Seymour Hersh's latest post "PUTIN'S PREDICAMENT AFTER THE TIDE TURNED IN UKRAINE - A shakeup in Kiev highlights Russia's intransigency" starts off with this paragraph:
"The uproar in Ukraine over Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky's firing midweek of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, an admired technocrat, had less to do with warfare than with issues of corruption. As the press in Kiev have portrayed him, Fedorov turned what was a brutal and losing war against Russia into a contested one by emphasizing the aggressive use of drones. He made clear that he was not interested in sharing the spoils that came from US and European military aid as Zelensky has been accused of doing. Fedorov was in the defense job only six successful months when he was forced out..."
Time for Sy Hersh to close the typewriter and enjoy his retirement.
Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko resigned July 14th and may end up being posted as ambassador to the U.S. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is always called "President" in western press. Would you still call President trump [sorry, no caps for him] president if he refused to call elections and overstayed his term by two years?
And what exactly is President Putin's "predicament"? Yes, NATO-backed Ukrainian forces made gains on a couple fronts yesterday, but with some re-deployment, those situations will be cleaned up. In President Putin's address to SPIEF (St. Petersburg International Economic Forum) he never mentioned the Ukraine situation even once. This little issue in the south is not going to define Russia. The entire drive of the government is for economic growth and productivity and this forum brought in US$84B in new investment to the world's largest country. Many countries would love this "predicament."
NATO via its proxy Ukraine is still losing "this brutal war." A couple days ago, four Tu-22M3 bombers headed for Sea of Azov from Engels-2 airbase in Saratov, with Kh-22/23 missiles, they were offshore south of Crimea and launched missiles at Ukrainian ports. Due to NATO's intransigence, it has now come to actual war instead of the restricted mobilization of the SMO. An underlying issue is the food supply of Africa. For the past week or a bit more, the UK-supplied Ukrainian drones (Hersh's "aggressive use of drones") has been hitting ships in the Sea of Azoz. Ukraine thought these were part of Russia's "shadow fleet" and were tankers storing their reserve of petroleum products. Likely some were doing that, but a significant number were holding the grain supply for Africa, waiting to pass through to the Black Sea. In these missile strikes on Ukrainian ports, more grain infrastructure was damaged, again disrupting grain for Africa, and they hope to re-route some to Romanian ports, but those don't really have adequate capacity. Certainly, more should have been done to enable delivery of critical food supplies, especially in this crop year which is facing many challenges.
Leave a comment! This is a re-direct to my Substack page.
Return to Limits to Progress Main Page
If you would like to send a donation, please send an Interac eTransfer to email address below. Thank you!
©2026 Kathleen McCroskey
Send your e-mail comments and questions to: