“‘A bad day for Putin,’ says Ukraine’s foreign minister”

The significance of the US military aid to Ukraine, approved in recent days by Washington, becomes clear, it is hoped, when compared with all other previous likewise financing during the course of the conflict. As told by the Council on Foreign Relations, total military aid in the two years to January 2024 came to $46.3 billion. The new funding is priced at $60.7 billion – but that includes a tranche of credit that should be counted as non-military: 8bn so that the pay packets most crucial to the survival of the anti-Russian Kiev regime can keep being produced. $52.7 billion all in one go, of course, is still a staggering figure in the context of the contrast that we want to make. With the western manoeuvre warfare practising Ukrainians increasingly unable to be anything other than static, or simply not there (routed), the Russians are inversely increasingly able to convert their incessant attriting pressure into territorial gain all along, currently, the Donetsk and Southern Donetsk fronts.

The new aid to Ukraine, then, might have the appearance of being done in panic. That various politicians of the Collective West have also been quite openly voicing concern about the looming defeat of the New World Order (or the International Rules Based one, as they refer to it) lends this some credence. Or, it could be that the US Government and Military Industrial Complex (MIC) recognises how their chances to exploit the Ukrainian situation are fast running out.

For a start, the central reason why – and notice the quotation marks – “aid to Ukraine” is so high at a sudden peak is because it is actually mostly concerned with restocking expended US equipment piles. ~$23 billion is earmarked for replenishment – and although some corporate-media coverage has tried to spin this as current indirect aid to come to fruition in the future (possibly), the fact is that it is an amount that more or less matches the $23.5 billion (of the previous $46.3) in equipment from US stocks that already went to Ukraine through presidential drawdowns. This milch cow facility is one that doesn’t necessitate the US President to seek authorisation from the legislative body every time there is a requirement for pulling the teats. Since August 2021, says the US Department of State website, there have been 44 occurrences of a drawdown for “defence articles and services” to be supplied to Ukraine.

Of course, this detail suggests that the US has had $23 billion’s worth of articles and services – albeit always overpriced – trashed by the Russians in Ukraine. Surely in that case, then, the Ukrainian aid package would have been cover for corrective action as a matter of basic survival – it wouldn’t look very much like the winning that the likes of Biden still says Ukraine is good for if Washington was to straight forwardly announce that, never in the field of human conflict had so much amounted to so pitifully little.

So, the apparent military assistance to go directly to Ukraine this time is in fact much smaller than it at first appears – let’s call it $29.7 billion, except that it continues to shrink. ~$11 billion of this package is actually earmarked for funding “current US military operations in the region”, as the same corporate-media coverage mentioned above phrased it. This, again as put by said source, would equate to “enhancing the capabilities of the Ukrainian military and fostering intelligence collaboration between Kyiv (sic) and Washington”. We can perhaps suppose, then, that this is about running the US operation whereby there is not only advising (for which read leading) of, but also equipment operation in a support capacity – all the sort of ancillary thing that requires more training than is given to a body forcibly conscripted from the streets – for Ukrainian forces. Moreover, this portion of aid package suggests that American motives are not purely mercenary – far from it. It suggests there is interest in propping Ukraine up, it seems, in a hope rooted in the original plan that Russia will somehow trip up.

So, now we are down to 18.7 billion, or thereabouts. The crux of this is the ~$14 billion served through the “Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative”, which is a device whereby the Pentagon buys weapons for Ukraine from US defence contractors. Previously, all told, $18.3 billion’s worth of weaponry had been procured by this avenue. Overlooking how it’s hard to put a value on any sum when it’s being used to procure overpriced rubbish, we just need to contrast the then and now amounts. Then: $18.3 billion over two years. Now: $14 billion “over night”. There is certainly a sense to be detected of the American MIC roistering while it still can. Or – again – it signifies hurling everything at their problem including the kitchen sink in the hope that it will make a difference. After all, while the US Government lost all that stock it needs replenished the US defence industry lost a reputation. Perhaps it hopes that the Russians just fluked when they worked through that $23 billion’s worth, or will behave differently when faced with a Ukraine flooded with wunderwaffe or, to perhaps be more precise, when faced with the prospect of it because one can be sure that most of this materiel won’t be ready now. There’s always more than an element of psychology in what Ukraine’s Anglo-globalist masters ever do.

There are other bits and bobs in the package that will have labels attached to them which are largely meaningless: “economic development”, for instance. What comes to the author’s mind when confronted with this phrase are the Ukrainians who buy cars from the West to serve instead of armoured personnel carriers – and other such rackets which will ultimately be benefiting Western companies.

There is no other direct military aid, apart from an additional $1 billion package from a new drawdown “set to include RIM-7 and AIM-9M Air-to-Air Missiles, Bradley M2A2 ODS-SA IFVs, MRAPs, HMMWVs, as well as Thousands of Air Defense, Artillery, Tank, and Rocket Munitions” [source: some old corporate-media or other]. This is probably the extent of what is going to Ukraine in the nearer future, despite what is being said about certain long range rocket munitions which were, for Public Relations purposes and as the story goes, already secreted into Ukraine ahead of Congress approving the financing for providing them.

Needless to say, none of this solves the immediate problem of the Russians now moving like a hot knife in butter through territory around Donetsk and in the northern section of the Southern Donetsk direction. Then again, there is nothing that the anti-Russian axis can do. The manoeuvre warfare chickens of the “can’t fail” Kharkov-Kherson-Zaporozhye gambit to expel Russia to pre-2022 positions are firmly home to roost. And it’s not that Ukraine doesn’t have the manpower – only today the Russians reported killing 300+ of them in the areas just mentioned as they counter-attacked (or acted as per manoeuvre doctrine for defence) no less than seven times. It’s that the anti-Russian axis just doesn’t have the wherewithal to beat Russia. It never did since the SMO started.

On that note, to be found below – for the reader’s consideration – are a couple of maps by pro-Ukrainian Liveuamap. On the top is one showing the front line from Kupyansk to Southern Donetsk as it was (by Liveuamap’s reckoning) in January 2023. On the bottom is a very recent version (April 24th) of the same situation. Find a way to rapidly switch back and forth between them and note very easily the results of the Russian offensive that this site has shown understanding of since the end of 2022. The slow grind westward – which occurred even while Ukraine was conducting the third phase of that abovementioned operation to dislodge Russia from post February 2022 Novorossiya – isn’t going to end while Washington and London (which also announced its own “record” £500 million package) keep flogging the dead Ukrainian horse. London and Washington are counting on destroying the Kerch Bridge, or pulling off some other likewise series of stunts, so that the Russian people will get moody at Putin. Ukraine is to be kept in the fight – or something best resembling one – until that happens. This is their plan. It can provide no real answer to the slow but inevitable liberation of Donetsk and after that of Kharkov and Sumy, also now on the cards (as the rumours have it). The shock is going to be terrific.