In his March 3 article for the Asia Times entitled “Nazi rescue of Mussolini a US model for Zelensky,” Stephen Bryen suggests that Ukraine’s President may soon have to flee.
Bryen suggests that Russian forces are seizing huge areas of Ukraine after its breakthrough in Avdiivka, the government prevents the holding of elections, unrest within the country is growing, anyone who opposes President Volodymyr Zelensky is replaced or imprisoned, the authorities are using force to attract recruits, and sporadic riots are breaking out against unpopular measures in the large cities of Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv.
He concludes that this, combined with Zelensky’s refusal to negotiate until Russia is expelled from Ukrainian territory and its leaders face war crime trials, means that the president’s security situation is rapidly becoming terminal, leaving the US no option but to evacuate Zelensky and replace him with someone more amenable to suing for peace and more acceptable to Vladimir Putin.
He draws a comparison with the situation faced by Benito Mussolini in 1943 when, as he was arrested and about to be forced out of office, Hitler dispatched a force of paratroopers and Waffen SS to release him and force his enemies into exile.
Needless to say, the pro-Kremlin media, Ria Novosti and Vesti, seized on the article as evidence that the end for Kyiv was in sight.
Bryen has a track record for making bleak predictions about the war with articles and broadcasts, including those in the online publication Weapons and Strategy where he is listed as the editor-in-chief, with titles such as:
NATO Chief Says 'Not Too Late for Ukraine' to Beat Russia
“Ukraine: Has the US Lost Yet Another Proxy War?”
“Regime Change Is Coming to Kiev - Zelensky May Soon Be Forced Out Thanks to Avdiivka.”
“Fire Jens Stoltenberg Now Before It Is Too Late!”
“NATO Needs to Pull its Soldiers from Ukraine.”
Let’s have a look at Bryen’s evidence that Ukraine, in general, and President Zelensky, in particular, are on their last legs.
Russia’s Advances: the loss of Avdiivka was a blow to Ukraine but Moscow’s gains in the following month have been minimal and the recent signs are that its forces are being held if not forced back in a number of areas.
Blocking elections: Zelensky and other members of the Ukrainian government have clearly laid out the legal, operational, financial and political situation why it is not possible to hold the vote under martial law.
Social unrest: the protests that have occurred are largely around calls for more funds to be allocated to the armed forces or for volunteers to be withdrawn after long periods of service and they have been almost totally peaceful, if occasionally noisy and certainly can’t be categorized as riots.
Removing opponents: like all Governments during peacetime, let alone when at war, Kyiv has regularly changed some of its political and military members and leadership. Claiming that opponents have been imprisoned for political reasons is also false, the courts have acted in a crackdown on corruption within the business and political classes and if Ukraine is “overzealous,” it is because action has been insisted upon by the EU and NATO if Kyiv is to become a member of their organizations.
The independent Russian news site The Insider has included Bryen’s piece in the “anti-fake” section of its online publication calling his logic “completely incomprehensible.” I. for one, concur with that assessment.
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Comments (5)
What a shame that the USA, the home of the free and the land of the brave, is full of people like Bryen. Victory to Ukraine.
Bryen appears to make the cognitive error of inflating tiny territorial gains at extreme cost in personnel and materiel in order to establish a false basis for his prognostications and prescriptions.
His employment in US government appears to have been an appointee in a republican administration not known for analytical rigor, but for bias - political bias in staff being another egregious error and vulnerability in our political system, which has been penetrated , as any informed reader knows, by both unwitting and biased agents of russian and other foreign governments.
Bryen himself was credibly accused of passing classified materials to a foreign agent, but escaped any investigation due to that same vulnerability and shielding through partisan political means.
All we can be surely aware of is his consistent use of hyperbole - exaggeration of information, along with the use of vague rhetoric ( itself the use of wording to affect opinion, including contrafactual statements, in order to develop and gain some personal advantage.
To understand the intentional deception involved in rhetoric, please explore cognitive error and cognitive bias, and constantly examine your own inevitable bias. My first sentence is relevant, and should alert readers to likely extreme deception as Bryen's probable tool for his imagined expertise, writings, endeavors, and associations.
@Makuye, Well written!
Sounds like Stephen Bryen is off his rocker
Yeah... well this same MRGA 'expert" also said back in 2022, on MRGA's well choreographed day one of russia's latest foreign invasion, “I don’t think Ukraine can survive the offensive” and proposing "second thoughts by Finland and Sweden about joining NATO". So he keeps whistling the same tune after russian's forces have severely been depleted. So what?
Let's be clear as well, that what putin has always wanted, is not 'Ukraine sovereignty' as such duplicitous commentators lie about. A so called peace plan now just buys him time to rebuild his evil forces. Putin wants Europe. He and his cronies have said as much. Putin has also invested heavily in destroying other allied democracies via the MRGA's spreading of internal dissent.
Ukraine is now facing its 4th historical Russian attempt at their genocide. This article should only prompt allies to ramp up their support for Ukraine further to both save its democracy and prevent its resources being added to a malfeasant enemy's inventory.
Allies fail here, and democracies will assuredly fail elsewhere. Who's next? Georgia, Moldova, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Taiwan, Australia.....the USA via an internal MRGA takeover? We are on the cusp of an authoritarian avalanche that as per its inherent nature only spreads destruction.
@John, Pluto entering Aquarius, only autocrats, dicktators and plutocrats for the next century
@Love You Neighbour, Consistent, repeated evaluation of pseudoscience "astrology" predictions show NO statistical variation from chance. Explore the research on this, and consider whether you will ever again waste a moment of your attention, much less trumpet random, fact-free assertions based upon delusion.
@Love You Neighbour, The pseudoscience of "astrology" has been repeatedly statistically examined, and its predictions found NOT to vary from chance, randomicity.
It would be well to explore that statistical literature before crediting any of its assertions with any validity whatsoever.
Back to the future? Did not the U.S. already do this once before?