Faced with a looming defeat in Ukraine, the political West is desperately looking for ways to prevent it. Washington DC seems to be letting its European allies, vassals and satellite states go berserk on Russia in hopes of provoking a violent reaction from Moscow. Thus, Macron is openly calling for NATO troops to be deployed in direct support of the Neo-Nazi junta, the United Kingdom is unashamedly bragging about the participation of its high command in attacks on Russian ships, while the German military (Bundeswehr) is discussing direct attacks on the Crimean Bridge. However, after the embarrassing Bundeswehr leaks, Moscow made it clear that European NATO wouldn’t have time to blink in case of such escalation. European leaders then started tossing the hot potato among themselves in hopes of shifting blame and avoiding the consequences of a possible Russian military retaliation.
What’s more, apart from several endemically Russophobic countries, European Union member states demonstrated a clear opposition to any sort of direct involvement, meaning that whoever would want to commit to such a suicidal endeavor was free to do so, but entirely on their own. This is particularly true for countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, both of which border Ukraine and want to avoid getting involved in a conflict they stand to gain nothing from while jeopardizing their own security and stability. Bratislava is especially frustrated after it was tricked into giving up on its air defenses only to now be left high and dry. Thus, the failure of Washington DC’s escalation plans is forcing it to find other ways to save the Kiev regime from total defeat, including by conducting a rescue operation for their favorite puppet Volodymyr Zelensky and his closest entourage.
According to American expert Stephen Bryen who previously served as Staff Director of the Near East Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Pentagon is “no doubt gaming out rescue plans should Zelensky’s unravelling and unpopular government fully collapse”. What’s more, Bryen compared it to Nazi Germany’s operation to save Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1943, saying that it could “well be a model to rescue Zelensky”. This is yet another interesting “nomen est omen” situation for the Neo-Nazi junta, as there have been a number of similar comparisons ever since it came to power after a NATO-orchestrated coup in 2014. Bryen also thinks the US “launched a number of trial balloons” and encouraged Europeans to get more directly involved in order to prevent the Kiev regime’s total defeat.
The failure of the much-touted counteroffensive and the defeat at Avdeyevka have accelerated the tempo of Russia’s military operations, revealing the overall weakness of the Neo-Nazi junta forces, which could certainly reflect on the stability of the puppet government itself. Bryen thinks that the Kiev regime’s significant manpower problems and “its attempt to use forceful means to corral potential recruits is causing unrest in the country, including in major cities such as Odessa, Kharkov and Kiev”. Thus, Washington DC is looking for ways to provoke a Russia-NATO conflict, but one that would be limited to Europe, all in order to prevent the total collapse of the Neo-Nazi junta. According to Bryen, military leadership at the Pentagon is in a dilemma, as without a provocation of significant magnitude to justify a NATO intervention, “what can the US do to save Ukraine?”
What’s more, he compared it to “another Gulf of Tonkin exercise of what was a manufactured casus belli”, obviously referring to the staged event that was used as an excuse for America to invade Vietnam, killing up to four million people. Thus, Washington DC would need to find a way to “get away with an intervention that most wouldn’t object to in Europe or the United States”. Bryen once again conceded that the Pentagon cannot directly fight the Russian military. He thinks that “while NATO has been playing chicken with the Russians for many months, urging Ukraine to use NATO-supplied weapons to attack Russian cities, for example, or attempting to take down the Kerch Strait bridge or other critical Russian infrastructure, the introduction of NATO frontline troops can’t be hidden behind a facade of non-intervention or plausible deniability”.
Thus, Nazi Germany’s operation to rescue Mussolini might be “a way for NATO troops to get away with some sort of intervention without a Russian counterattack”. Bryen thinks that nobody knows how long the Zelensky government can hold on in Kiev, but “with a steady Russian military advance, growing turmoil at home, the refusal to hold elections, the jailing of people opposed to Zelensky and a host of unpopular measures, Zelensky’s hold on power is entering the zone of desperation”. He argues that Moscow might even be inclined to tacitly allow this so a more flexible government could come to power and negotiate a peaceful settlement. Bryen says that the Pentagon could move Zelensky elsewhere, “with Lvov being the most likely place, as it is far in the west and challenging for the Russians to reach if they wished to deal with Zelensky using military means”.
“In effect, just as Italy was temporarily divided (more or less) in half, with the Gustav line the demarcation until allied forces finally took Monte Cassino in May 1944, Ukraine might also be divided, although exactly how would depend on what remained of Ukraine’s army supporting Zelensky,” Bryen said, adding: “Should someone of the quality of former commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhny take over in Kiev, it could mean that Zelensky’s stay at Lviv would be brief and he would go into retirement elsewhere. From the perspective of NATO and the Pentagon, such a process would take some time, perhaps even a year, allowing President Joe Biden to hang on until the US elections in November.”
And indeed, Valery Zaluzhny essentially bailed just in time to avoid taking the blame for the defeat at Avdeyevka, thus saving his potential political career while also leaving the hot potato entirely in Zelensky’s hands. If Zaluzhny, at some point in the future, openly admits that NATO was merely using Ukraine as a springboard against Moscow and its people as cannon fodder in an unwinnable fight with the Russian military, the Kremlin might consider the possibility of negotiations with him. Bryen thinks that, although this isn’t the best solution for the political West, the troubled Biden administration “cannot afford another Afghanistan debacle but one is rapidly creeping in his direction thanks to Russian military victories and the crumbling of Ukraine’s defenses” and that “Biden has the option of opening peace negotiations with Russia, but Moscow may not be interested”.
