Since the Russia-Ukraine war began over 20 months ago, Western media has constructed and dutifully hewn to a series of narratives: Volodymyr Zelensky is a war hero and resistance leader akin to Winston Churchill. Ukrainians are eager to volunteer for the war effort while Russians flee conscription. More money and weapons are all the Ukrainians need to retake the territory Russia has annexed. The West’s interests lie in helping them achieve that grand victory rather than in pushing for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement.
Facts at odds with these narratives — such as that Ukraine has been taking unsustainable losses in combat, that we don’t have enough artillery shells to adequately supply them, that the billions we’ve been sending to Ukraine are falling prey to corruption — have been dismissed as “Putin talking points.” The critics who point them out are attacked as Kremlin apologists.
All of which is why it was so extraordinary to read this week’s cover story in TIME magazine.
Written by Simon Shuster, who previously wrote the article naming Zelensky TIME's“Person of the Year” at the end of 2022, the piece is ostensibly another hagiography of Zelensky as the heroic figure forced to go it alone as times get tough and Western allies start to “abandon” him. But rather than shoring up Zelensky’s standing in the West, it validates many of the criticisms made by those supposed Putin apologists. Only now those criticisms are being voiced by Zelensky’s own aides and advisers inside the presidential palace.
The narrative dam our media has built around the reality in Ukraine is apparently breaking wide open, and the truth is finally spilling out:
Ukraine’s war aims are unrealistic. Kyiv has long maintained that its definition of victory, namely the retaking of all Ukrainian territory including Crimea, is achievable with Western arms and money. Now a disastrous summer counteroffensive, which has resulted in horrific Ukrainian casualties while reclaiming negligible amounts of territory, has Zelensky’s advisers reconsidering whether those aims are realistic. Yet Zelensky’s belief in ultimate victory over Russia has only “hardened into a form that worries some of his advisors,” according to Shuster, who describes Zelensky’s faith as “immovable, verging on the messianic.” One of Zelensky’s closest aides tells Shuster that, “He is delusional. We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.” This of course runs counter to all the propaganda pumped out by Ukraine and repeated by Western media sources. But increasingly it’s only Zelensky who still believes his own press clippings.
Staggering casualties have decimated the Ukrainian army. Ukraine has refused to disclose casualty counts throughout the war, dismissing the increasingly-credible reports of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties as Russian propaganda. But another close aide to Zelensky tells Shuster that casualties are so horrific that “even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, ‘we don’t have the men to use them.’” Shuster reports that, “In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition.” According to the article, the average age of a currently-serving Ukrainian soldier is 43 and getting older all the time. It appears the youth have already been sacrificed.
Conscription policies are draconian. Another fact dismissed as a “Putin talking point” is that Ukrainians have had to resort to ever-more draconian conscription policies to replenish their military’s ranks. Shuster lays out the unpleasant reality: “New recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified across the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption.” The corruption became so widespread that Zelensky fired the heads of all the regional draft offices in August, but the move backfired as lack of leadership brought new recruitment nearly to a halt.
Morale is collapsing. Even patriots don’t want to die serving as canon fodder for a doomed military strategy. Within the officer ranks, there is growing dissension bordering on mutiny. One close Zelensky aide complained to Shuster that some front-line commanders have begun refusing orders to advance even when they come directly from the office of the president. When Shuster asked a senior military officer about those complaints, the officer said that some officers have no choice but to refuse orders that are simply impossible. He told a story about an order in early October to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a “strategic outpost” in Eastern Ukraine that’s been under Russian control for almost a decade. “The answer came in the form of a question,” writes Shuster. “With what?” With no recruits and no artillery, Zelensky’s dreams of driving the Russians from every inch of Ukrainian territory cannot be achieved. He can only fight futilely to the last Ukrainian, and there is a diminishing number of Ukrainians willing to die in service of that strategy.
Corruption is uncontrollable. It has long been a “Putin talking point” that Ukraine’s government was shot through with corruption. And yet Zelensky has been getting an earful about exactly that from its U.S. and NATO allies, who don’t want to see their billions of dollars in aid disappear into the pockets of corrupt officials. Zelensky has taken some actions, like the sacking of his Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov for corrupt procurement practices. But to really root out corruption, Zelensky will have to fire most of his government. A top presidential adviser admitted as much to Shuster once his audio recorder had been shut off: “People are stealing like there is no tomorrow.”
“Nobody believes in our victory like I do,” Zelensky told TIMEin what became the pull quote for this cover story. He may have to read Shuster’s piece to see just how right he is, as he seems surrounded by aides who no longer believe in Ukraine’s war strategy or Zelensky’s leadership of it.
Zelensky no doubt intended the quote as a Churchillian “never surrender” exhortation to courage and resolve in the face of Ukraine’s “darkest hour” rather than as an admission of delusional optimism. Yet his dogmatic insistence on total victory and refusal to consider peace negotiations belie a loss of touch with reality that ought to worry both his countrymen and allies.
To be sure, Zelensky is not alone in his refusal to face reality. The Biden administration has proposed another $61 billion for Ukraine’s war effort without explaining how this will produce a different result than the $100+ billion already appropriated. Undoubtedly Zelensky’s optimism was fueled by Biden’s repeated promises of total support for "as long as it takes." But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. is in no position to deliver on that promise indefinitely. It has too many other global commitments, including to Israel, which compete for limited resources.
Alone among his team, Zelensky seems not to understand how circumstances have changed. Shuster and TIME try their best to portray him as the last stalwart of the Ukrainian cause, but the fact that his own inner circle is the source of the torrent of revelations and complaints suggests that his immovability owes not to Churchillian resolve but rather to an impervious bunker mentality.
David Oliver Sacks is Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures and cohost of the All-In Podcast.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a joint press conference with Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen in Kyiv, Ukraine September 06, 2023 (paparazzza/shutterstock)
Earlier today the Jewish Insider magazine ran a story saying that the White House tapped retired Lt. Col. Danny Davis for Deputy Director of National Intelligence, working under the newly confirmed DNI Tulsi Gabbard. It was a hit piece by a pro-Israel platform that primarily focused on Davis's critical views — published only in articles and on his popular podcast — on Gaza and Iran.
Within hours, he was informed there would be no job, Responsible Statecraft has confirmed. "Investigative journalist" Laura Loomer celebrated. We are sure neoconservative radio jock Mark Levin, who helped spread the Insider story to his 4.9 million followers on Wednesday, celebrated. We should not. President Trump should not.
Danny is a friend whose astute, informed military analysis has graced these pages over the last four years. I've had the pleasure of interviewing him countless times since 2009 when on active duty he sent a report to Congress and published an article excoriating the Afghanistan War generals— including the much vaunted Stanley McChrystal — for essentially lying to the American people.
In 2009 he had just returned from an inspection tour of the country and was pretty much shocked when what he saw there didn't line up with what the military was telling Congress and the mediahere. "I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress."
"Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level."
From his explosive Armed Forces Journal article, which is well worth reading today:
When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.
That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.
Today, more than 20 years later, everything he said about the war has been born out. The truth was out there and our military and civilian leadership tried to keep it from us — until they couldn't.
It may be obvious but that is exactly what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and DNI Gabbard said they wanted to bring to the table — a refreshing, dramatic shift from the status quo, which had become sclerotic, secretive, and punishing of dissent. Gabbard herself is an Iraq War-era veteran who risked her career to tell uncomfortable truths about American foreign policy and war. Her very public statements about bad Washington policies and the special interests leading us unto unnecessary wars aligned well with Danny's important work over the last several years.
So it is not surprising that the most strident voices in the War Party, particularly pro-Israel hawks trying desperately to manage the remembered history of the 9/11 wars, had it in for him. He is an anathema to everything they have stood for over the last two decades: he is against the U.S. trying to impose its interests and values on the world via foreign regime change, he believes the military is overextended and needlessly placed in harm's way overseas, and he has criticized the military industrial complex for risking troop readiness and basic conventional warfighting capabilities by deferring to the war profiteers in the industry. He has also echoed George Washington's warning about entangling alliances in his own warnings about unconditional aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Just recently he told me that the entire current generation of generals and admirals need to be replaced so that the military can reform itself, which begins with promoting officers based on merit, not politics and risk aversion.
To me this is the kind of America First guy that the administration needed. He is a Christian conservative with a stern moral compass and had been hopeful for the new administration and its early foreign policy moves. He risked his reputation in 2009, losing out on a typical post-military career in some cushy sinecure mucking it up with other establishmentarians planning the next war, or worse, a board seat at Lockheed or Northrop Grumman. Instead, he has been toiling away at the truth. And this is how the system rewards him. Shame.
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Top image credit: https://www.youtube.com/@QuincyInst
A senior Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday said it was ‘a problem’ that many in his party have been trying to out-hawk Republicans on foreign policy and that Democrats need to be more aggressive in advocating for diplomacy approaches abroad, particularly with respect to China.
During a discussion hosted by the Quincy Institute — RS’s publisher — with House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash), QI executive vice president Trita Parsi wondered why — pointing to Vice President Kamala Harris campaigning for president with Liz Cheney and Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-Mich.) recent embrace of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy — the Democratic Party has shifted away from promoting diplomacy, opposing “stupid wars,” and celebrating multilateralism.
“There is no question that that is a problem,” Smith said, adding that he thinks Democrats often fear being criticized for promoting talking with adversaries as being weak and then feel they don’t get enough support from the left. “One of the beefs I have with the left side of the spectrum is they’re always banging on us for not doing one thing or another. … We do four things and it’s the fifth thing we didn’t do.”
Smith said that Democrats need to “much more aggressively embrace diplomacy” and that part of that should be a refocus on how the United States deals with China.
“Everyone wants to talk about what their plan is to beat China. Anytime anyone says that, you got to ask the question, ‘what is your plan to peacefully co-exist with China?’” he said. “We are completely ignoring even trying to figure out how to make that work and constantly focused on how to beat them.”
Smith acknowledged that China “does have expansionist ambitions” and that the U.S. has “to be able to have an adequate deterrence” to push back and that “we need to be able to compete economically.” But, he said, the U.S. needs to work with China on a whole host of shared interests, like global warming, health issues and energy needs.
“What’s your plan to get along with China?” he asked.
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Top photo credit: Volodymyr Zelensky (Shutterstock/Pararazza) and Vladimir Putin (Shutterstock/miss.cabul)
The Trump administration has so far played its cards in the Ukraine peace process with great skill. Pressure on Kyiv has led the Ukrainian government to abandon its impossible demands and join the U.S. in calling for an unconditional temporary ceasefire.
This call, together with the resumption of U.S. military and intelligence aid to Ukraine, is now putting great pressure on the Russian government to abandon its own impossible demands and seek a genuine and early compromise. A sign of the intensity of this pressure is the anguish it is causing to Russian hardliners, who are demanding that Putin firmly reject the proposal. We must hope that he will not listen to them.
That does not mean that Moscow either will or should simply agree at once to a ceasefire. It will not, because the Russian government has always insisted that certain things have to be firmly nailed down in advance. It should not, because unless key things are agreed and/or excluded, there will be a grave risk that the ceasefire will collapse and the war will resume. These issues will now be discussed in the next round of U.S.-Russia talks, and we must hope that they can be agreed upon with reasonable speed.
Among the things that Russia will have to abandon is Putin’s previous demand that in return for a ceasefire Ukraine withdraw from those parts of the four provinces that Russia claims to have annexed but Ukraine still holds. That is not going to happen, any more than Russia will withdraw from the territory it now holds. The ceasefire line will run where the battle line stops. However, it seems probable that before agreeing to a ceasefire Russia will do its utmost to drive the Ukrainian army from the sliver of Russian territory it holds in Kursk, and it may well achieve this in the coming days.
Something that should be agreed — at least in principle —- before a temporary ceasefire is the framework of a long term ceasefire. It is not clear from the latest U.S.-Ukraine talks if Kyiv has definitely given up its hope of a European peacekeeping force. It must do so; for the Russians regard this as NATO membership by another name, and if the Ukrainians and Europeans try to re-introduce this later, Russia will resume the war.
Any peacekeeping force must come from genuinely neutral countries under the authority of the United Nations; and this in turn could form the starting point for a new consultative mechanism on European security —- something that Russia has been seeking for the past 15 years at least.
Western suggestions for this have been pointless and unacceptable to Moscow, because they have involved four Western nations plus NATO and the EU “consulting” with Russia. For Moscow, this would be simply a new version of the failed NATO-Russia Council, in which Western countries line up to present Russia with previously agreed diktats.
A UN peacekeeping force for Ukraine by contrast could be under the aegis of a committee of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany and whichever leading member of the “Global South” (for example, India and/or Brazil) provides significant numbers of peacekeepers. Such a group would also put content in (so far empty) Western acceptance of the “multipolar world,” and Western recognition that other countries have legitimate interests in European stability, insofar as war in Europe can have severe effects on their own food and energy security.
Such a UN mechanism could in turn help initiate talks on mutual arms limitations. Russia will obviously have to give up its previous demand that Ukraine reduce its armed forces to levels where they could not defend Ukraine, but it can be expected to press hard for limits on certain categories of weapons, like long-range missiles. This will be far easier for Ukraine, the U.S., and EU to accept if it forms part of a wider process of arms limitation negotiations.
One promising element could be a return to the mutual abolition of intermediate missiles in Europe.
Obviously such a complicated issue cannot be negotiated before a ceasefire, but an announcement of the beginning of a new arms control process should be possible.
Then there is the issue of the approximately $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, mostly held by Europe. Moscow will certainly demand a guarantee that they be unfrozen. The EU for its part is under pressure to seize the assets and use them to fund Ukraine —something that would be both illegal and a serious obstacle to peace. Ideally, however, together with EU aid they could form part of a Ukraine reconstruction fund under the UN, with a significant proportion of the Russian money going to reconstruct the Russian-held areas of Ukraine. Russian officials have suggested that this solution could be agreed.
These are all highly complex issues. Nonetheless, given intelligence and goodwill on both sides, it should be possible to make real progress in the next round of talks, and open the way to a ceasefire in the reasonably near future. Russia has good reason to seek an agreement, because otherwise the future offers only on the one hand a grinding war of attrition for uncertain gains, and on the other, the collapse of a highly promising new relationship with Washington.
Ukraine too will have to compromise, and here, professed friends of Ukraine in the West also have a responsibility, which so far all too many have completely failed to meet. The Trump administration’s initiation of the Ukraine peace process has been met in much of the U.S. and Europe not with sensible analysis and advice but hysterical and hate-filled condemnation, including disgraceful accusations of “treason”, of “betraying Ukraine”, and of a “New Yalta Agreement.”
As the latest news clearly demonstrates, none of this is true. And if as Marco Rubio has said, the ball is now firmly in Russia’s court when it comes to peace proposals and a ceasefire, it is also true that Ukraine also still has the capacity to wreck peace talks by introducing or reintroducing conditions that Russia will automatically reject. Their “friends” should not encourage them to do so.
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