{"id":165679,"date":"2023-05-01T10:42:25","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T14:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=165679"},"modified":"2023-05-01T10:42:25","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T14:42:25","slug":"this-is-the-best-ukraine-war-reality-check-on-the-net-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=165679","title":{"rendered":"

This is the best Ukraine War reality check on the net today.<\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Military Situation In The Ukraine.<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n

By Jacques Baud
\nGlobal Research, April 29, 2023
\nCentre Fran\u00e7ais de Recherche sur le Renseignement<\/p>\n

First published on May 5, 2022<\/p>\n

\n

Part One:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>The Road To War<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I have worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is therefore not a question of justifying war, but of understanding what led us to it. [\u2026.]<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s try to examine the roots of the [Ukrainian] conflict. It starts with\u00a0those<\/a>\u00a0who for the last eight years have been talking about \u201cseparatists\u201d or \u201cindependentists\u201d from Donbass. This is a misnomer. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014, were\u00a0not<\/strong>\u00a0referendums of \u201cindependence\u201d (\u043d\u0435\u0437\u0430\u0432\u0438\u0441\u0438\u043c\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044c), as\u00a0some unscrupulous journalists<\/a>\u00a0have claimed, but\u00a0referendums<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cself-determination\u201d or \u201cautonomy\u201d\u00a0<\/span>(\u0441\u0430\u043c\u043e\u0441\u0442\u043e\u044f\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044c). The qualifier \u201cpro-Russian\u201d suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term \u201cRussian speakers\u201d would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language\u2013because the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the American-sponsored overthrow of [the democratically-elected] President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language in Ukraine. A bit like if German putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.<\/span><\/p>\n

This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result was fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which was carried out beginning in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and some horrific massacres of the Russian population (in Odessa and Mariupol, the most notable).<\/span><\/p>\n

At this stage, too rigid and engrossed in a doctrinaire approach to operations, the Ukrainian general staff subdued the enemy but without managing to actually prevail. The war waged by the autonomists [consisted in].\u2026 highly mobile operations conducted with light means. With a more flexible and less doctrinaire approach, the rebels were able to exploit the inertia of Ukrainian forces to repeatedly \u201ctrap\u201d them.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014, when I was at NATO, I was responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms, and we were trying to detect Russian arms deliveries to the rebels, to see if Moscow was involved. The information we received then came almost entirely from Polish intelligence services and did not \u201cfit\u201d with the information coming from the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe]\u2014and despite rather crude allegations, there were\u00a0no deliveries<\/strong>\u00a0of weapons and military equipment from Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rebels were armed\u00a0thanks to the defection of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units<\/strong>\u00a0that went over to the rebel side. As Ukrainian failures continued, tank, artillery and anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists. This is what pushed the Ukrainians to commit to the Minsk Agreements.<\/span><\/p>\n

But just after signing the Minsk 1 Agreements, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launched a massive \u201canti-terrorist operation\u201d (ATO\/\u0410\u043d\u0442\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0440\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0447\u043d\u0430 \u043e\u043f\u0435\u0440\u0430\u0446\u0456\u044f) against the Donbass. Poorly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffered a crushing defeat in Debaltsevo, which forced them to engage in the Minsk 2 Agreements.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is essential to recall here that Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015) Agreements\u00a0did not<\/strong>\u00a0provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have\u00a0read the Agreements<\/a>\u00a0(there are very few who actually have) will note that it is written that the status of the Republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the Republics, for an internal solution within Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded the implementation of the Minsk Agreements while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter of Ukraine. On the other side, the West\u2014led by France\u2014systematically tried to replace Minsk Agreements with the \u201cNormandy format,\u201d which put Russians and Ukrainians face-to-face. However, let us remember that there were never any Russian troops in the Donbass before 23-24 February 2022. Moreover,\u00a0OSCE observers have never<\/a>\u00a0observed the slightest trace of Russian units operating in the Donbass before then. For example, the U.S. intelligence map published by the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on December 3, 2021 does not show Russian troops in the Donbass.<\/span><\/p>\n

In October 2015, Vasyl Hrytsak, director of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU),\u00a0confessed<\/a>\u00a0that only 56 Russian fighters had been observed in the Donbass. This was exactly comparable to the Swiss who went to fight in Bosnia on weekends, in the 1990s, or the French who go to fight in Ukraine today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state. In October 2018, after four years of war, the chief Ukrainian military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios,\u00a0stated that<\/a>\u00a0Ukraine had lost 2,700 men in the Donbass: 891 from illnesses, 318 from road accidents, 177 from other accidents, 175 from poisonings (alcohol, drugs), 172 from careless handling of weapons, 101 from breaches of security regulations, 228 from murders and 615 from suicides.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, the Ukrainian army was undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoyed the support of the population. According to a\u00a0British Home Office report<\/a>, in the March\/April 2014 recall of reservists, 70 percent did not show up for the first session, 80 percent for the second, 90 percent for the third, and 95 percent for the fourth. In October\/November 2017,\u00a070% of conscripts<\/a>\u00a0did not show up for the \u201cFall 2017\u201d recall campaign. This is not counting\u00a0suicides<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0desertions<\/a>\u00a0(often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO area. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense then turned to NATO to help make its armed forces more \u201cattractive.\u201d Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces. But this is a long-term process and the Ukrainians wanted to move quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias\u2026. In 2020, they constituted about 40 percent of the Ukrainian forces and numbered about 102,000 men,\u00a0according to Reuters<\/a>. They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities.<\/span><\/p>\n

These militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support. Even if one can argue about the term \u201cNazi,\u201d the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic\u2026[and] are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals. The best known of these is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is revered in the Ukraine for liberating Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before carrying out the 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France. [\u2026.]<\/span><\/p>\n

The characterization of the Ukrainian paramilitaries as \u201cNazis\u201d or \u201cneo-Nazis\u201d is\u00a0considered Russian propaganda<\/a>. But that\u2019s not the view of the\u00a0Times of Israel<\/em><\/a>, or the\u00a0West Point Academy\u2019s Center for Counterterrorism<\/a>. In 2014,\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0magazine<\/a>\u00a0seemed to associate them more with\u2026 the Islamic State. Take your pick!<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the West supported and continued to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous\u00a0crimes against civilian populations<\/a>\u00a0since 2014: rape, torture and massacres\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

The integration of these paramilitary forces into the Ukrainian National Guard was not at all accompanied by a \u201cdenazification,\u201d\u00a0as some claim<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the many examples, that of the Azov Regiment\u2019s insignia is instructive:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In 2022, very schematically, the Ukrainian armed forces fighting the Russian offensive were organized as:<\/span><\/p>\n