Ukraine does not want to win the latest battle with Russia (the “war” started in 2014), because this battle is too profitable for the Ukrainian elite. A real war with Russia (with real mobilization of personnel and industry) would cost the Ukrainian elite dearly (less American/EU aid money to steal). A real war would also require the kleptocratic Ukrainian government to give the Ukrainian peasantry a bit of freedom, similar to FDR pausing his “New Deal” to fight Hitler, Lenin’s “New Economic Policy”, or Putin’s current focus on mobilization instead of ransacking the Russian private sector.
I’ve spent a good part of the past two years in Ukraine (I speak fluent Russian and understand Ukrainian). I recently watched two Ukrainian blogger videos that really sum up perfectly the real war in Ukraine. In one video (use Google translate for English subtitles) Viktor Halasiuk professes his admiration for the Ukrainian deep state (the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians share his views). In another video Pavlo Sebastyanovich (the closest thing to a Ramaswamy/Milei Ukrainian of whom I know) refutes Viktor’s claims. (To understand the utterly corrupt kleptocratic socialist Ukrainian state, simply watch Pavlo’s channel regularly). You won’t find such honest content about Ukraine in English.
The Vast Majority of Ukrainians Are Diehard Socialists
Viktor considers the views of a small minority of (truly patriotic) Ukrainians (he talks about Pavlo without naming him) who want to fire 80% of the massive Ukrainian government bureaucracy, as mistaken, infantile, and dangerous. Viktor uses Georgia (the country) and Japan as examples of why Pavlo’s ideas are crazy.
Viktor says the success of Georgia was doubtful under Saakashvilli, who fired (Ramaswamy-style) 50% of government workers. Pavlo says Georgia made immense gains (Pavlo is telling the truth). Georgia is a landlocked country with Russia occupying two of its provinces (a situation similar to that of Ukraine). Even the imperial Japanese understood what the Soviets were, ending Japan’s WW2 savagery when the threat of Soviet occupation neared. As for Japan, Viktor makes the case that (post-WW2) Japan made massive gains in productivity because of a strong (handed) government with a lot of government industrial experts (I guess SpaceX is so successful because of government bureaucrats who know best how to build rockets). The role of Japan’s pre-WW2 successful industrialization and post-WW2 American occupation are downplayed. For Viktor the idea of just firing government workers is a “trap, illusion, myth”, an example of primitive inertial thinking, of “infantilism”.
Viktor claims that the problem is not the size, but the performance of government (the solution being, of course, more money to improve their performance). He mocks businessmen who think they can run a country as having a kindergarten mentality, yet he is proud of his work in parliamentwhere he says he rammed through 30 industrial laws that “created” $10 billion in new “investment” (investment, not kickbacks and bribes). He says he never once tried to tell a factory director how to run his own business. His job was to make doing business easy and more efficient (it was the private sector’s job to execute). Viktor suggests that Ukrainian business has not given enough money (he never mentions anything about wartime bribes) to support economic research, think tanks, Ukrainian authors, and stipends for Ukrainian students. He says he has never found a successful country with a weak government and strong business (strong business does not mean a successful country?). He says success requires the synchronized efforts and interests of government, society, and business (isn’t the government’s only interest the good of business and the people?). I think Mussolini had a good name for such a system.
In my experience, over 90% of Ukrainians would agree with the outlandish lies in Viktor’s video (they know none of it’s true). One reason is because so many have unrepentant communists in the family tree (even the American conservative hero Matt Walsh recently said that Tim Walz’s brother should have kept quiet about Tim because family comes first, just like Vito and Michael said in The Godfather). The idea of drastically reducing the state (even in wartime) will always be met by these people with mockery.
Ukraine Has Become Part of the Globalist Threat to America
An amazingly polished Ukrainian PR campaign (undoubtedly financed by some big-time globalists) convinced Western nations to become active participants in a war with a nuclear power. The end goal has probably always been the globalist elite buying up Ukraine (and in their wildest dreams Russia) on the cheap, which would make Ukraine’s elite fabulously wealthy. (Zelensky also previously announced a “patronage program” with BlackRock’s help, which would see “investors” taking ownership over Ukraine’s reconstruction.”) A key aspect of the PR campaign has been Zelensky’s constant spiel about “The war against Ukraine is a war against morality. And the defense of Ukraine is, above all, the defense of morality”. A very Western, woke way to talk about war.
Globalists are using similar tricks to plunge America into chaos. 20–30 million border criminals who operate (like the Ukrainians) by the laws of the jungle have been magically transformed into morally righteous “undocumented migrants”. They (like the Ukrainians) know that they owe everything to the Democrat party and the human trafficking network of the unelected bureaucratic state.MAGA America is the diametrical opposite of Putin’s Russia (I spent years in Russia), but has become, like Russia, a target for not selling out to the globalists (this is why Trump has been marked for elimination). The result is that Russia, the enemy of our enemy, is now our ally. Putin may be evil, but he is a very capable leader (not an incoherent senile puppet like Biden) who has no myths about the West or war. He has mobilized Russia for a real (long-term) war against Ukraine for the survival of the Moscow leech state (for similar reasons American/EU governments have mobilized against their own uncooperative fly-over territories). Moscow (like Washington/EU) survives by sucking the life blood of a massive empire and will (quite possibly) go nuclear if required to protect that empire.
Kyiv will likewise continue its decades-long war against its own fly-over territory that has utterly decimated Ukraine. The small army of armed Ukrainian government workers (serving in the police, tax collection, customs, etc.) are all excluded from military service, so they will be at 100% readiness after the battle with Russia is over. The peasants who escaped military service (by paying a bribe or going into hiding) will all be back to as good as new after the war. That includes all the pro-war Ukrainian men I know personally who, without exception, demand total victory (but insist that others do the dying). They all hate the peacenik Trump. The valiant Ukrainian front-line fighters that survive, the best of Ukraine, will be quickly forgotten, condemned to a meager existence ($55/month pensions for war vets).
After the battle with Russia is lost and the West stops making welfare payments, the Ukrainian kleptocrats could very well turn to Moscow. Which may not be all bad, since Russia could within a decade become a stabilizing force against a failing socialist/Islamic Western Europe. My Ukrainian friends will all blame Ukraine’s loss on America (especially the Trump half) and the EU.
P.S. The day before I submitted this article to AT was another day, another Trump assassination attempt, and a new Pavlo video about how military units are asking Biden to send money for drones directly to them (bypassing the corruption of Kyiv). Sad. They still haven’t figured out that the most corrupt U.S. administration in history never gave a crap about them.