Under this headline, the neocon Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin wrote yesterday about conversations at the Munich Security Conference with Ukrainians, who all told him Ukraine has little time to make a breakthrough against Russian forces or is in big trouble. Rogin quoted Biden’s “never waver” speech in Poland and Vice President Kamala Harris’s remarks at Munich about endless commitment: “The agony of war will persist. But if Putin thinks he can wait us out, he is badly mistaken. Time is not on his side.” The Ukrainians he met at Munich, said Rogin, disagree. “An endless war means a win for Putin and the loss of their country as they know it,” he wrote. Parliamentarian Yelyzaveta Yasko told him, “there is one phrase that makes us very concerned. … Many leaders right now are saying, ‘We will support you as long as it takes.’ And we feel this phrase is quite dangerous.” She and others insisted to Rogin: “Biden’s messaging signals that the West is psychologically and politically preparing for a long war. But Yasko told me the window of opportunity for winning is closing. Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, energy production and agricultural facilities are taking a brutal toll on the economy. The Ukrainian military is incurring heavy losses. The deepening destruction means Ukraine will become even more dependent on the West in the future and reconstruction will become exorbitantly expensive and difficult.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/23/biden-ukraine-russia-war-attrition/ )
The broader, global economic picture is indicated, again, in a long analysis published Feb. 21 on CODEPINK’s website, by Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK and journalist Nicolas J.S. Davies, and since reprinted by Zero Hedge, Naked Capitalism and Salon among others. As EIR has reported, the IMF had forecast 8.5% shrinkage of the Russian economy in 2022, but now reports it contracted by just 2.2% and will grow by somewhere up to 1% in 2023; Benjamin and Davies report Ukraine’s economy shrank by 35% in 2022 despite $46 billion in direct economic—not military—aid from America. The 20-country euro area economy is expected by the IMF to grow 0.7% in 2023; the British economy to contract about 1%; the German economy to grow just 0.1% in 2023 after 1.9% in 2022; German industry to pay 40% more for energy in 2023 than in 2021. Benjamin and Davies write: “Meanwhile India, which has remained neutral while buying oil from Russia at a discounted price, is projected to maintain its 2022 growth rate of over 6% all through 2023 and 2024.... China’s economy is expected to grow at 5% this year,” after Russia-China trade grew by 30% from 2021 to 2022.
