In a 1966 essay published in The Nation, sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven introduced the Cloward-Piven strategy, a political approach aimed at creating chaos to prompt a political crisis that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed annual income and an end to poverty. Fast forward to the present day, and some argue that the events of the past year, including the COVID-19 pandemic and allegations of a rigged election, echo the principles of Cloward-Piven, resulting in a significant shift in American leadership and direction.
The objective of Cloward-Piven is clear: induce chaos and turmoil with the ultimate goal of recruiting the poor onto the welfare rolls. According to the sociologists, a federal program of income redistribution becomes necessary to lift the poor en masse from poverty once chaos is established. This perspective sheds light on recent developments, particularly the response to the pandemic and the measures taken by the government.
The author of the article “President Cloward, Vice President Piven” suggests that the handling of the COVID-19 crisis aligns with the Cloward-Piven strategy. Lockdowns, closed businesses, schools, and churches are framed as part of a larger plan, with the ruling class spending trillions of dollars to rectify the damage. The term “stimulus” is criticized as a guise for massive income redistribution, where funds move from producers to nonproducers, a process that may further entrench dependency on federal government support.
In Cloward-Piven terms, a crisis is defined as a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. The essay argues that the orchestrated response to the pandemic serves as a crisis, disrupting institutions and creating the conditions for income redistribution. The author contends that the crisis can occur spontaneously, such as riots, or intentionally through tactics of demonstration and protest, generating institutional disruption or bringing unrecognized disruption to public attention.
The consequences of this strategy, as outlined by the essay, are profound. The shift from a government by, of, and for the people to a perceived tyrannical autocracy controlled by a small group of elites is depicted as a manifestation of the Cloward-Piven approach. The essay provocatively introduces the idea of “President Cloward and Vice President Piven,” metaphorical figures representing the alleged transformation of American governance.
Amid these claims, there is also a reference to the debate over the actual power dynamics within the current administration. The suggestion that the vice president might be the one in charge, rather than the president, adds an intriguing layer to the narrative. The term “cognitively impaired president in name only” is used to describe the perceived state of leadership.
In conclusion, the essay argues that recent events in the United States align with the Cloward-Piven strategy, suggesting a deliberate effort to create chaos and drive the nation towards a political crisis. The consequences, as outlined by the authors of the strategy, include income redistribution and a redefined relationship between the government and its citizens. The provocative notion of “President Cloward and Vice President Piven” encapsulates the alleged transformation of America’s political landscape, raising questions about the motivations behind recent policies and their long-term impact.
You should be able to see how the Anglo Saxon English genotype and culture of the UK and, especially, Ireland have been neatly, nearly wiped out in those countries. This has happened in nearly all once Judeo-Christian countries and is well underway in the US.
What is less appreciated, in the case of the US, is how NeoCons played the pivotal role in the genocide: NeoCons are rabid "progressives" in disguise. It is a thin disguise, but not that thin. The essential difference in today's putative "Conservative" vs. "Liberal" is only in the intermediary of the USD transfer payments. The military is ONLY another hypertrophied government extract-and-spend department, after all. What is the difference between socialized medicine and socialized military, after all?
Anyway, only a few countries remain on the planet where WASPs predominate: Iceland and Russia come to mind. Any others anyone can think of? There is a reason Russia must be defeated -- but it is not the reason publicly discussed.
The Death of Ireland and Replacement of the Irish People–The Conquest of Ireland and the UK Nears Completion
May 1, 2024 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: | Print This Article Print This Article
The Death of Ireland and Replacement of the Irish People
The Conquest of Ireland and the UK Nears Completion
Paul Craig Roberts
Gaza is not the only genocide. Genocide is taking place all over Europe and in the US.
All over Europe and the US governments prefer immigrant-invaders over their own citizens.
“The migrants are eligible for free accommodation, free social welfare, free medical care, food, clothes, and various other perks. Whilst at the same time that the Irish government is facilitating mass immigration there are 14,000 Irish homeless people on the streets.” And many more homeless Irish citizens are on the way. Migrants are given free accommodation in hotels and country estates throughout the land, while the Irish people are seriously struggling to make ends meet in a rigged inflationary system, with a never-ending story of sky-high rents, high taxes, inflation, and an ongoing extremely serious accommodation crisis. Many young Irish citizens are left with little option but to live with their parents or emigrate to countries such as Australia as they cannot afford to live in their own country.
This is an extremely important article. It shows that the West is being intentionally destroyed by its own governments. The threat that all citizens in the West face comes not from Russia, China, Iran, but from their own government.
Irish citizens who peacefully protest their replacement by immigrant-invaders are brutally beaten–even mothers and children–by police, which emphasizes the second class status of Irish ethnicity. “Many of the Irish police in balaclavas that are enforcing these tactics against the Irish people are not Irish at all, but are more akin to non-Irish hired mercenaries, or more like an EU army.”
“The stark reality is the Irish government is not really the Irish government it is just a puppet of the EU bureaucracy. Ireland has been a fully controlled vassal state of the banker-controlled EU, in particular since the controversial (and rerun) Lisbon referendum 14 years ago, which hammered a nail in the coffin of Irish sovereignty.”
30 minutes in he turns from the general situation facing poor migrants (where he IS allowed to intermingle) to the SECOND camp, WHICH IS *ALL* CHINESE, ALL *MUCH* DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION ... and NO ability to film nor interact with the supposed Chinese "migrants". Just a hypothesis, but some strange data points.
Do we even know what "Joe Biden" was supposed to do to justify the Chinese "investment" in Hunter and Brand Biden???
Is it an Invasion; or a Breeding/Genetic-Mixing Experiment; or What? The world Demography is being (it is not due to natural migration) surgically altered at VERY high speed. Canada isn't Canada, anymore. The US isn't the US. Europe is now a predominantly MUSLIM continent. Figure that; don't run from it; look it in the eye.
That is what Michael Yon has made his current life mission. Look, See, Report Back:
I stumbled upon this podcast episode by sticking around too long after the one I had been there to see. I HIGHLY recommend this to give yourself a "boots on the ground" perspective of just how the INVASION (let's call it by its right name; it is being ORCHESTRATED and PROMOTED and ENCOURAGED) is supplanting cultures and genotypes around the world.
We -- well, you see if you travel & look, which many Americans don't do -- are being REPLACED or, at least, DILUTED and FRAGMENTED. Most of us are too busy or constrained to travel to the far edges where the project is most visible: US Southern Border; The frozen north of Canada; the Darien Gap of Panama; Lithuania; Taiwan; Japan; etc.
It used to be really unusual when I met anyone who came anywhere close to seeing what I was seeing in the arc of society. Now it happens multiple times every day. -Fiz
The Regime That Doesn't Care
Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Saturday, Apr 20, 2024 - 07:00 AM
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,
We’ve all come across warnings against doom scrolling.
This is the practice of waking up in the morning, scouring headlines, seizing on the bad news, and dwelling on the darkness. You do this during downtimes in the day and in the evening. Your mood worsens, permanently.
It cannot be good for the human spirit.
The term implies that we are somehow looking for doom because it gives us a dopamine rush or something. Testing this idea, I’ve variously tried to avoid doing that. But there is a problem. It is impossible to avoid simply because the bad news is so ubiquitous. In fact, I’ve come to distrust any venues that are not reporting it!
Many people have concluded that if we are looking for something other than doom, we should leave what we called “the news” entirely and focus on culture, religion, philosophy, history, art, poetry, or find something practical and productive to do.
I recently met a wonderful Mennonite family living in Amish country in Pennsylvania. They live a completely unplugged life: no cell phones, no internet, no TV. There are only books, community worship, farming, tending to livestock, shopping at local stores, and visiting with neighbors.
I never could have imagined that there would come a time when I would say to those who have completely seceded from modern life: you might be doing it the right way. There is something truly brilliant about the choices you have made.
Sure, they have created a bubble for themselves, one of their own choosing as an extension of their understanding of their faith tradition. One point I observed: they surely seemed happy. Not in a fake way that we see on social media but authentically happy.
Once you leave that world and dip back into normal life, it’s just undeniable. The headlines are filled with tragedy at home and abroad, much of it an outgrowth of population despair. The list is familiar: learning loss, substance addiction, suicide ideation, public and private violence, massive and well-earned distrust of everything and everyone, raging conflict at all levels of society.
It’s hard consolation that so many predicted this outcome of the pandemic response. We knew from the empirical literature that unemployment is associated with suicide, that isolation is connected with personal despair, that loss of community leads to psychopathology, that dependency on substances produces ill health.
So many warned of this outcome from what governments did. In many ways, the world before lockdowns seemed fixable. Afterwards, too much is broken and ruined to imagine redemption.
A good example for me is mainstream corporate media. There was a time when I could listen to NPR or read the New York Times (NYT) and disagree but think: well, that’s a perspective I reject but still I benefit from knowing it. It seemed like we were all part of the same national conversation.
This is no longer true. What made the difference? Probably the realization that they are not just confused or pushing some biased outlook but rather actively covering up and lying. Realizing that is incredibly disorienting.
There is something about pretending that the lockdowns and all that followed were completely normal that discredits them. They do it constantly. Sometimes the media will report on learning loss or the suicide epidemic or rising ill health in the population. But there seems to be this studious attempt to pretend that no one knows why it is happening.
Or my least favorite tactic: pretending as if the pandemic necessitated all this and that it was not an outgrowth of deliberate decision-making on the part of elites.
This stuff makes me want to scream: they locked us down when it was totally unnecessary!
As my friend Aaron Kheriaty often observes, they believe we are stupid. They actually think we cannot make connections, have no memory, no knowledge of anything serious, and will just eat up their porridge of baloney daily while exercising no critical intelligence over any of it.
This rubs me wrong particularly on the subject of the mRNA shots designed to address the virus. We know for certain that they were oversold and failed in all the ways they were supposed to succeed. We are further flooded with evidence of their harms both from personal experience and the scientific literature.
But do we read or hear about this in the legacy media? Absolutely not. Even when it is overwhelmingly clear that the shot should be considered a possible cause in the sudden rise of heart attacks, sudden death, turbo cancers, and maladies of all sorts, this whole subject is somehow unsayable in the corporate media.
The silence on this topic is so conspicuous and apparent that it discredits everything else. And what is the reason for it? Well, pharma advertising provides a stunning 75 percent of revenue for mainline television. That’s an astounding number. The networks are simply not going to bite the hand that feeds them.
That’s true for TV and probably something similar applies to everything else too.
What does this mean for the rest of us? It means that every time we turn on the TV, we are risking getting propagandized by companies that are seriously in league with the government to generate the highest possible revenue stream for themselves regardless of the consequences.
And why zero focus on vaccine injury? Incredibly, the companies themselves are indemnified against liability for any harms they cause. Just think about the implications of this. Even if you know for sure that you have been harmed by a product you were forced or otherwise manipulated to take, there is almost nothing you can do about it.
That’s an incredible fact, and goes a very long way toward explaining the silent treatment.
The discrediting of major media in this context reveals a deeper and more terrifying truth. Much of the elite class of economic and social managers do not have our best interests in mind. Once you realize this, the color of the world changes for you. Once you gain that insight, there is pretty much no going back from it.
Millions have come to this realization over the last four years. It has changed us as people. We desperately want to live normal happy lives but we are overwhelmed by what we’ve learned. It’s like the curtain was pulled back and we have seen what is really going on. The whole of official culture is screaming at us to ignore that man behind the curtain.
I’ve recently taken my own advice and thrown myself into reading history as a refuge. My choice was probably not the best if my goal was to brighten my spirits. I have been reading “The Vampire Economy” by German economist and financier Gunter Reimann, published in 1939 (and which I scanned and uploaded with the author’s permission). http://mises.org/library/book/vampire-economy
The book was written as the Nazi Party had gained full control of government (and everything else) and the full war in Europe was about to commence with the German invasion of Poland.
Reimann brilliantly dissects the reality of a regime that cared nothing for the spreading suffering of the people.
“Nazi leaders in Germany do not fear possible national economic ruin in wartime,” he writes.
“They feel that, whatever happens, they will remain on top, that the worse matters become, the more dependent on them will be the propertied classes. And if the worst comes to the worst, they are prepared to sacrifice all other interests to maintain their hold on the State. If they themselves must go, they are ready to pull the temple down with them.”
That’s a bracing analysis and it could apply to many regimes in history, not just the Nazis. Indeed, good government in history has rarely been the norm. Power often benefits from suffering. As Americans we are not used to thinking this way about our elites. But it is probably time to realize that this trajectory is very much in play.
This might be the most striking change among millions of Americans over the last five or so years. We’ve come to realize that our leaders in so many sectors of American life (or global life, for that matter) do not favor our best interests. This is a troubling realization but it explains so much. It’s why the elites did not care about the harms of lockdowns or untested shots and are unconcerned about inflation, mass immigration, the rise of crime, squatting and the insecurity of property, exploding government debt, growing population surveillance, or anything like the normal rules of civilized life.
The regime, in the broadest possible way we can conceive of that term, simply doesn’t care. Even worse, it grows and benefits at our expense. They know it. We know it. They like it this way.
The problem is more than commercial office properties. Residential is also looking pretty ugly. And all these issues are tied to the banking sector, which is not looking pretty. We could see a variation on 2007-2008; nothing substantial was fixed, just papered over.
The Real Estate Slow Burn...
The Macro Butler's Photo
by The Macro Butler
Sunday, Apr 14, 2024 - 0:32
Amidst the return of the inflation boomerang and the weaponizing economy, and as ‘Forward Confusion’ continues to spread, investors overlooked the simmering crisis in Commercial Real Estate. However, the issue of vacant office buildings in American cities, transforming them into post-Covid wastelands, will impact the US economy in the coming quarters and beyond. Some pundits suggest that this surge in empty commercial real estate could lead to an utopian turnaround, but the potential for an "Urban Doop Loop" triggered by CRE should be widely acknowledged as a possible catalyst for a broader economic meltdown in a still inflationary environment. According to a new report from Moody's Analytics, there are more dormant office towers in the United States than at any point since 1979. This rise in vacancies is driven by a combination of remote and hybrid work trends, prompting companies to reduce their corporate footprints. Additionally, companies are relocating from ‘blue’ progressive cities and high-taxed states to red ones while downsizing their space.
As I said, at the beginning of the US weaponization of USD/SWIFT system, "WW4" has begun. Most of the people in the US remain dumb as a door-knob about the nature of what is going on, why, by whom and against whom. That is why it is WW4 and not WW3. WW3 is behind us, already, and humanity lost that war long ago.
Iran Announces Launch Of First Wave Of Ballistic Missiles On Israel
Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Saturday, Apr 13, 2024 - 06:05 PM
Update(1805): Iranian state media has just reported that the elite IRGC has launched its first wave of ballistic and(or) cruise missiles at Israel. Already an estimated hundreds of drones are headed toward Israel. It appears Iran is seeking to overwhelm Israel's anti-air defense systems. The United States is expected to help Israel intercept this barrage. There are statements from the Houthis saying they have also launched rockets against Israel, and there are fears Hezbollah is about to unleash a barrage too. Unconfirmed reports have said rockets have been launched from Iranian assets in Syria too.
Below is the IRGC confirmation via PressTV: "In response to the Zionist regime’s numerous crimes, including the attack on the consular section of Iran’s Embassy in Damascus and the martyrdom of a number of our country’s commanders and military advisors in Syria, the IRGC’s Aerospace Division launched tens of missiles and drones against certain targets inside the occupied territories," the statement read.
At this point the question is which will hit first: the slower-moving drones which were launched well over an hour ago, or the ballistic missiles which are likely to take less than 30 minutes to reach their targets.
. . .
DumbF Neocons and NeoLibs might want to watch Russian "progaganda" to balance out the US propaganda they slurp down 24/7. Their geopolitics might work out better, if they did.
Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Mich., on April 2, 2024. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Commentary
We’ve all wondered if the fix is already in. Given the irregularities of the last election, and the manner in which the whole of the U.S. establishment rallied around one side, maybe a Biden victory in November is a foregone conclusion.
I’m guilty of believing this. I’ve doubted every prediction that Donald Trump or RFK, Jr. can win. This is not because they won’t get votes. It’s because those votes might not matter enough.
The power of haters is awesome and ubiquitous. The whole of legacy media, government, corporate tech, pharma, and both the administrative state and the deep state are dedicated to keeping them and their supporters from power.
We don’t even know if elections really work anymore. It’s entirely possible, in this view, that millions will slog to the polls in November and do their duty in what will only end up as theater. The regime controls the ballots, surely, and nothing can overcome that. A second Biden term, the most unpopular president in my lifetime, is inevitable, in this view. The system is too broken to generate any other outcome.
Admit it: you have been tempted by this outlook too.
Well, I’m here to bring you some good news. The deep state has blinked. I will present evidence to you that the bad guys are actually preparing for a full-blown assault on administrative state hegemony. They are working to protect themselves against a victory by someone other than Joe Biden.
Will it work? I don’t know but what’s super critical is that they are preparing. If it were not possible to win, they wouldn’t bother. In other words, this is very good news!
The evidence comes from a largely unnoticed press release from the Office of Personnel Management. The legacy media did not report on this at all.
It reads as follows:
“The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) today announced a final rule that clarifies and reinforces long-standing protections and merit system principles for career civil servants,” says the press release.
It goes on to explain that this rule change makes it much more difficult or even impossible for any new president to reclassify “civil servants” as being under the control of the president. Instead, their jobs are permanent and thus protected against any efforts by a future president to reclassify anyone working for the federal government. None can be fired.
In particular, the press release explains, this is designed to thwart another attempt to change their employment status, as happened in November 2020.
“In the first week of the Biden-Harris Administration, President Biden revoked an Executive Order issued by the previous Administration that risked altering our country’s long-standing merit-based civil service system, by creating a new excepted service schedule, known as ‘Schedule F,’ and directing agencies to move potentially large swathes of career employees into this new excepted service status. This attempt would have stripped career civil servants of their civil service protections that ensure that decisions to hire and fire are based on merit, not political considerations.”
The “previous administration” means of course the Trump White House, which issued the greatest executive order in a hundred years.
After four years of being subverted and thwarted by the civil service bureaucracy, the White House finally figured out the core problem. There are more than 2 million permanent bureaucrats, ensconced in 430 agencies, who imagine themselves to live outside the democratic system and the U.S. Constitution itself. They believe they are the state and the elected leaders are mere decoration.
Trump’s executive order insisted that every agency do an internal audit and ferret out any employee who has something to do with making or interpreting policy; that is, anyone whose work impacts on whether the president actually has control of the executive department. All those employees would be reclassified as Schedule F, meaning that they could be replaced if need be.
That’s it. That’s the whole order. Maybe it doesn’t seem like much but it was actually brilliant. The Trump administration is the first to discover the great secret of American public life, which is that the administrative state has taken on a life of its own. After years of trying, the Trump White House finally happened upon a key lever to gain back control for the people. It’s as simple as that.
The Washington, D.C. political press freaked out. It was as if a president had found the engine room and the one switch that controls the whole thing. That was never supposed to happen. This produced mayhem inside the bureaucracy, and a doubling and tripling down on the conviction that he could never win a second term, lest this order be carried out.
That’s why one of the very first actions of the Biden administration was to repeal this executive order. That action made it very clear that Biden’s loyalties were with the deep state first and foremost. He would protect their jobs and power above all else. In fact, the OPM press release brags about this.
At issue here is a phrase from the initial Trump order. Any employee would be reclassified who deals with “confidential, policy determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating.” Notice this word confidential. This would apply to the whole of the intelligence community, perhaps. So wait, are we saying that the president should be in charge of the CIA, FBI, NSA, NSC, and the entire security apparatus, even to the point that he could fire anyone? Maybe so!
Such a situation would be intolerable to the bad guys. From their point of view, this would fundamentally upend the functioning of government in America.
Let’s face it. If the OPM and the whole of the bureaucracy believed there was no threat from Donald Trump or RFK, Jr., such a rule change would not be necessary. They believe it is necessary, which implies that the civil service thinks that the rising populist movement is a genuine threat that could succeed in taking back the country. Otherwise, they wouldn’t bother.
What is the OPM? It was founded out of the Pendleton Act of 1883, which started the permanent bureaucracy in the United States. With it came the Civil Service Commission, the first name of what later was called the OPM.
Until that time, and under the Constitution, the U.S. president had full control of the bureaucracy. The new president would typically replace a vast number of bureaucrats with loyalists. This was denounced as the “spoils system” but it could also be called simple democracy in which the people rule themselves through their elected representatives.
The permanent class of rules grew through wars and crises over a hundred years to become the government that cares not a whit for who is technically elected or otherwise appointed as agency heads. As a matter of habit, they have come to ignore all the comings and goings of the people elected by the population. Elections are just a distraction to them.
The essential point: Donald Trump and RFK, Jr. represent a genuine threat to the gang that has subverted and nearly wrecked this country. Now we know that this threat is real, else we would not see these efforts to entrench the bad guys and protect them against all conceivable threats.
As this proves again, the main struggle alive in this country and all over the world is the one between the people and the deep state consisting of a vast network of elites in government, media, the corporate world, banking and finance, private foundations, and global bureaucracies, all working for their own interests at the expense of everyone else.
It’s a battle for control, and it is the underlying dynamic that shapes our lives right now.
The bad guys are scared. Now we know this for sure, or they would not be trying to pre-rig the system against fundamental change. The elites believe based on long experience that they can always outwit the rest of the population. We shall see.
It’s going to be brutal before and after the election. There will be one or several October surprises. If Donald Trump wins, the onset of Winter will kick off propaganda like you have never seen. As the inauguration approaches, absolute hysteria will dawn. The COVID racket will seem like child’s play. Every day and every hour after will consist of wild attempts to stop the administration from functioning. What a time to be alive.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
All wild, drunken orgies must come to an end. All orgy participants, except the host and his best buds, need to be prostituted out to many, many, many Johns over many, many years. Someone needs to pay. YOU are someone! Pledge allegiance to the flag!
Jordan Peterson mentioned this as perhaps the most horrific, systematic, GOVT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED crimes against humanity. I hadn't heard of it. It was sick to read about it. AND THEN TO READ THAT THE US *PROTECTED* AND *REWARDED* SOME OF THE PRACTITIONERS in order to fast-start its own bioweapons research?
While Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments.[6] The United States helped cover up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators.[1] The Americans co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program, much like what had been done with Nazi German researchers in Operation Paperclip.[7][8]
Ukraine is at great risk of its front lines collapsing
According to high-ranking Ukrainian officers, the military picture is grim and Russian generals could find success wherever they decide to focus their upcoming offensive.
UKRAINE-RUSSIA-WAR-CONFLICT
Zelenskyy’s warnings are part of a broad diplomatic effort to free up the military aid his forces so desperately need | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
Unpacked
April 3, 2024 4:00 am CET
By Jamie Dettmer
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
KYIV — Wayward entrepreneur Elon Musk’s latest pronouncements regarding the war in Ukraine set teeth on edge, as he warned that even though Moscow has “no chance” of conquering all of Ukraine, “the longer the war goes on, the more territory Russia will gain until they hit the Dnipro, which is tough to overcome.”
“However, if the war lasts long enough, Odesa will fall too,” he cautioned.
With a history of urging Ukraine to agree to territorial concessions — and his opposition to the $60 billion U.S. military aid package snarled on Capitol Hill amid partisan wrangling — Musk isn’t Ukraine’s favorite commentator, to say the least. And his remarks received predictable pushback.
But the billionaire entrepreneur’s forecast isn’t actually all that different from the dire warnings Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made in the last few days. According to Zelenskyy, unless the stalled multibillion-dollar package is approved soon, his forces will have to “go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps.” He also warned that some major cities could be at risk of falling.
Obviously, Zelenskyy’s warnings are part of a broad diplomatic effort to free up the military aid his forces so desperately need and have been short of for months — everything from 155-millimeter artillery shells to Patriot air-defense systems and drones. But the sad truth is that even if the package is approved by the U.S. Congress, a massive resupply may not be enough to prevent a major battlefield upset.
And such a setback, especially in the middle of election campaigns in America and Europe, could very well revive Western pressure for negotiations that would obviously favor Russia, leaving the Kremlin free to revive the conflict at a future time of its choosing.
Essentially, everything now depends on where Russia will decide to target its strength in an offensive that’s expected to launch this summer. In a pre-offensive pummeling — stretching from Kharkiv and Sumy in the north to Odesa in the south — Russia’s missile and drone strikes have widely surged in recent weeks, targeting infrastructure and making it hard to guess where it will mount its major push.
And according to high-ranking Ukrainian military officers who served under General Valery Zaluzhny — the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces until he was replaced in February — the military picture is grim.
The officers said there’s a great risk of the front lines collapsing wherever Russian generals decide to focus their offensive. Moreover, thanks to a much greater weight in numbers and the guided aerial bombs that have been smashing Ukrainian positions for weeks now, Russia will likely be able to “penetrate the front line and to crash it in some parts,” they said.
They spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely.
“There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us. We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers,” one of the top-ranking military sources told POLITICO.
According to him, it is only Ukrainian grit and resilience as well as errors by Russian commanders that may now alter the grim dynamics. Mistakes like the one made on Saturday, when Russia launched one of the largest tank assaults on Ukrainian positions since its full-scale invasion began, only to have the column smashed by Ukraine’s 25th Brigade, which took out a dozen tanks and 8 infantry fighting vehicles — a third of the column’s strength.
Everything now depends on where Russia will decide to target its strength in an offensive that’s expected to launch this summer | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images
However, the high-ranking Ukrainian officers reminded that relying on Russian errors is not a strategy, and they were bitter about the missteps they say hamstrung Ukraine’s resistance from the start — missteps made by both the West and Ukraine. They were also scathing about Western foot-dragging, saying supplies and weapons systems came too late and in insufficient numbers to make the difference they otherwise could have.
“Zaluzhny used to call it ‘the War of One Chance,’” one of the officers said. “By that, he meant weapons systems become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians. For example, we used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully — but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”
“Don’t believe the hype about them just throwing troops into the meat grinder to be slaughtered,” he added. “They do that too, of course — maximizing even more the impact of their superior numbers — but they also learn and refine.”
The officers said the shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles supplied by the U.K. and U.S. in the first weeks of the invasion came in time, helping them save Kyiv — and so, too, did the HIMARS, the light multiple-launch rocket systems, which were used to great effect, enabling them to push Russia out of Kherson in November 2022.
“But often, we just don’t get the weapons systems at the time we need them — they come when they’re no longer relevant,” another senior officer said, citing the F-16 fighter jets as an example. A dozen or so F-16s are expected to be operational this summer, after basic pilot training has been completed. “Every weapon has its own right time. F-16s were needed in 2023; they won’t be right for 2024,” he said.
And that’s because, according to this officer, Russia is ready to counter them: “In the last few months, we started to notice missiles being fired by the Russians from Dzhankoy in northern Crimea, but without the explosive warheads. We couldn’t understand what they were doing, and then we figured it out: They’re range-finding,” he said. The officer explained that Russia’s been calculating where best to deploy its S-400 missile and radar systems in order to maximize the area they can cover to target the F-16s, keeping them away from the front lines and Russia’s logistical hubs.
The officers also said they now need more basic traditional weapons as well as drones. “We need Howitzers and shells, hundreds of thousands of shells, and rockets,” one of them told POLITICO, estimating that Ukraine needed 4 million shells and 2 million drones. “We told the Western partners all the time that we have the combat experience, we have the battlefield understanding of this war. [They] have the resources, and they need to give us what we need,” he added.
Europe, for its part, is trying to help Ukraine make up for its colossal disadvantage in artillery shells. And in this regard, a proposed Czech-led bulk artillery ammunition purchase could bring Ukraine’s total from both within and outside the EU to around 1.5 million rounds at a cost of $3.3 billion — but that’s still short of what it needs.
The officers emphasized that they need many, many more men too. The country currently doesn’t have enough men on the front lines, and this is compounding the problem of underwhelming Western support.
However, Ukraine has yet to pull the trigger on recruitment ahead of the expected Russian push, as authorities are worried about the political fallout mobilization measures might bring amid draft-dodging and avoidance of conscription papers. Zaluzhny had already publicly called for the mobilization of more troops back in December, estimating Ukraine needed at least an additional 500,000 men. The draft issue has gone back and forth ever since.
Then, last week, General Oleksandr Syrsky — Zaluzhny’s replacement — abruptly announced that Ukraine might not need quite so many fresh troops. After a review of resources, the figure has been “significantly reduced,” and “we expect that we will have enough people capable of defending their motherland,” he told the Ukrinform news agency. “I am talking not only about the mobilized but also about volunteer fighters,” he said.
The plan is to move as many desk-bound uniformed personnel and those in noncombat roles to the front lines as possible, after an intensive three- to four-month training. But the senior officers POLITICO spoke to said that Syrsky was wrong and “playing along with narratives from politicians.” Then, on Tuesday, Zelenskyy signed some additional parts to an old mobilization law tightening the legal requirements for draft-age Ukrainian men to register their details, and lowering the minimum age for call-up from 27 to 25. But in Ukraine, this is just seen as tinkering.
“We don’t only have a military crisis — we have a political one,” one of the officers said. While Ukraine shies away from a big draft, “Russia is now gathering resources and will be ready to launch a big attack around August, and maybe sooner.”
So, Musk may not be too wide of the mark after all.
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