{"id":240507,"date":"2023-07-31T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=240507"},"modified":"2023-07-31T05:28:11","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T04:28:11","slug":"opera-buffa-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/07\/opera-buffa-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Opera Buffa in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Russian President Vladimir Putin drives a construction truck across the road-and-rail bridge over the Kerch Strait linking mainland Russia to Crimea during its opening ceremony on May 15, 2018. On July 17 the bridge was attacked for the second time by the Ukrainian military, using a pair of submersible drones.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As the war drags on, delusions mount, with no end, or victory, in sight.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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29 Jul 2023 –<\/em> Let\u2019s take a look at recent events in the Ukraine war from the point of view of those in the American intelligence community who don\u2019t feel they have the ear of President Joe Biden but should.<\/p>\n

On July 17 Ukraine attacked for a second time one of Russian President Vladimir\u2019s proudest achievements: the 11.25-mile Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia. The 3.7 billion dollar bridge, with separate spans for auto and train traffic, was opened for auto traffic in May of 2018 and for trucks five months later, with Putin himself driving the first one to make the crossing.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made it clear before the Russian invasion early last year that he considered the bridge a legitimate military target. Ukraine initially attacked the bridge last October, using a submersible drone, but it was fully repaired within seven months. The most recent attack, by a pair of submersible drones, killed a couple who were driving across when the explosion occurred and injured their child. Damage to one of the auto spans was severe.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration\u2019s role in both attacks was vital. \u201cOf course it was our technology,\u201d one American official told me. \u201cThe drone was remotely guided and half submerged\u2014like a torpedo.\u201d I asked if there was any thought before the bridge attack about the possibility of retaliation. \u201cWhat will Putin do? We don\u2019t think that far,\u201d the official said. \u201cOur national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There\u2019s no adult supervision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putin responded to the second attack on the bridge by ending an agreement that enabled Ukrainian wheat and other vital food crops, stymied by the ongoing war, to be shipped from blocked ports on the Black Sea. (Before the war Ukraine exported more grain than the entire European Union and nearly half of the world\u2019s sunflower seeds.) And Russia began steadily intensifying missile and rocket attacks in Odessa, whose initial target list has expanded from port areas to inner city sites.<\/p>\n

The official said there was a lot more than grain and sunflower seeds flowing into Europe from Odessa and other Black Sea ports: \u201cOdessa\u2019s exports included illegal stuff like drugs and the oil that Ukraine was getting from Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point, with the Ukraine counteroffensive against Russia thwarted, the official said, \u201cZelensky has no plan, except to hang on. It\u2019s as if he\u2019s an orphan\u2014a poor waif in his underwear\u2014and we have no real idea of what Zelensky and his crowd are thinking. Ukraine is the most corrupt and dumbest government in the world, outside of Nigeria, and Biden\u2019s support of Zelensky can only come from Zelensky\u2019s knowledge of Biden, and not just because he was taking care of Biden\u2019s son.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are some in the American intelligence community, the official said, who worry about Putin\u2019s response to the recent Ukrainian drone attacks in central Moscow. \u201cWill Kiev be next?\u201d<\/p>\n

The official depicted the American position on the war in Ukraine as confounding and unrealistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president and [Secretary of State] Tony Blinken keep on saying, \u2018We are going to do what it takes for as long as it takes\u2019 to win the war.\u201d He added that the administration has been negotiating for months for the purchase of what may amount to as much as a ten-year supply of 155-mm artillery shells from the Pakistani army that could, ironically, extend the life of a losing war effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore people are going to die in this war, and what for?\u201d the official asked. \u201cThe American and Ukrainian military are no longer making any predictions\u201d about future success in the current counteroffensive. \u201cThe Ukrainian army has not gotten past the first of three Russian defense lines. Every mine the Ukrainians dig up is replenished at night by the Russians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality,\u201d the official said, \u201cis that the balance of power in the war is settled. Putin has what he wants\u201d: access to Crimea and the four Ukrainian oblasts\u2014Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia\u2014that were annexed by Russia last September 30. \u201cUkraine does not have them and cannot get them back.\u201d Meanwhile, Putin\u2019s end game in Odessa, if there is one, is not known.<\/p>\n

Despite all the unknowns, the official said, President Biden \u201cshould have told Zelensky that he was on his own when it came to the counteroffensive. The balance of power\u201d\u2014against the out-gunned, out-trained, and out-manned Ukrainian forces\u2014\u201cwas a settled issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Secretary Blinken, who publicly dismissed any talk of ceasefire negotiations before the current counteroffensive, accused Russia, according to a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0report, of \u201cweaponizing food supplies.\u201d He similarly accused Russia of \u201cweaponizing\u201d its vast supply of natural gas before President Biden authorized the destruction last fall of Russia\u2019s two Nord Stream gas pipelines to Germany.<\/p>\n

On Sunday during a televised interview with CNN\u2019s Fareed Zakaria, Blinken turned recent history on its head, declaring that in terms of what Putin \u201csought to achieve\u201d in the war with Ukraine, he had \u201calready lost.\u201d \u201cThe objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, its sovereignty, to subsume it into Russia. That failed a long time ago. Now Ukraine is in a battle to get back more of the land that Russia seized from it. . . . It is tough. The Russians have put in place strong defenses. . . . The Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their future, for their country, for their freedom. I think that is the decisive element and that\u2019s going to play out.\u201d In fact, any future settlement with Russia, if one is negotiated, will almost certainly include new leadership in Kiev and also acknowledge Russian control over the four annexed oblasts. Zelensky, if he survives, is known to own a house in Forte di Marmi, a beach town in Tuscany, which he purchased for $4.2 million in 2015, four years before he became president.<\/p>\n

The noisy public split in late June between Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the paramilitary Wagner Group, and Putin captured the hearts and minds of many American newspaper editors and reporters who viewed it as a serious challenge to Putin\u2019s leadership. I have not been able to learn whether there was a formal CIA assessment of the event, but there are serious intelligence experts on Russia who concluded that it was much more than the undoing of a difficult leader who seemed to be at odds with Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin is a Russian fundamentalist but he was aware that the Wagner Group was full of potential dissidents who did not consider him to be enough of a fundamentalist for them,\u201d the official said. \u201cThey wanted him to take Ukraine and Western Europe and drive all the way to the English Channel. Putin was not into it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow would President Biden react if China had established a base in Tijuana, Mexico, and met there with all the left-leaning governments of South America? That\u2019s how Putin would be expected to react to the meeting earlier this month of all the NATO chiefs in Vilnius, close to the Russian border.\u201d<\/p>\n

The official added: \u201cDon\u2019t think it\u201d\u2014Putin\u2019s exposure and entrapment of the failed Wagner Group counter-terrorists\u2014\u201cwasn\u2019t planned. Not a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russian history teems with such entrapments.\u00a0Just ask Leon Trotsky.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Seymour M. Hersh\u2019s investigative journalism and publishing awards include one Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. Hersh won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest for his 2003 articles <\/em>\u201cLunch with the Chairman,\u201d \u201cSelective Intelligence,\u201d and<\/em> \u201cThe Stovepipe.\u201d In 2004 he exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces; in 2005, he again received a National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club award, the National Press Foundation\u2019s Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism award, and his fifth George Polk Award, making him that award\u2019s most honored laureate. He lives in Washington DC.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2023 Seymour Hersh<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 scheerpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHow would President Biden react if China had established a base in Tijuana, Mexico, and met there with all the left-leaning governments of South America? That\u2019s how Putin would be expected to react to the meeting earlier this month of all the NATO chiefs in Vilnius, close to the Russian border.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":229121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[1104,417,1035,1126,1050,2462,91,2571,112,818,278,961,2200,95,70,1594,481,172],"class_list":["post-240507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-balkans-eastern-europe","tag-arms-trade","tag-bullying","tag-eastern-europe","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-nato","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-pentagon","tag-proxy-war","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-us-empire","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240507"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240646,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240507\/revisions\/240646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}