Fourth Estate Begins Conditioning Ground for Removal of Defiant Zelensky
Just a day after we wrote about the ‘rumored’ new plan for the US to hold Ukrainian elections next year to give intransigent Zelensky the boot, The Economist made it semi-official by acknowledging that, ‘suddenly’, Zelensky is facing a ‘power struggle’ at home:
It’s in line with how Biden’s advanced dementia was just “abruptly” discovered by figures and organs of the establishment, only after becoming convenient and politically expedient enough for them to make it public. Similarly here, as soon as the memo-from-above’s arrival, The Economist sprang into pre-conditioning the ground to sell the narrative that Zelensky’s regime is now on uncertain footing; they would have never been allowed to even suggest that Zelensky faced danger at home until it became necessary to do so.
The article opens up with the admission that funeral ceremonies for soldiers in Kiev have “become more frequent” after the recent ramp-up of Russia’s offensives, a testament to the AFU’s own mounting death toll at a time when they’re desperately trying to sell the opposing claim about ‘astronomical Russian casualties’.
For now, there are two dates on Kyiv politicos’ lips: January 20th 2025, the date of Mr Trump’s inauguration, the first moment for any possible ceasefire and lifting of military law, and May 25th, the earliest mooted date for an election.
An election during pinnacle of wartime seems unthinkable, they write, but:
Still, some groundwork appears to have begun. Regional election headquarters are mobilising, and work on candidate lists is beginning. The representatives of one likely presidential rival to Volodymyr Zelensky say that Ukraine needs elections; but they worry about making a public statement to this effect, fearing a fierce backlash from the presidential office.
Then, of course, comes the obligatory backstab:
Not only did Economist now roll out some “internal polling” that seemingly didn’t exist before, but the big kicker is the predictable insertion of Zaluzhny as new heir to the throne. That’s not to mention the suggestive lay out of their preferred outcome:
But a former colleague of the president says his best move might be to step aside regardless, and keep to his original promise only to serve one term. “Zelensky has only one way out to get out with an intact reputation,” this source says. “That is to run elections [without him] and go down in history as the man who united the nation in war.” The alternative is to risk being associated with a military collapse or an incomplete peace.
Ah, so a ‘dignified bow out’ just like the same establishment forces asked of Zelensky’s fateful partner-in-crime Joe Biden. Remember, it’s either the “easy way” or the “hard way”, as Pelosi said; the same stands for Zelensky. Take your free trip to Tel Aviv or we can begin raising the level of ‘encouragement’. After all, recall Zaluzhny was directed to step down from his role as general for a long time, and it was only after his direct subordinates began to be assassinated did he heed the warning and do as he was told.
The other excerpt from the article which went viral today was the following:
The army is censoring the most negative news to avoid fanning flames back home, he says. A senior military official agrees. Even Mr Zelensky is being shielded from the truth. “It’s not even that he’s being kept in a warm bath,” the source says, using a local idiom to suggest the president was being cocooned by his top officials. “He’s being kept in a sauna.”
Well, now, would you look at that? So maybe when Zelensky spouts off those ridiculous numbers about Russian losses, he’s not exactly the most trustworthy source? As preposterous as it may sound, given the above, it may even be the case that Zelensky actually believes the figures that only 30,000 or so AFU troops have died. He could very well think he’s winning the war based on his info-cocoon; scary thought.
The article ends with an interesting affirmation that Russia intends to capture the capital of Zaporozhye province, i.e. Zaporozhye city itself:
In Kurakhove, Russian forces are outnumbering Ukrainian forces by at least six to one, and a Ukrainian retreat seems inevitable soon. Ukraine is on the back foot in the Kursk region it in turn occupies, where Russia is trying to push its soldiers out with the assistance of thousands of North Korean troops. Fighting is also beginning in Zaporizhia province for what Ukrainian intelligence believes will be an assault on the provincial capital, an important industrial hub.
If that is indeed one of the main targets of the new coming offensive, it would seem to sketch a potential Putin plan for ending the war: one can theorize that Putin could “make it easy” on Zelensky, or whoever’s in power at the time, by taking the decision to give up Zaporozhye out of their hands. If Russian forces can capture Zaporozhye city and most of the province itself, then that would already be a major point of Russia’s negotiations demands accomplished. Given that Zaporozhye is much bigger and more consequential than Kherson, it represents a much bigger roadblock to Ukraine acceding to Russia’s terms.
However, there is one major problem with this theory. Russian Colonel Vladimir Trukhan outlines it here at around the 1:09:40 mark:
In WWII it took three entire combined arms armies (CAAs) of 200,000 men to storm Zaporozhye, which was a fraction of its current size at the time. For perspective: Bakhmut had a population of 70k, Zaporozhye is over 700k—Bakhmut is one tenth the size. It’s very unrealistic to imagine a city like that being taken by force, and Trukhan agrees. Aside: I recommend watching the full interview above. It’s a little hard to get into due to the slow-paced translation, but Trukhan lays out what I consider the definitive historicity of the entire SMO thus far which, as one reader mentioned to me, is very closely in line to my own repeated explanations dating back to the beginning of the blog.
Getting back: That being said, the Zapo region does have quite a few Russian CAAs, and depending to what level AFU collapses, anything is possible.
And Rezident UA channel reports:
#analysis
All our sources in the General Staff and the Office of the President confirm the information that Russia is preparing an offensive operation for the spring of 2025, the purpose of which is to reach the Dnieper. The Kremlin managed to play the Kursk Gambit and force the Armed Forces to spend reserves / equipment on Russian territory, where it is ground for the third month, and the Syrsky, suspended by the Office of the President, is not able to convey the opinion of the General Staff about the meaninglessness of the operation, which allows the enemy to seize our positions at a record pace. After the fall of Pokrovsk, the Russian army will enter the operational space and will be able to calmly move in the direction of the Dnieper, covering Zaporozhye from the north, while destroying the bridges, the city will not really be restrained due to lack of supply. These are all obvious things for the General Staff, but politicians pursue their goals and hope to get an opportunity for a bargain,why they hold on to the Kursk operation despite the huge losses of the Armed Forces.
There’s a point there: perhaps Russian forces can surround Zaporozhye, destroy the bridges and turn it into another Mariupol, where Azov’s back was against the water, but with a city of that size, it would still be a bleak prospect.
As for Zelensky’s trial, another ‘rumor’ from Ukrainian channels:
⚡️🇺🇦⚡️ Pre-war situation.
The Verkhovna Rada says that the OP is preparing a new law on such a martial law so that elections can be held and Zelensky legitimized☝🏻
The third wake-up call in a day that Zelensky is not going to follow Trump's plan for peace‼️‼️
As corollary to the Economist piece comes a new FT piece underscoring the mad scramble to hold as much territory as possible to jockey for ‘negotiating positions’ on the eve of Trump’s return to power.
The article claims both sides are rushing men to the front to gain as favorable a position as possible, with Putin again allegedly setting an ultimatum to recapture Kursk by Trump’s swearing in ceremony in January.
Lavrov on the other hand stated this is all bunk, and Russia does not intend to fall into another pointless Minsk agreement—from a separate source:
Trump's arrival will not change the fundamental attitude of the United States to the situation in Ukraine, Washington wants to keep everything under its control, Lavrov said.
He also added that proposals to freeze the conflict in Ukraine along the contact line are the same "Minsk agreements in a new package", even worse.
The Kremlin is again saying that Russia is only interested in those negotiations that will ensure the fulfillment of all tasks in the context of Ukraine and Ryabkov's 2021 ultimatum about NATO's withdrawal to the border of Germany. Everything else is of no concern, as is the change of faces in the White House. There will be no deal.
The FT article however claims Ukraine can “prove” its mettle to allies by holding strong until messiah Trump comes to the rescue:
But if Ukraine was able to stop Russia’s offensive and seize the initiative by the time Trump takes office on January 20, senior Ukrainian officials believe they could prove they are “fighters” and “winners” and help convince the president-elect to stand by them.
The article states Ukraine needs 160,000 men by February just to staff units up to 85% of what’s needed, but Ukrainian officials say that only 100k of that number will realistically be achieved.
Crucially the article confirms reports that Ukraine is press-ganging airforce pilots, surgeons, and the like to buttress the failing frontline:
To make up for the shortages, some infantry units have been allegedly bolstered with air force pilots, engineers, medics and surgeons, according to Mariana Bezuhla, an MP on the foreign policy committee, who was echoing concerns first made public by frontline soldiers.
Colonel Yuriy Ignat, a senior air force official, earlier this month said that some air force personnel had been transferred to frontline units, citing the challenging circumstances.
Ultimately, it seems the perennial tactic of the press is to continually mock-up some false arbitrary dates as some kind of next salutary ‘waypoint’ in order to drum up morale. This keeps people’s attentions forever pinned on some distant, perpetually approaching ‘event’ that will lead to Ukraine’s salvation. In this case, it’s now the Trump inauguration which is meant to initiate negotiations favorable to Ukraine. But as usual they ignore the fact that Russia has never signaled it would accept anything less than its full stated demands.
This analyst on TG said it best:
The Western press has been throwing out nightly rumors about the "peace plan of Ukraine". EU publications are less optimistic, American ones are more so. Each newspaper, like NYT, WSJ or Bild and Economics, has its own speculations.
The main thing is missing - the plans of the Russian Federation. Everyone is making the same mistake again - they don't notice the elephant. And in vain.
The front continues to crumble for Ukraine.
The biggest surprise breakthrough came today in Kupyansk, where a Russian column of what appears to be the 35th Motor Rifle Brigade suddenly swooped down out of Sinkovka, from the area of Liman Pershyi, and made a shock breakthrough all the way down into the industrial quarter of eastern Kupyansk, for the first time entering the city proper since its loss in late 2022:
This is another in a long line of signs of the AFU’s worsening staffing shortages which is creating major gaps in critical areas of defense:
Today afternoon, unexpectedly for the Ukrainian side, units of the Russian Armed Forces entered Kupyansk in the Kharkov region.
The advance of Russian armored vehicles and infantry was carried out along the railway from the direction of Liman Pervyi. The Ukrainian channel DeepState reports that this may have happened because the line of contact became a mystery to all units (Ukrainian Armed Forces) .
At the moment, local resources are reporting ongoing gun battles on the right bank, where the breakthrough occurred, and there are also reports that communication has been lost in the city itself.
If the Russian army can consolidate and expand the bridgehead, it will be a very serious success.
Informant
An AFU officer channel complains about the successful assault:
Granted, it’s not confirmed yet just how much—if any—of a foothold Russian forces were able to get against the defenders of the 116th Mechanized Brigade. Hopefully it will be cleared up in the coming day or two, but at least a small amount of units were able to lodge themselves into those advance positions. And in fact for the past week, there were reports of Russian advance scouts already entering the very fringes of outer-Kupyansk from the forest belts in the north.
This is how far some maps have them getting:
There were again many other small advances, but the most notable occurred on the Kurakhove and new Zaporozhye front.
Russian forces captured more of the eastern portion of Kurakhove itself (smaller circle on bottom), while capturing Illinka and advancing toward Berestky, where clashes were already reported:
Ukraine blew the Kurakhove dam at the west end of the reservoir, which has reportedly flooded and slowing Russian troops for now. At first Russia was blamed as usual, until even the worst pro-UA propagandists wisened up:
Note how blowing up a dam is a tactically ‘sensible’ act when Ukraine does it, but an egregious “terrorist action” when Russia is putatively responsible.
On Zaporozhye, you may recall just a couple weeks ago or less that Russian forces sprang out and captured Levadne on the western side of Velyka Novosilka. Now they have captured some or most of Novodorovka and all of Rivnopol:
Note that Makarovka, circled on the right, was just mostly captured in the last report.
For a wider view, it’s clear what we’re seeing is the slow enveloping of Velyka Novosilka from both sides, given that the entire bridge on the right (Shaktarkse, etc.) was only semi-recently captured as well:
Last items:
Admiral James Stavridis gives his idea of how the negotiations will play out:
Again: he thinks he’s being ‘maximalist’ in hypothetically allowing Russia to keep its current regions, but that is not even remotely close to fulfilling all of Russia’s demands, which no one in media is even acknowledging. In fact, they actively contradict those demands, as Stavridis does above, by claiming Ukraine will have a path to NATO, etc., when one of the demands is in fact strict neutrality, as well as demilitarization, which would completely obviate the NATO path, since there’s no point in joining NATO if Ukraine has a tiny symbolic element of its armed forces remaining.
Another troubling example of just how deluded and out of touch Western leaders are, we have Trump’s first pick for Secretary of Defense, Mike Rogers. Though Trump changed his mind and nominated Hegseth afterwards, it still shows the utter detachment of top elites, particularly given that Rogers was Chair of Congress’s Intelligence Committee, and is thus supposed to be one of the most informed members of Congress. Yet look how easily he thinks Russia would take the bait to end the war on unfavorable terms:
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French politician and Eurocrat Thierry Breton let the cat out of the bag, revealing that European politicians were not even allowed to speak of a Ukrainian truce until Trump made it “acceptable” upon his election:
What he reveals has far more dimensions than obvious at first glance: in fact, it underscores the complex matrix of control of the true global deep state whose invisible threads unite all of Europe. It’s clear that behind the scenes, major world leaders are merely mouthpieces for more powerful interests—Scholz, Macron, and the like are only allowed to follow a certain narrow company line until a different ‘green light’ is given to them by their controllers.
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Meanwhile, Annalena Baerbock disgustingly openly admits that Ukraine’s budget must be funded by “difficult” social cuts to German citizens:
Meanwhile, a reminder from her previous speech where she likewise bluntly declared that Ukraine must be funded “no matter what German voters think” because she made a “promise to Ukrainians”:
And remember, this is after Germany has already multiple times signaled knowledge of Ukraine’s involvement in the Nord Stream terrorist strike which generationally crippled Germany’s economy, and potentially even doomed Germany for good. The outright treason and betrayal is incomprehensible! This is the veritable definition of the term globalist: a person whose loyalties are to the global order, ruled by a small financial-military-dynastic cartel, aka the ‘NWO’, and not to their own citizenry.
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Lastly, this video from Europe claims Russia has been responsible, and intends to continue carrying out, major espionage, sabotage, etc., of all kinds throughout Europe:
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I do not think Zelensky will step down and simply fade from the scene. I suspect his end will come in a different way, from a nationalist faction in Ukraine. Do you remember what happened to Ceaușescu in Romania? I believe that that is the sort of end that Zelensky will have.
As for Baerbock, if Germany's situation becomes so bad that the common people begin dying from cold and hunger, then she too might suffer a similar fate to Ceaușescu. I doubt anyone would mourn her death if it happened, since she doesn't give a damn about her own people. Whoever prepares her food could save the German people a lot of suffering if they added something special to her breakfast.
As an American who didn't vote Trump, I'm dreading years of hearing how he's a fraud on foreign policy, when the American people mostly accept imperialism and aggression. Generally, Americans are only turned off when their lives and money are too involved (often corruptly).
Between the left believing everyone is Hitler and that Russian agents are behind every blade of grass, and the right believing China is the overlord engineering America's downfall, and most Americans agreeing they don't care about the rest of the world, I'm tired of my people accusing the ruling class of being the problem here.
At least some progressives have protested (Gaza), but what was the response from the establishment, and MAGA? Pro-Palestinian was equated to pro-terrorism, and national anti-Semitism propaganda campaigns sprung up to recondition American minds.
If Americans don't like war and war politicians, then they should stop believing Iran, Russia, China, and their allies are enemies who need to be kept in cages and routinely abused for the greater good of world order.
To be truly anti-war within an empire, you should have nothing in common with imperialists.