Future Global Order Pivots on Ukraine Proxy War

Russia’s gradual advance in the Donbass region appears to be forming an operational encirclement of Ukraine’s last major defensive line—its “fortress belt”—a development that could decide not only the fate of the war but also the shape of the emerging global order.

Future Global Order Pivots on Ukraine Proxy War (archived)

Related:

Russia’s Swift March Forward in Donbass [Pokrovsk is the prize]

Veteran: We Lied to You About What Happened in Afghanistan

Just over four years ago, the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan rapidly collapsed, marking the end of a two-decade effort to transform the country. The final days of U.S. involvement proved bizarrely emblematic of the tragedy that had unfolded up to that point. Afghans clinging to a U.S. airplane tumbled from the sky to their deaths. A suicide bomb left 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans dead. A U.S. drone killed seven children in what the U.S. military ineptly mischaracterized as a “righteous strike.” Good intentions and moral high ground gave way to national embarrassment.

Veteran: We Lied to You About What Happened in Afghanistan

Ukraine: The Dystopia of War

The dystopia of war (La distopía de la guerra)

On Monday, Le Monde reported on one of Ukraine’s flagship construction projects, very much in line with the limited possibilities for reconstruction under wartime conditions and the needs of the moment: a large military cemetery. According to the French outlet, the site will have a bunker to protect against possible bombing—although the dead have not been a specific target of Russian troops, as they have been of Israeli troops in Gaza—places to pay tribute to fallen warriors, and more space to bury soldiers now that existing cemeteries are overflowing. Without even minimally realistic data on casualties in either army, the warnings from sympathetic journalists are indicative when they state, as one Ukrainian blogger recently did, that “currently, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lack infantry. Completely. The infantry has fled, is in the hospital, or in the cemetery.” The growth of cemeteries is undoubtedly another important indicator. According to Le Monde , the new facilities will initially house graves, although the number could reach 130,000 or 160,000 in the future, indicating the current very high level of casualties and the possibility that such losses will continue in the future.

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