Things Aren't Going Well In Ukraine

The biological male in the photo above is Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, according to Wikipedia,

an American former journalist serving as a spokesperson for Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, in which she is a junior sergeant. . . . She arrived in Ukraine in March 2022, shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion, and has variously served as a war correspondent, a representative in aid negotiations, a civilian analyst with the Ministry of Defense, and a combat medic.

. . . Starting in March 2022, Ashton-Cirillo reported on the Russian invasion of Ukraine from Kharkiv, Ukraine, primarily for LGBTQ Nation, often writing about the war's effect on LGBTQ people. A trans woman, she is thought to have been the first openly transgender war correspondent.

The Wikipedia entry lists various official and quasi-official positions she's held in Ukraine:

In Kharkiv, she worked closely with the Ukrainian military and police, and was appointed by the mayor of Zolochiv, Kharkiv Oblast, as a representative to advocate with aid groups. After witnessing and reporting on the October 2022 Kyiv missile strikes—including posting a controversial widely shared video that showed a dead body—she resigned from LGBTQ Nation to become a combat medic in Ukraine's Noman Çelebicihan Battalion, a Crimean Tatar unit. In February 2023, she was wounded by Russian shelling while serving on the front lines in the Donbas with the 209th Battalion of the 113th Kharkiv Defense Brigade. She was subsequently assigned to the Territorial Defense Forces, and became one of its English-language spokespeople in August 2023.

So, whom are they trying to kid? Most Ukrainians belong to Orthodox Christian denominations, which are even less friendly to transsexualism than Roman Catholics or Protestant Evangelicals. A US national, she can't be there to appeal to Ukrainians and rally them to the cause. Yet it appears that she functions as some type of official Englsih-language spokesperson-cum-pinup trans for the Ukrainian armed forces. I doubt if many Ukrainians in or out of their army give her the time of day. She's there to speak English and appeal to a US audience, in particular a US audience aligned with the trans agenda.

Her newfound prominence in US media comes in the context of growing skepticism about the war, for instance in this op-ed in Newsweek:

Despite great hopes for a rapid success, Ukraine's months-in-the-making offensive has sputtered from the outset. That shouldn't have surprised anyone in the White House. On April 5, two months before the start of the offensive, I wrote that "Zelensky's troops—with little to no air power and a dearth in artillery ammunition—could suffer egregious casualties while gaining little."

. . . Whereas Ukraine was reported to have lost 17,500 troops in the first year of the war, it is presently assessed to have lost a breathtakingly high 50,000 additional deaths, for a total of 70,000 dead and 120,000 wounded.

. . . Rather than repeating over the next year and a half what has already not worked—potentially costing Ukraine yet additional hundreds of thousands of losses—it's time to try something that has a chance to succeed. In other words, it's time to acknowledge objective reality and employ policies that can work.

At the official level, this is unlikely to happen, and what we're seeing is an effort by President Zelensky not to focus on battlefield success, but to appeal to a narrow US audience that will continue sending him taxpayer money at the current level. Thus there's an English-language spokesperson who's meant to appeal to the Biden-aligned queer community as informed support for Ukraine's prospects falls away.

Another part of Zelensky's strategy appears to be to acknowledge the obvious, which is that Ukrainian corruption, credibly alleged to be worse than Russia's or Mexico's, is diverting US aid. In response, he's rounding up the usual suspects. Two weeks ago, he fired his defense minister. Oleksii Reznikov:

Although Reznikov has yet to be tied with any of the corruption scandals personally, the 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.

Just yesterday, he fired at least six of Reznikov's deputies as well:

Deputy defense ministers including Hanna Maliar, Vitalii Deyneha and Denys Sharapov, as well as the state secretary of the Ministry of Defense, Kostiantyn Vashchenko, were fired, according to the Telegram account of Taras Melnychuk, permanent representative of the Cabinet of Ministers.

Melnychuk provided no explanation of the firings, but the government has been investigating accusations of corruption in the military related to purchasing equipment.

It's worth noting that throughout history, despots tolerate corruption as a useful tool -- their vassals can steal as long as it's convenient to let them do it. As soon as it's more useful to remove them, they'll be fired (or worse) for the corruption they've always practiced -- but the system functions the same as ever, the point isn't to cure the corruption, the point is to remove whomever isn't convenient at a particular time.

What we aren't seeing is any change in US policy. Instead, we're seeing a gradual acknowledgement in the NATO establishment that they're pulling a bait-and-switch:

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned Sunday that the West must make preparations for a “long war in Ukraine,” and declaring that there is “no doubt” Ukraine will eventually join the American-led military alliance.

In an interview with the German Funke media group, the Norwegian politician threw cold water on the notion of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine coming to an end any time soon.

Let's recall that the 2022 line on Ukraine, first from Zelensky and quickly echoed in the West, was that Ukraine's heroic resistance to the Russian invasion would lead to Putin's quick collapse, at the minimal cost of some Ukrainian lives and stockpiles of obsolescent Warsaw Pact weapons held in NATO reserves. A year later, we're looking at a "long war" using tactics that have proven ineffective, funded largely by the US taxpayer in increments of $20 billion here, $30 billion there, with no end in sight.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian people have themselves tired of empty heroics. Larry Johnson at Gateway Pundit quotes the account of a Polish volunteer in Ukraine:

“There are no willing ones. They are looking for them on the streets. In Lviv there are “round-ups”, people are taken from construction sites, from bars. Recently I witnessed such a situation at the bus station in Lvov. Five policemen stood and checked everyone who wanted to leave Lvov.

Eight people were detained in this way. Many reasons for the current situation with mobilization originate in Bakhmut. It was such a plum, such a meat grinder that there was no one left to fight”.

This brings me to the surmise I've had for a while: there's a skim going on in Ukraine. That's just in the news. It's likely in the multibillions, and firing half a dozen bureaucrats won't fix it -- it's not meant to be fixed. The skim will continue as long as multibillions in US aid continues. The fighting itself is increasingly just a charade to justify and prolong the skim. But let's return to Milo Minderbinder, who played both sides of World War II for his own benefit in Catch-22: some of that skim is finding its way back to the US. That's got to be why there's no prospect of any serious change in policy at our end.

Who's getting the kickbacks over here from that Ukrainian skim?