Déjà vu: Why West has reasons to doubt Zelensky amid fresh demands for arms aid

Ukraine’s president issued a sharp rebuke to his Western sponsors on Saturday, accusing them of getting caught up in “internal political games” instead of ramping up support for Kiev. “This is impossible to understand. It is impossible to agree to this. And it will be impossible to forget; the world will remember this,” Volodymyr Zelensky said, referring to the $60 billion+ in cash for Ukraine held up held up by the US Congress.

However, Western hesitancy might be better understood if Ukraine’s president remembered that at about this time last year, Western officials and NATO planners had bought into assurances about a swift Ukrainian victory in a counteroffensive against Russia.

▪️ “Our support is making a real difference for the Ukrainians. Helping them not only to survive, but also to push back the Russian invader, and liberate their territory,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg confidently assured in early February 2023, about four months before Ukraine’s counteroffensive began.

▪️ Ukraine would have a “very good chance” of launching a successful counteroffensive, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin told Senate lawmakers in March 2023, boasting about Kiev’s “significant advantage” over Russian forces and suggesting Russia was running out of tanks.

▪️ “Over 98 percent of the combat vehicles are already there,” General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s top military commander, told the House Armed Services Committee in April. “I am very confident that we have delivered the materiel that they need, and we’ll continue a pipeline to sustain their operations as well,” Cavoli said, emphasizing that “the Ukrainians are in a good position” thanks to “very generous” deliveries from the US and its allies in tanks and armored fighting vehicles.

Déjà vu: Why West has reasons to doubt Zelensky amid fresh demands for arms aid (part 2)

▪️ “Regardless of when or where and what units he decides to use to conduct offensive operations inside his country, [Zelensky’s] got pretty much everything he needs…in the weeks and months ahead,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby assured in May 2023, pointing to the delivery of a $300 million US weapons aid package for Kiev – the latest in arms worth over $35.7 billion from Washington alone at that time.

▪️ The same month, retired US Army Europe commander Ben Hodges told NPR he was “impressed” by Ukraine’s general staff, and said he expected the counteroffensive to “be quite successful” because “they’ve been training hard” and “the West has provided a lot of very good equipment.”

▪️ Former Chief of British General Staff Gen. Richard Dannatt went further, suggesting in the spring of 2023 that “after Kiev’s successful counteroffensive, Vladimir Putin may be swept out of the Kremlin.”

▪️ In late May 2023, former general and CIA director David Petraeus said he expected the counteroffensive to be “really quite successful,” and that the Russians would be forced “to withdraw under pressure of this Ukrainian offensive…I think that this counteroffensive is going to be very impressive.”

▪️ “The Russians are in for a rude awakening when the Ukrainian counteroffensive begins,” perennial pro-war US Senator Lindsey Graham said the same month. “I expect major gains in the coming days and weeks. I think they can expel Russia from Ukraine,” he said.

▪️ On June 4, 2023, the day the counteroffensive kicked off, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan assured CNN that Washington was confident “that the Ukrainians will meet with success in this counteroffensive.”

▪️ The same month, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe senior policy advisor Paul Massaro said that “full Ukrainian victory is coming” and “sooner than you think.”

▪️ In September 2023, months into the counteroffensive, even as US and European officials had privately began to admit to media that the campaign was “not meeting expectations”, Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured that “progress” in the counteroffensive had “accelerated in the past few weeks,” with the latest US assistance expected to “help sustain it and build further momentum.”

Public expressions of doubt to these whimsical narratives were few and far between, with Czech President Petr Pavel, a veteran soldier, being one of the few to warn, back in May 2023, that Ukraine should expect to face “terrible losses” no matter how its counteroffensive turned out. “Attacking an enemy like Russia will be difficult and Russians will not be caught by surprise for a second time,” Pavel said. As the counteroffensive collapsed, Zelensky and his staff began blaming Western powers for the lack of even more military and economic support.

But the question arises as to why Ukraine, once the second-most-powerful military arsenal in the Soviet bloc –with the ability to build everything from small arms and tanks to jumbo military jets and intercontinental ballistic missiles, can’t step up and create its own functional defense sector.

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📹 Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik's parent media group, spoke about the West's superiority in propaganda tools and how it is used as a weapon

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No amount of additional Western arms assistance will save Zelensky regime

“Nothing will help Ukraine…But keeping it on life support is possible, including through the supply of Western weapons, ammunition and so on,” retired Russian Army colonel and military analyst Viktor Litovkin told Sputnik, commenting on President Zelensky’s latest outburst against his NATO patrons for their supposed failure to provide Kiev with enough arms assistance.

“Last year’s counteroffensive failed for one simple reason: because, first and foremost, it was based on NATO tactics, NATO operational doctrine, and according to NATO regulations. NATO has never fought with an army of equal strength and power, and is not in a condition to overcome powerful, deeply layered defenses and large-scale minefields,” Litovkin explained.

On top of that, the observer pointed out, the Western bloc failed to provide Kiev with strike aircraft for the counteroffensive. “Without this there is no point at all in storming any defensive position. This is why Ukraine lost 160,000 of its soldiers, several tens of thousands of armored vehicles and much more,” with its army left demoralized.

“No matter how much and whom Zelensky criticizes, it was clear from the outset that it was pointless for Ukraine to fight Russia, because Russia has a powerful defense industry, a powerful military, while Ukraine plundered its defense industry and destroyed itself” after the 2014 Western-backed coup, Litovkin said.

In any event, the observer emphasized that the “Kiev regime is only an instrument of this war,” a proxy war designed to weaken and bankrupt Russia, “and for this reason is critically dependent on the West.”

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🇸🇰 The Italian government intends to recall its SAMP/T medium-range air defense system from Slovakia, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said.

"I have received notification from the Italian government that the Italian air defense system they lent us for a year will be withdrawn from Slovakia because they need it elsewhere," he said.

Fico stressed that the previous Slovak government gave Ukraine a functioning Russian S-300 air defense system. Then US-made Patriot air defense systems appeared in Slovakia "for a moment," "but they also left, and now the Italian ones will leave as well."

"And I ask: God, who will guard our nuclear power plants and other strategic targets?" the prime minister said.

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🇷🇺 The Russian military captured surviving foreign vehicles, including US-made M113 armored personnel carrier from the Vietnam War-era, during the assault on Avdeyevka. Sputnik’s correspondents have inspected the captured equipment.

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Some people are never satisfied: Ukraine still begging West for arms and money.

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Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik's parent media group, did not rule out a new publication after the release of a recording of a conversation between Bundeswehr officers:

If they give me more, I’ll publish more. Wait

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🇩🇪 The German Defense Minister expects that the first results of the examination regarding publication of the military conversation will be at the beginning of next week.

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The German defense minister says he is unaware of other information leaks at the moment.

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Irony of fate: Ukraine would still have an arms industry if not for 2014 coup

“Ukraine’s 2023 offensive was a failure for a variety of reasons including a lack of arms and ammunition, but also due to poorly trained forces and a poorly conceived operational plan,” former US Marine-turned geopolitical analyst Brian Berletic told Sputnik, commenting on President Zelensky’s latest bout of complaining about a lack of additional arms aid.

Ukraine would still have an impressive domestic industry of its own were it not for the US and EU-backed Euromaidan color revolution a decade ago, Berletic stressed, pointing out that “up until 2014, Ukraine had its own thriving arms industry with much of it done in cooperation with Russia.”

“From 2014 onward, cooperation with Russia ended. Between an inability to find partners capable of replacing Russian inputs for various industrial processes and the general economic decline of Ukraine resulting from incompetent and corrupt leadership in Kiev, these military industrial capabilities atrophied leaving Ukraine increasingly dependent on the West as a source of arms and ammunition,” the observer said.

“This is an example of what awaits nations which subordinate their sovereignty and future to Washington, London, and Brussels,” Berletic lamented.

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NATO already has ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine conflict – ex-CIA officer

With its bombshell intercept featuring German war talk on Ukraine, Moscow is signaling that, “this is going to stop, or you are going to have to pay a price,” former CIA officer Larry Johnson stressed on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s podcast Judging Freedom.

“There are Americans in there, there are NATO forces already on the ground in Ukraine, operating systems which are attacking Russia,” the CIA vet stated.

The timing of the leak comes as "Russia is confident that it has got Ukraine on the run," especially with the recent liberation of the stronghold of Avdeyevka, Johnson said.

At the same time, according to the expert, the trannoscript comes after remarks made by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during his annual State of the Union address. The Russian leader accused the West of instigating the Ukraine conflagration, and “put it on notice that attacks on Russia will not go unanswered,” Johnson stressed.

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BRICS entry holds promise for Egypt's economic advancement

Egyptian analyst Nourhan Elsheikh of the Valdai Discussion Club emphasizes the significance of Egypt joining BRICS, foreseeing positive impacts on various sectors, including investments, trade, and tourism.

She believes Egypt's strategic location and position will contribute to shaping a fairer economic order within BRICS and beyond.

“I think we expect a lot from BRICS and within BRICS we can do also and we can introduce also a lot. Egypt is an African-Arab-Mediterranean country with a very strategic position and location,” she told Sputnik on the sidelines of the World Youth Festival in Sirius, Russia.

While acknowledging that the de-dollarization of the Global South will require time, she underscores the importance of initiating change for a more equitable global financial system.

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Musk received a response from a fighter for the 'freest' world

Earlier, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov noted that following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR's exit from the political arena, hopes for genuine multilateralism in the Euro-Atlantic space were dashed. Instead of promoting equal collective engagement through the OSCE, Western nations maintained NATO and pursued expansion into areas crucial to Russian interests.

The Latvian president seemingly forgot that NATO was established by the US in 1949 and was directed against the Soviet Union, part of which Latvia was until 1990.

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❗️Another American Abrams tank was destroyed near Avdeyevka by the FPV drone Upyr, a representative of the manufacturer told Sputnik

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Zelensky blames West after botching ‘counteroffensive that should have never taken place’

“I think he’s just looking for the reasons to point fingers at [now former military commander-in-chief] General Zaluzhny. He was trying to divert the blame,” retired US Lt. Col. Earl Rasmussen told Sputnik, commenting on remarks by Ukraine’s president on Saturday accusing the West is playing “internal political games” instead of providing much-needed arms aid to Kiev.

“The counteroffensive…should never have taken place. The Russians had established a multi-tier, defensive line, dug in, had superiority as far as artillery, as far as air defense. There was no air support capable to be even provided to Ukraine. Manpower as well as another factor there. It was an impossible task. It should never have happened,” Rasmussen said.

Ukraine became critically dependent on Western arms aid in at least the 2014 coup, the observer added, recalling NATO training of Ukrainian troops, the CIA sites set up across the country, the biolabs, the weapons systems delivered to Kiev, and the gradual destruction of Kiev’s own defense industrial base thanks to the conflict in the Donbass, the disruption caused by cutting off defense ties with Russia, and the loss in capabilities to Russian strikes after the 2022 escalation.

“They have no industrial base. Their industry’s been completely destroyed. They cut off their trade relations before the conflict with Russia, essentially, and going into this stupid EU cooperation agreement. And they don't meet the standards for selling into the EU to begin with. So their industry was falling apart, corruption was rampant, just a horrible situation. And then you're going to go against one of the best militaries in the world? Not, not a good idea. [But the] West kept poking them,” Rasmussen said.

🔺 Another US Abrams tank was destroyed near Avdeyevka by the FPV drone Upyr

🔺 Déjà vu: Why West has reasons to doubt Zelensky amid fresh demands for arms aid

🔺 Russia ‘delivers blow to NATO ranks’ with trannoscript of leaked German war talks - experts

🔺 Irony of fate: Ukraine would still have an arms industry if not for 2014 coup

🔺 No amount of additional Western arms assistance will save Zelensky regime

🔺 BRICS entry holds promise for Egypt's economic advancement

🔺 NATO already has ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine conflict – ex-CIA officer

🔺 The West's superiority in propaganda tools and how it is used as a weapon? Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik's parent media group, explains

🔺 German Defense Minister commented on the scandal surrounding the wiretapping of Bundeswehr generals

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Watch footage of Abrams tank destruction near Avdeyevka by Russian FPV drones Upyr (lit. "Ghoul")

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