Fuente: https://www.globalresearch.ca/putins-sledgehammer/5800016 Mike Whitney Investigación global 23 de noviembre de 2022
La negativa de Kiev a negociar un acuerdo
“Los ucranianos están en mal estado… No pasará mucho tiempo antes de que los ucranianos se queden sin comida. No pasará mucho tiempo antes de que se congelen… Han hecho todo lo que razonablemente podemos esperar que hagan. Es hora de negociar…. antes de que comience la ofensiva, porque una vez que comience, no habrá más discusiones entre Moscú y Kiev hasta que termine a satisfacción de los rusos”. — Coronel Douglas MacGregor, “Guerra en Ucrania; Silencio antes de la tormenta”, marca de 15 minutos
«Estrictamente hablando, todavía no hemos comenzado nada». — El presidente ruso Vladimir Putin
Los implacables ataques a la red eléctrica, las unidades de almacenamiento de combustible, los nudos ferroviarios y los centros de comando y control de Ucrania marcan el comienzo de una segunda y más letal fase de la guerra.
El mayor ritmo de los ataques con misiles de alta precisión y largo alcance sugiere que Moscú está sentando las bases para una gran ofensiva de invierno que se lanzará tan pronto como los 300.000 reservistas de Rusia se unan a sus formaciones en el este de Ucrania.
La negativa de Kiev a negociar un acuerdo que aborde las principales preocupaciones de seguridad de Rusia ha dejado al presidente ruso, Vladimir Putin, sin otra opción que derrotar a las fuerzas ucranianas en el campo de batalla e imponer un acuerdo a través de la fuerza de las armas. La inminente ofensiva de invierno está diseñada para dar el golpe de gracia que Rusia necesita para lograr sus objetivos estratégicos y poner fin rápidamente a la guerra . Esto es de Reuters:
Los ataques con misiles rusos han paralizado casi la mitad del sistema energético de Ucrania, dijo el gobierno el viernes, y las autoridades de la capital, Kiev, advirtieron que la ciudad podría enfrentar un «cierre total» de la red eléctrica a medida que llega el invierno.
Con la caída de las temperaturas y las primeras nevadas en Kyiv, las autoridades trabajaban para restablecer el suministro eléctrico en todo el país después de algunos de los bombardeos más intensos contra la infraestructura civil ucraniana en nueve meses de guerra.
Las Naciones Unidas dicen que la escasez de electricidad y agua en Ucrania amenaza con un desastre humanitario este invierno.
“Desafortunadamente, Rusia continúa realizando ataques con misiles contra la infraestructura crítica y civil de Ucrania. Casi la mitad de nuestro sistema de energía está deshabilitado”, dijo el primer ministro Denys Shmyhal…
“Nos estamos preparando para diferentes escenarios, incluido un cierre total”, dijo Mykola Povoroznyk, subdirectora de la administración de la ciudad de Kiev, en comentarios televisados. ( «Ucrania dice que la mitad de su sistema de energía está paralizado por los ataques rusos, Kiev podría ‘cerrarse'» , Reuters)
Hasta hace poco, Rusia había evitado objetivos que afectarían drásticamente las actividades civiles, pero ahora los líderes militares han vuelto a un enfoque más convencional. En la actualidad, el ejército está destruyendo todas las instalaciones, transformadores, unidades de almacenamiento, subestaciones, patios ferroviarios y depósitos de energía que permiten a Ucrania seguir librando la guerra. Claramente, como el estado más grande y más poderoso , siempre estuvo dentro de la capacidad de Rusia llevar un mazo a Ucrania y romperla en un millón de pedazos, pero Putin optó por contenerse con la esperanza de que Kiev entrara en razón y viera la desesperanza de su causa.
And –despite the deluge of western propaganda to the contrary– the outcome of this war has never been in doubt. Russia is going to impose a settlement on Kiev and that settlement will require the government to cut all ties with NATO and to sign a treaty declaring its neutrality into perpetuity. Russia is not going to allow a hostile military alliance to place its missile sites and combat troops on its western flank. That won’t happen.
Unfortunately, Russia’s military operation is going to greatly increase the suffering of the Ukrainian people who find themselves locked in a cage-match between the Washington and Moscow. This is from the World Socialist Web Site:
La pobreza en Ucrania se ha multiplicado por más de diez desde el estallido de la guerra entre Estados Unidos, la OTAN y Rusia , según los últimos datos del Banco Mundial (BM). Oficialmente, el 25 por ciento de la población del país ahora es pobre, en comparación con supuestamente solo el 2 por ciento antes de febrero de 2022… Con las autoridades prediciendo que la tasa de pobreza podría aumentar hasta el 60 por ciento o más el próximo año, están surgiendo niveles de privación en Ucrania que no se han visto en el continente europeo desde el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
El desempleo ahora es del 35 por ciento y los salarios han caído hasta un 50 por ciento durante la primavera y el verano para algunas categorías de trabajadores. … según el Fondo Monetario Internacional, la deuda pública de Ucrania se ha disparado hasta el 85 por ciento del PIB…. Un estudio conjunto publicado recientemente por la Organización Mundial de la Salud y el Ministerio de Salud de Ucrania encontró que el 22 por ciento de las personas en Ucrania no pueden acceder a los medicamentos esenciales. Para los 6,9 millones de desplazados internos del país, ese número aumenta al 33 por ciento.
… Los medicamentos que son más difíciles de conseguir, los que tratan la presión arterial, los problemas cardíacos y el dolor, así como los sedantes y los antibióticos, revelan una población que lucha para hacer frente a décadas de mala salud inducida por la pobreza y el trauma físico y psicológico de la guerra.
While US and NATO officials are able to dispatch massive amounts of firepower to Ukraine’s front lines within a matter of weeks, the delivery of life-saving humanitarian goods is seemingly an impossible logistical challenge.”(“Poverty skyrockets in Ukraine”, World Socialist Web Site)
Washington’s proxy-war on Moscow has inflicted incalculable suffering on the people of Ukraine who now face plunging temperatures, dwindling food supplies, a crashing economy and a growing shortage of essential medications. And despite the chest-thumping bravado over the recapturing of Kherson, the Ukrainian people will now be forced to flee their battered homeland by the millions seeking refuge in Europe which has already slipped into a post-industrial slump brought on by Uncle Sam’s reckless provocations.
How many of these working-class Ukrainians would have preferred that their leaders reach an accommodation with Putin (regarding his legitimate security concerns) rather than engaging the Russian army in a pointless war which has cost them their homes, their jobs, their cities, and (for many) their lives? And do the people outside the country who claim to “Stand With Ukraine” realize that they are actually supporting the impoverishment and immiseration of millions of civilians that are caught in a geopolitical crossfire between Washington and Russia? Anyone who genuinely cares about Ukraine should support Ukrainian neutrality and an end to NATO expansion. That is the only way this war is going to end. Russian security will be achieved by-way of a treaty or an iron-fist. The choice is Ukraine’s. This is from an article titled ‘Russia Is Right: The U.S. Is Waging a Proxy War in Ukraine‘:
“The war in Ukraine isn’t just a conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently declared. It is a “proxy war” in which the world’s most powerful military alliance … is using Ukraine as a battering ram against the Russian state … Lavrov is … not wrong. Russia is the target of one of the most ruthlessly effectively proxy wars in modern history.”
The US foreign policy establishment does not care about Ukraine or the Ukrainian people. The country is merely a launching pad for Washington’s war on Russia. That is why the CIA toppled the democratically-elected government in Kiev in 2014 and that is why the CIA armed and trained Ukrainian paramilitaries to fight the Russian military in 2015 (7 years before the invasion!) Here’s some background from a 2015 article at Yahoo News:
“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials….
“The United States is training an insurgency,” said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians.”
…the CIA and other U.S. agencies could support a Ukrainian insurgency, should Russia launch a large-scale incursion.
…“We’ve been training these guys now for eight years. They’re really good fighters. …representatives from both countries also believe that Russia won’t be able to hold on to new territory indefinitely because of stiff resistance from Ukrainian insurgents, according to former officials.
If the Russians launch a new invasion, “there’s going to be people who make their life miserable,” said the former senior intelligence official…
“All that stuff that happened to us in Afghanistan,” said the former senior intelligence official, “they can expect to see that in spades with these guys.” (“CIA-trained Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades”, Yahoo News)
There it is in black and white. The plan to use Ukraine as a staging-ground for conducting a proxy-war on Russia preceded the invasion by at least 7 years.
The Obama administration and their neocon allies set a trap for Russia in order to drag them into an Afghanistan-like quagmire that would deplete their resources and kill as many Russian servicemen as possible. As Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently admitted, the US wants to “weaken” Russia so it is unable to project power beyond its borders. Washington seeks unhindered access to Central Asia so it can encircle China with military bases and nuclear missiles. The US intends to control China’s growth while dominating the world’s most populous and prosperous region of the next century, Asia. But first, Washington must crush Russia, collapse its economy, isolate it from the global community, demonize it in its media, and topple its leaders. Ukraine is seen as the first phase in a much broader strategy aimed at regime change (in Moscow) followed by the forced fragmentation of the Russian state. The ultimate objective is the preservation of Washington’s preeminent role in the global order.
Putin’s winter offensive threatens to derail Washington’s plan to drag the conflict out for as long as possible. In the weeks and months ahead, Russia is going to intensify its assault on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Most of the country will be plunged into darkness, fuel supplies will dry up, food and water will become scarcer, communications will be cut off, and all rail-traffic will cease. Millions of civilians will flee to Europe while the entire country slowly grinds to a standstill. At the same time that Russian battalions overtake cities and towns east of the Dnieper, the Russian army will block vital supply-lines from Poland cutting off the flow of lethal weaponry and combat troops headed to the front. This, in turn, will lead to widespread capitulation among Ukrainian fighting units operating in the field which will force Zelensky to the negotiating table. Eventually, Russia will prevail and its legitimate security demands will be met. Here’s how Colonel Douglas MacGregor summed it up in a recent interview:
“What’s coming in the future is a very massive offensive... the kind of offensive that I and many other military analysts expected at the beginning; Very decisive operations, multiple operational axes designed to effectively annihilate the enemy on the ground. And that’s what’s coming now, that’s what lies in the future.” (Colonel Douglas MacGregor, “War in Ukraine; Quiet Before the Storm”, you tube)
When the ground freezes, Russia’s offensive will begin.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image: Russian president Vladimir Putin (Illustration by TPYXA_ILLUSTRATION/Shutterstock)