As Battles Rage, Ukraine Rejects Macron’s Plea Not to ‘Humiliate’ Russia 

Ooh. What did Manny propose?

“We must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means,” Mr. Macron, who has sought to position himself as the world’s chief negotiator with the Kremlin, said in an interview with French newspapers. “I am convinced that it is France’s role to be a mediating power.”

Do you see that up in the sky? That's daylight between France, at least, and the U.S. Daylight among NATO allies. That's not good. Macron obviously thinks the U.S., by continuously sending more and more lethal materiel to Ukraine, is also trying to humiliate Russia--which we are! That's daylight. He thinks the Bidens have no exit ramp--which we don't! Some idiot blogger I know has been bitching about no exit ramp/end game since the first week of the war.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, responded with a scathing post on social media.

“Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it,” Mr. Kuleba wrote. Instead, he argued, peace and the saving of lives could best be achieved by Russia being “put in its place.”

Tweet! Foul on Kuleba, five minute major for humiliating.

The exchange comes as the war has settled into what seems increasingly destined to be a slog.

The Ukrainians and Russians both claimed Saturday to be inflicting decisive losses against one another in the battle for Sievierodonetsk, the last major city in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine still under Ukrainian control.

I was going to write, "Ukraine, you are going to lose Sievierodonetsk and you are going to lose the war" but then why would Macron caution Ukraine about humiliating Russia? I was under the impression Russia was winning the war in the East, slowly but clearly.

But the fighting was not limited to that town. A senior Ukrainian official claimed on Saturday that the country’s troops had reached a milestone in grinding down the Russian invasion force in eastern Ukraine. Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff to President Volodymyr Zelensky, posted on the social networking site Telegram that most of a large Russian military unit had been destroyed in heavy fighting over the past weeks.

“Almost the entire 35th All-Russian Army was destroyed,” he wrote.

Mr. Yermak’s claim was supported by commentary from a Russian military blogger cited in a report by the influential Institute for the Study of War. Incompetent Russian commanders had failed to prepare troops for combat in a forested area near the city of Izium, the report said.

Do you know that Henry Kissinger, in Davos, urged Ukraine to trade territory for peace? If Ukraine didn't, Kissinger said, the odds of nuclear war increase. Which, see above on idiot blogger.

The British Defense Ministry said Saturday that Russia’s recent use of airstrikes and artillery fire has been a factor in its limited success in Ukraine’s east, a contrast with its largely ineffective air attacks earlier in the war. The Russian reliance on long-range strikes has probably depleted the country’s stock of precision-guided missiles... 

Look: The West has been of inestimable assistance to Ukraine in this war, so that does give us some skin in this game, but we cannot be telling Ukraine how to fight and how long to fight. We can pull our skin out, that's our recourse, stop the shipments of military hardware. But that is a drastic step, it would be precipitated by a much closer pass with nuclear Armageddon and would guarantee that Ukraine loses the war. To quote I.B. further, we, the West, Ukraine, Russia--that's right, Russia--need to agree on what a "win" is for Ukraine and whether the flip side Russian loss is too humiliating for them. My understanding is Russia has shown zero interest in negotiating to this point. If that is correct, Ukraine should humiliate away.

...

The intensity of the Russian attack and frequency of Russian reinforcements to Sievierodonetsk led to predictions that the city would soon fall. But...the governor of Luhansk province, who recently had a dour prognosis for the city’s survival, told Ukraine’s national television that Ukrainian troops had retaken 20 percent of the territory they had lost, adding that it was “not realistic” the city would fall in the next two weeks.

...

...a punishing, costly and tragic military stalemate is increasingly foreseen by experts. Ukraine has been outgunned, but will soon receive long-range M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, commonly known as HIMARS, from the United States. The exchanges of evermore lethal firepower will likely add to the many millions of people who have already been displaced, a death toll of at least 4,000 civilians and a Ukrainian economy already in tatters with roughly $100 billion in losses.

There it is, what Macron is concerned about and what the Bidens should be concerned about without any plan for an end game or definition of a win.

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on Friday that Russia would continue what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine until “all goals have been attained.”

And there that is. There is nothing to scold Ukraine about when that is the Russian position.

As the battle lines become more entrenched between Russia and the West, experts predict Russian cyberattacks, global disinformation campaigns and a potential food crisis prompted by a Russian naval blockade. 

Now that we have game-planned for and if we're not goddamned ready by now then it is either impossible to defend against the vaunted Russian cyber capability or, like its army, Russian cyber capability is not up to snuff. We, meaning the White House and relevant departments, have navel contemplated about why Russia has not cyber attacked before this. This is crying wolf at this point to me.

Russia’s strategy is essentially to pulverize specific areas with seemingly indiscriminate artillery shelling, killing or forcing to flee whoever is there before rolling in to stake the territory for Moscow.

Yes, ISW has long proclaimed that is Russia's goal. The West needs to keep this in mind: we are not going to replay Munich, 1939. If we have any sense at all we will never again tell a smaller nation how to fight and when to stop fighting. That is what Emmanuel Macron did today. Macron needs to shut the fuck up.