The President vs. the General [Ukraine War] | Seymour Hersh

Scott

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For those here who may not know who Seymour Hersh is, I think Wikipedia has a good summary of his accomplishments:

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Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. During the 1970s, Hersh covered the Watergate scandal for The New York Times, also reporting on the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia and the CIA's program of domestic spying. In 2004, he detailed the U.S. military's torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq for The New Yorker. Hersh has won a record five George Polk Awards, and two National Magazine Awards. He is the author of 11 books, including The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983), an account of the career of Henry Kissinger which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In 2013, Hersh's reporting alleged that Syrian rebel forces, rather than the government, had attacked civilians with sarin gas at Ghouta during the Syrian Civil War, and in 2015, he presented an alternative account of the U.S. special forces raid in Pakistan which killed Osama bin Laden, both times attracting controversy and criticism. In 2023, Hersh alleged that the U.S. and Norway had sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines, again stirring controversy. He is known for his use of anonymous sources, for which his later stories in particular have been criticized.

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Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh

Seymour's article is mostly paywalled, but I got the 7 day trial and so can include a bit more of the introduction as well as some of the conclusion to his article below:

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Ukrainian General Valery Zaluzhny wants the war to end now, and President Volodymyr Zelensky may just have fired him

February 1, 2024

It’s suddenly a tabloid war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reported to have demanded that General Valery Zaluzhny, the battle-scarred and much respected commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, resign. Zaluzhny has said nothing in public, but his spokesman has denied that his boss was fired.

The ongoing drama between the pair has caused consternation for many in Washington, since Zaluzhny said last fall in an interview with the Economist that the war against Russia was in stalemate. He had not shared his dour message in advance with Zelensky, though it was known to a few in Washington.

Some at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community welcomed Zaluzhny’s assessment as the beginning of an inevitable peace process. I reported in December that Zaluzhny had been in secret discussions with his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, on the many complicated issues that needed to be resolved if the war came to an end. Gerasimov was keeping his boss in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, informed; Zaluzhny was not doing the same in Kyiv.


[snip]

“Of course, Zelensky knew that Zaluzhny was dealing with the West,” the official said. “But Zelensky will be a dead man walking with the army, which is in favor of the general. He’s going to have a mutiny on his hands."

The current plan evolved among experts in the intelligence and military bureaucracy without input from the White House, the State Department, or the National Security Council. “It stems from the American and Ukraine general staffs and it is putting investments” from private industry, the official said, “and not solely government funding and grants as the ticket out.

“Putin, too,” the official said, “is looking for a way out. And he’s got the message.” The Russian leader has won the four oblasts that formed the core of his battle plan, after earlier losses in the war, and his control of Crimea is no longer an open question. “The strategy now being proposed,” the official suggested, in talks a few blocks from the White House but light-years away in attitude, “is to settle the war and settle the financial plan for Ukraine.”

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Source:
The President vs. the General | Seymour Hersh

I believe this war should never have started and could have ended shortly after it began (around March 2022), but the U.S. and the U.K. encouraged Zelensky to spill a lot more blood. Now it looks like the rank and file in both the U.S. and Ukraine are realizing that continuing the way they were is not in their best interests. It is my hope that the rank and file prevail, and sooner rather than later, to try to avoid further unnecessary bloodshed.
 
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