Lessons From Catch-22

In a sign of impatience with the counteroffensive's progress -- probably too late at this stage -- Zelensky has fired his defense minister:

Ukraine’s Minister of Defense has resigned after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced his intentions to replace him amid the struggling counteroffensive against Russia and mounting corruption scandals.

Oleksii Reznikov, who has led the Ukrainian war effort since the Russian invasion in February of last year, tendered his resignation on Monday, writing on social media: “It was an honour to serve the Ukrainian people and work for the Ukrainian Army for the last 22 months, the toughest period of Ukraine’s modern history.”

A week ago, I posted a tally of the major Ukraine corruption scandals to date, but it appears that yet another is in the background of Reznikov's resignation:

Although Reznikov has yet to be tied with any of the corruption scandals personally, the [New York] Times went on to admit that the resignation has “elevated the issue to the highest level of Ukrainian politics”. Unnamed Ukrainian officials even told the paper that some funds intended for military contracts “failed to produce weaponry or ammunition and that some money has vanished,” while claiming that the issue was merely confined to the early days of the war.

Legacy media reporting has been slim on specifics, but as of Saturday, Reuters reported,

A Ukrainian court ordered tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky to be held in custody for two months on suspicion of fraud and money laundering on Saturday, a striking move against one of the country's most powerful businessmen.

The detention of Kolomoisky, who is under U.S. sanctions and is a one-time supporter of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy whose election he backed in 2019, comes as Kyiv is trying to signal progress during a wartime crackdown on corruption.

. . . "It was established that during 2013-2020, Ihor Kolomoisky legalized more than half a billion hryvnias ($14 million) by withdrawing them abroad and using the infrastructure of banks under (his) control," the agency said in a statement.

So, who'd he been paying over those years? Anyone connected, say, to Hunter Biden? It's hard to avoid this is happening only because it's convenient for Zelensky now, and well after the alleged crimes took place. But for coontext, Larry C Johnson, a talking-head fixture on the PBS News Hour on matters of terrorism and intelligence in the 1990s and 2000s until he seems more recently to have moved to the right, had this to say on Gateway Pundit:

The leaders of the [US intelligence community] and the military still believe in their initial conclusion that Russia is weak because it did not steamroll through Ukraine and rout Zelensky off 12 months ago. . . . Putin also gets a heavy share of the blame by these leaders for allegedly not listening to the Russian military leaders and Wagner chiefs to do what is necessary to achieve victory. /p>

. . . Because the US intelligence and military leaders are looking at the war in Ukraine through this prism, the analysts and their managers, for the most part, face enormous pressure to conclude that Russia is a feckless and incompetent near-peer adversary and cannot last. /p>

. . . Reports that the West is going to pressure Ukraine to go on a complete, mobilized war footing and train a new army of 300,000 men [are] delusional. Unlike Russia, which outnumbers Ukraine by a factor of at least 8, Ukraine does not have a healthy, young pool of potential recruits. . . . New recruits assigned to operate battle tanks are looking at a training cycle of at least 12 months just to acquire minimal competence to maneuver and fire. If they start in October those new bodies would not be ready until September 2024 at the earliest.

This matches reports I've seen elsewhere that the new-model battle tanks that NATO promised Ukraine won't be available in sufficient numbers until late this year, while promised F-16s and trained pilots won't arrive until 2024. As autumn and bad weather loom again in Ukraine -- last year's counteroffensive ended with the seizure of Kherson in early November -- it's looking like 2023 will be a waste for Ukraine, except that Russia has managed to wear down Ukraine's forces over much of the year in attritional battles like Bakhmut. Johnson continues,

One other major questionable assumption — the rest of the world stays quiet and their are no other foreign policy crises that distract America and/or Europe. Given the coups in Africa and tensions with China, that does not seem to be a safe bet.

But if we're looking at a drawn-out war with an uncertain outcome years in the future, who benefits? Certainly not Ukraine, or at least not the Ukrainian people at large, who are subject to power outages via drone attacks from Russia and conscription from their own government. Not the US, which remains preoccupied there, while depleting contingency stocks of ammunition to supply Ukraine as other potential problems emerge in places like Taiwan. Possibly Russia benefits a little more than Ukraine, since in an extended war of attrition, Russia has vastly more personnel and ammunition to squander in Warld War I style confrontations.

On the other hand, I'm drawn to the figure of Milo Minderbinder in Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22:

Minderbinder, unlike most characters in Catch-22, who are the subject of only one chapter, is the subject of three chapters . . . He is one of the main characters in the novel. His most interesting attributes are his complete amorality without self-awareness, and his circular logicality in running his Syndicate.

Minderbinder's enterprise becomes known as "M&M Enterprises", with the two M's standing for his initials and the "&" added to dispel any idea that the enterprise is a one-man operation. Minderbinder travels across the world, especially around the Mediterranean Sea, trying to buy and sell goods at a profit, primarily through black market channels.

Eventually, Minderbinder begins contracting missions for the Germans, fighting on both sides in the battle at Orvieto, and bombing his own squadron at Pianosa. At one point Minderbinder orders his fleet of aircraft to attack the American base where he lives, killing many American officers and enlisted men.

The only people who are benefiting at this point from the Ukraine war appear to be Ukrainian oligarchs, many of whom live outside the country, who are likely to continue their skim despite occasional crackdowns for public consumption by Zelensky; elements of the NATO military, defense, and intelligence apparatus whose careers and prestige benefit from the continuing war; and Milo Minderbinder. There has got to be someone acting as the avatar of Milo Minderbinder in this case.

In other words, the skim includes kickbacks to an ultimate Milo Minderbinder who's allowing all this to continue -- indeed, delaying delivery of necessary advanced weapons that would shorten the war. It would help if that person had long-established contacts with politicians and oligarchs in Ukraine. Indeed, it would help if that person were fully embedded in a long-standing network of favors and obligations extending from Ukraine to the US Deep State.

This is why I think we need to keep asking what Zelensky has on Joe Biden.