Ukraine war: What does the West want?
What is the point of the sanctions? The fact is that the war continues. And the Russian armed forces are far from being at the end of the line, as the media would have us believe. The West has lost its way.
Peter Hanseler
At the end of February, the Russians’ stated goal was to conclude an agreement with Ukraine after a brief operation under which Crimea would be recognised as Russian, Lugansk and Donetsk would be declared independent and Ukraine would declare itself neutral.
It seemed that the negotiations in Istanbul were progressing.
Then, President Selenskyj was first told by Boris Johnson not to make a deal with the Russians, but to fight it out militarily. President Biden agreed, and since then weapons have been promised and delivered to Ukraine.
The USA alone has so far pledged a total of 43 billion dollars to Ukraine, which is roughly equivalent to Russia’s annual military budget.
What are the West’s goals?
Boris Johnson has always seen himself as the next Winston Churchill, and for that he first needs a war. In addition to his personal megalomania, he can also gloss over his huge problems at home, at the expense of his own people, of course.
The Americans are no longer even hiding their intentions: their declared goal is to weaken Russia permanently through a long war – economically, militarily and in terms of reputation.
Once again, the USA is proclaiming that an elected head of state must be replaced: “Putin must go!”
The Europeans go along with it and do not notice at all that they are being abused by the USA for their imperial goals.
Switzerland as a “neutral” country found a very prominent place on the ranking list of unfriendly states according to the number of sanctions imposed, which the Russian government published on 19 May: After the USA and Canada, Switzerland is in third place – ahead of the EU, nota bene.
It has long since ceased to be a question of sanctioning oligarchs close to the Kremlin: Everything that is or sounds Russian is persecuted – even in Switzerland.
A nationality is persecuted. The last time something like this happened was in the 1930s – and few are ashamed of it. No one wants to be exposed as a friend of Russia by the incited majority. The slightest questioning is qualified as treason.
These sanctions are of little use: Russia’s exports are higher than they were in 2021, the rouble is stronger against the euro today than it was five years ago, and the Russian economy, which has been trimmed to self-sufficiency since 2014, is adapting. The Russian economy is growing.
So the economic sanctions have not weakened Russia, but will probably lead the over-indebted West into a full-blown crisis.
But at least the Russians are losing on the battlefield, the media say. Really? On closer examination, this does not seem to be the case either. The Russians have obviously changed their military objectives since the failure of the negotiations in Istanbul.
However: in war, everything turns out differently, and many things go wrong on both sides – always. A plan is good until it starts. Logistics, supply and coordination are so difficult that most people cannot imagine it.
The Western media virtually write off their victory: the West sells the Russians’ war of movement as a Ukrainian victory every time the Russian army retreats from a point.
It was not the Russians’ intention to conquer Kiev, but to tie up Ukrainian troops around Kiev by their presence. The same is true of Kharkiv. Cities that the Russians actually want to conquer, they get.
Mariupol has been completely under Russian control for a few days. Between 1500 and 2000 Ukrainian troops surrendered and became prisoners of war. They were not evacuated, as reported by the New York Times, for example.
Looking at the map, the Russians already have huge areas in the east and south of Ukraine under control. Whether the Russians will take Odessa from the already occupied Kherson region, only the Russians know.
They are proceeding slowly, not out of weakness, but to spare soldiers’ lives and material and to secure supplies. Blitzkriege, which the German Wehrmacht waged, were always associated with great losses and enormous destruction. Already in Poland in 1939 and in the West in 1940, the Germans lost a great many soldiers and material.
This strategy led to the first disaster for the Germans in front of Moscow in the winter of 1941.
In addition, the Russians are not fighting a tank war, but an artillery war. The Russians have to fight their way through fortifications that the Ukrainians have built up over the last eight years, and they are doing so successfully.
Even the Pentagon confirms that the Western media’s portrayal of the situation on the ground is not true, but pure propaganda: at a press conference on 20 May, John Kirby claimed that the Russian forces were making slower progress than planned. But he states that the Russian forces are advancing; by the way, the front in the contested area is over 300 kilometres long.
Everything can always change, but the West has lost its way so far.
