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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.
My knowledge of Ukr politics begins and ends at ‘I support whatever the UGCC wants’, so this is an honest question- does Zaluzhny have sufficient internal support to force through a peace agreement over the nationalist’s objections, or to expand the draft until Ukraine is fully staffed again? Could that be the reason?
As for Zelenskyy, making high risk maneuvers is far from unknown when leaders sense a direct threat to their power.
@Dean
Elections in Ukraine are cancelled indefinitely with US State Department approval, so barring a military coup Zaluzhny can’t force anything through. The State Department might be changing its tune though. The war is going very badly for Ukraine. Budanov was supposed to be the hard-headed butcher that would fight to the last Ukrainian, so if he wants to tap out that means the situation must be very dire. A catastrophic, total Ukrainian collapse would make NATO a lot harder to defend because the Russians would be sitting right on the Polish border. The Balkans would also be at much higher risk. It would be better for NATO to force Ukraine to give up everything east of the Dneiper and freeze the conflict for another ten years. That at least gives Europe time to rearm.
and how it would be supposed to be changing things?
Kaliningrad is a thing, Belarus is effectively absorbed as far as military staging goes.
US State Department is not adding here much, elections are suspended in accordance of Ukrainian constitution on account of having a war
Remember, the US is the hyperagent. Other countries don't make and execute their own decisions- other countries either act in accordance with American permission, or are forced to respond to American impositions.
The whole Ukrainian govt is on US and EU payroll, about half their money comes from the West vs Ukrainian taxes.
"So I'm on trial for war crimes. Where is the justice? We are all individuals, making our own decisions. I never forced anyone to do anything. This prosecution is based on spooks, naïve conceptions of conspiracy and a simplistic understanding of a complex world of interrelated cause and effect."
"Well you did pay the soldier's wages. You provided them armaments, training and intelligence. You're responsible for their actions, your support is implicit."
Thank you for demonstrating a failure mode.
Do you feel like these snarky comebacks add anything, impress or convince others?
The galaxybrained 'you're just projecting your own ignorance and whenever you point out the silliness in what I'm saying - it's actually you that's wrong and each time you point this out it only shows how wrong you are' approach was fun but it's gotten a bit tired by now. You need a new routine.
And I am sure that- in your superiority and/or boredom- you will no longer waste your time responding to any of my posts that are not directly to you ever again.
In return, I will continue to strive to do the same for you.
Your example was actually a fair skit for showing the limits of a hyperagent mentality.
The short discussion, as much of a caricature as it starts as for Agent A, is rather more damning for Agent B, the supposed reasonable party and hyperagent proxy. By literally having a discussion that does not include an intermediary Agent C who perpetrated unspecified war crimes, whose existence is acknowledged but also dismissed by Agent B in favor of prosecuting Agent A on implicit rather than even explicit responsibility, it demonstrates the hyperagent theorist failure and inclination to unjustly allocation punishments and sanctions on the basis of convenience and accessibility, rather than agency is the nominal crimes.
There are interesting angles, historical examples, and differences/hypocrisies that could easily be pointed at. After all, at no point does Agent B ever actually assert that Agent A had any knowledge of, issued any direction for, had any operational control over, or ever voiced any support for. Agent B's accusation and prosecution of Agent A as the responsible party could run word-for-word even if Agent C actively deceived, defied, circumvented, and even defected from Agent A in order to commit the war crimes. Agent A is responsible merely for having supported Agent C at some point, not for having supported Agent C for the purpose of the atrocity alluded to. There is no criminal intent required, or even awareness.
The allocation of responsibility to Agent A by Agent B is fundamentally uninterested in the agency, moral responsibility, and moral culpability of Agent C. Agent B merely treats Agent A as the hyperagent on the basis of providing support, regardless of the degree of support (A is not claimed to be the decisive supporter), the exclusivity of support (A is not claimed to be the only supporter), or the restrictions that were attempted (A is not claimed to have taken not mitigations). Agent B, in doing so, begins to validate the nominally farcical accusation by Agent A that Agent B is naive, simplistic, and ignoring cause and effect.
If it was intentional, it was well done, with multiple levels. If it was not, that was my error, and I apologize for confusing you.
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