One of the byproducts of this "leak" is that we now know that there are US Special Forces inside Ukraine. Here are Krystal and Saagar offering up a scoop:

The headline for the YouTube video for the "Democracy Now" report suggests a "stalemate" but, if you've been following Douglas Macgregor (look him up on YouTube), you might have guessed that both sides are waiting for the mud in Ukraine to dry up (i.e. for midsummer) before beginning any offensive involving tanks that would have to cover ground. So my under-informed speculation here is that it only looks like a stalemate, now, because both sides are waiting for Ukraine's mud to dry.

At any rate, what happens in midsummer? Here's Jim Kavanagh's speculation:

It’s impossible to know what’s true and what’s feint about all this, and one can never be certain of the outcome once armies start blowing each other up, but I feel comfortable saying that: 1) There will be a Ukrainian offensive. The Ukrainians will throw everything they have into it and will make immediate territorial advances. 2) It is very unlikely that Ukraine will advance far enough to seriously threaten to re-take Crimea, and impossible that it will drive Russia to capitulate. 3) It is likely that the UA will exhaust itself, that enormous, irreplaceable, quantities of its manpower and materiel will be destroyed, and that the massive Russian force that has been held back until now will begin its own offensive that will be able to advance at will.

At which point, Kavanagh speculates further, the US will decide to escalate again. But with what? We know that, even with massive draft evasion, Russia has far more manpower than Ukraine and the current war is a war of attrition. The US, as stated above, already has troops inside Ukraine. Do you think they would move regular Army troops into Ukraine? Enlistment is declining. Maybe the US will revive the military draft? I'm sure that will be totally popular.

Another constraint limiting US options is the generally-felt necessity of maintaining a shroud of "secrecy" (or lies: either one will do) so that both sides can keep warfare in place in Ukraine. The good citizens of Russia/ Europe/ the US cannot be allowed to know too much about what is really going on in Ukraine, because otherwise they might feel compelled to, you know, oppose the war or something like that. Thus we see the zealousness with which "leakers" of information about the war are prosecuted.

While pawing through a free book offer recently, I found copies of a set of old books from the Eighties titled The Vietnam Experience. "The Vietnam Experience" books are full of pictures, pictures that could only have been taken by reporters with full access to war scenes (such as what we don't have now). They reminded me of what used to happen when America allowed its pointless wars to be fully publicized. I presume the White House warmongers don't want that to happen again.

Team Hubris has until midsummer to decide.