Winners and Losers From the Ukraine War
If Russia has been badly bled and Ukraine has suffered irretrievable losses of land and soldiers, who then are the winners? And who benefits from a continuation of this war, which will bring thousands more dead and wounded Russians and Ukrainians?
“There never was a good war or a bad peace,” wrote Ben Franklin at the end of the American Revolution.
But that depends on the war-makers and the causes for which they fight.
Six months into the war in Ukraine, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, when he could not get the U.S. or Kyiv to rule out admission of Ukraine to a NATO alliance aimed against Russia, who appear to be the winners and who the losers?
While Russia has made gains in the east of Ukraine, the Donbas and in the South adjacent to Crimea, captured Mariupol, and turned the Sea of Azov into a Russian lake, its losses have been massive.
The invading Russian army of February was stopped in its tracks outside Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv. That army failed to capture Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, close to the Russian border. It failed to capture Odessa, the third largest city and Ukraine’s major port on the Black Sea.
According to Western sources, Russia has suffered 75,000 to 80,000 casualties and is desperately recruiting, even in prisons, to find troops to replace the dead and wounded lost in Ukraine.
Putin wants to expand his army by an additional 137,000 troops.
The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the cruiser Moskva, has been sunk. A thousand tanks and armored personnel carriers have been destroyed.
The reputation of the Russian army as a near-invincible force in any land war in Europe has been shattered.
Politically, Russia has isolated itself from much of Europe, been hit with severe sanctions and watched as Europe and NATO unite against it.
Sweden and Finland have abandoned their historic neutrality to become the 31st and 32nd members of NATO.
Is Ukraine then the winner of this war?
After all, the war that the Ukraine of Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fought against a larger Russia for its freedom, independence and territorial integrity has won the admiration of much of the world.
Yet, in two clashes with Russia, in 2014 and 2022, Ukraine has lost 20% of its territory in its east and south, and Kyiv is not going to retrieve these lost lands before winter comes.
But if Russia has been badly bled and Ukraine has suffered irretrievable losses of land and soldiers, who then are the winners?
And who benefits from a continuation of this war, which will bring thousands more dead and wounded Russians and Ukrainians?
America?
Is this new Cold War II with Russia, into which we appear to have plunged, in the national interest of a United States that so welcomed the peaceful end of the old Cold War three decades ago?
Of what benefit to the U.S. is the sending of troops to the Baltic republics? Are we stronger, safer, more secure, now that we have committed to fight Russia to defend the 830-mile Finnish-Russian border, something no Cold Warrior of an earlier era would have dreamt of doing?
Are we better off because all the nations of the Warsaw Pact and three republics of the old USSR are now NATO allies for whose independence we are committed to fight Russia?
Is the revival of the Sino-Soviet pact, aimed at the West in the 1950s and now aimed at NATO and our Asian allies, something we should welcome? Have not our own post-Cold War policies contributed mightily to reviving the old Cold War Russia-China alliance against us?
Where President Richard Nixon appeared to split Mao’s China from Russia, this generation of American leaders appears to have restored that hostile duopoly.
Putin was a Russian KGB agent during the Cold War. Now every member state of the former Warsaw Pact and three constituent republics of the USSR of that era are NATO allies of the United States.
This is the new Cold War. Is Putin alone responsible for igniting it?
Perhaps highest among our goals in the first Cold War with Russia was the avoidance of a hot war that could escalate to a nuclear war and destroy both nations.
Now that we are again in a hostile state of relations with Moscow as we were then, how can this be the result of a successful foreign policy?
In the first Cold War, Eastern Europe and the Baltic States were accepted as satellites of the Soviet Union. Communism had been imposed upon them all after World War II.
But that was not a cause for military conflict between us.
When we brought virtually all of Eastern Europe into NATO, we were the ones, not Putin, who made their independence of Moscow and alliance with the West a matter for which we committed ourselves to go to war.
As Russians and Ukrainians kill one another in the Donbas, and hatred of Russians for Americans grows, how is that good for the USA?
Perhaps we ought to invest as much time and energy trying to end this war as we do to defeat and humiliate Russia, which will not bring us peace.
Finlandia https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=XYX-v9Zts84
Great Gate at Kiev МУСОРГСКИЙ С мертвыми на мертвом языке, Баба-Яга, Богатырские ворота из цикла «Картинки с выставки https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PAJuwXDqWc
“According to western sources?” Pat would get better information from The Saker and Moon of Alabama.
http://thesaker.is/
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
Russia never intended to take Kiev. It was a feint to hold down Ukrainian troops from going east.
C’mon, Pat!
Was just about to post this. The Russian army literally has a 9:1 K/D ratio and slaughters the pathetic Jewkraine army wherever it goes. Pat clearly doesn’t understand dollar hegemony and US imperialism.
Why did the war start right before Nord Stream 2 was about to open?
Why is Mark Zuckerstein and the ADL defending Ukraine neo-Nazis?
Why are they trying to start a war over the fake country of Taiwan?
China and Russia are US enemies simply because they undermine US dollar hegemony. That’s all there is to it.
The US didnt like when Russia threw out Jewish oligarchs.
The US doesnt like that Russia impedes Israeli dominion in the Middle East.
This essay shows that Buchanan is as clueless about what is really happening in Ukraine as he is about race.
Buchanan is nearly a noninterventionist, as am I. We don’t need to understand events.
Just get the US out of the conflict, out of NATO… nothing more to it.
Once upon a time Buchanan was fearless:
“Congress is Israeli-Occupied Territory.”
— (https://wallwritings.me/2009/05/04/congress-is-israeli-occupied-territory-you-got-a-problem-with-that/)
Many (most?) defenders of White rights never touch the JQ. They have their reasons. But folks like Buchanan, who did but now don’t… what are we to make of them?
Hats off to David Duke, one of those uppity goys who never got the ADL memo:
“Who is Responsible for this War: Americans – Russians – Ukrainians or Dare we Say it: Jews?”
— (https://renseradioarchives.com/archives/dduke/071922.mp3)
I dont have time to listen to a podcast, but I appreciate the link. I guess I owe Dr. Duke an apology. I used to be critical of him, but clearly he deserves respect.
I knew Jews were significantly to blame in part due to articles Dr. MacDonald tweeted and hosted. I prefer to read. Also, at RT, people there showed that Azov had Jews in it. I was shocked by that. The “Nazis” were funded by Jews and had Jewish members.
Btw, I have similar experiences in the grocery store, as you describe below.
Buchanan isn’t clueless about a goddamned thing. He is something akin to a double agent – a hooker with a heart of gold. He is on ZOG’s payroll, more or less, as controlled opposition yet he is secretly hoping WN proves triumphant. He is unwilling to show his true colors until WN is politically powerful enough to defect to as against ZOG, under which circumstances his defection from ZOG would be a personally safe move for him.
You could say the same about a whole host of other characters, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, you name it. Chickenshit cowards who love shekels more than honor have always followed this modus operandi, even though they know the truth. Just how the fuck do you think the Jews managed to gain control of the West in the first place? Well, wonder no longer!
Enough autism please, rhetorical or otherwise.
In America we will experience one more cycle of Trump before the realizatiWestern Europe’s green energy policies along with its sanctions on Russia will result in economic ruin. This will have the effect of handing political power to the far right on a silver platter. This fall the far right will take power in Italy. France and Germany will go over to the far right in the next few years.
on sets in that the system is hopelessly, irredeemably corrupt with the only hope of reform being to break away from the system. If Republican voters want as a bare minimum colorblind civic nationalism they are going to have to secede to get it.
Sweden Democrats might become the biggest party in the Swedish Riksdag on September 11.
Buchannan is NOT a positive addition to Occidental Observer … He is fosssilized Trojan Horse and does not know what is going on in Ukraine…
Who is better? Dr. Trifkovic? Why do you say Buchanan is a “Trojan horse”? He’s the first person I followed to learn a bit of political science.
To be fair, none of us really know what is going on in Ukraine. I don’t know if Mr. Buchanan seriously believes the information he has quoted, but he tends to take the approach of assuming, for argument’s sake that the western portrayal is accurate. Even with that assumption, the war in Ukraine should not continue.
I tend to believe the US* does benefit, although at a cost, by continuation of the war through bleeding Russia and trying to protect what is left of its criminal enterprise in Ukraine.
* By US, I mean the US government and the criminals who own it, not the actual peoples residing in the US.
Yesterday while in line at a supermarket check-out, the woman in front of me spilled blueberries on the floor as she tried to put them on the counter.
She was very apologetic, and to ease her embarrassment I asked her if she ever heard the song “Blueberry Hill.” She had. I asked her if she ever heard it sung by Vladimir Putin. She was understandably puzzled. I told her she could find it on YouTube*.
Just then the customer in front of her butted into our conversation, loudly asking me if that was the Putin who’s murdering Ukrainians. I loudly told him we never hear both sides of that story, just like we never hear both sides of the Palestinian story. If he persisted I was considering adding both sides of the German story, but he nervously took his receipt from the cashier and vamoosed.
* (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=putin+blueberry+hill)
Much (((media))) gloating over Russian military losses (drone drops bomb down open hatch of Russian tank with crew inside — hooray!!, blah blah blah).
There’s a lesson here (((cheerleaders))) aren’t telling us.
Technological advances have also rendered much of the multi-trillion dollar US military equally vulnerable — and we’ve pissed away far more on our military.
Much as the airplane doomed the battleship, drones, smart missiles, etc. are rapidly rendering all naval surface ships, mechanized infantry (tanks), manned aircraft, etc., obsolete.
Yawn !!!!
When are you going to realize this entire war is JEWISH FAKE NEWS ?? JEWS extorting money and war material from gullible goyim political whores who are OWNED by JEW money while pretending to have a conflict.
If you all had half a operating brain you would realize both of these countries are run by the VERY SAME JEWISH Chabad who, using the JEWSMEDIA, continue to fan the flames, are storing up newly acquired free military equipment for later resale on the international arms market.
Remember Orwell’s 1984 ? Remember the mandatory “RAGE” assembly to fool the mentally twisted people into thinking there really was a enemy when it was all Big Brother Psyop propaganda?
Your seeing it right now gullible Goyim !
As a former US naval aviator and Korean veteran with an album of MiG-17 photos off my wingtip along the Kamchatka peninsula, I have more than an armchair acquaintance with Russian reality, and I can back up Larry S’s derogatory comment
about Buchanan’s Kiev error. It was obvious at the time that the Russians were not going to suffer any losses in a battle there, though they could have easily taken it. Why ? Because they pulled back before it became clear as to why. Buchanan had his good points on overall geo-strategy, but it’s obvious his military tactics do not come on for the same praise.
I think it was a wise decision to not approve my post, for it did not meet the academic standards of this high quality website. If you are interested though in observing how individuals reacted to my unintelligent post, I’ve posted it at
https://www.unz.com/comments/all/?commenterfilter=_-Sanjay-_
and
https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1362062/
As usual, I will try harder in the future to come up with better quality posts, thank you, Sanjay.