30 June 2023

Greenwald: If Western Press Admits Ukraine's "Counteroffensive" Is A Failure, Imagine How Bad It Really Is

Tim Hains

GLENN GREENWALD: Earlier today, CNN (a very emphatic booster and supporter of Biden's war policy in Ukraine that has been cheerleading it from the start and barely includes any dissent from opponents)... Even CNN and its national security correspondent Jim Scuitto, are starting to admit that this counteroffensive is a failure by every metric, at least so far.

Here today is an article on CNN: Early Stages of Ukrainian Counteroffensive "Not Meeting Expectations" - "In its early phases, Ukraine's counteroffensive is having less success and Russian forces are showing more competence than western assessments expected, two western officials and a senior US military official told CNN. The counteroffensive is 'not meeting expectations on any front,' one of the officials said. According to Western assessments, Russian lines of dense have been well-fortified, making it difficult for Ukrainian forces to breach them. In addition, Russian forces have had success bogging down Ukrainian armor with missile attacks and mines and have been deploying air power more effectively. Ukrainian forces are proving 'vulnerable' to minefields and Russian forces 'competent' in their defense, one of the Western officials said... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted Wednesday that progress had been 'slower than desired.'"

If CNN is telling you that this counteroffensive is a "failure by all metrics" and even Zelensky is admitting that progress has been "slower than desired," imagine the truth of what a debacle this actually is.

If you look at the images of what the Russians have spent the last year doing, with their fortifications and the landmass that they control, digging like World War One-style trenches that would prevent even tanks from doing anything other than just falling facedown into them and all kinds of zigzag trenches that make it impossible to attack with artillery, they're very dug in. The Russians know how to fight these wars, they were very much major participants in World War One and World War Two. They know how to fight these land wars in Europe. They very much know Ukraine, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union for the entire 20th century.

And the ability of the Ukrainians to break through those lines and be able to blow apart highly fortified Russian positions, if it is possible at all, is going to take months if not years, and tens and tens of thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands of lives. For a country, Ukraine, that has a much smaller population than Russia does, and therefore a much smaller supply of men of fighting age, just that alone is gigantic.

And you know if the Western press is willing to tell you that this counteroffensive that they've been touting for so long is basically a failure by every metric, if even Zelensky... who is lying a lot and exaggerating every success and downplaying every Russian success is even saying progress has been "slower than desired," imagine what the truth is -- the carnage that is being imposed on Ukrainian forces.

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