Unbelievable Failure: Ukraine’s Defenses Crumble as Billions in Aid Disappear

by Jeff Childers

Surprisingly! The New York Times ran a narrative-bending story yesterday — outside the paywall! — headlined, “Surprisingly Weak Ukrainian Defenses Help Russian Advance.” It was surprising, all right. The article’s honesty was the most surprising part. We’re rapidly approaching the Proxy War stage where the media starts squaring its war reporting with reality, trying to rescue a few crumbs of credibility.

This important story blew a fatal hole in the “Ukraine was unfunded” argument.

As the Times’ article made abundantly clear, it is now incontestable that Ukraine — even aided by NATO war planners, free weapons, and a multi-billion-dollar blank check — failed miserably at the fundamentals. Ukraine’s culture of corruption, graft, and easy dishonesty proved suicidal. NATO’s unaccountable war-by-committee, in the face of a unified, organized, experienced enemy with a clear chain of command, proved disastrously incompetent.

First, recall last week’s war-shattering news. After a five-month siege, Russia finally captured Ukraine’s key strategic village of Avdiivka, which the Americans had transformed into a heavily defended military-industrial base ten years before.

Over a handful of days of bloody fighting following Russia’s capture of the fortress city, Ukrainian defenses sagged and quickly collapsed. You could call it a rout. The Russians are now flooding west. The obvious problem, ignored by corporate media until now, was immediately grasped by the war bloggers.

Ukraine never installed any real defenses behind Avdiivka.

As unbelievable as it sounds, it seems like Ukraine’s generals failed to anticipate Russia’s breakthrough. Now, nothing is stopping Putin’s forces except Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the open, who are being mercilessly mowed down. Meanwhile, invisible NATO war planners just throw more and more men at the Russians, desperately trying to slow their advance.

But did the generals really fail to foresee this development? According to various reports, Ukrainian parliament members are starting to ask some hard questions. Where did all the money go that was allocated for defensive perimeters? Many fabulously exorbitant, emergency-priced contracts to build defenses were awarded and paid. Unimaginable amounts of foreign aid — mostly from the U.S. — ebbed and flowed through the Ukrainian treasury.

Why weren’t defenses laid down?

In the most ominous sign for Ukraine of all, it looks like the blame-shifting has begun. The Times’ article quoted anonymous U.S. officials complaining Ukraine will have to “face the consequences” of its own bad decisions, as though the U.S. and NATO were hands-off or something:

Due to what could be euphemistically called an unfortunate confluence of events, Ukraine has no excuse. The Russians were in the exact same spot a year before, and handled it well, giving Ukraine a perfect example. In 2022, after the Russians withdrew from western Ukraine, they had a five or six month breather while Ukraine ploddingly prepared for its heavily-marketed but unsuccessful Glorious Spring Offensive. During that time, Russia built a massive north-south network of layered defenses running the length of the entire country. It was a gargantuan building project that may have set new records for speed, quality, and engineering.

But, despite having about the same amount of time to prepare while the Russians were busy with Avdiivka, the Ukrainians only dug a few ditches and put up some “Putin sucks” signs.

The Times included helpful satellite infographics crystallizing Ukraine’s failures. Below on the left, behold Russia’s famous — and 100% effective — triple-layer defense network. Remarkably, it runs for 600 miles or more including lines of deep ditches that tanks can’t cross (a downward barriers), then lines of concrete “Dragon’s teeth” fences that also stop tanks (an upward barrier), and behind that a system of concrete trenches, which stop tanks and also give Russian infantry excellent cover.

By comparison, in spite of having around the same amount of time as the Russians to get their defenses ready, the Ukrainians inexplicably did almost nothing. Above right, you can see a couple useless Ukrainian dirt trenches, not carefully constructed like the Russians’, but rather hastily dug. The trenches are short and unconnected — the Russians can drive right around them — and easily bulldozed.

In other words, Ukraine’s pathetic trenches are utterly useless, an insult on top of their frittering away months of potential preparation. It was a fact the Times essentially admitted:

Ample time! But … where were the brilliant NATO war planners during this ample time? Compare Ukraine’s cute little ditches with this example of one area of the Russians’ intricate defensive network (again, courtesy of the Times). The Russians built complex, substantial defenses that the Times properly called “fortifications,” shown below in yellow lines:

Making all this even more humiliating, the Russians built their fortifications while they were laboring under U.S. sanctions — enduring terrific difficulty getting building materials. On the other hand, the Ukrainians enjoyed concierge-level access to NATO’s private supply closet and an infinite cash card.

For the cost of a single F16, the entire defensive perimeter could have been speedily built, but wasn’t.  And now, it’s too late.

Even worse, the Times let slip that they didn’t forget. They had the money. They allocated the money to defenses:

Oops! Where, oh where, did a billion dollars go? Where, oh where, could it be?

We will probably never know. Ukraine lost its password to Quickbooks and then the hard drive crashed. They think it might be a virus. Regardless, now ordinary, non-oligarchical Ukrainians are dying by the bucketloads. They are dying because the money was stolen. They are dying because nobody in charge — not Zelensky, not Jens Stoltenberg, not Lloyd Austin, not George Burns — ever audited the books. They never made sure the money was being properly spent building Dragon’s Teeth rather than building Italian villas, buying Gucci purses, gold chains, and Mercedes convertibles, and of course, lots and lots of blow.

Even by the most cynical estimates, Ukraine won’t run out of ammo and weapons until July. It’s not losing because of lack of ammo. It already got plenty of money to build fortifications but obviously used it for something else. It is losing because it failed to do the most basic, obvious thing in the world.

Sadly, it seems Ukraine must now face the deadly consequences.

But don’t worry! The unaccountable, invisible generals or CIA agents or MI6 spooks or whoever makes up NATO’s behind-the-scenes war planning group will completely avoid the exploding blame balloon. They’ll probably just get reassigned to the Middle East.

I think this intensely-critical article, combined with last week’s CIA exposé, means the New York Times has pulled the Proxy War’s plug. We’ll see.

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