“Futile Waste Of Human Resources & Money” – EU PM Says West Got Ukraine All Wrong
A lone outlier and rare voice of dissent to come out of the generally staunchly pro-Ukraine central and eastern European countries has been Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. He has stirred the pot again and caused outrage among fellow government officials after penning an op-ed this week wherein he slammed the West for getting Ukraine wrong all along.
What’s more is that the op-ed published by Slovak newspaper Pravda.sk on Tuesday was issued at the very moment President Zelensky has been touring nearby Baltic countries while urging more weapons and support as the “arms warehouses are empty”, supposedly. Fico is a member of the left Smer party in Slovakia and has pointed out that NATO leaders and the US have “repeatedly erred in assessing” the real state of the war.
He articulated that it’s largely the false “black-and-white vision” of the war, a simplistic narrative “desired in Washington or Brussels,” which has resulted in blunder after blunder, and greater suffering for all during an unnecessarily protracted conflict. Fico described the now proxy war as a “futile waste of human resources and money” that the Western allies got painfully wrong.
Fico said the Russian invasion was the result of a negative domino effect of events going back to 2014, when Washington asserted its influence in Kiev.
“Russia responded to the security situation and Ukraine’s pressure to join NATO by violating international law, using military force without an international mandate,” Fico wrote. “Big countries often do that, let’s see what the US accomplished in Iraq.”
“And the West, instead of immediately making every effort to achieve a quick ceasefire, at the beginning of 2022 without even losing a tenth to Ukraine, made a huge mistake,” he continued. “[The West] incorrectly evaluated the use of Russian military force as an opportunity to bring Russia to its knees.”
Indeed, US officials themselves have made similar statements over the ‘opportunity’ they see in the conflict. For example Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin famously said the US goal is to “weaken” Russia under Putin.
Fico’s op-ed also spoke to the futility of seeking to pump more billions and advanced weapons into Kiev (also amid the EU seeking 50BN euros, which was held up by Hungary). His words suggest it’s game over and that nothing will change regardless of EU and US policy:
Russia completely controls the occupied territories militarily, Ukraine is not capable of any meaningful military counter-offensive, [and] it has become completely dependent on financial aid from the West with unforeseeable consequences for Ukrainians in the years to come,” he explained.
“The position of the Ukrainian president is shaken, while the Russian president increases and strengthens his political support,” Fico continued, pointing out that “neither the Russian economy nor the Russian currency collapsed, [and] anti-Russian sanctions have increased the internal self-sufficiency of this huge country.”
There are other recent signs that Fico’s assessment is accurate, such as the following…
US Officials Are Concerned About Split Between Zelensky and Military Chief
— Kyle Anzalone (@KyleAnzalone_) January 11, 2024
Bloomberg reports, “Officials in Washington are concerned differences between Zelenskiy and his army chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, are slowing efforts to crystallize a new strategy.”
“Ukraine’s military is… pic.twitter.com/sENg35puG0
During his tour of Baltic allies Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Zelensky had complained that his armed forces are “sorely lacking” in advanced anti-air technology, also at a moment Russia has increased missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities in response to Ukrainian cross-border attacks on Belgorod.
Kiev has already in the last months been signaling the world that it is ready to blame Washington if it loses the war (which already looks like the outcome), given Biden’s planned over $60 billion in Ukraine defense aid was held up by GOP members of Congress. But maybe the West should listen to the populist Slovak PM Fico.
