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Collective West Press Starting to Acknowledge Ukraine’s Untenable Position and Inevitable Loss

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Yours truly was about to post on how the media, largely following European and NATO officials, had gone uncharacteristically quiet about Project Ukraine even as the Russia electricity war was pushing much of the country into a humanitarian crisis. But just as I was starting to write this post, as we will soon discuss, the New York Times and CNN published new stories that effectively admit that Ukraine’s prospects are not too hot.

Aside from being able to hide behind continued Trump whipsaws and violence, and the new distraction of the latest Epstein files release, perhaps these generally sociopathic Western leaders are chagrined, or at least embarrassed, as they ought to be. They sabotaged the Istanbul talks, promised they would “whatever it takes” for Ukraine to win, pressed Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainians, with the result that Russia is now taking Ukraine apart. War is a deadly, destructive business. Unless the weaker side knuckles under when it still has that option, the stronger combatant will subjugate its opponent. That results in massive harm to civilians.

And even though the Europeans have kept pushing Ukraine on, as if patching up a badly battered boxer to go back into the ring for more punishment, don’t kid yourself about massive US culpability. The US was behind the Maidan coup. Biden provided an enormous amount of funding and browbeat allies, even ones in Asia, to deplete their weapons stocks to help arm Ukraine. Trump could have pulled the plug at any time by cutting off intelligence support but was too afraid of Lindsay Graham to do so.

As those who have been following the war know, Ukraine’s electricity system is close to collapse. We had pointed out early on that high loading, as cold weather will produce, will lead to further damage due to surges and difficulty in load balancing. So not only are Russian strikes further degrading the power system, but it is also coming apart due to the severity of damage it has suffered, just as someone trying to walk on a broken leg will do himself further harm. But have no doubt that the Russian missile and drone strikes are the biggest factor in the worsening electrical system emergency. From Aljazeera:

  • Russia launched an overnight attack described as the “most powerful” this year on Ukraine’s battered energy facilities, officials in Kyiv said, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without heating amid glacial winter temperatures and in advance of talks to end the four-year war.

  • The latest Russian operation against Ukraine’s energy sector was the biggest since the start of 2026, Ukraine’s leading private energy company DTEK said on Telegram.

  • A power plant in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv was also badly damaged in the Russian attack, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. The attack on Kharkiv also injured at least five people, according to officials…

  • A power plant in Kyiv’s eastern Darnytskyi district was seriously damaged in the Russian attack, Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Telegram, prompting officials to redirect resources to restoring heating to thousands of residents in the city.

  • At least 1,142 high-rise apartment blocks have been left without heating in the Ukrainian capital following the Russian attacks, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said.

This snapshot understates how bad things are. Ukraine has been diverting power from less heavily populated areas to the big cities. Even so, there has been a 24 hour blackout of the entire country, plus protracted outages every day in Kiev, Kharviv, Dnipro, and other large centers, which also means no heat and no water/sewage pumping. Russia has been striking the substations that handle power from Ukraine’s three nuclear plants, as well as hitting thermal stations.

More detail:

The West is impotent. It does not have enough weapons to make a difference, and even if it did, Ukraine is running out of men. The EU is not delivering on its promise to somehow cobble together a €90 billion funding package to keep Ukraine on life support. Trump is playing stupid games to pretend that he has a say in what is happening. He announced that Russia had agreed to a one-week grid attack ceasefire. As Alexander Mercouris explained at length, the Russia long silence before responding suggested there was no such deal or at best it had been discussed privately.1 Russia made it seem as if it was already underway, set to finish two days later.

Trump was not about to admit he had been outmaneuvered:

Finger-wagging is another sign of weakness, even before getting to the inconvenient fact that NATO bombed energy infrastructure in Kosovo:

The immediate triggers for the latest bout of coverage are Russia resuming its energy strikes when the “ceasefire” ended (bad Putin!) and the new round of discussions in Abu Dhabi. These talks are a sham. Russia’s position is non-negotiable. Putin had warned early on that the longer the war went on, the harder it would become to negotiate with them. Russia has signaled it will increase its demands in the wake of the Ukraine attack on Putin’s Valdai residence. Mercouris’ reading of the latest statements from Russia is they now want regime change, as in Zelensky and his merry band sent packing. But as of now, Ukraine still has agency. Zelensky is not only ferociously rejecting giving up land but has cheekily upped his ante by demanding NATO-level security guarantees from the US when no NATO/Ukraine neutrality are principal Russian demands. Yet US in typical Trump misdirection is pretending that a deal is nigh, with “territory” the only sticking point. Help me.

So now to the increasing signs that the press is starting to prepare the public for a Ukraine defeat. However, as we will also see, the media is still way behind the state of play. Even as it describes increasingly desperate conditions, the New York Times weirdly talks about territorial concessions in Donbass. Earth to Gray Lady: Russia holds nearly all of it now, and its minimum ask includes all of Kherson and Zaporzhizhia oblasts, which it only partially controls now. However, in the opening paragraphs of For Peace, More Ukrainians Consider the Once Unthinkable: Surrendering Land, which explicitly mentions only giving up the Donbass, the New York Times indirectly acknowledges the Russian principle (emphasis ours):

Ms. [Khrystyna] Yurchenko is among a growing number of Ukrainians who say they would hand over the part of the Donbas still controlled by Ukraine to Russia if that would end the war.

This represents a notable shift for a war-weary Ukrainian population. Giving up territory that Russia has been unable to capture has long been considered a red line. But what once seemed impossible now appears less so, as the Kremlin insists that U.S.-backed peace negotiations will advance only if Ukraine agrees to walk away from the Donbas.

The Times focuses on the fact that more Ukrainians are willing to consider ceding part of Ukraine to end the conflict. While it blathers unduly about security guarantees, it eventually admits that Russia won’t accept them since they are Trojan horses for stationing Western forces in Ukraine. It seems that Russia has to keep hammering on this point, since European leaders keep acting as if their face-saving peacekeeping/reassurance force scheme might happen if they keep talking it up:

Nevertheless, the Times surprisingly notes: “While European nations have vowed to station troops in Ukraine after any cease-fire, it remains unclear whether they would agree to actually fight Russia in defense of Ukraine.”

There is no mention whatsoever of the usual tropes of Russia taking presumed unsustainably high military or economic losses. It does hints that Zelensky’s position is becoming difficult:

In May 2022, two months after Ukrainian forces repelled the Russian Army around the capital, Kyiv, a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 82 percent of Ukrainians believed that the country should not surrender territory under any circumstances.

In the institute’s most recent survey, published on Monday, 40 percent of respondents said they would support giving up the Donbas in exchange for security guarantees.

The two figures are not directly comparable, because earlier polls did not attach security guarantees to the question about ceding territory. But the finding tracked with other survey data showing a rising acceptance of territorial concessions.
Still, a majority of Ukrainians remain opposed. Many say they are prepared to continue enduring hardships, including Russia’s campaign to knock out the country’s energy infrastructure during a bitterly cold winter.

Relinquishing the Donbas could fracture Ukrainian society, analysts said. It could also recast the legacy of Mr. Zelensky from a heroic leader who defended the state to one who allowed a Russian occupation of Ukrainian-controlled territory where about 190,000 people now live. Many would presumably move to areas still held by Ukraine rather than live under Russian rule.

Next to CNN, in Ukraine’s strategy is to kill 50,000 Russian soldiers a month. A sign of confidence or an indicator of weakness?:

The suggestion that Russia is suffering heavy losses is not new. A new report last week estimated that 1.2 million Russians have either been killed, wounded or are missing since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago – the highest casualty figure suffered by a major military power since World War II. The report put the number of Ukrainian casualties between 500,000 and 600,000.

“The data suggests Russia is hardly winning,” the report’s authors wrote.

Maybe not, but as senior officials from Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare for the next round of direct talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, it would be a mistake for Ukraine’s supporters to get carried away.

Even this mild-throat clearing is unusual for a Western outlet. From later in the article:

The logic behind Kyiv’s position is simple: Very few Ukrainians believe Putin has any goal other than the total subjugation of their country. So, why hand over territory for nothing if Ukraine can expect to kill hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers while Moscow keeps trying to capture Donetsk by force?…

But if there is no confidence that negotiations are headed anywhere, what about Ukraine’s battlefield strategy? Is piling up the other side’s body bags the best way forward?

An American former fighter, Ryan O’Leary, who led an international volunteer unit called Chosen Company, believes not, triggering a vigorous debate after he laid out his arguments in a social media post.

He took issue with the much vaunted “e-points” scheme, whereby Ukraine’s units earn points for each Russian soldier killed or piece of materiel destroyed. The points are exchanged for new equipment, and the Defense Ministry says the scheme provides a wealth of data that helps shape future plans.

But O’Leary suggested they create the wrong incentives, causing Ukrainian commanders to prioritize more straightforward drone strikes against infantry targets around the line of combat, rather than tougher but more significant deep strikes against Russian logistics – like vehicles and communication hubs, as well as Russian drone crews operating from rear positions.

One has to note that in the fabulously corrupt Ukraine, where it has been reported that commanders are not reporting deaths of their own soldiers in order to collect their pay, that the incentives are obvious: over-report Russian deaths.

CNN acknowledges Ukraine’s manpower problems:

The infantry shortage is well known. Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute estimates there are fewer than ten Ukrainian infantry soldiers per kilometer of front line. He also estimates that most brigades have at most 10% of their total personnel in the infantry. Traditionally, that number would be upwards of 30%…

But in a war where drones – not infantry – matter most, it is Ukraine’s shortfalls in drone crews that are most pressing, especially in the key battle for operational depth – the destruction of targets up to 25 miles (40 kilometers) behind the line of combat.

In a forthright defense of the fighters under his command, the head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Forces, Robert Brovdi, said last week there needed to be a threefold increase in the number of drone operators. Just 30% of the frontline – which stretches 745 miles – is currently covered, he wrote on his Facebook page.

Fedorov, the new defense minister, acknowledges the scale of the problem, telling the Ukrainian parliament some 2 million people are ignoring their call-up papers, while 200,000 others have deserted.

Keep in mind that Russia, with some success, has been targeting drone operators.

Even with increasing glimmers of reality coming in press accounts, the level of denial about how fragile Ukraine has become still widespread. A few sightings and representative snippets:

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, in Vladimir Putin Isn’t Winning in Ukraine:

Russian forces have taken an astonishing 1.2 million casualties in Ukraine since 2022, according to estimates from Seth Jones and Riley McCabe of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Russian death toll may be as high as 325,000—more than five times than in all Soviet and Russian conflicts combined since World War II. Some 36,000 Americans died in the grinding three-year Korean War.

The conventional wisdom is that Mr. Putin will eventually prevail because Russia is the larger power and Mr. Putin can keep throwing men into his human meat grinder. Yet Mr. Putin isn’t making territorial gains commensurate with his losses…

The Ukraine war draws comparisons to the trench warfare of World War I, but the Russian advance has been “slower than the most brutal offensive campaigns over the last century, including the notoriously bloody Battle of the Somme during World War I,” says the report. Ukraine has its own manpower shortages, but Russian casualties are two or 2.5 to one for Ukraine.

The Telegraph maintains that the problem is not Ukraine’s weakness but Trump’s, in Trump is sowing the seeds of the next Ukraine war:

Through four years of full-scale invasion and one brutal offensive after another, Russia has never managed to capture it. Ukraine’s soldiers have repulsed Vladimir Putin’s attacks and doggedly held the line at immense cost….

So Putin is trying to gain at the negotiating table what he has failed to seize on the battlefield…

The obvious way to break the deadlock and achieve an agreement would be for the US president to tell his Russian counterpart to drop this absurd demand for territory that Moscow’s forces have not captured.

Trump could back this with real pressure, for example by supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles to destroy Russian oil refineries, or by allowing the Senate to pass a bill – which has lain dormant for a year – to suffocate the Kremlin’s oil exports by imposing US tariffs of 500 per cent on any country that buys them.

And from Politico, The steel porcupine: How Ukraine plans to defend itself after the war, which of course presupposes that there will be a post-war Ukraine:

Ukraine fears it can’t rely on security guarantees from its allies in any potential peace deal, and so must be ready to stand alone as a “steel porcupine” to ensure that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin won’t return for another attack….

That means a permanent massive army, heavy investment in the latest drone and missile technology, and domestic arms production.

Erm, and how does that happen in a county with either no or a marginally operating grid, badly damaged rail lines, great depopulation, and huge budget deficits which will pretty much assure hyperinflation?

So Ukraine’s continuing success in the narrative war will simply result in even more devastation to the country and its people than might have happened otherwise. “Nicely played” even though true, sidesteps the issue: that extending the timetable to Ukraine’s defeat or capitulation has to be to facilitate yet more looting. Even the coked-up Zelensky cannot be blind to the horrific conditions around him and the cost to what is left of Ukraine.

______

1 It is inconceivable that Russia agreed and then expected Trump not to tout it as a concession. If the Trump team indeed ran this by Russia in advance, it seems more likely that they made non-committal noises.

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38 comments

  1. John Merryman

    When greed is the motivating factor, strategy is little more than bacteria racing across the petri dish.
    The advantage of multicellular organisms is being able to sense and navigate their situation.
    In that states function as social super organisms, government is the nervous system, while money and banking are blood and the circulation system.
    We have evolved enough to understand that as government has to serve the entire society it works best as a public utility. Even if only because the most healthy states are the most powerful.
    We have yet to understand the same principle applies to banking. So rather than this system being used to allocate resources where they would be most effective, much is siphoned off to feed large egos.
    The puppet masters have been firing the smart ones that wouldn’t do what they were told and hiring the dumb ones that would, that the crazies pushed the idiots out of the way and here we are.

  2. The Rev Kev

    Just the other day I heard something that makes a lot of sense of the present picture. For months now there has been talk of the Donbass and how 20% has not yet been captured which has led Trump floating the idea that it be run by the Ukrainians as a special economic zone or something as part of his deal. This person pointed out that if the Russians actually snapped up the rest of the Donbass, that there will be an international demand that Russia can stop now as they have what they want, ignoring the status of the Kherson and Zaporzhizhia oblasts. By leaving the Donbass partly occupied, Russia can now concentrate on taking the Kherson and Zaporzhizhia oblasts in plain sight and they are making rapid advances. I would imagine that if those two oblasts were fully freed, then they could snap up the rest of the Donbass or maybe they will go for Odessa first. Whatever. In the meantime the west is still obsessed with the Donbass and missing the big picture.

    1. nyleta

      To take Odessa, and I think that they will have to by 2030, they are going to need the South Ukraine NPP because all the fossil fuel plants will be long gone. If there is a collapse of the core of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with unconditional surrender these type of events will move very fast in a way Europe can’t control because they lack the capacity.

    2. Louis Fyne

      Odessa has peculiar geography—to oversimplify a peninsula surrounded by marshes and water.

      for any multi-decade stable peace/equilibrium, (IMO) Russia has to take Odessa and have a link to Transnistria.

      it *feels* like the broad plan is to wait for total April 1945-style Ukrainian general collapse before any (swift) push to Odessa.

  3. mrsyk

    Thank you. From a perspective of maintaining US hegemony, the worst possible outcome is functioning Ukrainian infrastructure operating in concert with Russian (and for the moment Chinese) interests. In an ugly way it makes sense to prompt Russia to destroying said infrastructure before Ukraine capitulates.
    The same cannot be said of the EU.

    1. SaintPepsi

      Pretty much. It’s a stupid perspective, but that’s probably how they see it. Washington probably sees no difference between Ukrainians and Russians anyway. A dead Ukrainian is just as good as a dead Russian, less meat for those banzai meat waves or whatever.
      Putin, being an economist of sorts, probably doesn’t even want Ukraine – can’t afford to pay all those pensions and to rebuild literally everything (Ukrainian “infrastructure” was probably a total write-off even before the war). But if, on the other hand, EU had bread and turnip lines, and it looks promising… he just might get millions of young(ish) Russian emigrees right back.

  4. Mark Gisleson

    Great summary. I expect the media will do a quick pivot to “Who Lost Ukraine?” at which time they will resume their normal TDS programming.

    1. Randall Flagg

      It is a great summary.

      I can’t understand how Russia is winning this. Wasn’t Putin supposed to be dead from cancer by now?
      Where does Russia keep finding those washing machines to get the microchips to put in their missles? I mean that’s what the MSM narratives among other nonsense was were back when this started. Full scale invasion and all that. I can’t remember all the others.
      Sarc off now.

      2. You're soaking in it!

        Full scale invasion and all that.

        “Unprovoked” You forgot to say “unprovoked”. You can mix it up a bit and use “war of aggression” for variety.

  5. Nat Wilson Turner

    There are at least two reasons this awful war is kept going beyond just the grift IMO:

    The Western powers view Ukrainian casualties and misery as much of a “win” as they do Russian casualties.

    Russia being tied down militarily in Ukraine means they’re less able to exert power in the Sahel, the Caucasus, the Levant, and the Persian Gulf.

    2. motorslug

      Spot on. The more they tie up Russian assets with Ukrainian blood, the better for the MICC, zionazis and Turks. Also, EU/UK staving off their residents’ anger at their slide into ‘second-world’ lifestyle.

    3. John Wright

      One can surmise that the eventual Ukrainian defeat will result in many Ukrainian people trying to move to the EU in the aftermath.

      They may not be welcomed.

      The longer the war continues, the fewer Ukrainian refugees will need to be accommodated in the EU.

  6. Aurelien

    It’s important to remember that all along, western support for Ukraine has been based on assumptions of Russian weakness. Western experts confidently claimed that the Russian Army had reached its culminating point mere days after the SMO started. Subsequently, the West persuaded Kiev against a negotiated settlement by arguing that sanctions would rapidly bring Russia to the point of collapse, and that superior western weapons would destroy their forces on the battlefield. Given that, in the western view, such a defeat would bring about the collapse of the Russian political system, it seemed to good a deal for Ukraine to refuse: indeed, it would have been perverse for them to have done so.

    Since that strategy failed, the West has lived on hope, either that the military campaign will bog down and the Russians will compromise, or that indeed this time the Soviet economy will actually fall apart. The West abandoned a long time ago, if it ever had them, hopes of a Ukrainian military victory. All it can do is try to keep the war going. We’re now at the stage of cultists reassuring each other that the Messiah is coming, Real Soon Now. Blind hope is all they have left.

    1. Ignacio

      Cultists reassuring each other. IMO exactly that. Even if they have lost any hope. The cult is above hope. Somehow, I was writing something on the same vein a little bit later, but your comment wasn’t still visible.

    2. jsn

      “Oh wait, I was using the Gregorian Calendar, what I said will transpire will come forth in 13 days” territory yet?

    3. Bazarov

      “Blind hope is all they have left.”

      I think there’s more than that left. Given Ukraine is going to lose, the West has to decide–and fight for–the shape of that loss. Ukraine should lose in the manner most beneficial to the West.

      Two “losing” scenarios, for example:

      1.) Russia takes the four regions + Odessa, leaving a rump Ukraine in the West’s sphere of influence.

      2.) Russia takes all of Ukraine, with perhaps some territory shared out to Hungary and Poland.

      Which of these scenarios would the West prefer? The first scenario leaves the West a rump Ukraine. The question is whether it’s an asset or a liability. Probably the latter, a bleeding ulcer. Rump Ukraine will be a failed state sucking in money and resources and always causing problems, like a new Israel but much less effective as a fighting platform. This “losing scenario” makes leftover Ukraine the West’s problem, a very expensive one.

      The second losing scenario makes Ukraine Russia’s problem. With all of Ukraine under Russia’s control, rebuilding and maintaining the war-ravaged state is now its very expensive responsibility. The west does not give up all influence as it can support various terrorist movements in-country (it has plenty of experience doing so in other regions of the world), spending a pittance and forcing the Russians to spend a lot to maintain order. The whole time the Western media can carp about brave freedom fighters oppressed and about Russian human rights violations etc., etc.

      The West therefore might oblige Russia to take the whole board. That way, the West can wash its hands of the Ukrainian state and people while continuing to use them to needle Russia. For that to happen, for them to “lose well,” the West must keep the war going.

  7. Observer

    I hope “not too hot” was not sarcasm. This is so so sad for the people of the Ukraine and Russia and the world.

  8. XXYY

    I’m curious where these gigantic Russian body counts keep coming from.

    My strong impression is that Putin is running the war in such a way as to minimize casualties on his own side (and on the Ukrainian side, for that matter, focusing mostly on infrastructure destruction rather than indiscriminate bombing of civilian population centers). Whenever there is a prisoner exchange, there are always far more Ukrainian prisoners being exchanged than Russian ones. The Russian military seems to be fully manned and equipped, and has been successfully running its recruiting programs. The idea that Putin is running some kind of shoestring meat-grinder operation does not coincide with what we are hearing.

    Are large Russian casualty numbers just a Western psyops thing? I don’t hear much pushing back on it from either the Russians or the anti-war Western media.

    1. Nat Wilson Turner

      Note that the 1M+ figure is total casualties but the claimed Russian KIA (killed in action) is around 300K which seems plausible. The real lie is in the minimization of Ukrainian casualties which they claim to be 1/2 that of the Russian #’s which is absurd.

      1. Glen

        I remember hearing COL. Doug Macgregor say on Judge Nap a while back that he’s hearing actual Ukrainian casualties were somewhere in the 1.3 – 1.5M range, I forget the exact figure (I don’t think they had an exact figure, and one wonders if even the Ukrainian government does at this point.)

      2. Revenant

        I don’t think it will turn out nearly that high. Somebody usually astute (armchair warlord? Imetatronink?) thought that total casualties including wounded might be that high.

        With 40x ratios of returns of dead Ukrainians to Russians, a million Ukrainian dead would only require 20k Russians. The multiplier is provably too high (the Ukraine is in inching retreat, Russians are capturing ground and corpses) but even at 10x, a million dead Ukrainians is 100k dead Russians and, on a 3x rule of thumb, 300k wounded.

    2. WJ

      I too would be interested in hearing from anybody who has read more plausible estimates of the relative number of Russian and Ukrainian casualties. If Russia really does have 300,000 KIA, then I would imagine (on the basis of how Russia is conducting its advances and the numbers of recent prisoner exchanges) that Ukraine might be approaching between 700,000 and an unthinkable 1 million KIA. But I really have no way of gauging the accuracy of these estimates. Any links to trustworthy sources appreciated.

      1. fjallstrom

        Not what you asked for, but for what it is worth, I think the Mediazona/BBC have a good methodology in counting Russian military deaths in the war. They present both numbers on confirmed dead (168 thousand) and estimates from population records (219 thousand). The first number is more certain and could be seen as a floor, even though some confirmations are always going to turn out incorrect.

        For the Ukrainian side there is less resources in running a tally, but UAlosses has one I know of. They have 180 thousand confirmed Ukrainian deaths in the war. This is also a floor.

        Outside of respective military’s count of their own dead soldiers that is the best data I am aware of. Then there is estimates depending on various factors to estimate the true, larger, death counts. These are always going to differ a lot depending on methodology.

  9. Ignacio

    Everybody’s talkin’ at Zelenski & the Willing but they don’t hear a word they’re sayin’, only the echoes of their lies.
    Zelenski goes on, yes, without hearing a word, without seeing the consequences of past mistakes, without realising something should change, unlike some midnight cowboy in NY. And this is because Zelenski & The Willing reinforce amongst themselves: Zelenski isn’t maximalist because he is not able to see the reality. He is maximalist because his band of Willing Partners want him to be so. And they need him to be so because,… why are they so willing and spending like crazy in the project? Because they “must” believe in Zelenski. I see Rutte in Kiev and vomit.

    Please forgive me for relying on the beautiful music by Nilsson and a great movie to try to explain how i see this.

  10. Victor Sciamarelli

    Sometimes when you’re listening to someone you assume, for one reason or another, they understand the basics of a particular theory. Unfortunately, it can prove to be a false assumption that might lead you into the woods.
    For example, I’ve never heard Zelensky debate a core issue of this conflict which is NATO expansion. I never heard him say that Russia is wrong and then put down an argument that demonstrates Ukraine can be a member of NATO without threatening Russia.
    If Zelensky does, indeed, understand the theory that NATO/US is an existential threat to Russia, then how can he pursue security guarantees and continue the war?
    After all, NATO means the US and that means US bases and military in Ukraine, and as 80% of Russia’s population live in western Russia, that means the America military is within minutes of reaching most of Russia.
    I sometimes think Zelensky and the people around him don’t fully understand what they’re demanding.

  11. Yaiyen

    This won’t matter EU is already preparing 90 billion dollar for Ukraine 2026/2027 . This war will continue for a long time, the only thing change is the average Ukraine realize they are losing the war . I feel they are creating third Reich in Ukraine with the new generation . I still see Russia losing, USA will have 90s government in Russia again

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      We mentioned the funding package in the post. It depended on floating bonds. Ukraine needs the money NOW. There has been absolutely no movement of any sort in getting this offering done. So this looks like an empty promise.

      1. Ignacio

        May be there are procedural hurdles to pass the package. EU Parliament approval was on 21st January, then, EU Decision 2026/258 (Spanish version) published on Jan 29th authorizes the mechanism (enhanced cooperation) between most but not all EU members but yet to be decided by those EU members which should release the funds by the 2nd quarter of 2026 at the latest. May be additional problems arise while negotiating this enhanced cooperation.

        I suspect second thoughts might be arising in some countries. We will see.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          This is very helpful and thanks for the correction. I will read the detail but my impression was that the support mechanism for the loan was flaky and ought to result in a comparatively high interest rate. If so, that may focus some minds if anyone does market soundings before final commitments are made. Also in another quarter throwing more money into the Ukraine burn pit may come to look toxic.

          1. Ignacio

            So far what I have read is that 60 out of 90 billion are for military aid with preference to EU materials and a special mechanism to spend in 3rd countries (US) has just been approved when special needs cannot be met with EU equipment and materials. It will be somehow more cumbersome for Ukrainians to buy US material needing previous request, criteria examined, met and approved.

              1. Ignacio

                O yeah! I was only adding some additional context which I had read before. The who is on the hook thing has, IMO, potential to break things apart some day. Bulgaria on the hook for money spent mostly in let’s say German, French or Italian companies might be seen as a unfair treat very much contrary to EU promises, promises. When 2/3 of the amounts compromised are not exactly expenses made in solidarity but favouring a few well…

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