by Michael Wood
The situation in the Ukraine is now in the slow-motion process of collapsing government and military, and slowly this reality is dawning upon the MSM in the west. When even The Telegraph, one of London’s loudest Ukraine cheerleaders – admits “Zelenskyy is losing touch with reality,” you know the fairy tale is over. The money’s gone, the front is collapsing, and corruption is swallowing what’s left.
Over one week, Russia has destroyed much of Ukraine’s energy grid – yet again, while the Ukrainian anti-corruption organisation NABU accuses Zelenskyy’s inner circle of skimming $100m from air-defence contracts for nuclear plants, and his TV business partner bolts to Israel hours before the scandal broke. This is the same president who tried to bring NABU under his control last July until street protests forced him to back off. That’s not “bad optics.” That’s a regime trying to slam down the lid on its own anti-corruption organisation. And there are believable rumours that the corruption goes much farther up the line to Zelenskyy and his handlers.
So what has Zelenskyy done? He flew to Paris to sign letters of intent for 100 Rafale fighters, SAMP/T systems and Ground Fire radars, after already promising to buy 150 Gripen fighters from Sweden and LNG deals via Greece, all the while with a $60bn budget hole and open admission that Kiev runs out of money by February.
The “plan” is a €140bn EU loan collateralised on frozen Russian assets held at Euroclear that Ukraine can never repay unless Russia first pays reparations after losing the war. That isn’t strategy. It’s psychosis, nearly rivalling Hitler’s final days in the Berlin bunker. (And it could yet come to that when the neo-nazi Bandera political party turns on his government.)
(And using those Russian frozen assets will help collapse the whole delicate international finance structure because trust will have been destroyed.)
Meanwhile reality keeps breaking through the western media’s spin, the critical city for Ukrainian defence, Pokrovsk has fallen, Russia is pushing westward across Zaporizhzhye with speed, heading towards the large city of Zaporizhzhya, desertions are running at 100,000 for the last year, and former Zelenskyy loyalists are warning of “the loss of statehood” and a defence that is “falling apart.” War cemeteries are expanding and filling faster than you can imagine.
The Telegraph says this is a tragic phase in a noble struggle, a desperate leader clinging to symbolic arms deals as the storm gathers. But look closer and you see something darker, a bankrupt puppet state signing fantasy contracts it will never pay for, fronting for a Western war machine that has already written off Ukraine’s future and is now looking for someone to blame when the collapse becomes impossible to hide.
Zelenskyy isn’t the only one losing touch with reality. The real delusion lives primarily in London, and secondarily in Brussels and Washington, in the minds of people who apparently genuinely believed they could bankrupt Russia, loot frozen Russian assets, launder tens of billions through “aid,” and somehow walk away with a victory parade and a reconstruction bonanza (BlackRock wins). Instead, they are left with a shattered country, a bleeding front, a corruption scandal at the nuclear core of the state, and an unelected president whose political capital is in ruins.
Let’s stop pretending. Ukraine isn’t collapsing because Zelenskyy “lost touch with reality.” Ukraine is collapsing because its Western NATO advisers never had any realism to begin with. They mistook their own propaganda for strategy, their own corruption for virtue, and a nuclear‑armed civilization (Russia) for a country that could be bled into submission. Now, as Pokrovsk falls, as the desertions surge, as cemeteries overflow, the same elites who armed the fantasy are searching for their fall guy. They will blame Zelenskyy, their last actor on the stage. They will blame Ukrainians. They will blame anyone but themselves. But history won’t. History will record this war as the moment an empire (American) fed a nation into the meat grinder and called it “democracy” and when Russia, without ever bending the knee, exposed the whole Western project as a spectacular, historic delusion.
I don’t like war any more than the rest of us. My family lost members in WWI and WWII, my brother served in the Korean War, and I served in the Cold War, so no, I don’t approve of war – any war.
The whole war in Ukraine could have been avoided completely if the Ukraine hadn’t ordered its neo-Nazi Azov battalions to start killing all civilians (ethnically Russian) in Donbas back at the beginning of 2022. That order was intercepted by everyone and it forced Russia to send in its physically closest reservists to prevent the genocide. That was how it all started. Of course the whole previous Euromaidan thing and repeated provocation to Russia etc., didn’t help. Now Russia is determined to ensure that it never happens again and that the largely ethnically Russian east is safe. To do that they want the Dneipr River as the new border with Ukraine, and no western fantasy peace proposals will stop that from happening.
Ukraine, its government and army is even now collapsing before our eyes and no more of our people’s money should be spent, quite enough has already gone into the pockets of Zeneskyy and his friends.
Why hasn’t this war come to an end earlier? Look to London. Look to the isolated, inept politicians of both sides and their Civil Service masters, living off remembrance of past glories. This is the seat of western Russophobia, deep in the Cold War mentality and the fear of the Soviets. This unreasoning, blind Russophobia, which they have transmitted through the MSM.
But history doesn’t support this. In the 1500s London started the Muscovy Company to trade with Russia. It built offices in Moscow which persisted through 350 years to the revolution. Those old offices still exist today. The Royal Navy sent officers to help build the Russian Navy in the eighteenth century The Royal Navy and the Russian Navy developed a complex and symbiotic relationship, with Britain providing expertise and resources to Russia’s growing navy, and Russia supplying naval stores like hemp and tar to the British. This partnership was crucial for both nations, as Britain helped modernize the Russian fleet, while Russia’s resources helped maintain the Royal Navy, especially after American independence. Both navies also served together at times, with Russian fleets working alongside the British North Sea squadron in operations against France. Church of England dissidents negotiated with the Russian Orthodox Church in the late eighteenth century and the Russian Orthodox Church offered recognition to the Church of England in the mid nineteenth century. We do NOT have a “centuries long” history of Russophobia.
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Catherine the Great was a great admirer and supporter of Voltaire and Diderot. She was widely admired by intellectuals in the west. When she annexed Crimea in 1783, that raised a few eyebrows, but the west didn’t turn against Russia until the 19th century. Napolean foolishly invaded Russia as part of his anti-monarchist crusade. In the Crimean wars, France and Britain foolishly sided with the Islamist Caliphate and its incarnation in the Ottoman Empire.
Germany sent Lenin back to Petrograd (modern-day St. Petersburg) to overthrow the Kerensky regime, which was pro-western and still supported Russia’s fight against the central powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. He was sent on this mission the same month that the US entered WW1.
There are “neo-Nazi” elements, corruption, and excess authoritarianism on both sides in the current conflict. Stalin entered an Orthodox seminary in 1894, in what is now present-day Tbilisi. Known for its rigid discipline and censorship, he was expelled in 1899, likely due to his growing interest in Marxism. His early training in theology and scripture likely influenced his later use of dogma, ritual, and centralized control in Soviet ideology.
Thus, he segued from one aspect (faith) to the other aspect (force) in the faith-force duality. Though nominally an atheist, Stalin had faith in Marxist ideology. Later he did have the good sense to expel Muslims from Crimea, in an echo of Catherin the Great–but he also persecuted Jews, though not as harshly as did Hitler, his one-time ally.
Thus, we should not be surprised at the emergence of neo-Nazism after the breakup of the Soviet Union. For instance, the Wagner mercenary group was co-founded by Utkin, known for his Nazi tattoos, including SS insignia and a Nazi eagle.
Ukraine’s Azov battalion was also enamored of SS symbols (until western aid was increased and their symbols and atrocities suppressed). These neo-Nazis were not scholars of history and do not exactly copy Nazism. For Russian and Ukrainian “neo-Nazis”, the symbols had symbolic value indicating ethno-nationalism that was different than Hitler’s ethno-nationalism.
Concerning Wood’s analysis of the current situation in Ukraine, that echoes Russia’s claim to already control Pokrovsk. Though dire, Ukraine’s position in Pokrovsk has not been totally erased. This eerily echoes Hitler’s claim to have conquered Stalingrad, when at their high-water mark Germans controlled only 90% of that city.
There is corruption, estatism, and brutality on both sides. Ironically this provides evidence for Putin’s claim that Ukrainians and Russians are two peas in a pod, that they are really one people and culture. Since the west doesn’t have the power to depose both regimes (and other threats) simultaneously, we should probably support the lesser of two evils or be neutral, depending on circumstances.
In WW2, FDR believed Hitler the greater threat and so supported Stalin. That was probably wise, though after Hitler’s death Gen. Patton proposed the west supply remaining German forces and send them against Stalin in a one-front war.
Ukraine is like a smaller Russia that wanted to become a European democracy but got knocked off that path by Russia’s invasion and also by Ukraine’s own corruption.