Leaks Spell The End For Ukraine (And Expose Western Disinformation)

Leaks Spell The End For Ukraine (And Expose Western Disinformation)

by Joe Lauria

Leaked U.S. intelligence documents have exposed Western disinformation  about Ukraine winning the war. Now the heavy fighting moves to Washington...

A Washington Post headline last week was a bombshell for someone who has only been reading about the Ukraine war in The Washington Post and other Western media: “U.S. doubts Ukraine counteroffensive will yield big gains, leaked document says.”

The story admits that Western media audiences have been misled about the course of the war, that essentially what mainstream media has been reporting about Ukraine has been a pack of lies: namely that Ukraine is winning the war and is poised to launch an offensive that will lead to a final victory. 

Instead, the second paragraph of the piece makes clear the leaked documents show the long-planned Ukrainian offensive will fail miserably — “a marked departure from the Biden administration’s public statements about the vitality of Ukraine’s military.”  

In other words, U.S. officials have been lying about the state of the war to the public and to reporters who have faithfully reported their every word without a hint of skepticism.

The Post said, as if it’s a bad thing, that the leaks will likely “embolden critics who feel the United States and NATO should do more to push for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.”

That has begun to happen. Writing in the uber-Establishment Foreign Affairs, former State Department official Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, write that “it is difficult to feel sanguine about where the war is headed.”

In “The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine: A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table,” they say:

“The best path forward is a sequenced two-pronged strategy aimed at first bolstering Ukraine’s military capability and then, when the fighting season winds down late this year, ushering Moscow and Kyiv from the battlefield to the negotiating table.”  

The article does not mention the leaks, though it was published after the disclosures made clear that the Ukrainian offensive, intended to  break through Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, would fail.

Filled with the usual talk about Ukraine having better “operational skill” than Russia, and that the war will end in a “stalemate,” the piece represents an emerging strategy in the West: namely that before negotiating, Ukraine needs to launch its offensive to gain back some territory, “imposing heavy losses on Russia, foreclosing Moscow’s military options, and increasing its willingness to contemplate a diplomatic settlement.”

But that is a tall order. Moscow would be unlikely to negotiate at the end of the Ukrainian offensive, particularly as the article admits the “Russian military’s numerical superiority” and that Ukraine is “facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.” 

Moscow was ready to cut a deal with Kiev one month after Russia’s intervention but the West, with its strategy of lengthening the war to weaken Russia, quashed it. Why would Moscow accept a deal now when Ukraine is at its weakest and Russia is poised to make significant gains on the battlefield?

And what comes next? “NATO allies would start a strategic dialogue with Russia on arms control and the broader European security architecture.”  

Incredibly this is what Russia was asking for before its February 2022 intervention and it was rebuffed by NATO and the U.S.  Now a Foreign Affairs article is recommending it.

Is there no better sign that Ukraine has lost this war?

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