MoA [Moon of Alabama]
What a difference a year makes …
– 
bigger – bigger
‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’ Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight – Time – Oct. 30, 2023
That offensive has proceeded at an excruciating pace and with enormous losses, making it ever more difficult for Zelensky to convince partners that victory is around the corner. With the outbreak of war in Israel, even keeping the world’s attention on Ukraine has become a major challenge.
Quoting a soldier on the front of the counter-offensive, the Economist agrees:
“Left Handed”, an infantryman fighting at the front between Robotyne and Verbove, says Ukrainian losses have increased to alarming levels, in part due to the work of drones. The plains of Zaporizhia have turned their back on life, he says. “It’s hellish. Corpses, the smell of corpses, death, blood and fear. Not a whiff of life, just the stench of death.” Those in units such as his own had more chance of dying than surviving. “Seventy-thirty. Some don’t even see their first battle.”
Still, Zelenski is urging them on:
But his convictions haven’t changed. Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace.On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”
Zelensky’s stubbornness, some of his aides say, has hurt their team’s efforts to come up with a new strategy, a new message. As they have debated the future of the war, one issue has remained taboo: the possibility of negotiating a peace deal with the Russians. Judging by recent surveys, most Ukrainians would reject such a move, especially if it entailed the loss of any occupied territory.
The war is lost. They know it. But they are unwilling to give up.
Reader comments:
The zionist Neocons opened the bin of Nazism because Russia was frustrating the destruction of Syria for Greater Israel . Soros funded the indoctrination of Ukraine with Russophobia for Greater Israel.
You have to prosecute the ringleaders first. We still don’t know whether they used some kind of chemical torture rendition like the neocons used in the War on ( i.e. to manufacture ) Terror.
Posted by: Giyane | Oct 31 2023 12:36 utc | 43
Well now his existence has become inconvenient – another botched project to be swept under the rug. I would think it would be safer for him to step-down. I wonder if that door is closed. How long will it take for Ukrainians to understand what they have done?
Posted by: jared | Oct 31 2023 12:37 utc | 44
It’s worth noting that British neocon darling, Owen Matthews (Despite his name, his mother is a Russian Jew whose father was a brutal official, possibly NKVD in the Stalin regime who ran away with the family when when consequences came due to Britain) who combines the worst of the English upper classes with the worst of Russian Jewry. Arrogance, superiority complexes and outgroup hatred compounded. Matthews is notable in that he appears on Russian TV, often taking ridiculous neocon talking points and has appeared in some Russian scripted TV shows, demonstrating his connections to that community in Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Matthews
He wrote a book on the Ukraine war, hilariously titled “Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine”. He seems to have taken far too long to write his book and exploit the ignorance of the masses, perhaps the advance from Harper-Collins was all he really wanted. However, coming out in September 2023, it’s impossible for even the most stunted mind not to see who overreached in Ukraine and it wasn’t Putin. If anything it’s a fascinating artifact to prove to later generations that, yes, Virginia, people, particularly among the educated professional classes actually believed this, don’t ever trust the upper middle classes, ever, they’re not just anti-social, they’re stupid. Lawyers and doctors should be banned from political office. (Or perhaps we should have a pure democracy with no representatives at all)
Winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023
*A Telegraph Book of the Year*
A Times Best Book of Summer 2023
*Shortlisted for the Parliamentary Book Awards*
An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War – and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin apparently lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime – and Russia itself – at risk of destruction. Why?
Drawing on over 25 years’ experience as a correspondent in Moscow, as well as his own family ties to Russia and Ukraine, journalist Owen Matthews takes us through the poisoned historical roots of the conflict, into the Covid bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of paranoia about Western threats, and finally into the inner circle around Ukrainian president and unexpected war hero Volodimir Zelensky.
Using the accounts of current and former insiders from the Kremlin and its propaganda machine, the testimony of captured Russian soldiers and on-the-ground reporting from Russia and Ukraine, Overreach tells the story not only of the war’s causes but how the first six months unfolded.
With its panoramic view, Overreach is an authoritative, unmissable record of a conflict that shocked Europe to its core.
The reviews are pure gold.
Reviews:
”’Not merely the first full account of the war in Ukraine, but may set the standard for some time to come … a remarkable achievement, with Matthews’s expert eye like an all-seeing drone, buzzing from one side of the conflict to the other”
-5* Telegraph”’A vivid and revealing first draft of history … The strength of his account lies in his ability to tell the story from many angles, weaving them into a single, fast-paced narrative … fascinating”
-Financial Times”’The best current analysis of the countdown to war”
-Serhii Plokhy, TLS‘There will be many more books on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but Owen Matthews’ extraordinary perspective has produced an interim account of special value.’ Daily Mail
–”’A wave of hurriedly written books about the Russo-Ukrainian war is about to crash over our bookshops and overburdened shelves, but it is hard not to feel sorry for most of their authors. Owen Matthews has already come out with what is not only one of the fastest, but also likely to be the best, setting a painfully high benchmark for those who follow.”
-Times
Posted by: Altai | Oct 31 2023 9:28 utc | 16
It seems to me that the CIA’s TIME magazine (it mockingbird usurped cerca 1963) is setting up Elensky to be the lone fall guy (the deciderer!). To remove any blame on the USUKIS money machine. And the true rulers and strategizers of Ukronazilan – Nuland,the Kagans, Blinken and dopey Uncle Joe. (Please don’t let ’em find out about all the money I stole).
Elenski is a sock puppet and he’s in trouble. Has he anywhere to hide?
Posted by: Chaka Khagan | Oct 31 2023 12:35 utc | 42