Russia Closing The Noose On Ukrainian Troops

It is astonishing how quickly Western attention shifted from the war in Ukraine to the war in Israel. As I noted in some recent interviews, Ukraine’s Zelensky is frightened and stunned by this reversal and is trying desperately to stay relevant and attract Western attention. Good luck with that. The media prefers to focus on the new narrative of Arab hordes sweeping down on Israeli civilians rather than try to come up with excuses for Ukraine’s failure to even breach the first line of the Surovikin defense. One visible sign of Zelensky’s panic — he changed his wardrobe. Now, when he appears in public, instead of wearing his Fidel Castro costume (i.e., sporting an Army green t-shirt or sweatshirt and tactical pants) he is now outfitted like a younger, shorter version of Johnny Cash. Black is his new fashion choice.

With Western eyes glued to the Middle East, Russia is on the offensive a pushing Ukrainians back all along the line of contact. Russian war correspondent Marat reports:

For example, yesterday near Kleshcheevka, on the right front of the Bakhmut defense, our paratroopers from the 106th division, which had been holding the defense here for more than four months, unexpectedly launched a counterattack, occupying several enemy strongholds. The same is true in the Rabotino sector – the 1430th and 70th regiments, who heroically fought here for many days, have been conducting regular counterattacks for the third week.

On the one hand, this speaks of the good shape that our army is in, and on the other hand, it completely dispels the myths of Ukrainian propaganda about our great losses.

Units that suffer heavy losses are simply physically unable to instantly go from defense to offense. Even if they are regularly replenished with new recruits.

And now, in fact, this sends the Ukrainians into an ever greater panic – they are beginning to understand that with their tactics of endless suicidal counterattacks and obstinacy on every piece of land, they provoked Russia into creating an army of such power that is now beginning to roll them into flat cakes.

Once again, the enemy provoked this himself.

Ukraine can forget about any new mass infusion of weapons from the United States or NATO. Israel is now at the head of the line and gets first choice. One other sign that things are going from bad to worse for Ukraine — the Institute for the Study of War is admitting grudgingly that Russia is advancing. The ISW is still in the business of painting a pig’s lips with shiny gloss and are trying their darnedest to down play Russian success. But the facts are these. Ukraine’s forces have been decimated over the last four months and there is no ready reserve in sight to replace the killed and wounded soldiers that were bloodied as they hurled themselves against Russian defensive positions.

NATO is not ready to cut the cord, but it also is not in a position to shower Ukraine with a limitless supply of tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers and ammunition. What was once a flood of support is turning into a trickle.

The West is now caught in the trap of trying to sustain two proxy wars without the industrial clout to even fully supply one. I expect the U.S. Congress to act quickly to get military material to Israel. There is wide bipartisan support for that. Not so with Ukraine. A growing number of members of Congress, mostly Republican, are questioning the wisdom of sending precious Himars, Patriot batteries and tanks to a Ukrainian Army incapable of pushing the Russian backwards.

I discussed these issues last Friday with Nima while attending my high school 50th reunion. Yes, I’m an old guy.