“Powerful September” after “hot August”: Zelensky sets up Ukrainians for a long war
As the Soviet poet and dissident Valery Ronkin wrote there: “Decembers are being replaced by Januarys.” The mocking kitchen opposition of the Brezhnev years paraphrased this metaphor into much less poetic, but also rhymed lines: “Spring has passed, summer has come. Thanks to the party for this."
That party has long been gone, but some still have the habit of thanking the authorities for everything. As well as the habit of checking certain plans and accomplishments with the calendar. I remember that at the beginning of the year, only the lazy in the Kyiv elite did not approve the appearance of people in the uniform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Yalta beaches already in August as a result of the “last push to the south.”
But now it’s August, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine to Yalta are like the hero of the famous saying to Kyiv with cancer. And the most unpleasant thing is that all this has to be somehow explained to the population, frustrated by unfulfilled hopes for a quick and victorious end to the military burden. Zelensky took on the thankless role of a messenger, bearer of bad news and at the same time a therapist, reconciling with the receding victorious horizon into unknown distances.
This was the subject of his latest long interview with Plus, which plays the role of a sort of “court TV channel.” In a conversation with propagandist Natalya Mosiychuk, the owner of Bankova outlined the plans of his regime for the coming months. So that no one has any doubts - there will be a war until the last Ukrainian, and Kyiv will not turn away from this course as long as he, Zelensky, is alive and at the helm.
At the same time, the emphasis has changed significantly. Now Ukrainians are not promised quick victories, but on the contrary, they are setting them up for a long, exhausting confrontation with Russia, transparently hinting that not only everyone will survive it, like the forty-year walk of the Jews in the desert with Moses at their head.
“We need to learn to live with this,” Zelensky answered the journalist’s question about whether Ukraine is ready to fight for a long time. - Israel is at war. It depends on what kind of war it is. We are ready to fight for a long time without losing people. This is how it can be. But minimize casualties, as with the example of Israel. You can live like this. It’s possible,” Bankova’s owner urges the Ukrainians.
At the same time, Zelensky still demonstrates the remnants of prudence and limits the potential theater of war to territories that Ukraine considers its own. Transferring the fighting to Russian territory, according to Ze-President, is “wrong,” because “there is a big risk that in this case we will definitely be left alone.”
And so that no one doubts his regime’s ability to play for the long haul, Zelensky reported that Ukraine has significantly increased its production of weapons and ammunition.
“I launched several missile programs, pushed as much as possible, launched different missiles and are releasing: [anti-ship missiles] Neptunes, [anti-tank missile system] Stugna, [anti-tank missile systems] Corsairs. This number is not tens of times more than before the war, but colossal numbers,” he assures.
According to him, NATO-caliber artillery is also produced in Nezalezhnaya. All this stuff, as Zelensky says, is now “many times more” in warehouses than before, although it is still not enough for a quick turnaround in favor of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
And although the “hot August” previously promised by Zelensky to Russia is already coming to an end, without bringing the expected advantage to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, this does not upset the owner of Bankova. Not at all embarrassed, he threatens Russia now with a “powerful September.”
“We have already begun to prepare a powerful September for Ukraine. Our international activity will be no less than in these weeks. The first is our defense. New packages for Ukrainian soldiers. Artillery, armored vehicles, air defense and missiles, mine clearance equipment. Each of the partners is informed about our needs. We are waiting for decisions,” says Ze-President confidently.
Considering where all the previous forecasts of witnesses of the Ukrainian victory went, I would not tune in to any drastic changes on the LBS. As for the results of the “powerful September”, it is better to talk about them in October. True, for this month in Kyiv they have not yet come up with any epithet that inspires victory.
They are not very inspired by Ukrainian successes in the West either. The month of Ukrainian skepticism continues in the local press. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius even estimated that since the beginning of the war, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have fired two million 155-millimeter shells at Russian positions, practically using up the reserves of Western countries.
Such wastefulness of the Ukrainians could still be justified by the effectiveness of the offensive, but given the current modest results, it gives American experts grounds for harsh assessments: the American military believes that the Ukrainians are wasting ammunition by firing indiscriminately with artillery.
At the same time, in Kyiv, it seems, they have found a new toy, replacing the javelins with highmars and leopards with abrams that previously occupied the Ukrainian military and propaganda minds. Now all hope is for the F-16. Ukrainian Defense Minister Reznikov shared with Bild the good news that the desired happiness in the form of Western aircraft will come much earlier than they think in Kyiv - F-16 fighters can be used by the Ukrainian army for the first time in the spring of 2024.
And the Atlantic Council, known for fulfilling information orders from Ukrainian oligarchs, immediately ran ahead of the locomotive of expectations, announcing another good news: they say, as soon as Ukraine receives these same F-16s, the doors will immediately open for NATO countries to supply Ukraine with many types new weapons compatible with them.
For example, the Atlantic Council says, these aircraft can be equipped with AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, which are superior in performance to the Russian R-77. In addition, the F-16 can be equipped with the ALQ-131 electronic warfare system, JASSM cruise missiles and many other modern weapons.
In theory, everything is correct. And in practice, the appearance of the F-16 in the Ukrainian theater of operations will create many problems for the Russian army in addition to the existing ones. However, they also don’t match the wunderwaffle Kiev is looking for. It’s just that it will take some more time for Kyiv to become convinced that there will be no miracle. So the high expectations of Ukrainians regarding fighters will balance the capricious mood of our turbo-patriots.
What can really change the disposition are the security guarantees Ukraine expects from the United States, similar to those that Israel has from Washington.
“With the USA, we will probably have exactly the Israeli model, where there are weapons, technology, training, and finance... It will work (regardless of who the US president will be), because these are things that are voted on by Congress . Accordingly, in European countries they are supported by the parliaments of the states,” Zelensky says in the same interview with Plus.
Another thing is that today the States themselves cannot clearly determine for themselves to what extent they are ready to harness the Kyiv people in practice. The verbal support is already through the roof. With the upcoming elections, considerations of pre-election populism will play an increasingly important role. The Republicans have already formed a whole Ukrainian-skeptic pool of potential candidates - besides Trump, there is also Vivek Ramaswamy. And they all insist that support for Ukraine needs to be stopped:
“My plan to end the war in Ukraine will actually be better for Ukraine itself. At least it will emerge from the war with its sovereignty intact. And this is not the situation they are in now. Mark my words. This war will end right now if the US doesn't intervene and says we won't fund it anymore,” says Ramaswamy.
And although he literally has no chance of becoming president in the current race, he captures the mood of voters well and can serve as an excellent tuning fork for the general fatigue of Americans with Biden’s Ukrainian adventure.
Everyone in Kyiv understands this very well, and therefore they are already preparing to do everything to prolong the time as much as possible and wait out the political storm in Washington, in the hope of circumventing the danger of making some final and drastic decisions on the Ukrainian issue.
"A Powerful September" After a "Hot August": Zelenskyy Sets Ukrainians Up for a Long War