Escalations on the Battlefield, in Propaganda, and Nuclear War Rhetoric
In a recent interview on the Ukraine War situation, Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer, formerly a Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations, and presently a highly knowledgeable expert on Russian military and foreign policy thinking, lamented that a major problem with US foreign policy on Russia is that few Americans have much accurate information about Russia. They are more likely to have considerable misinformation. This includes especially the background of the Ukraine War. In the case of Vladimir Putin, their knowledge consists mostly of carefully orchestrated demonization by the CIA, British MI6 intelligence, and Hillary Clinton. Ritter estimated that real understanding of the Ukraine War and Russia generally is limited to a single low digit percentage of American adults. Ritter’s remarks translate into approximating that only a little better than 4 percent of potential American voters are fully able to discern the realities of the Ukraine situation. This low number reflects the relentless blizzard of compliant US, British, and German media disinformation and propaganda misrepresenting the causes and facts of the war. Based on polls showing at least 30 percent of Republicans have significant reservations about continued US support for what is actually a costly and failing US proxy war against Russia, maybe 10-12 percent of the population is adequately informed
Scott Ritter has written about 10 books about the Cold War and has testified before Congress as an expert on international weapons control. He was once cross-examined by then Senator Joe Biden, who tried to dismiss his expert opinion on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A recent book by Ritter, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, was praised by Jack Matlock, former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union; Ray McGovern, former senior CIA analyst for Soviet/Russian affairs, and Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist.
I don’t always agree with Ritter, but you have to be in the Joe Biden class of closed-minded hubris to thoughtlessly dismiss his research, conclusions, and arguments.
Ritter and many others are now pointing out that public ignorance of the real facts of the Ukraine War is bringing the US and our Western allies to the brink of full-scale war and even nuclear war with Russia and perhaps China. This public ignorance has been engineered to serve a distorted view of national security, which in reality is a form of imperialism shaped by incredible hubris. We are no longer seeking to be a “city on a hill,” a guiding light to the nations, but rather an imperial boss of the nations. We are now risking unthinkable levels of war to promote and sustain a false narrative on the Ukraine War. The Ukraine War is far from a righteous war in truth. It was never about protecting Ukraine, or defending freedom or democracy It was about using Ukraine to weaken and bring down Russia regardless of the cost to Ukraine.
When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, and most of it became the Russian Federation, we had an opportunity for peaceful and mutually profitable economic cooperation by which we, the Russians, and most of the world would benefit. But we mismanaged the opportunity and began to lean toward keeping Russia weak to ensure we remained the world’s unchallenged political, economic, and military leader. Our methods increasingly ignored standards of peaceful competition and good will. The demonization of Putin began in 2007, hoping for eventual regime change in Russia as a path to breaking Russia apart and exploiting its vast resources. This plan is actually documented in two April 24, 2019, RAND Corporation studies on Extending Russia from Advantageous Ground.
In 2014, the Obama Administration, principally through Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, and Jeff Sullivan, using the CIA, USAID, George Soros NGOs, British MI6 Intelligence, and extremist Right Sector nationalists, many of whom were Nazi oriented, and some of whom had previously been identified as terrorists by former US governments, overthrew by violent mob action the elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. He was relaced by those backed by the US government. Viktor Poroshenko was elected Ukrainian President in July 2014 and initiated a campaign of terror against Russian ethnics, including women and children, in southern and eastern Ukraine.
At least 38 percent of the population of Ukraine at that time were Russian speakers of Russian or mixed Russian-Ukrainian ancestry. These are most concentrated in southern and eastern Ukraine. The new Ukrainian government immediately began passing laws for cultural cleansing of anything Russian, pertaining to language, culture, religion, and history and began enforcing them with ruthless force. This started a civil war in which over 14,000 people were killed. Agreement for a cease fire and steps to assure fair treatment of the Russian ethnic population, called Minsk II, was signed in February 2015, but Ukraine never implemented them. German and French leaders involved in the negotiations later confessed that Minsk II was only intended to stop the fighting until Ukraine could recover and retake the seceded states of Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea.
Running on a peace platform including elements of Minsk II and better relations with Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine in April 2019 and took office in May. However, threatened by the Right Sector and pressured by the US and UK, he dropped his peace platform. On March 24, 2021, Ukrainian President Zelensky officially announced plans to invade and reconquer Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea.
In former Swiss Strategic Intelligence Chief, Col Jacques Baud’s just published book, Covert Wars in Ukraine, he shows the results of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) survey in February 2022 that reveal that only 50.2 percent of Ukraine’s adult population was willing to oppose Russian invasion in any way. Only 17 percent of the population was willing to take up arms against the Russian intervention. This was only 5 percent in the East, which included Donetsk and Lugansk. It was 16 percent in the South, which included Odessa, 27 percent in Central Ukraine, including Kyiv, and 32 percent in the radical dominated West.
Col. Baud also demonstrates that the idea that Russia is seeking to seize power over all of Ukraine to reconstitute the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire is completely contradictory to the facts. In early February 2022, the Ukrainians were concentrating troops near the Donbass region and had escalated Ukrainian artillery strikes against civilian areas of Donetsk by ten-fold. This triggered the Russian intrusion on February 24, 2022. Putin’s speech the same day was all about combating the threat to the large Russian population of Ukraine. It seemed to the Russians, and by no means just Putin, that a humanitarian intervention was urgent, and the Kyiv government needed an unmistakable demonstration that a conquest of the Donbass and Crimea would not be tolerated.
The Russian intrusion into Ukraine was actually a huge gamble for Putin. Russia’s Army was only 500,000 and had to protect the extensive borders of the largest country in the world. The Ukrainian Army of 450,000 was NATO trained, and Ukraine had another 450,000 in ready reserves. Only about 150,000 Russian troops could be spared for Putin’s operation. Actually, only 90,000 were brought into Ukraine to get Zelensky’s attention by threatening the Kyiv capital. Within a few days, Zelensky was asking for peace negotiations. A peace agreement was reached in Istanbul in late March 2022, just five weeks from the initial intrusion on February 24. This peace agreement would have left the Donbass oblasts in Ukraine with a semi-autonomous status. It would also enforce Minsk II provisions for equal language, cultural, religious, and political rights for Russian speakers. It should be obvious from Russian approval of the Istanbul agreement that the Russians had no territorial ambitions beyond protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine and its own national security. However, the Istanbul agreement was abandoned on April 8 due American and British pressure, personally delivered by British Prime Minister Boris Johonson. Believing Russia was weak, they wanted to continue the war to weaken Russia further and actually break Russia with massive sanctions, causing regime change. The sanctions, however, failed and actually made Russia stronger. Moreover, pushing the Russians into a closer alliance with China was serious US foreign policy mistake.
In May 2023, the Russians offered an Istanbul 2.0 treaty acknowledging the assessment of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Crimea into the Russian Federation. These are all 60 to 90 percent Russian ethnic. This was refused by Ukraine with Western support. Continued NATO resistance to Russian terms and Russian supremacy on the battlefield make it likely that Putin will take the other four 63 to 74 percent Russian oblasts of Kharkiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Odessa. This set of nine took the historical name of Novorossiya (new Russia) during the civil war of 2015. It is possible that Putin might take everything east of the Dnieper and even Kyiv to assure Russian national security.
President Trump’s campaign policy adhered to until recently had been to reduce military aid to Ukraine and finally cut it off as an unwise, extremely costly, and failing project.
The Ukraine Project has been a disaster for Ukraine. Its economy and infrastructure are being destroyed, and more than 7.0 million refugees have left the country and do not want to return. This includes over a million males of military service age. Only the approximately 2.3 million Russian ethnics who were evacuated to Russia or fled to Russia have intentions of returning According to Col. Douglas Macgregor, US Army (ret), highly decorated former Trump advisory staff member, approximately 1.8 million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action or died of wounds. The real level of Ukrainian casualties are a Top Secret coverup, and Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualties are wildly exaggerated propaganda.
The CIA probably collaborates in Ukrainian propaganda, and what they present to President Trump and Congress may be agenda-driven rather than objective. This is a dangerous situation that sometimes damages President Trump’s credibility and needs to be monitored and corrected by the Director of National Intelligence.
President Trump’s position on the Ukraine War seems to have been reversed in recent weeks. Cheerleaders for the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia. like Senator Lindsey Graham and retired General Jack Keane. seem to be running American foreign policy. They are advocates of a Project Ukraine narrative that Ritter, Baud, Macgregor, McGovern, and scores of other prominent scholars, military experts, and Congressional MAGA Republicans strongly oppose.
The tragedy of this Ukrainian proxy war is that Ukraine is suffering terribly in blood and its future posterity for the benefit of US hegemony. At this point, the Ukrainian Army is running out of soldiers, voluntary recruits, equipment, and prospects for survival. They are outnumbered more than six to one in artillery and artillery shells, while the Russians are able to sustain production of artillery equipment and shells at more than three times the production of all of NATO. The Russians have air superiority, air defense superiority, electronic warfare superiority, and they are amazingly good at finding ways to cancel the effectiveness of new NATO weapons. They also have vastly superior systems for recovering and treating wounded, which is one reason Ukrainian deaths are much higher than Russian deaths. In rockets and missiles the Russians have a hypersonic superiority as much as five years ahead of the US. Until recently. Ukraine had an edge in drone warfare, which kept the Russians slowed down. However, Russian production of drones now far exceeds Ukrainian production and resources, and Russian technology has allowed them to trace the source of drones and eliminate the drone pilot.
According to Russian sources, Russian troops are already in possession of most of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistical and defense stronghold in western Donetsk. The Russians are said to have effective control of Highway E-50, the main supply source for the Ukrainian Army in Pokrovsk. Moreover, going east the terrain is relatively flat with few obstacles to rapid Russian advance to the Dnieper. The fall of Pokrovsk would cause major damage to Ukrainian logistics and defense. Pokrovsk was a city of 60,000 in 2022, and predominantly Russian ethnic. All but about 1,500 civilians have fled or been evacuated. This is also the situation for other major Ukrainian held towns in western Donetsk.
On August 2, fighting and Russian advances were occurring in the western Donetsk towns of Toretsk (12,000), Kostiantynivka (67,000), and Kramatorsk (147,000). Russian troops had already secured Chasiv Yar (12,000). Population figures were 2022.
Meanwhile, massive Russian missile and drone attacks on military, logistics, and infrastructure targets occur nightly. The numbers are typically about 20 rockets and missiles and 600 drones. Ukrainian propaganda frequently claims most of these are shot down. One competent source indicates about 30 percent of the drones are downed before hitting their targets. Few of the missiles and rockets are stopped. The US Patriot Air Defense system is overwhelmed by the swarms of drones.
In conventional warfare in Ukraine, Trump probably realizes in poker terms that he is holding a pair of sixes and only the threat of nuclear war can counter Russian face cards and aces. He also realizes that sanctions have not worked against the Russians and more sanctions will probably prove ineffective. His threat to sanction or place heavy tariffs on China and India for using Russian oil and gas moved neither Russia nor China, and India was angered and made it clear to the US and Russia there would be no change in India’s purchase of Russian oil and gas. Secondary sanctions against allies buying Russian oil and gas seems a good way to alienate friends and build membership for BRICS.
Trump has also given Russia an August 8 deadline for a ceasefire or else there will be severe consequences. Ceasefires with no agreement on terms is a trick the Russians learned not to do again with the Minsk II betrayal. Such ceasefires allow an enemy to build up enough strength to attack again with more destructive power. It’s like the Lucy football trick on Charlie Brown. No sane and informed military strategist would go for this trick that Muhammad was recorded as using 1400 years ago. Lyndon Johnson was so eager for peace in Vietnam that he allowed the North Vietnamese 19 bombing halts, which were all abused to the fullest extent.
On July 17, presumably with higher permission, Army General Chris Donohue warned the Kremlin that if Russia continued its aggression in Ukraine, NATO could take control of the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.
In response to Trump’s August 8 deadline, Russian former President and Deputy Chairman of the National Security Committee, Dmitry Medvedev, posted on X that: “Each new ultimatum is a threat and step towards war.” Trump said that Medvedev’s post was “highly inflammatory” and ordered two US nuclear submarines to posts nearer Russia. This is actually of little consequence, but it raised the overall temperature. Later Medvedev pointed out on Telegram that Russia has a “Dead Hand” system of automatic nuclear retaliation if sensors indicate a nuclear hit in critical areas.
All this is a disturbing increase in dangerous war rhetoric. Russian combat activity in Ukraine is increasing at a rapid rate. Many MAGA Republicans are increasingly disturbed at Trump’s most recent statements and the influence of Lindsey Graham. It would be well to remember that American power and financial capabilities are not unlimited. We should also remember Sun Tsu’s warnings that the surest road to defeat is to overestimate your own capabilities—hubris is often involved—and to underestimate the capabilities of your enemies.
“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”—Proverbs 28:13.
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East. 
