ofc Crimea), which Ukraine didn't want to agree too even though they have, at present, a snowball's chance in hell of regaining any territory and are inexorably losing more at an escalating pace. Mind you, this is pretty much 'minimalism' on the Russian side. Ukrainians, just to start proper negotiations wanted an 'unconditional 30 day ceasefire', to which Russians were unwilling to agree because they thought it was just a stalling tactic to get time to build more defensive lines.
There's no reason to believe Russians are going to be in any way more amenable this time -they've taken more ground, their forces are being sustained, unlike the Ukrainian ones.
Town of Pokrovsk (~70k before war) whose supply lines have been interdicted for months now & ofc town itself has been under constant attrition is getting ever more cut off. Russians have massed forces to actually cut off the town and Ukraine doesn't have any reserves to counter that, so there's risk of the city getting wholly cut off.
So what to make of it? Seymour Hersh claims that US wants to replace Zelensky with Zaluzhny. A regime journalist calls that 'Ukrainian disinformation'..
But Hersh also claims US is trying to reach an agreement with Russia while it's still possible. Russians who are confident they can see it through obviously don't want to make any deal that'd be less than full recognition of conquered territory & Finlandization of rump Ukraine. So, why even attempt to negotiate? If Zelensky were to make peace, he'd have to fight the nationalists who won't give up this easily, go against his western sponsors who don't want the war to end either. He clearly doesn't have support to end the war.
It looks like desperate flailing from Zelensky's side. Or is the army personnel/ammo situation so critical that he expects it to be close to collapse within a month? Very little is known about how bad it is for AFU (it's all secret and they rarely say anything). About the best report is this Polish one, which says Ukraine requires 300,000 soldiers to fully staff its combat formations, and that presently there are cca 300,000 men in the trenches.
Curious about where the "escalating pace" point comes from.
I'm too bubbled up on this, I think. I occasionally see videos of Russians getting mowed down by FPV drones or the Ukrainians pulling off a strike inside Russian motherland territory, and then usually Russian retaliation, but very few updates on battle line movement.
The pro-Russians have called the slow pace of grinding village conquests by Russians an escalating pace or words to the same effect for close to three years now, the same time they've predicted the imminent collapse of the front, Zelensky getting couped and so on.
Collapse happens first gradually, then suddenly. I have said almost 3 years ago that both sides are losing the war and it is competition which one will lose it faster.
And I am not even sure that West's best toys can turn the tide*. And I suspect that is the reason why they hadn't been delivered to Ukraine. Taurus may be a nice piece of gear. But I am fairly sure Germans doesn't want to give China opportunity to figure out counter measures.
*If you think tide exists. Although it seems that the artillery theorem starts to work in their favor lately.
My suspicion is rather that the main consideration behind non-delivery of Taurus is that it weighs heavily on one side of a mutual restraint agreement. Taurus can hit Moscow; having to evacuate the Kremlin into hardened command bunkers would certainly be a symbolic and morale hit on Russia, cause friction on its entire government apparatus and possibly destabilise the country down the line regardless of what else happens in Ukraine. However, Russia also has plenty of militarily eminently sensible moves that it has not taken yet, presumably because of Western sensibilities, such as bombing Ukraine's NPPs to actually turn off the lights or turning to indiscriminate bombing of cities to obstruct the civilian economy implicitly supporting the military one (surely Ukrainian drone innovation would be hampered if its drone innovators can no longer buy a warm meal, take a shower or have a warm bed to sleep a full night in).
Would they still not take them if countries like Germany exhausted all escalation steps short of boots-on-ground? Would Germany go boots-on-ground over bombed out NPPs? (I am skeptical that this would necessarily entail significant radiation leaks. Russia could even announce their targets in advance and demand a preemptive shutdown, leaving the offense against the West to be limited to the vague notion of "nuclear terrorism", especially toothless after the latest Iran happenings.)
Unfortunately, the Western propaganda posture requires denying this (as it must be asserted that Russia is maximising for evil, and non-manifestation of any evil outcomes is strictly due to its incompetence), and therefore prevents questions like "What could Russia do if we delivered Taurus? Would it actually be a net positive for Ukraine?" from entering the public discourse.
Yep, the number of bridges across the Dnieper is quite limited, and yet they haven't been taken out, nor have the railroad hubs in Western Ukraine been covered with petal landmines.
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