In a recent 60 Minutes Interview, the interviewer and and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made several dubious claims. In the following video I debunk several points.
- The domino theory. Putin plans to conquer the whole of Europe.
- Putin is not the enemy. The enemy is the whole of the Russian people who support Putin.
- Russia bombs civilians and commits war crimes. Ukraine does not. Ukraine does not hit civilian targets in Russia with drones. If they do, they have a right to.
- If only the West had given Ukraine more weapons they would have defeated Russia. Now the whole world has to unite to defeat Russia to avoid (or cause?) WWIII.
- The war (and cocaine addiction?) has taken a toll on Zelensky.
- Russia (1.3 million troops) and Ukraine (500,000) have no professional army left.
- Putin will go on threatening nuclear war. (He’s never done so in any speech or statement.)
- The interviewer asks about Ukraine negotiating in exchange for land. (Zelensky had a law passed forbidding negotiations with Putin.)
The most outrageous statement was to say that neither Russia nor Ukraine have any professional troops left. This is just beyond irresponsible reporting.
Up until last September, the majority of troops fighting against Ukraine were the Lugansk and Donetsk republic volunteer militias, the Chechen mercenaries and Wagner.
Few regular Russian army troops out of the total 830,000 mobilized have seen action. Most of the so-called conscripts are not draftees, but are reserves that have had past military training or experience. There are also a large number of volunteers, but they are not the majority.
The Russians are currently playing a waiting game prior to launching their own offensive while they build up more weapons and more troops.
Even Western sources have admitted that Russia has more weapons than they had at the start of the war, and more mobilized troops.
Russia also recently surpassed Germany and GDP/PPP to become the first largest economy in Europe, and the fifth largest in the world.
It’s advantageous to be on the defensive because the equal or larger size army on the defensive loses about one-third of its troops to death and casualties as the attacking army.
Part of the waiting game is the economic war. Germany has deindustrialized. The sanctions on Russia make energy for their factories too expensive.
In a recent speech, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken claimed that “Russia was seeking to destroy the Europe’s economy”:
https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-remarks-to-the-johns-hopkins-school-of-advanced-international-studies-sais-the-power-and-purpose-of-american-diplomacy-in-a-new-era/ by refusing to sell gas and oil to Germany. On the contrary, Russia offers cheap energy to Germany But the US forces Germany to sanction imports.
It amazes me that they are able to say such things.
The fact is that the Western powers were never planning on engaging Russia with NATO directly. They planned to provoke a war in order to sanction Russia into economic collapse. Since that has backfired big time and they do not have an off-ramp or a reverse gear.
But there are signs this alliance against Russia is cracking. Even Poland’s president, who has been Ukraine’s staunchest supporter has recently turned agaisnt the Kyiv government.
“Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person clinging to anything available,” President Andrzej Duda told Polish journalists in New York on Tuesday. “A drowning person is extremely dangerous, capable of pulling you down to the depths . . . simply drown the rescuer.” ~ The Financial Times, Poland ramps up Ukraine criticism
This startling statement comes on the heels of Duda having criticized Ukraine’s Nazi past and the fact that Kyiv government, which is made up largely of ultra-nationalists, has never acknowledged or expressed apologies for the massacre of over “100,000 Poles” by Ukrainian Nazis during and after WWII. The Polish parliament has said that the murders, carried out between 1943 and 1945 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera, bore elements of genocide. ~ Reuters, Poland asks Ukraine to confront dark past
