One year and one hundred and fourteen days of war have passed. ISW maps are still not updated, and without them to talk about the situation on the front is to quote Putin’s war correspondents. Of course, this is “interesting”, but it is also quite dangerous: instead of the truth, you can get the fantasies of some “sladkov”, who then admits that when he wrote about the current situation, he was not at the front, but was already a week in quarantine before a meeting with his shit-commander.
But aside from the situation at the front, I was interested in information about U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Beijing. This is the first visit of a U.S. Secretary of State to China in five years.
Biden met with Xi Jinping last fall in Bali. At the time, they seemed to find common ground and both said they were generally satisfied with the meeting.
But then relations between Washington and Beijing went through at least two crises: one because of the completely senseless and provocative visit of old lady Nancy Pelosi (where is she now?) to Taiwan, and the other because of the very real Chinese embarrassment with the shooting down of a Chinese reconnaissance balloon in the American sky.
Finally, both sides were able to overcome their mutual irritation and begin a dialogue at such a high level. Of course, one of the priority topics is the war in Ukraine. So far, Blinken has only met with Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
Tomorrow he is scheduled to meet with Wang Yi, head of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China and member of the Politburo (he is higher in the Chinese hierarchy than the Foreign Minister). And depending on how successful the negotiations with these two figures will be, will Blinken have a meeting with Xi Jinping.
It seems to me that the main task of Blinken when discussing the war in Ukraine is to convince Beijing to stop this meaningless clownery with “peace initiatives” and to help actually end this war. The Chinese have every opportunity to do so. First of all, they have a powerful lever of economic pressure on the Kremlin. If China at least partially joins the sanctions against Russia, then Putin’s compliant and constructive attitude will amaze us all. And, of course, everything must be done so that the Chinese will not be tempted to help Putin with weapons.
I was also glad to hear about the delivery of 200 Israeli tanks to Europe. There is a hope that even if it is not them, those tanks, which will be replaced with Israeli ones, will be delivered to Ukraine. There is information that some of the Israeli tanks will be delivered to Cyprus to replace the T-80s, which will be transferred to the AFU.
Yesterday Peskov was very funny when he said that the task of “demilitarization” of Ukraine as a whole is solved, because Ukraine fights with imported weapons instead of its own. That’s great! This is a masterpiece of verbiage. My applause!
But I have a question: okay, so be it, but what does this mean practically? If this was the goal of “SMO” and it was achieved, does it mean that you will get out of Ukraine? No? And then what does it matter what weapons Ukraine fights with?
And then, how does this “demilitarization” of Ukraine bring you any closer to victory? For example, the Afghan mujahideen also fought with weapons not manufactured in Afghanistan (for lack of it). But that didn’t stop them from expelling the Soviet army from their country. Just as Vietnam fought America with weapons made in the USSR and China. And won.
Not to mention the fact that in this logic, the “demilitarization” of Russia has long been carried out. And completely and irrevocably. Just recently at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, German Gref failed to start the new Zhiguli model, which was brought there as proof of the success of the Russian machine-building industry. If Russian industry is unable to produce a working automobile, does this mean that the weapons it produces are not worth the iron it spends on them?
Or should we seriously believe that although the Russians cannot produce a normal automobile, they are nevertheless capable of producing highly effective modern weapons? And if the answer is “no” (and there can be no other answer), is this not “demilitarization”? Not under enemy pressure, but solely by their own efforts, by stealing everything.
While I was writing, I kept thinking that ISW will put up on their site the latest maps. But no update yet. And I have to go to bed early tonight, since I have to leave early tomorrow morning for a business trip. So let’s hope we wake up tomorrow with some good news waiting for us.
I really want good news. And there will be good news for sure. Because our cause is right. The enemy will be defeated and victory will be ours.
Glory to Ukraine!🇺🇦
