US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a surprise visit to Kiev this week, ostensibly in order to voice the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine as the country faces challenging conditions amid its Western-backed proxy war against Russia.
Blinken’s itinerary included a stop at a military-themed pizza parlor and an unexpected performance by the top diplomat and amateur guitarist, who treated locals to a performance of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” Blinken’s musical stunt was met with mixed reviews, with some Ukrainians questioning its appropriateness given the country’s current struggles on the battlefield.
“Like many other politicians… Blinken appears to have misinterpreted the 1989 rock hit as a patriotic anthem,” noted a critical review by NBC News. “In fact, the ‘free world’ is Young’s ironic reference to America’s failings, including homelessness and gun crime.”
Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Thursday to weigh in on Blinken’s impromptu concert as the Russian army continues to make gains in the northern Kharkov region.
“I'll just say he has to work on his, c, d, f, b minor transitions,” said Ritter of the secretary of state’s guitarwork. “If we look at the depth of what he was saying… I think he said we got another $2 billion we're going to give [Ukraine].”
“He's talking about long-term joint defense industry efforts, meaning that America's got to work with Ukraine so that sometime in the future, Ukraine will be able to produce its own defense needs…. And he's talking about the potential of having a weapons factory built in Ukraine two years down the road. I mean, Tony Blinken's just off in Never Neverland,” he said, predicting the “imminent collapse of the Ukrainian ability to sustain combat cohesion on the battlefield.”
The former UN weapons inspector agreed with analysis offered by Stephen Byren on the Moon of Alabama blog claiming Russia’s recent offensive towards Kharkov is intended to “disintegrate the Ukrainian army.” Moscow has been engaged in a “war of attrition” against the country, Ritter noted, with the ultimate stated aim of demilitarizing Ukraine and ending the threat it poses as a proxy for NATO and Western interests.
Kiev’s refusal to surrender means Russia is forced to “grind down” its military, he claimed.
“We've been talking about military math,” said Ritter. “I've been talking about that all along, how Ukraine is consuming resources, manpower and material at a much greater rate than they can replenish it. And Russia is accumulating resources at a much greater rate than Ukraine can diminish them. And so Russia's getting stronger everyday – Ukraine's getting weaker.”
“Now they've [Russia] gone over to what they have stated is the offensive,” he continued. “That means that it will be Russia taking the fight to Ukraine in a time and place of their choosing and Russia has opted to do this along the totality of the line of contact. If you go and look at where the battles are being fought, they're being fought from Zaporozhye all the way up to Lugansk, and now Russians open the second front north of Kharkov.”
“They're not just wearing down the Ukrainians, but they're putting the Ukrainians into a classic horn of a dilemma, meaning they don't have enough forces to defend the area they were already defending. And now a new frontier opened up, and they have to decide what forces they're going to strip from where to send north, weakening the line that they're stripping [and] giving the Russians more opportunities.”
The result, Ritter said, is the gradual thinning out of Ukraine’s armed forces until its military is split and collapses.
Additionally Ukraine faces political collapse, he claimed, as President Volodymyr Zelensky’s term comes to an end next week. “It will come to a head on May 20th, when the legitimacy of the Zelensky regime – or what passes for legitimacy – collapses altogether because his term runs out,” said Ritter. “There was no presidential election. He will be ruling as an unelected dictator.”