Since the war in Ukraine began in February last year, Welt has relentlessly funnelled jingoistic Anglosphere war propaganda to its centre-right German readership. They reprinted this pro-Azov Battalion editorial complete with National Socialist symbols; they achieved a kind of ecstatic climax during the counteroffensive last September, when they announced that a turning point was at hand; and they have been among those predicting that Russia is on the verge of running out of missiles and artillery shells any moment now.

Well, no more. Readers opened the paper today to find these sobering remarks on why it’s all over. The problem, we read, is that “the United States, Germany and other NATO allies are more afraid” of escalation than of a nebulous “threat to Western security posed by Russia’s territorial conquests in Ukraine,” and have failed to provide adequate support.

Russia has so far destroyed 60 to 70% of the critical Ukrainian infrastructure. It’s unimaginable that Kiev will receive sufficient air defence systems … to stop the Russian orgy of destruction. … And Ukraine will prove less and less able to repair the destroyed infrastructure as the required material becomes scarcer and … the Ukrainian defence industry lacks urgently needed electricity.

Russia’s military is trying to counter Western precision weapons with volume, and has the resources to do so. This is especially true when it comes to tanks. According to the London-based think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Russia will soon have 4000 deployable tanks at its disposal – a crushing mass that not only poses a great risk to the Western Leopard tanks, but also puts Russia in a position to go on the offensive at any time.

I guess Russia isn’t facing weapons shortages after all; we can dispense with that tattered little fantasy now. Perhaps they were just keeping it alive until Olaf Scholz agreed to send our handful of irreplaceable Leopards into this impossible situation.

… The longer the war has dragged on, the more Ukraine is running out of soldiers. It is already … at least in its eighth wave of mobilisation, with men over 60 now being sent to the front. … Russia is likely to emerge from this war not only militarily … but politically victorious. … Membership in NATO will probably be ruled out for the foreseeable future following a ceasefire or peace negotiations, and Ukraine’s accession to the EU will take much longer than Kiev is currently demanding even in the best scenario. …

Understatements of the century, these.

The international community has done a great deal to support Ukraine. But it is still far too little to enable Kiev to assert its legitimate claim to territorial integrity. One can only suspect a strategy is at work here. Anyone who talks to Western diplomats hears more and more often about fear of escalation, worries of war fatigue in democratic societies, and hopes for a quick ceasefire.

Yes, a “strategy” is at work here. The German media has smeared anyone trying to talk about this strategy as a conspiracy theorist, but it’s clear enough: This is a proxy war, in which the Global American Empire has chosen to financially and materially support a weaker ally in a destructive military adventure against a rival. The empire doesn’t care about Ukraine, or democracy, or anything else; it’s a blind expansionist borg, and the war was a simple opportunity to hurt an opposing power. Now that this strategy seems doomed to fail, we’re allowed to be more honest about it, but there won’t be a moment of introspection. Not a single Western strategist or politician will ever ask whether peace should’ve been negotiated sooner, before Ukraine was so totally wrecked and before so many Ukrainians had to die. This was never about Ukraine.