A Ukraine Miscellany XI: Escalation, Ticking Time Bombs, and Endgame (I)

There has been an escalation. This is a point on which I think all parties would agree. But as to the nature of that escalation, there are sharp divisions based on one's understanding of events.

The Kharkiv Offensive has proven a major blow to Russia – a severe defeat with both on the ground strategic ramifications and even political ones for the Putin regime. He's under a great deal of pressure from forces within his government that want to escalate the conflict even while the new mobilisation is leading to unrest on the streets. NATO (and its proxy in Kyiv) has the momentum, and in an attempt to salvage a failed campaign, he's making rapid moves to at least consolidate his gains in the East and leave a contiguous land-zone or land bridge between the Russia's southern districts (oblasts) and the Crimea.

And yet these areas (from the Donbas to the Crimea) are considered part of Ukraine and there's a brewing showdown as once they are formally annexed by Moscow – Putin will view an offensive on those territories as a red line, an attack on Russia itself.

In Western media coverage Putin increasingly comes off as unhinged and as guilty of reckless conduct and nuclear sabre rattling. And yet the same media will neither contextualise his statements, or the larger story. Nor will they report on the rather salient comments from leaders like Silvio Berlusconi who insist that Putin was forced or manipulated into this war by the West, let alone the words of Western leaders that have openly spoken of not just a goal to weaken Russia by means of the Ukraine War but even a desire to dismantle the Russian Federation – the real agenda that's quietly been on the table since the early 1990's. Other wars are being planned as we speak.

Putin is accused of genocide even while despite the massacres and brutality of the war there is no evidence of an attempt to wipe out the Ukrainian population. Not even close. Indeed, we just witnessed a large prisoner swap – a development all but unthinkable by a regime committed to eradicating an enemy population. The very notion is further ridiculous as the line between Russian and Ukrainian identity is so blurry as to make the prospect an impossibility. The attempts to compare Putin to Hitler are endorsed by hacks and aimed at the ignorant.

Putin's concerns are ridiculed and Western media is replete with commentators and politicians who dismiss his apprehensions and try to paint him as deranged – even while other officials, military strategists, and ex-military commentators speak openly of goals that in every way validate Putin's greatest fears. And this is true even with regard to nuclear weapons as before his invasion – the Kyiv leadership was calling not just for NATO membership but for nuclear weapons to be placed in Ukraine. This is in addition to the constant meddling and militarisation of Putin's borders.

And yet they speak as if it's all dreamed up in his mind. It's amazing to behold but then when you hear the media and the commentators opine and wax eloquent on these points – you almost want to throw the radio across the room. It's like listening to a Trump speech – lies upon lies and all expressed with the most nauseating self-righteous and self-satisfied tones. The past is rewritten and a convenient but completely fabricated and deceptive metanarrative is invoked. But people drink it up.

Listening to the news in recent days is taking me back twenty years to the propaganda campaigns and madness of 2002.

One is reminded of a spoiled child provoking a dog. Eventually the dog lashes out and if the child is injured, the immediate or visceral response on the part of many is to blame the dog. Those with a little bit of wisdom and insight (and who witnessed the lead up) will understand the dog is not entirely to blame and the real instigator and aggressor is the child.

Biden recently delivered a rather menacing (if absurd) speech at the United Nations General Assembly but no one in the Western media challenged his assertions. Everything he accused Russia of – namely of violating the UN Charter and invading a sovereign country, were charges easily levied at the United States and NATO many times over. But American commentators in all their hubris and hypocrisy will insist the US is 'exceptional' – in other words it is above all ethical considerations and judgment and its motives and actions (however misguided and destructive) are necessarily 'good'. The bottom line is this – what we say, goes. We are right by virtue of who we are not because of what we do.

The media's campaign is relentless. I burst out laughing while listening to the BBC the other days as some hack commentator lamented Putin's mobilisation as it will primarily affect the poorer classes in the country. The well-to-do and Putin's allies won't be affected, but the regular folk are the ones that for economic and social reasons end up going off to fight.

What a ridiculous commentary. Is this any less true when it comes to the West? Has this 'expert' bothered to study the composition of the military in the UK, let alone the United States? The American enlisted forces are dominated by lower-class elements, and minorities that are seeking a way out of their economic and social struggles. And it is they who are called upon to kill and be killed on America's battlefields. This is not a situation unique to Russia. The media and its paid commentators seem to know nothing of history and have deliberately chosen to ignore its rather inconvenient lessons.

The hour is late and the Kharkiv Offensive was launched due to a number of pressing events and situations coalescing at present and in the near future. It was launched in the face of pending crisis. The Offensive by the way was NATO funded, armed, and coordinated. The Ukrainians pulled the triggers (or most of them) and shed the blood, but the operation was run out of Washington, London, and Brussels. They trained and armed the troops and undoubtedly provided the battle plans, aided with logistics, and coordinated things like intelligence and targeting. NATO is at war with Russia and everyone seems to know this except the Western public and its political leadership which continue to play a self-serving denial game.

Putin is scrambling to consolidate and hold on to his gains because the West is trying to topple his government by forcing it into a crisis – one in which the other actors in his regime will move against him, either on the basis of military defeat, military crisis, or popular unrest and social upheaval. The clock is ticking for Vladimir Putin and you can be sure Western intelligence agencies are active on the ground despite the fact that Putin has sought (with a rather heavy hand) to suppress all organisations with Western contacts – potential conduits for just this sort of activity.

The sanctions regime imposed by the EU and the US has largely failed and yet winter is coming and Europe's economy is going to scream and there is going to be widespread anger. Not everyone is buying the Putin blame game and already some politicians are getting nervous. Between inflation and energy shortages, it is going to be a winter of discontent and a gateway for Right-wing parties seeking power. Meloni's fascist party stands poised to take over in Italy. She's officially on board with the NATO agenda but (as signalled recently by her ally Berlusconi) not everyone within the Italian Right is enthused about this war. Right-wing gains have been made in Sweden, and there are rumblings throughout Central and Eastern Europe that have the potential to generate fissures in the NATO/EU programme against Moscow. As the winter drags on, the already tenuous united European wall against Putin may start to crumble.

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