President Biden, in his earlier speech to the General Assembly, did not deal with Ukraine’s perilous position in the war with Russia but renewed his resounding support for Ukraine and insisted that “Russia alone bears responsibility for this war”—ignoring, as the leaders of many developing nations do not, three decades of NATO expansion to the east after and the Obama administration’s covert involvement in the overthrow of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine in 2014.

The president may be right on the merits but the rest of the world remembers, as this White House seems not to, that it was America that chose to make war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with little regard for the merits of its justification for doing so.

There was no talk from the president of the need for an immediate ceasefire in a war that cannot be won by Ukraine and is adding to the pollution that has caused the current climate crisis engulfing the planet. Biden, with the support of Secretary Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan—but diminishing support elsewhere in America—has turned his unrelenting financial and moral support for the Ukraine war into a do-or-die issue for his re-election.

Meanwhile, a relentless Zalensky, in an interview last week with a fawning correspondent of 60 Minutes, once the pinnacle of aggressive American journalism, depicted Putin as another Hitler and falsely insisted that Ukraine had the initiative in its current faltering war with Russia.

Asked by the CBS correspondent, Scott Pelley, if he thought “the threat of nuclear war is behind us,” Zelensky responded: “I think he’s going to continue threatening. He is waiting for the United States to become less stable. He thinks that’s going to happen during the US election. He will be looking for instability in Europe and the United States of America. He will use the risk of using nuclear weapons to fuel that. He will keep on threatening.”

The American intelligence official I spoke with spent the early years of his career working against Soviet aggression and spying has respect for Putin’s intellect but contempt for his decision to go to war with Ukraine and to initiate the death and destruction that war brings. But, as he told me, “The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going.

“The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”