During the Great War of 1914 Britain invaded neutral Greece and occupied Salonika with a large force. This operation, far away from the Western front where the war would be decided, was called a “sideshow” by many in England and the French Premier even referred to the army as the “Salonika gardeners”. In Ireland a humorous song, “Right ye are, Salonika. Right ye are me soldier boy!” was written by Sinn Feiners to mock the purposeless of it all.

During the second war against Germany of 1939 Britain had lost the appetite for large scale warfare on the European continent and did everything it could to avoid it. The war thus became unwinnable for Britain after it evacuated Europe in May 1940 after a couple of weeks of German pressure. It was in no hurry to get back either, and Churchill did everything he could to deter an Allied invasion for as long as it was possible. Only in June 1944 did it go along with the Americans, fearing that Soviet forces might reach the English Channel before it got back on the continent, if it waited another year.

Unlike the British war of 1914 the British war of ‘39 consisted of “sideshows” and what were referred to as “pinpricks”. Churchill lavishly called this war “setting Europe ablaze” in his ham-actor way. In essence it was terrorism as a substitute for war that Britain was both unwilling and unable to wage. It was clear that the British knew the war could only be decided on the real battleground by the Soviets, and through American power.

There is something of this British way of warfare, born of weakness, in Kyiv’s latest sideshow in Kursk. If it has a strategic purpose it is as an unpredictable temporary raid into enemy territory to cause uncertainty in the Russian mind. It will not work as anything else and it will be disastrous for Kyiv as anything else.

If it has any wider strategic objective it is to panic the Russians into moving forces away from the actual frontlines, where they are relentlessly degrading Kyiv’s NATO built army. And the hope would be to perhaps incite various hotheads, provoking the Kremlin into more aggressive measures.

That’s what Zelensky means when he talks of “bringing the war to Russia.”

That is exactly what Britain did in its war of ’39. Knowing that it was unable to beat the Germans it took to provoking and enlarging the war in any way it could, hoping something would turn up. There is something of the “Hail Mary” shot about it.

Before Kyiv’s Kursk foray we were hearing little about Ukraine in the Western media. It is clear that the popular war was over for the West and the Western public no longer wanted to know of the debacle they so enthusiastically were recruited to through the initial barrage of moral propaganda. The war was down to the elites and their paid mouthpieces in media, academia, think tanks etc. to cheerlead Ukraine to their slow but inevitable destruction. Now the redundant ex-generals and “military analysts” have suddenly found employment again on the BBC and Times Radio etc. trotting out their familiar failed narrative as a comfort blanket to the increasingly small audience of people who still have faith in Ukrainian fairy tales.

At first the Western media ignored the Kursk incursion, seeing it as a curious piece of military thinking on the part of Kyiv. It could not understand why Ukraine was attacking an area considered of so little value when there were no Russian forces there. All there was there was a string of hamlets and woods. Some obscure place with the population of a small Irish town was described as a Russian city, in Ukrainian hands!

However, after a few days the raid put Ukraine back into the Western news, displacing the everyday Israeli massacres of Palestinian civilians which the Western public is finding increasingly hard to hear about. Kyiv also provided a little light relief to the UK to deflect from its mounting social and political conflict over migration.

Why did Russia not see this coming? The Russians operate on the basis of military logic and Putin is the consummate realist, unimpressed by media events. There would be little expectation of the Ukrainians attacking the backwoods around Kursk. That is why the Russians were caught with their pants down. Such a raid, militarily illogical, was beyond Russian imagination. And that is why the Ukrainians were successful in putting together the operation.

What surprised the Western media was the Russian reluctance to divert forces from the frontline in eastern Ukraine. Instead, the Russians began evacuating civilians, pounding the Ukraine supply lines and surrounding the incursion forces, seemingly at leisure. Putin described the Ukrainian foray as a terrorist incident rather than an invasion, signalling he was not going to treat it with any more military significance than it deserved. The Kremlin is calculating that their own advances in the real front line would mean the Ukrainian foray into Kursk would have to withdraw upon minimal pressure. These forces have to be supplied to be able to remain in situ, or they will have to attempt a breakout at some point. At that point they become vulnerable. Then questions would be asked why such forces were wasted in a sideshow, with harmful losses, when the defence of Ukraine was neglected. Such a thing would ultimately be a great blow to Kyiv’s morale. Perhaps Kursk would really be the last mission?

Some speculated that the incursion has been to do with Ukrainian irredentist designs on Russian territory. It is, of course, true that the Ukraine does not have natural borders and where Russians end and Ukrainians begin is not always clear, despite the attempts of Ukrainian nationalists to carve out a clear distinction. The experience of history shows that Ukrainian nationalists are incapable of holding a large state together. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, on the other hand, was able to provide for a cohesive Ukrainian state for the first time and add extensively to its territories and peoples, under Russian patronage.

Since Kyiv has now chosen to place its future under Western patronage the more important question to be asked at this point is: What is the US objective now in Ukraine?

There are 3 possibilities:

1. To win – This has proved impossible and been shown to be highly unlikely. Western sanctions have failed, and the NATO/Kyiv counter-offensive was routed a year ago. The present Kursk foray is a small raid in comparison. All the wunderwaffen – the latest forlorn hope being 7 or 8 surplus F-16s – have so far failed to tip the balance. The Russian industrial base has been more than a match for the degraded industrial base of the globalised West. And the Russians have done what they always do in war – learn and improve with waging it. They are made of stronger stuff than the West imagined and much stronger than anything they are likely to encounter from Europe.

There is now good reason to see the 2023 NATO/Kyiv counter-offensive as a kind of Dieppe operation. It is said that Churchill put on the disaster of Dieppe to show the US that their desire to fight Germany on the continent was foolhardy. Washington showed Kyiv likewise what their dreams of total victory would result in when they entered the field half-trained in a highly-advertised offensive and without air cover against well defended lines. This has taught Kyiv a lesson about engaging in NATO schemes foisted upon them to impress their donors and backers in the West. At Kursk they have played it the Ukrainian way by entering lightly patrolled countryside that is largely devoid of military opponents.

It is obvious now, as the present writer has explained for 2 and a half years, that the only chance of Kyiv winning this war would be a massive escalation using direct Western military power, and this would probably lead to a World War with nuclear weapons. It is likely there are still enough sane heads in Washington to prevent that sort of thing, although some still publicy advocate it, perhaps safely knowing it won’t happen.

While there is obviously an ideologically driven warmongering faction within the US foreign policy establishment that is eager to escalate the war with Russia, the limited US intervention tends to suggest more moderate forces eager to prevent the more reckless provocations favoured by hard-line elements in Kyiv – such as the assassination of Putin. They wish to confine the conflict, like Putin does, within set and manageable limits. They are intent on “playing the game” as the British used to put it.

They have probably asked themselves the question: Would complete victory, if it were even possible, be worth it? There are logical reasons why such a scenario would be problematic for the West. In the unlikely event that Russia collapsed in chaos and was broken up, as some have proposed, who would lead the bits and control the nukes? Not such a predictable, pragmatic man as Putin. In 1991 the dissolution of the USSR was carefully managed to ensure that nukes would not fall into the wrong hands. Washington was very much at pains for Kiev/Kyiv not to have them, for example, showing how they didn’t trust Ukrainians with dangerous weapons even then. Would such a thing be possible if Russia broke up during a war rather than through a peaceful, controlled dissolution organised by Gorbachev and Yeltsin that was successfully controlled to only inconvenience the Russians?

2. To settle – Perhaps Zelensky wants to conclude a deal and more sensible Americans with Ukraine’s interests at heart would be in favour of sacrificing the lost territory for a Ukrainian future on the South Korean model. Zelensky has been making noises about this lately, even in reference to the Kursk raid.

However, concluding the war at this point would mean a humiliation for the West and would represent a clear Russian victory. It would be difficult to get Kyiv to agree to a settlement without leading to a civil war and a full Ukrainian collapse. Both the West and Kyiv were offered good terms by Putin prior to the Special Military Operation and at Istanbul in the Spring of 2022. These terms were rejected, and the Russians will only settle now on their terms, after the large sacrifices they have made in blood and treasure.

Settlement, therefore, looks unlikely, barring some wizardry by a re-elected Trump. Although Trump, even if he is re-elected against a massive media campaign behind Harris, is likely to have much on his hands in January to carry such a project through.

3. Maintain the war – The war is not in a situation of stalemate; it is in a situation of Russian attrition that is winning the war. The high point for Kyiv was in Autumn 2022 when the small Russian expeditionary force was exposed, and some territory was won back in an orderly Russian withdrawal to shorten the lines. Since then, the steady appliance of Russian numbers to the battlefield means that Ukraine is losing over 1,000 soldiers most days (the Kremlin suggesting 2,000 per day over the last 2 months). Kyiv is finding manpower harder and harder to replace. In recent weeks hundreds of vehicles belonging to Kyiv’s press gangs have been destroyed by a popular resistance movement unwilling to fight and die in an unwinnable war. The movement of lines has all been in one direction only for a long time now and the counter-offensive of 2023 revealed Kyiv’s inability to conquer territory for nearly 2 years now. Hence Kursk.

The US objective in Ukraine has always been to simply bleed Russia. This is why Biden has continually seemed to be behind the curve in offering weaponry to Kyiv. Washington’s objective has been to just keep the Ukrainians in the field and fighting. The swamp/Afghanistan model of keeping the war going for a decade to drain Russia is the most attractive option for the US and is really its default position. This does not have the disadvantages of winning or settling and there is a strong element of hoping for the best in it. It is the low cost/limited liability option for Washington to fight to the last Ukrainian.

To sum up – Ukraine will continue to be the US’s fall guy. Kyiv is there to bleed Russia until it has no blood left itself. The understanding beneath everything in the West that this is a Russian civil war in which both Russia and the Ukraine will be weakened should not be discounted. For all the moral support there is for Kyiv in the West the Ukrainians are not seen as Westerners. They are the most useful of cannon-fodder but ultimately very expendable for Washington, if the war can be abandoned somehow by saving face (perhaps by blaming Trump).

This all looks very nice and cheap for Washington but there are some serious downsides that have resulted from the war for the West. First, there is how Russia has re-orientated to the east, bringing it closer to China – something which the US did everything possible to prevent since the time of Nixon. Second, there is the increasing de-dollarization promoted by the Western seizure of Russian assets and the warning this sent to independent states. Third, there is the destruction of the European economy, which now has to pay for much more expensive energy from the US, leading to the cost-of-living crisis and the tumbling of governments. Fourth, there is the huge mess left on Europe’s doorstep which the EU will have to pay heavily for to clean up in the future. Europe is still existing in a world of wishful thinking and do not seem to understand the nature of the conflict they have been drawn into. Fifth, there is the expansion of BRICs and the greater attraction of Eurasianism, for countries like the Gulf states, Turkiye, and Azerbaijan etc. Sixth, there are the millions of Ukrainian refugees adding to the European migrant crisis, and straining public services. And finally, there is the potential economic crisis for the United States brought about by Biden’s policies and accentuated by his war measures which will have a domino effect when contagion occurs in Western economies.

This represents a not so healthy balance sheet, all in all, for the West.

The West was getting increasingly concerned about how Russia had resurrected itself into a functional state after being laid low during the 1990s. Putin was responsible for this and it was decided he had to go, through one means or another. The Ukraine conflict was carefully stoked over a decade to bring Putin down and disable Russia as a consequence of the hoped-for regime change. But with the end of so many Western leaders and governments it looks very likely that Putin will actually be the last man standing.