The US is working on a successor for Zelenskyy if he is captured or killed. They include plans to move government functions to western Ukraine.
The U.S. and allied nations would also like to see Ukrainian officials establish a location for leadership outside of Kyiv, according to multiple officials. A presidential retreat in the Carpathian Mountains has been floated as an option . . .
Meanwhile the US is looking to turn Ukraine into another Syria or Afghanistan with long-term insurgency against a Russian-controlled government in Kiev.
My observation is that the last insurgency in western Ukraine was a bloody guerilla war against the Soviets for several years after World War II. It resulted in over 100,000 Ukrainian deaths according to some estimate. This war was led by the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), a far-right partisan group that was at times allied with the Germany in World War II. The Soviets did their best to hide the events related to the war, and the war has rarely been mentioned in western media. The Azov battalion and allied groups are the modern-day descendants of the UPA.
Given the change in technology since the 1940s since the 1940’s, is a repeat of the UPA’s failed insurgency even less likely to succeed today?
Is the US looking to turn western Ukraine into another Syria or Afghanistan with huge civilian casualties?
Is the point of the proposed insurgency to create another war-forever cash cow for military and surveillance interests in Washington?
Ukrainians should realise by now that their membership in NATO would only be granted by NATO if NATO can see some use for them as pawns in their larger agenda, as they were this times around. They should not depend on any better support against an attack next time. They will need to choose to be a neutral state. If things quieten down between Russia and a shrunken Ukraine, and Russia remains sufficiently strong, NATO may subject Finland to the same fate to further deplete Russian resources.
Yes. If you are looking for a cash-cow scenario for the military, then training people like Centura for an insurgency makes sense. It took about three years for Soviets end serious insurgency after World War II; I think that an insurgency would end much more quickly given the improvements in military technology. Of course military increased military spending is likely to continue even after the insurgency is over.
Ukraine is not Afghanistan from the 1980s. The Carpathian Mountains near Ukraine’s southwest border is the only mountainous part of the country. The Carpathians are similar to the Appalachians; they are not the Hindu Kush. Most of the rest of the country is open farmland or grasslands.
Here is what the Carpathians look like at the place where the borders of Ukraine, Slovakia, and Poland meet.
I see some parallels with US support for Syrian rebels during the Obama administration that resulted in the creation of ISIS. In both cases foreigners from western Europe are coming to fight. In both cases, the survivors are likely to return home once the insurgency ends along with exiles.
What happens when there are large numbers of far-right extremists with military experience in western Europe? Will they be used to create problems there?
Or will they be used as another pretext by EU governments to end civil liberties?
This is not being involved (or interfering if you like) in an internal insurrection of a country, picking sides. This is helping a country that has been invaded and is in the process of being occupied by a foreign power. There is no moral ambiguity here, and certainly not based on the possibility of bad people maybe sometime in the future having power here. Bad people are already there…Putin’s occupiers.
Real Politik sometimes forces you to “support” very questionable and sometimes outright awful people for the pursuit of your political objectives.
We’ve supported some pretty horrible people in the past, especially during the Cold War. It’s one those of those situations where there are no good choices and you go with the one that can at least be used to further your geopolitical objectives versus the one who is diametrically opposed to you.
Of course you do, because you argue in bad faith, with the goal of always projecting blame onto Democrats.
In any event, ISIS was around long before Obama was even in government.
Is there the potential for blowback by supporting these groups? Sure. Thing is, there’s also blowback for doing nothing. Either way, we know that there will be an insurgency in conquered Ukraine, we may as well set the Nazis to killing Russians.
Yes, there is also the law of unintended consequences. Al Qaeda is likely a result from the successful US-backed insurgency in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Gotcha. You think funding of Syrian rebels under Obama created ISIL even though it was founded by Zarqawi about ten years before Obama became president. I get your schtick.
