The Ukrainian offensive has barely begun and officials in Washington are already down playing expectations...

 via Politico

Alex and JONATHAN LEMIRE have a story today about how the Biden administration fears it will be criticized if Ukraine’s counteroffensive falls short of its goals. Simply put, if Kyiv’s forces don’t retake a large chunk of territory seized by Russia, hawks will say the United States should’ve provided more weapons while doves will claim the time for peace talks was yesterday (and that’s not even including what on-the-fence allies would do).

So today, we thought we’d dive a little deeper into why this fear is cropping up all of a sudden.

Two U.S. officials told our own ERIN BANCO that the belief is the Russians are so dug in that the Ukrainian offensive won't amount to much. There is even some thinking that the offensive might not happen at all, at least not in the way Ukraine’s push last year went down. "I don't think that there's going to be this, wake up one morning and see, like, Ukrainian streaming across large swaths of territory sort of situation,” said one of the officials, who, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. “Definitely not."

Furthermore, our own PAUL McLEARY heard that when Ukrainian officials were in Washington, D.C., last week, they asked administration officials what pledges or guarantees they could expect from the United States during the NATO summit in July. The general response to them was: “Depends on how the counteroffensive goes.”

Story here 

Depends on how the counteroffensive goes.

Wow.

If we were only supplying military weapons and gear then I could easily say ok.

But we're doing more than that.

We're propping up their entire freaking economy and that's with the knowledge that many of their senior officials are stealing our money like there is no tomorrow.

So what's my concern.

They're gonna push because they want to get money. But the soldiers on the ground who will follow the orders to push are gonna be paying with their lives.

I wish that at least ONE TIME in my lifetime we could get an ally that isn't corrupt as hell (does Kuwait qualify?) that we could support fully and only wanted to achieve truly measurable goals without the sloganeering of "as long as it takes and whatever it takes".