NATO's 'Backfired' Ukraine Strategy Built on 'Ideology, Bribery and Blackmail'

Moscow was swift to shoot down Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny's claims earlier in the week of a battlefield impasse as being far from the truth, emphasizing that Russia fully intends to reach all the objectives of its special military operation.

The US-led Western master plan implemented in Ukraine backfired because it was “not fact-based”, with Washington dipping into its playbook of utilizing both “bribery” and “blackmail", Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik.

NATO's "strategy" was "ideology and domestic interest-based - in some cases based on financial bribery and energy blackmail by the US. It was a strategy of finance and military aid/contracts rather than an actual strategy", pointed out Kwiatkowski.

Earlier, the Ukrainian army’s Сommander-in-Сhief General Valery Zaluzhny admitted that Kiev needed to take a massive technological leap to break the current "stalemate" in its counteroffensive against Russian troops. “There will, most likely, be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” he highlighted in an interview with the UK's magazine 'The Economist'.

“In a world with well-informed, logical and humanitarian leadership in Kiev and Washington, we would indeed consider Valery Zaluzhny's evaluation as a precursor to immediate negotiations with Russia. Everyone is ready for that except for Zelenksy, Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Nuland, Senator Graham, and Congressman Schiff,” said the pundit.

Espressing himself in both an article and then an interview, Zaluzhny conceded that “NATO’s textbooks” and “the math” that Kiev used in planning its much-heralded counteroffensive had failed to stop Russian forces from tackling Ukrainian troops.

Zaluzhny speculated that the aforementioned NATO textbooks and the calculations had suggested that “four months should have been enough time for us [the Ukrainian army] to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea and to have gone back in and out again.”

He was referring to the peninsula which chose to split off from Ukraine after the February 2014 Euromaidan coup, voting overwhelmingly in a referendum in March 2014 to rejoin Russia. Ukraine boasted of plans to use its summer counteroffensive to seize Crimea.

Zaluzhny also added that he was concerned about the fact that "sooner or later [Kiev] will realize that we simply don't have enough people to fight". Accordingly, he struck up the familiar tune of demanding more weapons from the West - one that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have perfected. Thus, warning that there were “heavier battles to come,” the Ukrainian top general solicited assistance for Ukraine’s missile and air defense, and offered “calculations” as to “how many tanks, artillery we need and so on and so on".

In effect, however, no amount of sophisticated weaponry worth however many billions of dollars would be sufficient to help Kiev in its counteroffensive.

Ukraine lost more than 90,000 servicemen killed and wounded since the start of counteroffensive on 4 June, Russia’s Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu said on 30 October. It was added that Ukraine's counteroffensive had failed to achieve significant success on the battlefield, with the Ukrainian forces losing around 600 tanks and about 1,900 armored vehicles. The Russian Army will continue to "methodically and confidently" carry out assigned tasks in the zone of the special military operation, added the Ministry.

The US-spearheaded Western strategy had been to use Ukraine as a pawn in its proxy war to attempt to “isolate Russia economically, to weaken Russia's military capability, and to strengthen Ukraine as a potential EU and even NATO member,” Kwiatkowski emphasized. However, “in each of these publicly stated objectives, if there was a strategy to do these things, it backfired and failed in all cases,” added the retired Lieutenant Colonel.

Such “across the board failures” can only mean that “either the strategy was so bad it should have never made it off the table, or the aim had been to fail be destroyed, just not publicly stated,” Kwiatkowski stressed.

“If it was a US strategy to create a weakened and more US-dependent Europe, filled with Ukrainian and other refugees, creating even more financial weakness in Europe vis-a-vis the US, then we must say that the US strategy succeeded. Europe is isolated politically and economically - from the BRICS, and eastern energy sources - and it is locked into an expensive, geriatric, war-leaning socialism that cannot be sustained without US overlords and promises. But even this strategy is backfiring as voters in a number of EU countries are choosing liberty and republicanism over EU prescriptions and mandates," said the former Pentagon analyst.

It should be noted that Zaluzhny's use of the word "stalemate" with reference to the Ukrainian counteroffensive was swiftly commented on by Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the claims of a battlefield impasse as false.

"No, [the conflict] has not reached a stalemate. Russia consistently continues to conduct the special military operation. All the objectives must be reached," Peskov said.

Furthermore, last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin described Kiev’s summer counteroffensive attempt as a total failure, not a stalemate, which he said had cost Kiev huge losses both in manpower and NATO-donated weaponry.

Kwiatkowski weighed in on the timing of the statements made by Ukraine's commander-in-chief, voicing the opinion that he must be “in a hard place, standing between a hollow and demoralized” Ukrainian military, and above him a “delusional politician who has not decided how to best save himself", meaning Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky. Late last month, a British newspaper reported that Ukraine's failed counteroffensive had generated friction between General Zaluzhny and President Zelensky. According to the paper, Zelensky insisted on further counteroffensive attempts whereas Zaluzhny believed that the focus should be on the Ukrainian army holding their present positions and preparing for next year's assault.

“I suspect the General sees that if the war doesn't end very soon, Ukraine cannot be rebuilt or healed, at least as a Ukrainian nation, with little left to fight with, and little to fight for. Obviously, he has loyalty to Kiev - we often see the Generals who know what is going on are often far wiser than the politicians who have been seduced by flattery of the rich, and megalomania and paranoia. Zaluzhny, as a Ukrainian nationalist, may also be sensing that the vultures ready to pick Ukraine's economic bones are either getting ready to rethink their upcoming post-war investment, or are very close to executing, and he's looking out for his own influence and role in the future of the country," Kwiatkowski said.

Zaluzhny also referred to the ongoing Ukraine conflict as a "war of positions," with the former Pentagon analyst adding that the Ukrainian General appeared to perceive "similarities in the conflict with WWI, specifically in the evolution of a Maginot line style of defense” (the Maginot Line being a line of failed fortifications named after the French Minister of War André Maginot and built by France in the Thirties to deter invasion by Nazi Germany).

“If the war is negotiated to end now, I see the borders roughly as they are being defended at present. Clearly, Ukraine is unable to advance eastward, this is evident," said the pundit.

As Washington struggles to keep up with growing demands to support its ally Israel in its fight against Hamas, and the Kiev regime amid its ongoing conflict with Russia, Kwiatkowski concluded:

"If Ukraine becomes weaker and weaker, with both the US and NATO tapped out logistically and unwilling to conduct and participate a direct fight against the Russian military over Ukraine, Ukraine risks that line moving westward, and being forced to cede even more territory in an appeal for peace.”