Bakhmut and the Ghost of Zbigniew Brzezinski

May 2, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The White House is engaged in what may be reasonably considered wishful thinking about Russian casualties. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed yesterday that Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties in Bakhmut alone over the past five months, including 20,000 dead. Newsweek reported that the numbers were based on newly-declassified U.S. intelligence reports, though Kirby did not explain how the numbers were derived.

“Russia’s attempted offensive in the Donbas largely through Bakhmut has failed,” Kirby claimed further. “Last December, Russia initiated broad operations across multiple lines.... Most of these efforts have stalled and failed. Russia has been unable to seize a real strategically significant territory.” That assumes, of course, that Moscow was intending to seize “significant territory” as opposed to simply letting Ukrainian forces beat themselves mercilessly on the Russian fist.

Newsweek then turns to the ghost of the undead Zbigniew Brzezinski to “explain” what’s happening. “Putin believes it’s his destiny to recreate the Russian Empire,” former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, during an Jan. 29 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“And as my old mentor, Zbig Brzezinski, used to say, ‘Without Ukraine, there can be no Russian Empire.’ So he is obsessed with retaking Ukraine, he will hang in there.... And he’s doing what Russian armies have always done, and that is sending large numbers of relatively poorly equipped, poorly trained conscripts to the frontlines, in the belief that mass will overcome.”