Colonel Richard Black wants to make it clear that he is not some left-wing pacifist. I served in uniform for 32 years, love my country, risked my life for it hundreds of times. I flew 269 combat missions as a Marine helicopter pilot. My aircraft was hit by ground fire on four flights. I volunteered for ground combat with the 1st Marine Division and made 70 bloody combat patrols. I was wounded and my radiomen were both killed fighting beside me as we tried to rescue a surrounded Marine outpost.
Let me start right off by saying that I believe that Ukraine has lost the war. Of course, the war isn’t over, but it is lost. It’s become an artillery duel. Russia fires 50,000 shells a day, ten times more than Ukraine. The Washington Post says Ukraine is almost completely out of ammunition and there are no replacements for its Soviet-era ordnance.
NATO recognizes the war is lost. It’s now become an unpleasant distraction that simply needs to be wrapped up as far as NATO is concerned. The sanctions war has failed. The entire financial might of the Western World was unleashed against Russia. The Biden administration swore that the Russian ruble would be crushed into dust. They boasted of destroying the Russian economy and inspiring a revolution. They would create such hardships that Russians would revolt and overthrow their President. But today, the ruble is stronger than before the war. This year, it has been the strongest of all currencies. Russian inflation peaked around 15% and is expected to subside. But as their inflation tops out, Europe’s and America’s has just begun skyrocketing dangerously.
From the onset of war, Russians have never experienced shortages of food, housing, heating fuel, or gasoline. Anyone who expects Russians to crack from the loss of Gucci purses or Big Mac hamburgers do not understand the Russian psyche. Hopes of ousting President Putin have died. On March 1st, British Prime Minister Boris Jonson predicted that sanctions would “bring down the Putin regime.” Since then, Boris Johnson has nearly been ousted himself in a parliamentary vote of no confidence. At the same time, President Putin’s popularity rose to 83%, which is greater than any of his Western counterparts.
At the outset of war, the United States unleashed a carefully orchestrated barrage of anti-Russian propaganda; all dissenting voices were blocked from the media. Western media breathlessly reported the dramatic exploits of someone called the “Ghost of Kyiv,” a pilot so skillful that he shot down an incredible 40 Russian jets, before heroically dying in battle. But the Ghost of Kyiv was a complete hoax. He was a media concoction, a fiction, a fraud who never existed at all.
