ICG: The Russians are gaining ground

Ukraine and Russian-occupied/annexed territories as of 4 January 2024
(From Viewsridge via Wikipedia)

In his latest weekly update, ICG’s Mark Armstrong wrote the following:

How’s the war in Ukraine going? There’s not much news about the war in Ukraine lately, and there’s a reason for that. According to recent reports, the Ukrainians are falling back all along the front as Russians move forward destroying enterprises the Ukrainians need to stay in the fray. The much ballyhooed counter-offensive failed, whether they admit it or not. The Russians are gaining ground and now it’s good money after bad.

Related to Ukraine, Russia, and the USA, ZeroHedge posted the following:

January 5, 2024

On the surface, US foreign policy seems to be utterly irrational. The US gets into one disastrous war after another — Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza. …

Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022. …

It has also suckered client states such as Ukraine to fight America’s wars on the ground, so that no American body bags would spoil the US propaganda machine. Needless to say, US masters of war such as Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, and McConnell remain thousands of miles away from the frontlines. The dying is reserved for Ukrainians. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) defended American military aid to Ukraine as money well spent because it is “without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” somehow not dawning on the good Senator to spare the lives of Ukrainians, who have died by the hundreds of thousands in a US-provoked war over NATO enlargement. …

When Congress reassembles in January, Biden, Kirby, Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, McConnell, Blumenthal and their ilk will tell us that we absolutely must fund the losing, cruel, and deceitful war in Ukraine …

It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon. This overhaul should start in 2024 by rejecting any more funding for the disastrous Ukraine War … https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/sachs-us-foreign-policy-scam-built-corruption

While we are getting closer to Armageddon, that is at least seven years away.

That said, The Economist posted the following:

Putin seems to be winning the war in Ukraine—for now

FOR THE first time since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24th 2022, he looks as if he could win. Russia’s president has put his country on a war footing and strengthened his grip on power. He has procured military supplies abroad and is helping turn the global south against America. Crucially, he is undermining the conviction in the West that Ukraine can—and must—emerge from the war as a thriving European democracy. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/30/putin-seems-to-be-winning-the-war-in-ukraine-for-now

Although Ukraine’s President Zelensjy has called ceding territory to Russia “insane” (https://www.axios.com/2023/12/12/zelensky-ukraine-russia-territory-republicans), as the map at the beginning of this post shows, the reality is that Ukraine has lost a lot of territory to Russia and Ukraine’s allies in the West hold little hope that Ukraine will get much, if any, of that territory back.

Notice also the following:

Republican senator says Ukraine may have to cede land to Russia to end war

11 December 2023

Ukraine may need to cede land to Russia in order to end the Russian invasion there, Republican US senator JD Vance said Sunday.

The comments underscore how a bloc of GOP lawmakers are staunchly opposed to extending US support for Ukraine nearly two years on from when the world rallied around it after Russia’s invasion of its borders.

“What’s in America’s best interest is to accept Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians and we need to bring this war to a close,” Vance, of Ohio, said on CNN’s State of the Union. “The idea that Ukraine was going to throw Russia back to the 1991 border was preposterous – nobody actually believed it.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/11/republican-senator-jd-vance-ukraine-cede-land-russia-war-invasion

Without more money and weapons from the USA and Europe, Ukraine has little hope to beat back Russia.

But there is also the situation where Ukraine’s President Zelensky has stated that he will not negotiate with Russian President Putin.

Officially losing Donbas, Luhansk, and Crimea is not what Ukraine’s President Zelensky wants. But it looks like, if there was a negotiated settlement, that would tend to mean that Russia would hold on to Crimea and much of the Donbas as Russian territory. The Kyiv regime has not wanted that to be seriously considered, but may find that as its best course of action.

As far as loss of territory goes, as long time readers of this COGwriter Church of God News page are aware, for many years I have written that at least part of the territory that Ukraine claims would ultimately be supportive of Russia. We have seen some of that already, and likely we will see Ukraine officially accept at least some territorial loss. Though Ukraine may do so somewhat unofficially, basically by accepting a cease-fire, which allows Russia, thus, to hold on to territories that it now controls. But that still is the same result of Ukraine losing territory.

In 2013, I warned that Russia would end up with territory claimed by Ukraine well before it happened in Crimea. Furthermore, on February 22, 2022, two days before Russia’s ‘special military operation’ into Ukraine began, I posted: “I expect that Donetsk and Luhansk will either be annexed by Russia and/or join its Eurasian Economic Union.” After holding referendums, that annexation happened in 2022:

On 30 September 2022, Russia, amid an ongoing invasion of Ukraine, unilaterally declared its annexation of areas in and around four Ukrainian oblasts – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The boundaries of the areas to be annexed and their borders were not defined; Russian officials stated that they would be defined later. …

On 20 September, the authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, as well as the occupation administrations of Kherson Oblast and Zaporizhzhia Oblast, announced referendums on joining Russia on 23–27 September.^[18]

On 27 September, Russian officials claimed that the accession “referendum” in Zaporizhzhia Oblast passed, with 93.11% of voters in favour of joining the Russian Federation.^[19]

… On 30 September, Putin signed accession treaties with the four pro-Russian leaders of the regions, Leonid Pasechnik, Head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Yevgeny Balitsky, governor of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Volodymyr Saldo, governor of the Kherson Oblast.^[26] The exact boundaries of the territories declared annexed were however not legally defined, with the drafts of final annexation documents recursively referring to territories “on the day of the admission to the Russian Federation” and on the day of “the formation of a new constituent entity within the Russian Federation”, both being prospective future events.^[26] (Russian annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Wikipedia, accessed 04/06/23)

Russia may negotiate the borders of the annexed regions. However, Russia has no intentions of giving up Crimea or all of the Donbas.

Furthermore, people in the annexed regions are expected to vote in Russia’s March 17, 2024 presidential election–which is something that Ukraine does not want to see–but currently is in no position to stop.

If Ukraine does not receive enough military and financial support or negotiate soon enough, Russia may decide to go for even more territory like Kiev, or perhaps all of Ukraine.

Here is that video made just prior to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine:

21:20

Russia, Ukraine, Babylonian Europe, and Prophecy

The situation between Russia and Ukraine has again heated up, although it has been tense since the Euromaiden protests and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. There was later a separation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Russian Orthodox Church. Is war prophesied for Russia and Ukraine? Are prophecies in the Bible associated with the ‘kings of the Medes’ and a power from the “north country” related to any in Russia and Ukraine? Is a confederation of powers from the north, east, and central Asia prophesied to destroy the coming end time European Babylon? Will the destruction be reminiscent of what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah? Who is the King of the North and who will destroy him? Do those in Russia and Ukraine have a hope of salvation? Will Russia and powers of the east be involved in the gathering in Armageddon as prophesied in Revelation 16? Dr. Thiel addresses these issues.