With the Russian capture of Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine whose former population of 31,000 was less than the number of battle casualties sustained in taking it, Western military analysts are beginning to worry — a lot — about the democracy's future.
They worried months ago, too, and they took their concerns to the only people who could allay them: Western government officials, especially those in the U.S. The end of 2023 marked the last American military aid sent to Ukraine; now lost battles, lives and territory are the result, as predicted.
International correspondent Joshua Keating notes that though the Ukrainian army once fired more artillery shells than the Russians, it's now "firing less than a fifth of what the Russians can put out." That, according to Britain's Royal United Services Institute. Keating also notes that Europe's production of shells "is finally starting to ramp up," but rather slowly.
What's heartbreaking is that the US has artillery and its ammunition ready to go — munitions that could nullify and perhaps reverse Russia's battlefield advantages. But, Republicans; specifically, Donald Trump. We all know that gruesome story of inhumanity on meth, no need to repeat it here.
I will say they remind of me of Southern slaveholders who mocked and derided their African-American "property" for being hopelessly ignorant, yet of course it was slaveholders who denied them access to even the most rudimentary education.
Likewise, Republicans withhold military aid from Ukraine while saying this is a war that country can't win. Ukrainian Parliament member Yehor Cherniev also sees the slaveholder-slave absurdity: "First, they don’t give Ukraine shells, and then they lament that it has lost a populated area and claim that Russia cannot be defeated."
After the loss of Avdiivka, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby pointed to the inevitable. Ukraine lost the battle, he said, "because of congressional inaction. We’ve been warning Congress that if they didn’t act, Ukraine would suffer losses on the battlefield, and here you go. That’s what happened this weekend."
The administration that Kirby works for is not entirely without blame, however. Each time it faced an escalation-of-arms decision, it consistently "dithered," as Dick Cheney once famously put it about another war. The Biden administration would ponder for weeks or months about this or that munition desperately needed by the Ukrainian army. Finally it would relent, only to dither some more about the next necessity.
It's still doing it. The administration is leaning "toward supplying long-range ATACMS missiles," which over two years Ukraine has begged for and virtually every Western military analyst has ardently recommended. And then the jets, the fighter jets, to provide cover for Ukrainian troops and take out Russian artillery units. Not one is yet to be seen in the sky.
The motherlode of blame continues to lie on — though not oppress — Republicans. They're content to watch a free, democratic European nation go down before a cutthroat sociopath. If it does, the stain on America's international reputation will be ineradicable — and 44 million Ukrainians will be living in hell.
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