Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) has issued a new public memo to President Trump warning him that his advisors are selling him a “song and dance” on Russia and the war in Ukraine. “The New York Times is reporting that the outlook for Russia in Ukraine is ‘bleak.’ C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe is said to have explained that to the Russians while in Moscow Tuesday. He reportedly urged them ‘to cut a deal before their military and economic situation gets worse.’” The VIPS report at the outset, “We write you on the chance you may be taken in by this latest song and dance. We believe it is orchestrated by the same kind of geniuses who told President Joe Biden to announce on July 13, 2023, in a major speech in Helsinki, that the Russians had ‘already lost the war’ in Ukraine.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” the memorandum warns. “Your predecessor was ill-served by intelligence. We suspect you are getting the same tendentious treatment from your own advisers. Indeed, many of them seem unconscionably relaxed about risking wider war with Russia over Ukraine.”
“Russia is methodically advancing in Donbass along a thousand-mile front, it is weathering drone attacks on its oil and civilian infrastructure with enhanced interception and has enforced a virtual blockade on Ukraine’s largest port, Odessa, with withering aerial attacks,” the VIPS report later in the memorandum. “Ukraine’s manpower and interceptor shortages make it impossible for it to ever recover its lost territory, as you acknowledged after your meeting with President Putin in Alaska.
