Last week, the American Conservative published a critical piece on the Ukraine war titled, “Holding Ground, Losing War.” The sub-head explains, “Zelensky’s strategy of defending territory at all costs has been disastrous for Ukraine.”

The Conservative plainly stated the article’s main point, that Russia hasn’t really started to fight yet: “Russia always had the resources to dramatically escalate the fighting and end the fighting in Ukraine on very harsh terms. Escalation is now in progress.“

But even within the context of the current, more limited conflict, the article describes the Russians being historically patient and deliberate, while the Ukrainians let themselves be pushed around like checkers in a game played by unsupervised two-year-olds.

According to the Conservative, Ukraine made the classic strategic error of valuing inches over lives. In other words, again and again Ukraine’s military — undoubtedly encouraged by U.S. intelligence agencies who craved headlines for their psyops — traded transitory minor territorial gains for significant lives and hardware.

As an example, the Conservative pointed to the recent “victories” in Eastern Ukraine, describing them as a propaganda win but a military disaster:

U.S. satellite arrays undoubtedly provided Ukrainians with a real-time picture of the area showing that Russian forces west of Izium numbered less than 2,000 light troops (the equivalent of paramilitary police, e.g., SWAT and airborne infantry).
The Russian command opted to withdraw its small force from the area that is roughly 1 percent of formerly Ukrainian territory currently under Russian control. However, the price for Kiev’s propaganda victory was high— … an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 Ukrainian troops were killed or wounded in a flat, open area that Russian artillery, rockets, and air strikes turned into a killing field.
Now that Russia has begun its mobilization — which is moving full steam ahead — the Conservative says the war has entered a new phase, provoking a critical inflection point: “Washington confronts a stark choice: Talk about having successfully ‘degraded Russian power’ in Ukraine and scale back its actions. Or risk a regional war with Russia that will engulf Europe.”

Europe, as the article notes, is on the brink of its own revolution, a rightwing ascension induced by the war’s social and political side effects:

Sanctions are hurting America’s European allies, not Russia… Discontent is growing, making it quite plausible that governments in Germany, France, and Great Britain will likely follow the path of their colleagues in Stockholm and Rome , who lost or will lose power to right-of-center coalitions.
You can add Sweden to that list. The Ukraine war may have the unexpected effect of cementing more rightwing nationalist governments in Europe. An equal and opposite affect.