In the spring of 2022 Ukraine and Russia were ready to start Turkey/Israeli brokered peace talks. But, facing the partygate crisis at home, Boris Johnson bullied Ukraine to fight on. Almost two years later the Ukrainians have lost nearly all of the meagre gains they made in the much vaunted 2023 “counter offensive.” And on all fronts Russia is now advancing, taking out the“fortresses” Bakhmut and Avdiivka and village after village across the line. The gains are measured in hundreds of metres a day in each area where fighting is underway. They are not huge on a daily basis and each day sees body bags shipped home to both Kiev and to Moscow on a horrible scale. But Stevie Wonder can see that it is Russia that is advancing. However…
Boris has to justify the tens of billions of Western cash sent to Ukraine and the vast numbers of dead, injured or captured Ukrainians to assuage his guilt from stopping even the chance of peace in Spring 2022 and thus, visiting Kiev, he claims to be “more confident than ever” that Ukraine will win. On the ground the average Ukrainian soldier is 44 and as Ukraine simply runs out of soldiers, conscription will soon be expanded and ahead of that more men are fleeing to the West though this is illegal. There can be no basis for BoJo’s claim or that of Call Me Dave a couple of days ago.
It is as if, somewhere in the East of Ukraine someone found an old Soviet PR playbook and translated it into English. Push a lie often enough in Pravda and eventually the great unwashed will believe it.
For what it is worth I do not see a catastrophic Ukrainian collapse although I may be wrong. I am not sure that the Russians want to push on West of the Donbas into areas which are overwhelmingly Ukrainian. And even if they wanted to, the Ukrainians will be well dug in and so the cost of making very slow gains will be enoromous both financially and in terms of dead and maimed young men being shipped back to Mother Russia. So the idea that the Russians might sweep through Kiev and then onto Lvov and then into Poland and the Baltic States by early 2025 ( one of many Daily Mail scare stories) is for the fairies. But equally the idea that Ukraine has a greater than ever chance of winning is just a fantasy.
Is Boris that deluded or does he think that we so easily fooled?
