Ukraine

War Is Hell and as Zelensky’s troops enter the second week of their counter offensive it is clear that Ukraine is the seventh circle. The Ukrainians are taking heavy losses for so far minimal gains as they hurl themselves against an elaborate Russian “defense in depth.”

President Zelensky has said that the counter offensive is going according to plan. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, more phlegmatically reported: “It is a very difficult fight.”

The Ukrainians have had some success in the Donetsk region where they appear to have regained about 40 square miles of territory. They are also advancing on Bakhmut. But the Russians appear to have the edge in the vital Zaporizhia region where the Ukrainians have lost a number of tanks, including recently supplied German Leopards and American tanks. Having said that, Putin has admitted to losing 54 tanks in the past ten days.

To a large degree the counter-offensive appears to be a big step up from a probing exercise but not yet a full-scale frontal assault. The Ukrainians are still looking for weak points in the 600-mile long Russian defensive line and neither side has committed its reserves.

Among the major developments in Russia this week have been the Russia Day celebrations on Monday and a new enlistment law. The first marks the day that Russia seceded from the old Soviet Union and was used by Putin to deliver a rally around the flag speech while warning of tough times ahead. The second allowed the recruitment of convicts into the regular army. This will enable the government to reduce unpopular conscription levels but will also exacerbate the conflict between the Wagner Group and the army, as prisons are also the main recruiting ground for the mercenary group.

USA

Teflon Trump can’t win. His arraignment on federal charges this week may have failed to dent his popularity among hard-right Republican voters, but the wider voting public is thoroughly unimpressed. The numbers don’t stack up for a third Trump attempt at the White House.

Registered Republicans are 38.8 million of the voting population. At a guess I would say that roughly 3.8 million of them are either so sick of Trump that they will either abstain or vote against him.

Democrats are 49 million of the voting population. I reckon that they will all vote for the Democratic candidate – even if he is an octogenarian – to insure that Trump stays out of the White House.

That leaves the Independents who are 41 percent or 65.68 million of the registered voting population. The latest opinion polls show that they are split 40/60 with the 60 percent adamantly opposed to Trump returning to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

That means that if all the registered voters cast their ballots tomorrow for one of the two main candidates that Trump (assuming he is the Republican candidate) would receive about 44 million votes and the Democratic candidate (whomever that may be) would receive 78.8 million.

The above figures do not take into account abstentions or the impact of third parties. These will be mainly Andrew Yang’s Forward Party and the Green Party which may shave 5-6 percent off the Democratic Party and the Libertarians which may take a couple of percentage points from Trump. The outcome, however, will be the same—a Democratic landslide.

The Republicans only chance is to jettison Trump. The problem they have is that too many people have tied their entire careers to a plummeting star.

Iceland

Tiny Iceland has no army, air force, or navy. It does have a Coast Guard of three ships and four aircraft. Not exactly a defense establishment capable of taking on the might of Russia.

And yet the land of fire and ice this week became the first NATO country to risk the ire of Moscow by effectively severing diplomatic relations with the Russians over their invasion of Ukraine.

Officially the Icelanders are “suspending” diplomatic relations from 1 August. In practice this will mean closing their embassy in Moscow and declaring Russian diplomats in Iceland persona no grata.

The reason given is that because of the Ukraine war Russian-Icelandic “commercial, political and cultural relations are at an all-time low” and so there is no point in paying good money to keep diplomats sitting in expensive offices twiddling their thumbs.

The move drew a sharp and bitter response from Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov who threatened immediate repercussions. Three days later the computer system of the Althing (the Icelandic parliament) was subjected to a major cyber-attack from “somewhere in the East.”

It would be tempting to dismiss the Russo-Icelandic split as a minor diplomatic difficulty. The problem is Iceland’s strategic position. It straddles the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap which guards the sea lanes that Russia must use to reach the North Atlantic from its Arctic and Baltic bases.

During the Cold War, up to 5,000 US troops were based at Keflavik Air base to monitor all Soviet shipping that passed to the north and south of the island. They were withdrawn following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but from 2016 have started to return.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”