News emerged this week that the United States had secretly sent long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to Ukraine as part of a weapons shipment announced last month.
The provision of the armaments, which are able to strike targets farther away than the mid-range ATACMS sent last year, has stoked fears of escalation amid the threat of the Kiev regime gaining increased capability to strike targets in Russia. The covert weapons transfer forms part of an emerging pattern of the Biden administration secretly providing arms to allied countries amidst growing opposition to US support for wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Former Ukrainian diplomat and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Thursday to discuss the impact of the weapons transfer as well as a recent $61 billion aid package passed by the US Congress.
“I believe that there is going to be no difference at all with what's happening on the front lines in Kiev today,” said Telizhenko. “We saw more than $200 billion altogether [over] the last years given to Ukraine to fuel this proxy war with Russia and nothing has changed. Ukraine lost 30% of its territory… and more than 600,000 or around 700,000 men from the Ukraine army are in the ground, buried dead because of this proxy war.”
“Ukraine is losing,” he observed bluntly. “More men are going to die. We're going to lose more, 100,000 or 200,000 more Ukrainians. And basically Washington is financing a dictatorship which has no elections. A country which basically canceled its elections.”
Ukraine’s conflict with Russia is often cast in the West as a battle of “democracy” versus “authoritarianism,” with Volodymyr Zelensky fashioned as the brave defender of liberal values. The framing is not unfamiliar for Americans, as the Iraq War was also sold as an effort to “spread democracy” to a purportedly grateful Iraqi people while continued US presence in Afghanistan was justified under the banner of promoting women’s rights.
Such justifications typify the unique “liberal imperialism” of the United States, according to scholars, wherein foreign wars are rationalized under the pretext of exporting America’s “special virtues.” “If people want to say we're an imperial power, fine,” said arch neoconservative commentator Bill Kristol in 2003 shortly after the United States launched its ill-fated invasion of Iraq. “If three years from now we have beaten back these threats and have a decent regime there, it'll be worth it.”
America’s standard of a “decent regime” appears to be one where the country continues to exercise its coercive influence; the US has signaled it’s unlikely to remove military forces from Iraq even after repeated requests from its government. In Ukraine, too, the goal appears to be maintaining a reliable Western client state as observers slam the lack of democratic values embodied by the ruling regime. Zelensky has been heavily criticized for shuttering dissident media outlets, banning opposition political parties and violently press ganging Ukrainian civilians into forced military service.
“Zelensky's staying in power illegitimately by the Constitution of Ukraine,” said Telizhenko. “Its 103rd article [of] the Constitution of Ukraine states that the president's there for five years. He's staying over his term. So, this money is going to finance a dictatorship, a proxy war, and it's all paid by US taxpayers funds.”
What’s more, Telizhenko claimed increasing numbers of Ukrainians are also uninterested in continued aggression against Russia.
“Congress should have listened to Ukrainians because the majority of Ukrainians today, 63% of men don't want to fight,” said the ex-diplomat, pointing to a recent poll of fighting-age men conducted in Ukraine. The survey also found that half of Ukrainians as a whole oppose current attempts to conscript more servicemembers to shore up the country’s battered armed forces.
“I do hope that somebody will listen and have a cool mind to understand that this conflict needs to end,” Telizhenko lamented. “You have even [Rep. Victoria] Spartz (R-IN), who is Ukrainian born, was against giving this money to Ukraine because she understands what it's going to lead to. She understands the situation on the ground in Ukraine. And she's Ukrainian.”
“More than anybody else [she understands]. She knows, she was born in Ukraine, she emigrated to the United States and became a congresswoman. She knew what she was talking about and nobody listened.”