US Officials Doubt Ukraine’s Objectives Will Be Achieved – Media

Friday, February 3, 2023

Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

Apparently, even American officials do not believe in Kiev’s plan to take over Russia’s Crimea. According to a recent report from a major Western media outlet, high ranking US officials are skeptical that the Kiev regime will be successful in its goal to restore Ukrainian pre-2014 borders. In fact, the case reveals how it is becoming more and more difficult to disguise the indisputable reality that Russia is winning the conflict.

The information was given to Politico by sources inside the American political scenario. According to what was reported, lawmakers from the US House Armed Services Committee would have heard the opinion of some US Department of Defense’s officials at a recent joint meeting. There is no public list with the names of Pentagon’s members who would have participated in this meeting. However, it was informed that among them were Laura Cooper, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, and Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This shows the relevance of the event, considering the high positions of the participants.

Four people who were at the meeting told about the details of the occasion to Politico. As expected, the sources remained anonymous. According to them, Pentagon’s officials said that Ukraine is not capable of expelling Russian troops from all regions already integrated into the Federation. The consultants were emphatic in saying that any Russian withdrawal from Crimea is unlikely, considering the current military scenario of the conflict which, at least in the short/medium term, may not change in favor of the Ukrainians. Officials also said they believe that if Ukrainian forces launched an operation to retake Crimea, it would be at high risk of defeat and not a guaranteed success.

Politico also interviewed Pentagon’s spokeswoman Sabrina Singh about the case. She refused to comment on the matters allegedly discussed at the meeting with House’s members, emphasizing the confidentiality of the issue. She made some ambiguous comments, stating that Ukraine’s military capability “speaks for itself”. Indeed, her words sounded like an attempt to disguise Pentagon’s real opinion on the Ukrainian conflict.

“We’re not going to comment on closed-door classified briefings nor will we talk about hypotheticals or speculate on potential future operations (…) [However] in terms of Ukraine’s ability to fight and take back sovereign territory, their remarkable performance in repulsing Russian aggression and continued adaptability on the battlefield speaks for itself”, she stated.

In fact, other recent pronouncements by US officials endorse the narrative that the Pentagon does not really believe in a Ukrainian victory. For example. Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chair, had already stated in January:

“I still maintain that for this year it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all –– every inch of Ukraine and occupied –– or Russian-occupied Ukraine (…) That doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but it’d be very, very difficult”.

At the time, Ukrainian officials severely criticized the American general. According to sources familiar with the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was reportedly “furious” with Milley’s words. Also, Zelensky’s adviser Andriy Yermak even commented on this topic during the summit of the World Economic Forum in Davos, assuring that Kiev would regain all the territories it considers part of its sovereign space, “including Donbass and Crimea”.

In this sense, what seems to be happening is the coexistence of two discourses in the US: on the one hand, the Pentagon knows that the Ukrainian victory is unlikely, if not impossible, and that the supposed “reconquest” of Crimea is unlikely to happen. On the other, there is an attempt to maintain the public narrative that Kiev is winning and can reach its pre-2014 borders, as this feeds NATO’s war machine and justifies the irresponsible policy of sending weapons to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime.

When the American military for some reason publicly reveal what they really think about the conflict, the mainstream media reacts to it with exasperation and the Ukrainian authorities utterly deny it, promising absolute victory. For the western elites and the Ukrainian regime, what matters is to keep the war until its ultimate consequences. Recognizing Russian victory and negotiating peace terms does not even seem like a possibility.

At some point in the future, however, if it wants to avoid an unprecedented escalation, the West will have to admit the unfavorable circumstances and stop encouraging Kiev to regain territories which chose to join Russia.

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Source: InfoBrics