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Jun 2, 2022Liked by Andrew Cockburn

Regardless whether Crimea is part of "Russia" or not, plenty of Russia is well within rocket range and the idea that Ukraine will not attack Russian territory is a joke, and the Biden Administration is well aware that Ukrainian promises are but a figleaf.

The entire point of the exercise is to get Russia to escalate, and therefore provide an excuse to keep on doubling down, even as the US continues to fight to the last Ukrainian.

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so US (and Nato) started off by giving Ukraine useless Javelins.

Then after 2 months they promised artillery which isn't arriving.

And now they are discussing, 3 months in, long distance artillery.

One has to assume the don't much care about Ukraine winning.

Meanwhile the story is that Ukraine started great, Russia badly, and every piece of news has been good for Ukraine (or scandalous about Russia) and wildly exaggerating the importance of Nato assistance. And yet Russia have this thing tied up clearly (and to those who recognise Army, navy, air defence and any mobility was all lost to Ukraine by end Feb this has never been of any surprise).

The only way that this makes sense is that Nato/US wants Ukraine to fight gloriously to the last Ukrainian. The promised assistance, the fake success, is all about persuading Zelensky never to negotiate a defeat, and to make the west appear less callous as they condemn more and more territorial units to the front line and death. (This is quite evil).

My guess is that Ukrainian casualties are running a 5X the Russian level. Should the fighting continue and they withdraw to regions which are not traditionally pro-Russia it will actually get far worse for them. They won't be able to shelter amongst the civilians as easily. Perhaps Russia will stop being as concerned about collateral.

In other words your US Military sources are being deliberately lied to (the Ukraine is winning conspiracy is far to big to be a misunderstanding). And I doubt there is any intention for Ukraine to get long distance artillery.

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Who is "live map"? This is the best website to track wars all over the world. They have very detailed maps showing areas of control. For example, in Syria they show 6 distinct pockets under the control of ISIS. Where did they get this detailed information? It's sure not from any news reports or social media. In Ukraine I noticed that for years before the current war, Ukrainian military was reporting cease fire violations. The separatists were firing artillery. But there were never any reports coming from the separatist side saying the Ukrainians fired artillery back at them. It's really hard to believe that the Ukrainians never fired back for years. You can get an account and pay for a subscription to "live map." But that does not mean you can ask them any questions. There is no way to do that. They claim to be news reporters. But from where? I noticed a grammatical error in their description of themselves. This is the kind of error made by somebody who's first language is not English.

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