Ukraine – 5/15 Sitrep
By: Robert Homans
@rhomansjr
May 15, 2022
Yesterday, my collaborator in Kyiv told me that his computer has crashed. Without his critical input, I will likely not send out emails as frequently as has been the case since the start of the war. We’ll see what next week brings.
Interview With Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Indiana) From BBC’s “Hard Talk” – From listening to this interview, it seems as if Rep. Spartz is a figure who is inconvenient to a minority in her own Party, about the level of support the U.S. is providing to Ukraine. She is also likely inconvenient to the Democrats who make up a large portion of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, a group of Members of Congress who support Ukraine. It is hard to ignore one of their own, who was born in Ukraine and who still has family there.
When the interviewer asked Rep. Spartz if people in her District opposed her spending so much time on Ukraine, instead of on issues closer to them such as inflation, she answered that she holds many “town hall” meetings with constituents in her District, and she said that some of them want her to run for President. By asking this question, the interviewer showed himself to be mis-informed. I am on Rep. Spartz’s Congressional mailing list. I can say that prior ot the start of the war, Ukraine almost never came up. At least until the war started, she spent almost all of her time on issues other than Ukraine. In fact, upon reading her posts, I began wondering when she would start paying more attention to Ukraine. We now know the answer.
“I am finished underestimating Ukraine” – Gen. Jack Keane, US Army (Ret), on the “Wall Street Journal Editorial Report,” May 14, 2022
It seems as if French President Macron isn’t yet finished underestimating Ukraine. In an interview with the Italian television station, Rai, Pres. Zelenskyy said that Macron suggested to him that Ukraine give up partial sovereignty over its territory to allow Pres. Putin to “save face,” after Russia has been defeated in 2 major battles, Kyiv and now Kharkiv, and is in the process of losing a 3rd, in Donbas. In 2015 the French and the Germans pressured Ukraine into giving up sovereignty over its territory, in an agreement that is now known as “Minsk II.” Minsk II has never been implemented, nor will it ever be. Macron needs to come to the realization that this is a “new day,” but he’s by no means the only one who has underestimated Ukraine.
Ukraine has a history of being underestimated. Here are a few examples:
· 2004 – Orange Revolution
o Putin comes to Kyiv to campaign for Viktor Yanukovich, who at the time was running for President against Viktor Yushchanko. Putin’s decision to come to Kyiv was a contributing factor in Yanukovich’s eventual defeat. It is an early example of Putin making one idiotic mistake after another in Ukraine but the West, instead of recognizing Putin’s mistakes for what they are, never tired of calling Putin a “Chess Master,” and a “Master of the Long Game.”
o Very few people believed that Ukrainians would come out into the streets to protest what was clearly a fraudulent election that called Yanukovich the winner. They did, the election was re-run, and Yushchenko elected President.
· 2013/2014 – Revolution of Dignity
o Many in the West never acknowledged that Euromaidan was a movement created and financed by Ukrainians. Instead both they and the Russians asserted that it was financed by the U.S.
o According to reports Radek Sikorski, then the Polish Foreign Minister and an EU observer in negotiations that took place on February 21, 2014, between Yanukovich and Ukrainian opposition political figures on re-scheduling the next Ukrainian Presidential election, told one of the Ukrainian opposition figures that unless they agreed to the deal that they had just negotiated with Yanukovich, to move the Presidential election up by several months, that they’d all be dead in the next 72 hours. They went down to Independence Square, where 50,000 protestors were gathered to mourn those who were murdered on Institutska St. the day before, and they presented the deal that Sikorski had told them they must agree to, only to be told by one protestor that if Yanukovich wasn’t gone by 10AM the next day that the fighting would resume. Yanukovich fled at 4AM the following morning, but what wasn’t known was that Yanukovich had started backing up the moving vans to his estate 3 days before.
· Spring to September 2014 – Loss of Crimea and Donbas
o February 2014 – While President, Yanukovich had gutted the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 4 MiG 29’s had just been sold to Chad. In February 2014, at the time of Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, Ukraine had only 6.000 combat ready soldiers.
o Spring 2014 - Russia thought they could walk into what they call “Novo Rosiya,” the part of Ukraine along the coast of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, as well as Kharkiv, and they’d be welcomed by Russian speaking Ukrainians with open arms – no need for an invasion. Russia was wrong then, but they didn’t learn their lesson in 2022 when most of the destruction that has taken place in the current war, perpetrated by Russians, have been visited upon the same Russian-speaking Ukrainians whom Russians thought would welcome them 8 years before.
o Summer of 2014 – From 6,000 combat-ready troops, the Ukrainian Armed Forces re-took 2/3rds of Donbas from Russian proxies, and they were ready to re-take all of Donbas.
o September 2014 – Russian forces counter attacked, and Ukraine suffered a major defeat at llovaisk. Few people in the West seemed to remember what Ukraine had accomplished, pre Ilovaisk. Instead, Ilovaisk served as a sort of convenient means for them to focus on poor procurement, bad leadership, and corruption, and concluded that Ukraine could never defeat Russia in an armed conflict.
· Early 2015 – Debaltseve
o Another major defeat for the Ukrainian Army, leading directly to Minsk II.
· 2022 – Ukraine won’t last 5 days.
o This chorus has continued throughout the course of the war, with the experts saying that Ukraine must agree to a ceasefire with Russia and partial loss of territory.
o Few, including most military experts, failed to recognize or acknowledge the substantial training that had place in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, starting in 2015, especially in organization and leadership, initiated by Ukrainians with substantial support from NATO countries. Without these changes, all the Western equipment I the world would not have mattered.
With all due respect to the Western experts, Ukraine has a history of facilitating the under estimation by both the West and Russia and influencing their policies toward Ukraine, including:
· 2004 – Creation of RusUkrEnergo, allowing for huge sums of money to be siphoned off from Ukrainian taxpayers.
· 2007 – Political infighting that ended with the return of Yanukovich as Prime Minister.
· 2010 – Ukraine deciding to no longer defend itself, in a case brought against Ukraine by Dmytro Firtash, over Ukraine’s expropriation of gas that Firtash claimed belonged to him. The Stockholm Court was about to enter a finding for Ukraine. Instead, Firtash received approximately $1 billion in damages.
· 2014 to 2019 – The term of Petro Poroshenko.
o Wrangling over the creation of an Anti-Corruption Court.
o The corruption in the Pechersk District Court, where a number of anti-corruption cases went to die, and Poroshenko’s refusal to disband the Court.
o Hunter Biden, Burisma, Giuliani, and the revelations of American professional service firms slopping at Ukraine’s dirty money trough.
These are a few examples, but they led the West to overlook Ukraine’s accomplishments and it has resulted in poor decisions about how, and with what, to arm Ukraine against a possible Russian attack. For both Russia and the West, their underestimation of Ukraine is present for all to see
The war, at great cost, has brought a new day to Ukraine. It is well past time for those in the West to start looking through the shortcomings, so that they never underestimate Ukraine again.
Might be the most important summary article I've read. Countering Russia propaganda about the circumstances is quite important and needs to have more visibility. Can't know if I am simply swayed by Ukraine counter-propaganda, but to my mind the US simply took advantage of an organic movement in 2014 with various placed claims. The US corruption itself allowed those claims and Hunter Biden was a key figure. Trump's efforts to discover truth were based on information the US held that the system didn't want revealed because it might be embarrassing. The intersection of US-Ukraine politics is troublesome.
Zelensky seems more than an adequate figure and efforts to make him a corrupted person seem to be negated by the Ukraine public. I have no doubt about various levels of corruption, yet Ukraine can decide that themselves without outside help.