The US Government made Zelensky wait for his meetings at the White House and the Pentagon by more than an hour this time.
When he finally began his speech at 6:41 pm, he looked distant and agitated. His delivery felt stilted, as though he wanted to get it over with.
He later said he was exhausted from the persistent need to convince his allies’ help can defeat Russia.
“Nobody believes in our victory like I do. NOBODY,” Zelensky said.
It is only getting harder. Twenty months into the war, a fifth of Ukraine’s territory is under Russian occupation. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed.
Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened.
So has the level of international support.
“The scariest thing is the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” Zelensky says. “You see it in the United States, in Europe.”
Public support for aid to Ukraine has been in decline for months in the U.S., and Zelensky’s visit did nothing to revive it.
The counter-offensive proceeded at an excruciating pace and with enormous losses, making it ever more difficult for Zelensky to convince anyone victory is around the corner.
With the outbreak of war in [the neocolony], even keeping the world’s attention on Ukraine has become a major challenge.
President Zelensky feels “Angry.”
The usual sparkle, his sense of humour, his bawdy jokes, none of that has survived into the second year of all-out war.
Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out [like Adolf Hitler in April 1945].
Zelensky feels betrayed by the West. They have left him without the means to win the war.
But Zelensky’s belief in Ukraine’s victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic.
“He deludes himself,” his closest aides tell in frustration. “We are out of options. We are losing. But try telling him that.”
Zelensky’s stubbornness has hurt their efforts to produce a new strategy. One issue has remained taboo: the possibility of negotiating a peace deal.
Zelensky remains dead set against even a temporary truce. Because he will be left with this explosive force that can destroy him.
For now, he is intent on winning the war on Ukrainian terms.
Ukraine have ramped up production of drones and missiles to attack the Russian rear. The Russians have responded with more bombing raids, more missile strikes against the infrastructure.
Ukraine will not be able heat homes and keep the lights on through the winter.
Zelensky says: “A third world war could start in Ukraine.” That was his message in Washington.
His audience though has stopped paying attention.
The atmosphere had changed. Assistance to Ukraine had become a sticking point in the debate over the federal budget.
Congressional leaders declined to let Zelensky deliver a public address on Capitol Hill. His aides tried to arrange an in-person appearance for him on Fox News and an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Neither one came through.
Instead, Zelensky met in private with then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and lawmakers who grilled him behind closed doors.
“They asked me straight up: If we don’t give you the aid, what happens?” Zelensky recalls. “What happens is we will lose.”
Zelensky went further: “You are giving money. We are giving our lives.”
But Congress passed a bill to avert a government shutdown with no assistance for Ukraine.
Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have damaged power stations and parts of the electricity grid, leaving it potentially unable to meet spikes in demand when the winter temperature drops.
Blackouts would be more severe this winter, and the public reaction in Ukraine would not be as forgiving.
The cold will also lock down the front lines.
But Zelensky has refused to accept that.
An undisclosed senior general in charge of the counteroffensive will be fired, to ensure accountability for Ukraine’s losses at the front.
Some front-line commanders have begun refusing orders to advance. “We can’t win a war that way.”
At one point in early October, the political leadership in Kiev demanded an operation to retake the city of Gorlovka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that Donetsk has held and fiercely defended for a decade.
The answer came back in the form of a question: “With what? Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new soldiers?”
The shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. Ukraine does not have the men to man up weapons.
Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded.
According to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000.
It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years.
43 years old men in Ukraine are ill - “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”
Recruitment grounds to a halt.
Stories are spreading of draft officers pulling and beating up men off trains and buses and sending them to the front.
Those with means bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Corruption within the recruitment system became widespread.
“People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”
From the earliest days of the Russian invasion, Zelensky’s top priority and his main contribution to the nation’s defence had been to keep attention on Ukraine.
It would become a lot harder with the outbreak of war in [the neocolony]. The focus of Ukraine’s allies in the U.S. and Europe, and of the global media, quickly shifted to the Gaza Strip.
On its own, Ukraine aid no longer stands much of a chance in Washington. The White House remains committed to helping Ukraine but bundled to [the Zionist regime].
Zelensky’s arguments about shared values no longer have much sway over American politicians or the people who elect them. Achieving that gets harder as global crises multiply.
Zelensky sees no option but to press on through the winter and beyond.
“I don’t think Ukraine can allow itself to get tired of war,” he says.
“Even if someone gets tired on the inside, a lot of us don’t admit it.”
The US is the real winner. Billions in lucrative weapons contracts; Europe is now completely dependent on the US for fossil energy at greatly elevated prices
Short term gains for the long term loss of economic prosperity in Europe. In effect a reverse Marshall plan - the original Marshall plan was strategically beneficial to imperialism, its reverse will be highly damaging. A dependent Europe is a poor consolation prize for the defeat of their plot to regime change and balkanize Russia. Consolidation toward the innermost core of the empire at the expense of its vassals is a clear sign of empire in retreat. Europe will either rebel against the US or become dead weight dragging the US down. Unlike in the global south there is little in terms of resources that Europe can be milked of. Once the remaining industrial power has all been drained away to the US, Europe will become nothing more than a strain on already stretched imperial capabilities. The US presence in Europe at the same time as they are frantically trying to hold on to the Middle East and confront China in the Pacific will become untenable and unaffordable.
It still has not sunk in for most of the West the extent of what Russia’s SMO has set in motion. The only event in recent history that comes close to this level of world changing impact is the Al Aqsa Flood. Each of these two operations has been a major blow to imperialism and produced a fundamental paradigm shift in the world.
In a longer term though USA will greatly loss on this, this war allowed Russia economy to greatly reinforce itself against western hostilities and greatly decreased the influence of USA on the world. It might take a long time, but i think it will be remembered like the Marcomanni Wars, the tile starting the domino of empire’s fall.
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They should but they won’t be.
Also, does this make Ukraine deep in eternal debt to the US and EU? All those weapons and all that money were loans, correct?
Pretty much does, yeah. They will be forced to sell off even more land and any not yet privatized assets that they still have to western corporations. One way or another the vultures will claim their due.
Ukrainians are not going to be happy with this. They were essentially duped into trusting the West, like it had their best interests at heart but really it was just a money game.
Unfortunately i fear that for today’s Ukraine, much like it was for the people of Nazi Germany, the realization that they were duped can come only after they experience total defeat.
Even now as their losses mount, their economic situation gets worse and worse, and the West itself is clearly in a crisis spiral, a lot of Ukrainians continue to double down on idolizing the West and fighting to the death in the hope of being allowed to be part of it. What is happening psychologically is effectively a sunk cost fallacy on a national level. It is too painful to admit to themselves that all of the losses they suffered were for nothing, for the false promise of a prosperity that was never going to be offered to them.
Lethal aid