Real news, real information, real analysis. This article is so refreshing and brings back memories or what journalism used to look like when done by the professionals.
Exactly, now they all just copy paste the same gaslighted mis/dis info from 'Agency approved' CNN/MSNBC propaganda, usually here in the EU with added misery of poor translation to local language (something akin to using auto-translate, just horrible crap) and some woke twist added according to the copy+paste 'reporters' ideology.
Plus those MSM sites are usually so chock-full of advertisement, that even with finely tuned adblocking, those sites are painful to browse.
And they wonder why people do not trust the 'mainstream' media anymore...
Fantastic analysis. Do Ukrainian soldiers realize they are dying for Biden, Kamala, Blinken, Blackrock, and JPMorgan? The hour is late at Casino Kiev, Zelensky is short on chips, weapons, and cocaine so he is pushing all in…
Except Elensky doesn't decide anything, not even the amount of his daily "Vitamin C" intake. And do you really believe anybody in Kiev is keeping track on available and still functional manpower and equipment and the required ammunition and supplies for such an operation, spread out over the 200 or so Ukrainian brigades?
This "Kursk offensive" bears the hallmark of a US/NATO maneuver warfare operation, with its complex logistics issues dealt with in the US, not anywhere in Ukraine, and the required ISR provided by the US/NATO as they have been doing since 2014, and using US/NATO-trained infantry (including US/NATO "mercenaries") riding US/NATO vehicles, communicating using Starlink terminals supplied by the US.
I am forced to always repeat the simple, obvious and most important fact: this is a US vs Russia war using Ukraine as a proxy.
Not a single thing is decided in Kiev or anywhere else in Ukraine, this entire $hitshow is remotely run from Washington, DC and Langley, Virginia since 2014.
Indeed, if we consider this operation as just proof-of-concept, NATO training exercise, it makes a lot of sense. NATO generals just wanted to see how the combined arms army, equipped with the best weapons they may muster, with all the cutting edge ISR and drones, may achieve. Doing it away from front makes sense. No reasonable war-related objective makes sense. They wanted to see what they may achieve if they’ll push the NATO forces directly against Russia.
After the poor performance of these wonder weapons, I suspect there will be few contracts executed for the MIC outside of NATO countries.
Unless, of course, Elensky is producing, directing, editing and staging realistic film that he sends back to the corporate board rooms who use it for marketing purposes.
It’s indeed very good explanation. It may happen, the US/NATO overlords wanted the Ukraine to perform the ideal, NATO-style combined arms operation. They still seem to believe that UA front failures are happening merely because UA’s generals don’t know how to conduct modern war. They launched the model operation which was “certain” to achieve crushing victory. Similar to the Rabotino offence, the Russians were suppose to flee in panic. They intentionally chose a stage far away from the actual front to make this exercise isolated as much as possible from all other realities of the previous fighting. This was supposed to be the new start of the warfare, done right this time. Looks like a proof the NATO generals are delusional and still have no idea why actually are they loosing in the UA.
"They launched the model operation which was “certain” to achieve crushing victory."
Exactly. They assembled a Frankenstein grouping of around 8,000 mechanized infantry to conduct a typical US/NATO "maneuver warfare" offensive using US/NATO tactics against a region of fields and small villages defended by a few dozen Russian border guards caught by surprise.
They knew this "Kursk offensive" would be a huge success, at least during the first 48~72 hours, and that was enough for the "narrative".
Whilst not giving a damn for the casualty levels of Ukraine soldiers or limbs. That's why they keep trying to push the narrative that they did not know about this operation, which is completely ludicrous. Leaving dumb elensky to take responsibility, which is why he is there & the fool still doesn't realise it yet. His use by date is fast approaching.
Madeleine Albright about the death of half a million Iraqi children due to sanctions imposed by the US: "We think the price is worth it."
That's the mindset of the people who are making all the decisions for Ukraine.
Of course they couldn't care less about casualties on either side, military or civilians, as a result of this "Kursk offensive" that has zero military strategic value.
There are many nato (pure nato) and secret US spec forces present, when they will start to retreat it will mean it is over, only Ukrainians will be left and end up as Kia or Wia or pow. It is a diversion. Diversion no 2 is coming soon on ZNPP and real nato naval attack from Odessa then a big krinky again with 25k forces mainly nato + mercs a few ukr for plausible deniability, goal is Crimea + F 16 Attack on the bridge before potus election day nothing else. Crimea is a British and neocons 'idée fixe'.They know it will fail (in D C and London) but they need a P R booster for the dem's, operation 'Putin humiliated' is the code name, really not a joke. Nato forces are near Odessa, lot of French is actually spoken(and English) is actually heard in the bars in Odessa this for a few weeks.
The guy behind Zelensky (Yermak) and real Nato de facto rep. said 'this second part of August will change the World forever'...delusion of grandeur or psychopathy?
This is a theory Ive heard from several sources. The issue, of course, that a large amphibious invasion toward Crimea is even more of a fool’s errand than this Kursk spectacle. Ukraine may be able to fling across the Dnieper a few brigades, but it would find it impossible to supply them for any length of time. This means that any attacking force would be be cut-off and methodically annihilated by the Russians.
Krinky was another crazy nato op or state dept forced on them , it was even a J Sullivan personnal idea. Ukr lost 3500 men in that disaster. J Sullivan please train again, courage. This war is a personnal 'vendetta' from a small bunch of jews with ukrainian roots (Nuland, Sullivan Jacob, Blinken + maybe other less known?). They manipulated Biden which is not difficult, this is why they faked the election. War was forseen after Hillary (another one, Clinton is not her real name) 'victory', but then Trump won, then they used covid to be sure Trump would lose. Without Trump and c19 this war would already be over for years.
There is no concentration of troops for the moment they are spread in the city and around Odessa oblast + Romania, in mainly civilian clothes till now.
1) The "power plant story" is not "too phantasmagorical." Did not the Chabad Chasidic mesianic End Times cataclysmic Zelensky say "to the last Ukrainian?
Anthropologist Robert Sepehr (YouTube) has several videos on D.U.M.B.s and the 2500km long catacombs beneath Kiev used 12.800 years ago when the bloodlines of Ouroboros ended the AGE of Atlantis through microwave warfare and created a pole shift - Flood.
2) Krepost is a paradox (and in argument analysis ALL paradoxes are rejected), and hence we need to turn to unconventional fields of observation and thinking (ISR).
3) Official narratives about an operational fart = deception is a pillar in warfare.
4) "Desperation breeds strange ideas...?" Or maybe NATO's degree of deception is WAY over our heads? Undeniably, NATO has been and is even more so preparing to double down until cataclysm come, showing we don't understand their their causality, and thus our analysis sucks.
From media studies we know to ask, are we the intended "audience" of the "sender's message?" Or is it the post-cataclysmic audience that the global Deep State/Shadow State is addressing with their sum of paradoxes, in Ukraine and elsewhere?"
Isn't it obvious that Deep State plays according to Abrahamic End Times "Revelation:" stories that their forefathers wrote (and mind that Robert Sepehr has shown that the Queen of England is related to Prophet Muhammad and that their lineage traces back 26.000 years to the "Cro-Magnon" E.T.s...).
It's not a "road to nowhere" just because we're blind of their path - raison d'etre. Contrariwise, the article implies that Ukraine's General Staff is incompetent and dumb, continuously making seemingly (!) retarded maneouvers like Krinky and stances like Bakhmut: pointless expenditures of "human resources" (as Liberals call us; a Capitalist commodification of Humanity) and materiel.
Mind the context that days prior to Krepost the F-16 wunder waffen were delivered and Zelensky said (IIRC) "Russia has to feel the pain." Also mind the US elections and the Cosmic factors that to 50% determine factors on Earth and that Illuminati know of and play accordingly. The Bibilical End Times speak of two "Battles" in which the first will be won by 'Russia' whereas the second will lead to a decisive victory for the West. Bakhmut was the "First Battle," and the summer 2023 counter-offensive was meant to start the "Second Battle" but the F-16s didn't arrive.
Now they have... can - and will - deliver B-61 tactical nukes... and the "pain" was to be a nuclear devastation of Kursk NPP. Problem is Russian layered air defences, but had it happened, then headlines would claim to post-cataclysmic audiences (like we are now) that the technological prowess of the Western Übermensch beat the Orcs.
Conclusion:
Kiev is "creating a spectacle," indeed but it's not for its "western backers" who themselves are orchestrating it from London, and even more so from Tel Aviv and New Haven. It is a war of headlines and the spectacle has two audiences. The contemporary needs to be deceived into an Abrahamic End Times scenario whereas the post-cataclysmic audience needs to be deceived that it was Yahweh who "punished His children for disobeying" by embodying Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is not about (my/your) belief, it is about fact, and Sun Tzu agrees.
In Bob Marley's words:
"The stone that the builder refuse
Will always be the head cornerstone-a sing it brother
The stone that the builder refuse
Will always be the head cornerstone
You're a builder, baby
Here I am, a stone
Don't you pick and refuse me
'Cause the things people refuse
Are the things they should choose
Do you hear me?
Hear what I say!"
See images on p.15, 33-34, 36, 40, 43-46 for a scientific paradigm shift greater than that of Copernicus:
Good analysis, BUT, I can see the logic - sort of - from the AFU's side.
More or less everyone agrees that Krepost will cost the Donbass dearly; but I think nobody had any doubt that the Donbass was lost anyway; whether Ukraine lost it in 3 months or in 6; the Russian army was on an inevitable and unstoppable drive.
What the Ukrainians have done is rolled the dice to change the arc of things. This is something I can understand. History is replete with "heart ruling head" in war and, well, making history. Germany's own invasion of Russia back in WW2, if was being blogged about at the time, would have been an overwhelming argument in favor of Russian surrender and capitulation. As was British resistance - it cost them their empire. Contrast with the French, who did the rational thing and who will forever bear the historical stain on their consciousness. Further, in modern times, Hamas' attack on Israel had exactly 0 chance of success militarily, but it did absolutely change things, dramatically, in every way conceivable.
In this sense I understand why Zelensky is doing this. He was facing strategic dilemmas - certain failure in the Donbass, dwindling Western support, mathematical inevitabilities regarding manpower and machinery. He could not simply wait for something to happen, so he did SOMETHING. And by all accounts, it was a bold move. The propaganda value is out of this world, and has given real pause in Western circles as to what exactly is Russia's red line? Zelensky is saying "look, we invaded Russia. We killed civilians, shot up houses, displaced 100k people, and are going out of our way to provoke the Russians as much as possible. Nothing happened. The escalation bogeyman doesn't exist" and he kind of has a point. Meanwhile Russia is adding to this belief by insisting that NATO was "in on" Krepost; with all the various conclusions you can derive accordingly.
Throughout this conflict, the Ukranians have been the far stronger side in terms of Information, Media and all that. Some say that is meaningless; on the other hand I would say that the entirety of Western support was born of that wellspring.
Edit: Forgot to add Challenger-2 to the dead-tank list. And Abrams I believe.
Great comment and I agree with the basic premise: Z felt he needed to do SOMETHING. The is issue with that SOMETHING is that, if we are honest with ourselves, it’s more of a whimper than a bang. Yes, Z found a weak spot in Russia’s defenses and punched a hole. To what end? Russia and Ukraine have a huge border, with lots of strategically meaningless villages on either end. Capturing some meaningless dirt, and inflicting inconvenience on Russian civilians is not doing SOMETHING, it is a PR stunt, which has been amplified into SOMETHING, by the Western spin machine. And that spin lasted all of a week. Because strategically the move is nonsensical and immediately and transparently so. Three weeks in the incursion has already bogged down, with reserves that could be used to plug gaps in Donbas frittered away taking villages no one heard of. Sure, Ukraine could have changed the narrative arc, had it seized the Kursk nuclear power plant or threatened the regional capital, but it didnt.
What the escapade does show is that Zelenski’s government is not interested in talks or compromise. It wants things it cant achieve militarily and wont settle for anything other than its maximum objectives.
Zelensky understands that he has put his partners in a dilemma - if he loses, they lose. But he can lose badly, and they will lose worse. So he keenly understands the shared fates, and often manipulates them accordingly and quote effectively
Very good points. That's why the Russians have to go nuclear on the Ukrainians now. With the Ukrainians 10's of kilometers deep inside Russian territory, the Russians can nuke them there. Better to sacrifice a few hundred square kilometers of contaminated land, which will become habitable again after a few decades anyway (think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both habitable cities nowadays), than to loose deterrence.
Nuclear war would be pointless except the death of millions of civilians, and even on Russian territory considering the winds will carry fallout on Russian soil as well. And this would end up with China and India and others who are neutral flipping and going against Russia.
We live in a Global world, and there would be almost nobody who would support you nuking a state that has no nukes itself for no reason.
Replying to all four replies at once. First off, why maintain tactical nuclear forces if it's not possible to use them because even using tactical nukes will always lead to all out nuclear Armageddon? It makes no sense. The situation for using them has arrived now with a full bore NATO attack on Russian territory. And who knows what other attacks are in the works. The Kursk region border location is ideal because it's thinly settled. The prevailing wind direction is to the East but that region has been evacuated. This means that fallout can be coped with. Modern nukes i.e. neutron bombs have far less of a fallout problem than what used to be the case anyway. Nukes can be detonated on the Russian side of the border to cut off the Ukrainian/NATO forces further inland. And why would that provide any possible justification for Israel/the US nuking Iran, as somebody has written? It makes no sense either.
tactical nuclear weapons were designed with the logic of the last war, particularly the massive soviet army vs a massive us/nato army. This mean targeting tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands men and armor in huge grouping pouring over breakthroughs in large land wars, tactical air groups being targeted with anti-air nuclear missiles taking out entire bomber and fighter squadrons, or if on water large grouping of carrier and support ships. beyond that, the logic was in favor of such because of the imprecise nature of the technology of the time, so like artilleries they solve the issue of lacking precision point coordinates to target with smaller weapons systems. But times have changed.
You meanwhile are suggesting they do what with the nuclear weapons here? Nuke Kursk oblast to kill who? a few thousand men and dozens of tanks and apcs at best? take out like 4 artillery and one AA system? destroy some plywood and plastic drones? What logic is this exactly?
Looking at a map, there are only a very few cross-border roads that the Ukrainians can use. Moreover, the mud season is approaching. This means that nuclear strikes can be carried out on those roads to cut off the Ukrainian forces further inland. It's not necessary to contaminate the entire border because there is enough of a mud season in this area to render providing supplies via the fields infeasible. Disrupting the supply lines negates the objection that Kiev's forces are too dispersed to make nuking them efficient, or that they cannot be nuked because the have dug in in built-up areas, where civilians might still be present. If it's still unacceptable to contaminate any Russian soil, air bursts can be used to damage their electronics. Air bursts, as opposed to setting off nukes in space, have limited EMP range, so that would limit EMP effects on Russian forces. Air bursts would not directly harm any civilians who remain near the border either, given that that is still a concern.
Conventional warfare generates lots and lots of kinetic power and
destruction. Consider the FAB 500's and thermobaric bombs for example. I sort of can see your point as an abstract proposal, but from where I stand that makes your reasoning even more twisted.
No need to rush and clamour for even more death and suffering.
strike on their own territory against one and a half cripples on it? What military sense is there in that? If they do, then demolish Kyiv to radioactive ash, that would certainly improve the negotiating position. But they won't do that either, since the goal is not to defeat the Ukrainians, but to defeat the whole of NATO. And for that, it's worth just waiting for the bubble to burst.
Kiev is currently assembling a second wave of strike groups to follow up on the initial incursion. In the context of this war and the wider confrontation with NATO this presents an extremely serious escalation that warrants a nuclear response.
It all ended with a couple of Kinzhals in Odessa. And Pavel Durov was taken hostage. The escalation will continue to escalate, but there is no reason to give NATO carte blanche to use nuclear weapons.
Nothing would delight NATO more than if Russia were to resort to nuclear weapons.
Not only would Russian impotence be on full display, any goodwill Russia enjoys would be instantly erased, and the US and Israel would feel free to use nuclear weapons on Iran.
Not fair? Or course not, but "fair" has nothing to do with it.
Fair is, among others, essentially a hopeful virtue, having naught to do with warfare. Though its axioms begin from moral assumptions, the application of western policy is, in practice, strictly amoral. One needn’t adhere to strictures if the belief system is obvious righteousness. There’s no question about what’s fair because in action, to implement the scheme, there is no fair, nor room for doubt. It’s a faith in who we are, and belief in one’s values. Whereas parsimony is the correct intellectual approach to tying oneself emotionally to “belief”, once conjoined, belief is better than data, better than wonder. The fewer of these, the better. But, that’s not how Sapiens works.
Question: How would you comment Ukraine’s demands as set forth in The Guardian? They seek the green light to use the Storm Shadow missiles to target Moscow and St Petersburg as a way to force Moscow to negotiate.
Sergey Lavrov: This is blackmail, an attempt to pretend that the West seeks to avoid any excessive escalation. In reality, they are full of mischief. Avoiding escalation is not what the West is after. To put it into plain language, they are simply picking a fight.
I think that this has become obvious to everyone. I have recently cited John Kirby, who is the White House National Security Communications Advisor. A couple of months ago, he said that escalation would be dangerous, since it would be extremely ill-advised to let the situation slide into a world war and that Europe would be the one to suffer in the process. Recently, John Kirby said this again. For Americans, any talk about the third world war comes down to something that would affect Europe alone, and God forbid if it ever happened. This is quite telling, since this idea reflects the mindset of the American planners and geostrategy experts who believe that they can simply sit the whole thing out. I think that it is important to understand in this situation that we have our own doctrine, including the one governing the use of nuclear weapons. An effort to update it is underway. Moreover, these Americans are well aware of the provisions it sets forth. This fact transpires from the Freudian slips they make when they say that having a third world war would be a bad thing because they do not want Europe to suffer. This is what this American mindset comes down to. They have a mindset of a master sitting somewhere out there overseas and believing to be totally safe and secure, thinking that not only Ukrainians, but also, as it turns out, Europeans would be willing to do the dirty work and die for them.
We have long been hearing speculation about authorising Ukraine to use not only the Storm Shadow missiles, but also US-made long-range missiles. There was an anonymous source in Washington who said that they were working on it. This source purported that their overall view of Ukraine’s request is quite positive. I will stop at that. President Vladimir Putin said all about it quite a while ago.
Now, all we can do is confirm once again that playing with fire is a dangerous thing for the men and women in charge of nuclear weapons across the Western world, but they are playing with matches as if they never grew up.
He thinks that repelling the Ukrainians from Kursk will not be easy for the Russians and that the use of nuclear weapons will, therefore, be tempting.
Overall, the Kursk invasion, bogged down or not, has weakened Russia's deterrence. Some in Russia have argued that squeezing the Ukrainians out using conventional means will not actually restore it. There are enough actors that would be willing to go even for such a scenario just to stick it to the Russians. Invade, get squeezed out, rinse and repeat. How shall that be nipped in the bud?
BTW, Big Serge's account of the Kursk NPP is a little bit lacking. It's a Soviet-era RBMK-type NPP i.e. it's of the same design like the one where a reactor went off in Chernobyl in 1986. These RBMK NPP's are very different from NPP's as they are usually laid out virtually everywhere else in the world. Lacking unitary reaction vessels, they are more vulnerable.
I don't know about nuclear, but I am absolutely on the same page regarding the psychology of things. If kursk simply becomes another positional front in the war that the Russians take a year to grind out, then it will happen again and again. The border is too long, it's indefensible.
Putin needs to stop being a fox and start being a lion
In short - Kiev regime and/or their sponsors conclude that they can't win by playing defense. Therefor they are "thinking out of the box".
I'd differ in Big Serge's conclusion about them not being so crazy as to attack a nuclear plant. This has already happened, and there were a variety of actions aimed at the ZNPP in Energodar, although the in-preson assaults were fairly lame. It's been a consistent theme that AFU has tried to creating chaos for PR and/or psyop purposes, by what would otherwise be moronic tactical/operational methods. Keep in mind, these guys pattern themselves not after the regular German army of WWII, but after the meth heads and ideological zealots in fringe SS divisions. This was a terror operation, aimed at whatever targets of opportunity they can get to. It just didn't get as far as they wanted it to, thankfully.
I think the only objective for this offensive that makes any sense is the capture of the Kursk nuke plant. But I don't believe the Ukes ever had any intention of damaging the plant. I think they had delusions of holding it as a barganing chip in exchange for the Zaporizhzhia (Energodar) plant. The Ukes have been obsessed with the Zap Plant for a long time and they want it badly. I think one other thing points to this is the preponderance (as I understand it;...... perhaps mistakenly) of wheeled military vehicles used in the advance. It seems the Ukes very much prioritized speed in this offensive. (The similarities to the German Ardennes Offensive are striking. A monster roll of the dice, gamble, in a front far removed from the most critical theater of the war.)
Despite Big Serge's deconstruction of this point, I tend to agree. The western MSM and various specialist press are full of stories penning a narrative about how Putin is so desperate at present, that he will order a manufactured FF at his own nuclear installations or even use tac nukes. My judgement is not that the seizure of the KNPP was in itself a militarily effective threat, but to be used as part of a wider initiative to blackmail Russia to negotiate on terms more favourable to the West before Ukraine collapses. I think Big Serge's analysis maybe misses this point - the objective was to inflict a defeat on Russia which would lead to panic and destabilisation, and peace terms. Fantasy in my view, but what have NATO get left? And make no mistake, this is a NATO not a Ukrainian operation.
Problem with this line of reasoning is the following: for how long can you "hold" the Kursk NPP *without damaging/threatening to damage it*?
Let's play out the hypothetical: you capture the NPP, then say you won't give it up unless ZNPP is given back to you. RF says no. Then what? The Kursk NPP is located some 60-70 km north of Sudzha. You (UKR) "hold" the NPP but are surrounded. No help coming. No logistics. What do you do?
1) At this point, the Zelenskyy government is getting pretty desperate. I'm not sure they're thinking that far ahead. From their perspective, just capture the Kursk nuke plant, then figure out the next move when it comes. Even if they cannot hold onto it, merely capturing it would be a dramatic coup and could be used to reinvigorate their donors into giving more aid.
2) Zelenskyy's primary donor, the US government and the neocons who run it, the people behind all this, they couldn't give a rat's ass about Ukraine or the Ukrainian people. The US government has only ever been interested in using the Ukraine war as a battering ram against Putin and the Russian Federation. At this point, they know the war is lost, so for their part, the Kursk Offensive is basically just an exercise in throwing spaghetti against the wall in the hopes that maybe it will cause enough embarrassment to Putin's government to precipitate its collapse. What do they have to lose at this point?...........nothing.
Your point is taken. It only demonstrates that virtually everything the West (and its puppet, Ukraine) do are for "image". There is no lasting substance. The entire Western civilisation is built on Hollywood image - everything from fiat currency to fiat wars built on the reputation (and image!) of perceived WWII accomplishments. Those "images" are now being broken through as a new multi-nodal world is evolving.
As for your second point, the West continues to demonstrate its complete ignorance of the Russian civilisation and its people and the unifying effect an invasion has on the country - and I mean "invasion" to its broadest extent - economic, monetary and military attacks on the state - it is like an all-consuming beast that the more you throw at it, the more it grows in strength and determination. The West, however, is too embroiled in image and hubris to ever understand such things.
An absorbing analysis. I believe that there is another aspect to discuss, however. There is an inordinate number of European and American "mercenaries" involved in operation Krepost which makes this adventure a real NATO invasion of Russia. The number of NATO troops in the fight against Russia in the Donbas is under reported even by liberal critics. Ukraine itself has not been an independent nation since 2014 - it is a CIA-MI6 Frankenstein monster of NATO. This is no parochial skirmish, it is the real deal managed by psychopathic NATO Nazis.
Of course. The longer Russian dithers, the more likely the real NATO invasion is.
The basic problem here is that the Russian leadership does not want this war and are hoping that it will just go away. This is why they were so eager to enter into the secret Qatari talks to enter a Minsk-3, only to get suckerpunched again.
Russia does not want to make war on people it sees as misguided brethren. They do not want to admit to themselves that they will never be allowed to join the West, nor do they want to face up to just how sociopathic the West is, how much they hate Russia, how they will never treat her as a peer, much less a member of their club.
Where did you read this nonsense? About the negotiations in Qatar. In the Washington Post? It has long been known that WP is a garbage dump. And to draw conclusions based on their articles is, at least, short-sighted.
there is a work by the Russian writer Gogol, Taras Bulba, that's where the procedure for dealing with lost children is described. And here there are only brothers.
Regarding Qatar and the like, these are constant processes of negotiations on various details. Lavrov revealed some details, there was no Minsk 3 supposed there.
And also, judging by the statements of a number of speakers, the voiced problem of the West's non-recognition of Russia and Russia's desire for such recognition is no longer relevant. The four-hundred-year servility to Western culture opened by Peter the Great and the "window to Europe" is closing. Now the processes of realizing that Russia has its own path are beginning. Russia is the last country of Christian culture that preserves traditional values. This is Katechon. Or if we play by analogy, then this is the Imperium of humanity, while the rest worship Horn and Slaanesh and Dzinch.
Otherwise, this seems like so much wishful thinking. Russian oligarchs like their parisian shopping sprees, Muscovites want to take vacations in Spain, and a "nice" (note the quotation marks) passport is seen as desirable.
I'd love to believe otherwise. I truly would, But I can see what is in front of my face.
both oligarchs for whom it was important left the country, as for the opinion of Muscovites - they are absolutely unimportant since Muscovites as such do not determine the course of the state. And besides, those for whom a "nice" passport was the main value in 22 also left, clearing society of their "important" opinion.
again moving on to analogies, if we recall the history of Japan, then at some point, having encountered the advanced Chinese civilization, it was engaged in plagiarism to the level of writing, but then the first isolation happened anyway. An absolutely normal historical process. Probably several people in Kyoto would have liked to continue to cooperate with that China, but those who were higher simply decided for them.
Is Ukraine in charge? Sure, Ukraine wouldn't want the nuclear power plant to blow up and pollute the soil there on both sides of the border, but the Neocons in DC would be just fine with it. They blew up the Nordstream pipeline.
Of course Elensky is not in charge of anything. He is a mediocre Ukrainian TV actor who was chosen by the fine people in Langley, Virginia as the perfect puppet to lead Ukraine into the disastrous situation it is in now.
And yes, the author apparently assumes that Elensky somehow could be the "brains" behind the "Kursk offensive" and that Elensky decides on any policy in Kiev.
The truth is that not a single important decision regarding Ukraine is made in Kiev - and Moscow is fully aware of that. Ukraine and the Ukrainian army are remotely micromanaged by special teams back in the US.
so all the decision makers have families outside the former Ukraine, where they have accounts and real estate. There are no reasons at all to believe that they cannot engage in nuclear terrorism. The only thing is that the sponsors who own land from funds like Vanguard may be against it.
Vlad, Yes, Vanguard may not like the nuclear plant blowing up, but the millionaires who own wheatland in the USA will get rich just like the wheat farmers did during WWI.
Like most political acts, there is less to this - much less - than meets the eye. Simply put, the Kiev mob understand - how could they fail to? - that they cannot successfully defend their conquests in Donbass, despite all the years of assiduous trench-digging and bunker-building. Nor can they prevent or significantly delay the inexorable push of the Russian armed forces into the heart of Ukraine itself. All this looks really terrible in the media, which is where Western politicians get most of their beliefs from.
Since the Kiev mob cannot hope to win anywhere on the main line of contact, but can look for nothing but continuous grinding defeats and retreats, what they wanted was anything at all that could be presented in the media as a "win". Even for a short time. And the incursion into Russia gave them that - for a short time. Sometimes it really seems as though the Kiev mob is being led personally by the ghost of Adolf Hitler himself. But actually it is being led by the Washington gang, who think very much like him.
It's a strange dichotomy. They need to show they can still fight to western observers. But they can't really show that over the developed battle space. So instead they, invade Kursk. They also want to fish for money by showing losses, so they lose in the Donbass. It does make sense from a .... idk kinda fund raising perspective.
By the way you totally jumped the battle of Diu of 1509 in your attempt at an history of naval warfare, went straight at Lepanto 1570:
"The Battle of Diu is considered one of the most important battles in history. It marked the beginning of Western European dominance in the Indian Ocean. The author William Weir in his book 50 Battles That Changed the World, ranks this battle as the 6th most important in history, losing only to the Battle of Marathon, the Nika Rebellion, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Battle of Arbela (Gaugamela) and the Battle of Hattin. He says: "When the 15th century began, Islam seemed about ready to dominate the world. That prospect sank in the Indian Ocean off Diu.""
How come this oversight? I had to resort consulting the schematic sketch for this battle from that wikipedia page in order to fully appreciate that exotic scuffle
Sergiao however didn't mention that the Mamluks' carracks were built in Egypt by Venetian shipwrights. Portuguese enterprises around Africa and to India for the sake of reaching her spice markets directly, hurt not only Arabs, but also Venetians in their quality of middlemen bringing Oriental merchandise from Constantinople to Europe.
This prompt and heavy Venetian involvement in matters half the world away, just a few years after the Portuguese reached India the first time and did not achieve really anything meaningful yet, underscores how important monopoly of the spice trade must have been at the time.
Although this new front is ocurring in Kursk, it seems a lot more similar to the Ardennes offensive than the OG Battle of Kursk. For Germany in 1943, much like Ukraine in 2023, there was still hope that they could engage the main body of enemy troops and defeat them, but both "counteroffensives" hit a brick wall. But by 1945, much like Ukraine today, Germany felt that their only hope was to hit the enemy where they *weren't,* so they attacked a lightly defended and heavily wooded area where they could achieve concealment and suprise.
I expect this battle to have a similar result as the Battle of the Bulge, in that it will ultimately hasten the defeat of Ukraine by squandering irreplacable assets.
Although, as far as I know, the Ardennes offensive was supposed to trap the main Allied grouping and cut their supply lines. As far as I'm aware, what saved the Allies was the fact they pulled their main group back just fast enough to block the Axis breakthrough.
Many comentators compare the ukranian operation to Ardennes offensive simply because of the notoriety of Battle of the Bulge, Bastongne defense by the 101st airborne and so on. But as Serge himself showed in previous posts - despite being unrealistically ambitious, lacking unit strenght and air cover, the operational objective was sound - cutting allied army group behind a river in Belgium and improve the overall situation in the West.
Better analogue in my opinion would be to compare this ukranian gamble to Operation Spring Awakening in March of 1945 - with Zhukov an Konev gathering strenght 30km from Berlin, Hitler sent precious tanks and battle worthy SS elements to attack in Hungary for vague objectives of oil fields and defense of Vienna - all irrelevant at this point. The operation is known very little today, exactly because in the overall picture it was completely inconsequential and disjointed from the key battlefields of Ruhr and Berlin.
I know I'm just a dumbass, but I think Russia should really turn up the heat and assign the Southern Army to activate the front toward Odesa. You know, before NATO does it. Stress Ukraine assets even more. It's going to happen anyhow, why not create the initiative. A land, sea, and air assault should do wonders for Ukraine morale.
It needs to mobilize to 3 million standing army.( Mearsheimer number) . This war will continue even if russia stops at donbass. NATO/ EU dreaming of cold war repeat with Ukraine as germany
Perhaps you are being too generous with just how rational at this point Ukrainian leadership is. It has never been monolithic and became even more fragmented in the past 10 years. I can imagine some of the ones hailing from the Western Ukraine perfectly willing to ruin parts of North Eastern / Eastern Ukraine for a chance to ruin part of European RF. More to the point, these kind of projects (operation Krepost) require multiple internal sponsors to get off the ground so I can see multitude of justifications coming from political, military and other wings. And after that you have a committee effect: everyone thinks it is a good idea and in the absence of better ideas it becomes a plan.
Real news, real information, real analysis. This article is so refreshing and brings back memories or what journalism used to look like when done by the professionals.
Exactly, now they all just copy paste the same gaslighted mis/dis info from 'Agency approved' CNN/MSNBC propaganda, usually here in the EU with added misery of poor translation to local language (something akin to using auto-translate, just horrible crap) and some woke twist added according to the copy+paste 'reporters' ideology.
Plus those MSM sites are usually so chock-full of advertisement, that even with finely tuned adblocking, those sites are painful to browse.
And they wonder why people do not trust the 'mainstream' media anymore...
Fantastic analysis. Do Ukrainian soldiers realize they are dying for Biden, Kamala, Blinken, Blackrock, and JPMorgan? The hour is late at Casino Kiev, Zelensky is short on chips, weapons, and cocaine so he is pushing all in…
Except Elensky doesn't decide anything, not even the amount of his daily "Vitamin C" intake. And do you really believe anybody in Kiev is keeping track on available and still functional manpower and equipment and the required ammunition and supplies for such an operation, spread out over the 200 or so Ukrainian brigades?
This "Kursk offensive" bears the hallmark of a US/NATO maneuver warfare operation, with its complex logistics issues dealt with in the US, not anywhere in Ukraine, and the required ISR provided by the US/NATO as they have been doing since 2014, and using US/NATO-trained infantry (including US/NATO "mercenaries") riding US/NATO vehicles, communicating using Starlink terminals supplied by the US.
I am forced to always repeat the simple, obvious and most important fact: this is a US vs Russia war using Ukraine as a proxy.
Not a single thing is decided in Kiev or anywhere else in Ukraine, this entire $hitshow is remotely run from Washington, DC and Langley, Virginia since 2014.
Indeed, if we consider this operation as just proof-of-concept, NATO training exercise, it makes a lot of sense. NATO generals just wanted to see how the combined arms army, equipped with the best weapons they may muster, with all the cutting edge ISR and drones, may achieve. Doing it away from front makes sense. No reasonable war-related objective makes sense. They wanted to see what they may achieve if they’ll push the NATO forces directly against Russia.
After the poor performance of these wonder weapons, I suspect there will be few contracts executed for the MIC outside of NATO countries.
Unless, of course, Elensky is producing, directing, editing and staging realistic film that he sends back to the corporate board rooms who use it for marketing purposes.
agree-OTAN flexing and finding out the flex doesn't work w/ a peer Army. OTAN thinks it's better than "sliced bread", sorry about yer luck.
It’s indeed very good explanation. It may happen, the US/NATO overlords wanted the Ukraine to perform the ideal, NATO-style combined arms operation. They still seem to believe that UA front failures are happening merely because UA’s generals don’t know how to conduct modern war. They launched the model operation which was “certain” to achieve crushing victory. Similar to the Rabotino offence, the Russians were suppose to flee in panic. They intentionally chose a stage far away from the actual front to make this exercise isolated as much as possible from all other realities of the previous fighting. This was supposed to be the new start of the warfare, done right this time. Looks like a proof the NATO generals are delusional and still have no idea why actually are they loosing in the UA.
"They launched the model operation which was “certain” to achieve crushing victory."
Exactly. They assembled a Frankenstein grouping of around 8,000 mechanized infantry to conduct a typical US/NATO "maneuver warfare" offensive using US/NATO tactics against a region of fields and small villages defended by a few dozen Russian border guards caught by surprise.
They knew this "Kursk offensive" would be a huge success, at least during the first 48~72 hours, and that was enough for the "narrative".
Whilst not giving a damn for the casualty levels of Ukraine soldiers or limbs. That's why they keep trying to push the narrative that they did not know about this operation, which is completely ludicrous. Leaving dumb elensky to take responsibility, which is why he is there & the fool still doesn't realise it yet. His use by date is fast approaching.
Madeleine Albright about the death of half a million Iraqi children due to sanctions imposed by the US: "We think the price is worth it."
That's the mindset of the people who are making all the decisions for Ukraine.
Of course they couldn't care less about casualties on either side, military or civilians, as a result of this "Kursk offensive" that has zero military strategic value.
There are many nato (pure nato) and secret US spec forces present, when they will start to retreat it will mean it is over, only Ukrainians will be left and end up as Kia or Wia or pow. It is a diversion. Diversion no 2 is coming soon on ZNPP and real nato naval attack from Odessa then a big krinky again with 25k forces mainly nato + mercs a few ukr for plausible deniability, goal is Crimea + F 16 Attack on the bridge before potus election day nothing else. Crimea is a British and neocons 'idée fixe'.They know it will fail (in D C and London) but they need a P R booster for the dem's, operation 'Putin humiliated' is the code name, really not a joke. Nato forces are near Odessa, lot of French is actually spoken(and English) is actually heard in the bars in Odessa this for a few weeks.
The guy behind Zelensky (Yermak) and real Nato de facto rep. said 'this second part of August will change the World forever'...delusion of grandeur or psychopathy?
This is a theory Ive heard from several sources. The issue, of course, that a large amphibious invasion toward Crimea is even more of a fool’s errand than this Kursk spectacle. Ukraine may be able to fling across the Dnieper a few brigades, but it would find it impossible to supply them for any length of time. This means that any attacking force would be be cut-off and methodically annihilated by the Russians.
Krinky was another crazy nato op or state dept forced on them , it was even a J Sullivan personnal idea. Ukr lost 3500 men in that disaster. J Sullivan please train again, courage. This war is a personnal 'vendetta' from a small bunch of jews with ukrainian roots (Nuland, Sullivan Jacob, Blinken + maybe other less known?). They manipulated Biden which is not difficult, this is why they faked the election. War was forseen after Hillary (another one, Clinton is not her real name) 'victory', but then Trump won, then they used covid to be sure Trump would lose. Without Trump and c19 this war would already be over for years.
You'll love the links in my post below!
Oh and you think RF won't see that build up in Odessa. They will be getting a visit from Dr Kinsal at Mach 10.
There is no concentration of troops for the moment they are spread in the city and around Odessa oblast + Romania, in mainly civilian clothes till now.
You'd think that Russia would have seen this buildup.
Russian ISR clearly is not all its cracked up to be.
What data do you have that indicates NATO forces plan to actively intervene this year?
See my post, Rick, you'll love the links (sadly) and I have some information showing the FULL picture that no one else has.
Nobody asks. A farmer doesn't ask veal calves how they feel.
Great comment.
Pure Bezmenov!
Quite the contrary.
1) The "power plant story" is not "too phantasmagorical." Did not the Chabad Chasidic mesianic End Times cataclysmic Zelensky say "to the last Ukrainian?
Anthropologist Robert Sepehr (YouTube) has several videos on D.U.M.B.s and the 2500km long catacombs beneath Kiev used 12.800 years ago when the bloodlines of Ouroboros ended the AGE of Atlantis through microwave warfare and created a pole shift - Flood.
2) Krepost is a paradox (and in argument analysis ALL paradoxes are rejected), and hence we need to turn to unconventional fields of observation and thinking (ISR).
3) Official narratives about an operational fart = deception is a pillar in warfare.
4) "Desperation breeds strange ideas...?" Or maybe NATO's degree of deception is WAY over our heads? Undeniably, NATO has been and is even more so preparing to double down until cataclysm come, showing we don't understand their their causality, and thus our analysis sucks.
From media studies we know to ask, are we the intended "audience" of the "sender's message?" Or is it the post-cataclysmic audience that the global Deep State/Shadow State is addressing with their sum of paradoxes, in Ukraine and elsewhere?"
Isn't it obvious that Deep State plays according to Abrahamic End Times "Revelation:" stories that their forefathers wrote (and mind that Robert Sepehr has shown that the Queen of England is related to Prophet Muhammad and that their lineage traces back 26.000 years to the "Cro-Magnon" E.T.s...).
It's not a "road to nowhere" just because we're blind of their path - raison d'etre. Contrariwise, the article implies that Ukraine's General Staff is incompetent and dumb, continuously making seemingly (!) retarded maneouvers like Krinky and stances like Bakhmut: pointless expenditures of "human resources" (as Liberals call us; a Capitalist commodification of Humanity) and materiel.
Mind the context that days prior to Krepost the F-16 wunder waffen were delivered and Zelensky said (IIRC) "Russia has to feel the pain." Also mind the US elections and the Cosmic factors that to 50% determine factors on Earth and that Illuminati know of and play accordingly. The Bibilical End Times speak of two "Battles" in which the first will be won by 'Russia' whereas the second will lead to a decisive victory for the West. Bakhmut was the "First Battle," and the summer 2023 counter-offensive was meant to start the "Second Battle" but the F-16s didn't arrive.
Now they have... can - and will - deliver B-61 tactical nukes... and the "pain" was to be a nuclear devastation of Kursk NPP. Problem is Russian layered air defences, but had it happened, then headlines would claim to post-cataclysmic audiences (like we are now) that the technological prowess of the Western Übermensch beat the Orcs.
Conclusion:
Kiev is "creating a spectacle," indeed but it's not for its "western backers" who themselves are orchestrating it from London, and even more so from Tel Aviv and New Haven. It is a war of headlines and the spectacle has two audiences. The contemporary needs to be deceived into an Abrahamic End Times scenario whereas the post-cataclysmic audience needs to be deceived that it was Yahweh who "punished His children for disobeying" by embodying Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is not about (my/your) belief, it is about fact, and Sun Tzu agrees.
In Bob Marley's words:
"The stone that the builder refuse
Will always be the head cornerstone-a sing it brother
The stone that the builder refuse
Will always be the head cornerstone
You're a builder, baby
Here I am, a stone
Don't you pick and refuse me
'Cause the things people refuse
Are the things they should choose
Do you hear me?
Hear what I say!"
See images on p.15, 33-34, 36, 40, 43-46 for a scientific paradigm shift greater than that of Copernicus:
* https://www.academia.edu/117486886/The_Nazis_and_the_Cabal_Antarctica_UFOs_and_Illuminati_Controlled_Opposition
Explained in 4 pages:
* https://www.academia.edu/102662060/Analytical_Tool_of_Tools_The_Spiritual_Dimensional_Level
Full story - 230 pages:
* https://www.academia.edu/88836523/A_Lot_Has_Happened_to_S%C3%B6dert%C3%B6rn_University_board_Oct_7_2020_
Good analysis, BUT, I can see the logic - sort of - from the AFU's side.
More or less everyone agrees that Krepost will cost the Donbass dearly; but I think nobody had any doubt that the Donbass was lost anyway; whether Ukraine lost it in 3 months or in 6; the Russian army was on an inevitable and unstoppable drive.
What the Ukrainians have done is rolled the dice to change the arc of things. This is something I can understand. History is replete with "heart ruling head" in war and, well, making history. Germany's own invasion of Russia back in WW2, if was being blogged about at the time, would have been an overwhelming argument in favor of Russian surrender and capitulation. As was British resistance - it cost them their empire. Contrast with the French, who did the rational thing and who will forever bear the historical stain on their consciousness. Further, in modern times, Hamas' attack on Israel had exactly 0 chance of success militarily, but it did absolutely change things, dramatically, in every way conceivable.
In this sense I understand why Zelensky is doing this. He was facing strategic dilemmas - certain failure in the Donbass, dwindling Western support, mathematical inevitabilities regarding manpower and machinery. He could not simply wait for something to happen, so he did SOMETHING. And by all accounts, it was a bold move. The propaganda value is out of this world, and has given real pause in Western circles as to what exactly is Russia's red line? Zelensky is saying "look, we invaded Russia. We killed civilians, shot up houses, displaced 100k people, and are going out of our way to provoke the Russians as much as possible. Nothing happened. The escalation bogeyman doesn't exist" and he kind of has a point. Meanwhile Russia is adding to this belief by insisting that NATO was "in on" Krepost; with all the various conclusions you can derive accordingly.
Throughout this conflict, the Ukranians have been the far stronger side in terms of Information, Media and all that. Some say that is meaningless; on the other hand I would say that the entirety of Western support was born of that wellspring.
Edit: Forgot to add Challenger-2 to the dead-tank list. And Abrams I believe.
Great comment and I agree with the basic premise: Z felt he needed to do SOMETHING. The is issue with that SOMETHING is that, if we are honest with ourselves, it’s more of a whimper than a bang. Yes, Z found a weak spot in Russia’s defenses and punched a hole. To what end? Russia and Ukraine have a huge border, with lots of strategically meaningless villages on either end. Capturing some meaningless dirt, and inflicting inconvenience on Russian civilians is not doing SOMETHING, it is a PR stunt, which has been amplified into SOMETHING, by the Western spin machine. And that spin lasted all of a week. Because strategically the move is nonsensical and immediately and transparently so. Three weeks in the incursion has already bogged down, with reserves that could be used to plug gaps in Donbas frittered away taking villages no one heard of. Sure, Ukraine could have changed the narrative arc, had it seized the Kursk nuclear power plant or threatened the regional capital, but it didnt.
What the escapade does show is that Zelenski’s government is not interested in talks or compromise. It wants things it cant achieve militarily and wont settle for anything other than its maximum objectives.
Zelensky understands that he has put his partners in a dilemma - if he loses, they lose. But he can lose badly, and they will lose worse. So he keenly understands the shared fates, and often manipulates them accordingly and quote effectively
Very good points. That's why the Russians have to go nuclear on the Ukrainians now. With the Ukrainians 10's of kilometers deep inside Russian territory, the Russians can nuke them there. Better to sacrifice a few hundred square kilometers of contaminated land, which will become habitable again after a few decades anyway (think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both habitable cities nowadays), than to loose deterrence.
Nuclear war would be pointless except the death of millions of civilians, and even on Russian territory considering the winds will carry fallout on Russian soil as well. And this would end up with China and India and others who are neutral flipping and going against Russia.
We live in a Global world, and there would be almost nobody who would support you nuking a state that has no nukes itself for no reason.
Replying to all four replies at once. First off, why maintain tactical nuclear forces if it's not possible to use them because even using tactical nukes will always lead to all out nuclear Armageddon? It makes no sense. The situation for using them has arrived now with a full bore NATO attack on Russian territory. And who knows what other attacks are in the works. The Kursk region border location is ideal because it's thinly settled. The prevailing wind direction is to the East but that region has been evacuated. This means that fallout can be coped with. Modern nukes i.e. neutron bombs have far less of a fallout problem than what used to be the case anyway. Nukes can be detonated on the Russian side of the border to cut off the Ukrainian/NATO forces further inland. And why would that provide any possible justification for Israel/the US nuking Iran, as somebody has written? It makes no sense either.
tactical nuclear weapons were designed with the logic of the last war, particularly the massive soviet army vs a massive us/nato army. This mean targeting tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands men and armor in huge grouping pouring over breakthroughs in large land wars, tactical air groups being targeted with anti-air nuclear missiles taking out entire bomber and fighter squadrons, or if on water large grouping of carrier and support ships. beyond that, the logic was in favor of such because of the imprecise nature of the technology of the time, so like artilleries they solve the issue of lacking precision point coordinates to target with smaller weapons systems. But times have changed.
You meanwhile are suggesting they do what with the nuclear weapons here? Nuke Kursk oblast to kill who? a few thousand men and dozens of tanks and apcs at best? take out like 4 artillery and one AA system? destroy some plywood and plastic drones? What logic is this exactly?
Looking at a map, there are only a very few cross-border roads that the Ukrainians can use. Moreover, the mud season is approaching. This means that nuclear strikes can be carried out on those roads to cut off the Ukrainian forces further inland. It's not necessary to contaminate the entire border because there is enough of a mud season in this area to render providing supplies via the fields infeasible. Disrupting the supply lines negates the objection that Kiev's forces are too dispersed to make nuking them efficient, or that they cannot be nuked because the have dug in in built-up areas, where civilians might still be present. If it's still unacceptable to contaminate any Russian soil, air bursts can be used to damage their electronics. Air bursts, as opposed to setting off nukes in space, have limited EMP range, so that would limit EMP effects on Russian forces. Air bursts would not directly harm any civilians who remain near the border either, given that that is still a concern.
Conventional warfare generates lots and lots of kinetic power and
destruction. Consider the FAB 500's and thermobaric bombs for example. I sort of can see your point as an abstract proposal, but from where I stand that makes your reasoning even more twisted.
No need to rush and clamour for even more death and suffering.
strike on their own territory against one and a half cripples on it? What military sense is there in that? If they do, then demolish Kyiv to radioactive ash, that would certainly improve the negotiating position. But they won't do that either, since the goal is not to defeat the Ukrainians, but to defeat the whole of NATO. And for that, it's worth just waiting for the bubble to burst.
Kiev is currently assembling a second wave of strike groups to follow up on the initial incursion. In the context of this war and the wider confrontation with NATO this presents an extremely serious escalation that warrants a nuclear response.
It all ended with a couple of Kinzhals in Odessa. And Pavel Durov was taken hostage. The escalation will continue to escalate, but there is no reason to give NATO carte blanche to use nuclear weapons.
Nothing would delight NATO more than if Russia were to resort to nuclear weapons.
Not only would Russian impotence be on full display, any goodwill Russia enjoys would be instantly erased, and the US and Israel would feel free to use nuclear weapons on Iran.
Not fair? Or course not, but "fair" has nothing to do with it.
Fair is, among others, essentially a hopeful virtue, having naught to do with warfare. Though its axioms begin from moral assumptions, the application of western policy is, in practice, strictly amoral. One needn’t adhere to strictures if the belief system is obvious righteousness. There’s no question about what’s fair because in action, to implement the scheme, there is no fair, nor room for doubt. It’s a faith in who we are, and belief in one’s values. Whereas parsimony is the correct intellectual approach to tying oneself emotionally to “belief”, once conjoined, belief is better than data, better than wonder. The fewer of these, the better. But, that’s not how Sapiens works.
"That's why the Russians have to go nuclear on the Ukrainians now."
LOL! The "Putin must nuke Kiev" club has one more pathetic member, I see.
Lavrov has now clearly hinted that the use of nuclear weapons is on the table. Go figure.
Not exactly. Here are Lavrov's exact words:
(from https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1966772/ )
Question: How would you comment Ukraine’s demands as set forth in The Guardian? They seek the green light to use the Storm Shadow missiles to target Moscow and St Petersburg as a way to force Moscow to negotiate.
Sergey Lavrov: This is blackmail, an attempt to pretend that the West seeks to avoid any excessive escalation. In reality, they are full of mischief. Avoiding escalation is not what the West is after. To put it into plain language, they are simply picking a fight.
I think that this has become obvious to everyone. I have recently cited John Kirby, who is the White House National Security Communications Advisor. A couple of months ago, he said that escalation would be dangerous, since it would be extremely ill-advised to let the situation slide into a world war and that Europe would be the one to suffer in the process. Recently, John Kirby said this again. For Americans, any talk about the third world war comes down to something that would affect Europe alone, and God forbid if it ever happened. This is quite telling, since this idea reflects the mindset of the American planners and geostrategy experts who believe that they can simply sit the whole thing out. I think that it is important to understand in this situation that we have our own doctrine, including the one governing the use of nuclear weapons. An effort to update it is underway. Moreover, these Americans are well aware of the provisions it sets forth. This fact transpires from the Freudian slips they make when they say that having a third world war would be a bad thing because they do not want Europe to suffer. This is what this American mindset comes down to. They have a mindset of a master sitting somewhere out there overseas and believing to be totally safe and secure, thinking that not only Ukrainians, but also, as it turns out, Europeans would be willing to do the dirty work and die for them.
We have long been hearing speculation about authorising Ukraine to use not only the Storm Shadow missiles, but also US-made long-range missiles. There was an anonymous source in Washington who said that they were working on it. This source purported that their overall view of Ukraine’s request is quite positive. I will stop at that. President Vladimir Putin said all about it quite a while ago.
Now, all we can do is confirm once again that playing with fire is a dangerous thing for the men and women in charge of nuclear weapons across the Western world, but they are playing with matches as if they never grew up.
Lavrov has been cited as saying that Russia was "clarifying" its nuclear doctrine:
https://eurasianet.org/russia-announces-it-is-clarifying-its-nuclear-doctrine
And here is a podcast with Gilbert Doctorow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEtqbFV789I
He thinks that repelling the Ukrainians from Kursk will not be easy for the Russians and that the use of nuclear weapons will, therefore, be tempting.
Overall, the Kursk invasion, bogged down or not, has weakened Russia's deterrence. Some in Russia have argued that squeezing the Ukrainians out using conventional means will not actually restore it. There are enough actors that would be willing to go even for such a scenario just to stick it to the Russians. Invade, get squeezed out, rinse and repeat. How shall that be nipped in the bud?
BTW, Big Serge's account of the Kursk NPP is a little bit lacking. It's a Soviet-era RBMK-type NPP i.e. it's of the same design like the one where a reactor went off in Chernobyl in 1986. These RBMK NPP's are very different from NPP's as they are usually laid out virtually everywhere else in the world. Lacking unitary reaction vessels, they are more vulnerable.
I don't know about nuclear, but I am absolutely on the same page regarding the psychology of things. If kursk simply becomes another positional front in the war that the Russians take a year to grind out, then it will happen again and again. The border is too long, it's indefensible.
Putin needs to stop being a fox and start being a lion
A jackal, maybe, with a nod to Sydney Carton?
In short - Kiev regime and/or their sponsors conclude that they can't win by playing defense. Therefor they are "thinking out of the box".
I'd differ in Big Serge's conclusion about them not being so crazy as to attack a nuclear plant. This has already happened, and there were a variety of actions aimed at the ZNPP in Energodar, although the in-preson assaults were fairly lame. It's been a consistent theme that AFU has tried to creating chaos for PR and/or psyop purposes, by what would otherwise be moronic tactical/operational methods. Keep in mind, these guys pattern themselves not after the regular German army of WWII, but after the meth heads and ideological zealots in fringe SS divisions. This was a terror operation, aimed at whatever targets of opportunity they can get to. It just didn't get as far as they wanted it to, thankfully.
I think the only objective for this offensive that makes any sense is the capture of the Kursk nuke plant. But I don't believe the Ukes ever had any intention of damaging the plant. I think they had delusions of holding it as a barganing chip in exchange for the Zaporizhzhia (Energodar) plant. The Ukes have been obsessed with the Zap Plant for a long time and they want it badly. I think one other thing points to this is the preponderance (as I understand it;...... perhaps mistakenly) of wheeled military vehicles used in the advance. It seems the Ukes very much prioritized speed in this offensive. (The similarities to the German Ardennes Offensive are striking. A monster roll of the dice, gamble, in a front far removed from the most critical theater of the war.)
Despite Big Serge's deconstruction of this point, I tend to agree. The western MSM and various specialist press are full of stories penning a narrative about how Putin is so desperate at present, that he will order a manufactured FF at his own nuclear installations or even use tac nukes. My judgement is not that the seizure of the KNPP was in itself a militarily effective threat, but to be used as part of a wider initiative to blackmail Russia to negotiate on terms more favourable to the West before Ukraine collapses. I think Big Serge's analysis maybe misses this point - the objective was to inflict a defeat on Russia which would lead to panic and destabilisation, and peace terms. Fantasy in my view, but what have NATO get left? And make no mistake, this is a NATO not a Ukrainian operation.
Problem with this line of reasoning is the following: for how long can you "hold" the Kursk NPP *without damaging/threatening to damage it*?
Let's play out the hypothetical: you capture the NPP, then say you won't give it up unless ZNPP is given back to you. RF says no. Then what? The Kursk NPP is located some 60-70 km north of Sudzha. You (UKR) "hold" the NPP but are surrounded. No help coming. No logistics. What do you do?
Oh, for sure. All that is correct.
Two points here.
1) At this point, the Zelenskyy government is getting pretty desperate. I'm not sure they're thinking that far ahead. From their perspective, just capture the Kursk nuke plant, then figure out the next move when it comes. Even if they cannot hold onto it, merely capturing it would be a dramatic coup and could be used to reinvigorate their donors into giving more aid.
2) Zelenskyy's primary donor, the US government and the neocons who run it, the people behind all this, they couldn't give a rat's ass about Ukraine or the Ukrainian people. The US government has only ever been interested in using the Ukraine war as a battering ram against Putin and the Russian Federation. At this point, they know the war is lost, so for their part, the Kursk Offensive is basically just an exercise in throwing spaghetti against the wall in the hopes that maybe it will cause enough embarrassment to Putin's government to precipitate its collapse. What do they have to lose at this point?...........nothing.
Your point is taken. It only demonstrates that virtually everything the West (and its puppet, Ukraine) do are for "image". There is no lasting substance. The entire Western civilisation is built on Hollywood image - everything from fiat currency to fiat wars built on the reputation (and image!) of perceived WWII accomplishments. Those "images" are now being broken through as a new multi-nodal world is evolving.
As for your second point, the West continues to demonstrate its complete ignorance of the Russian civilisation and its people and the unifying effect an invasion has on the country - and I mean "invasion" to its broadest extent - economic, monetary and military attacks on the state - it is like an all-consuming beast that the more you throw at it, the more it grows in strength and determination. The West, however, is too embroiled in image and hubris to ever understand such things.
Image, hubris, deconstruction and deindustrialisation.
Focusing on non essentials like genders and so on while everything is gutted,
breaking down and falling apart.
(what weirds me out is that all the rainbow nonsense is all so hideous and ugly
and they go the extra mile to make it even more atroceous and disgusting.
Psychological warfare)
Zelenskii and his government also could not give a rat's ass about Ukraine or Ukrainians.
So what?
Well, there's that.
An absorbing analysis. I believe that there is another aspect to discuss, however. There is an inordinate number of European and American "mercenaries" involved in operation Krepost which makes this adventure a real NATO invasion of Russia. The number of NATO troops in the fight against Russia in the Donbas is under reported even by liberal critics. Ukraine itself has not been an independent nation since 2014 - it is a CIA-MI6 Frankenstein monster of NATO. This is no parochial skirmish, it is the real deal managed by psychopathic NATO Nazis.
Of course. The longer Russian dithers, the more likely the real NATO invasion is.
The basic problem here is that the Russian leadership does not want this war and are hoping that it will just go away. This is why they were so eager to enter into the secret Qatari talks to enter a Minsk-3, only to get suckerpunched again.
Russia does not want to make war on people it sees as misguided brethren. They do not want to admit to themselves that they will never be allowed to join the West, nor do they want to face up to just how sociopathic the West is, how much they hate Russia, how they will never treat her as a peer, much less a member of their club.
Where did you read this nonsense? About the negotiations in Qatar. In the Washington Post? It has long been known that WP is a garbage dump. And to draw conclusions based on their articles is, at least, short-sighted.
Go ahead, stay in denial.
there is a work by the Russian writer Gogol, Taras Bulba, that's where the procedure for dealing with lost children is described. And here there are only brothers.
Regarding Qatar and the like, these are constant processes of negotiations on various details. Lavrov revealed some details, there was no Minsk 3 supposed there.
And also, judging by the statements of a number of speakers, the voiced problem of the West's non-recognition of Russia and Russia's desire for such recognition is no longer relevant. The four-hundred-year servility to Western culture opened by Peter the Great and the "window to Europe" is closing. Now the processes of realizing that Russia has its own path are beginning. Russia is the last country of Christian culture that preserves traditional values. This is Katechon. Or if we play by analogy, then this is the Imperium of humanity, while the rest worship Horn and Slaanesh and Dzinch.
We've all read Gogol.
Otherwise, this seems like so much wishful thinking. Russian oligarchs like their parisian shopping sprees, Muscovites want to take vacations in Spain, and a "nice" (note the quotation marks) passport is seen as desirable.
I'd love to believe otherwise. I truly would, But I can see what is in front of my face.
both oligarchs for whom it was important left the country, as for the opinion of Muscovites - they are absolutely unimportant since Muscovites as such do not determine the course of the state. And besides, those for whom a "nice" passport was the main value in 22 also left, clearing society of their "important" opinion.
again moving on to analogies, if we recall the history of Japan, then at some point, having encountered the advanced Chinese civilization, it was engaged in plagiarism to the level of writing, but then the first isolation happened anyway. An absolutely normal historical process. Probably several people in Kyoto would have liked to continue to cooperate with that China, but those who were higher simply decided for them.
If only the problem were limited to Moscow.
And if you think that Russia is going to self-isolate as did the island nation of Japan....
"... nor do they want to face up to just how sociopathic the West is. ..."
I am convinced they HAVE learned.
Case in point: a few months ago the statements by high administrative officials
were still very courteous, polite and friendly.
Not so any more. The language is now more direct and at times blunt and confrontational. "Mene mene tekel upharsim"
Is Ukraine in charge? Sure, Ukraine wouldn't want the nuclear power plant to blow up and pollute the soil there on both sides of the border, but the Neocons in DC would be just fine with it. They blew up the Nordstream pipeline.
Who is really in charge of Ukraine?
"Who is really in charge of Ukraine?"
Rhetorical question, I am afraid. This is a US vs Russia war where the US is using Ukraine as a proxy.
Andrew, That's my point. The author assumes that Zelensky is in charge of Ukrainian war policy. He is not.
Of course Elensky is not in charge of anything. He is a mediocre Ukrainian TV actor who was chosen by the fine people in Langley, Virginia as the perfect puppet to lead Ukraine into the disastrous situation it is in now.
And yes, the author apparently assumes that Elensky somehow could be the "brains" behind the "Kursk offensive" and that Elensky decides on any policy in Kiev.
The truth is that not a single important decision regarding Ukraine is made in Kiev - and Moscow is fully aware of that. Ukraine and the Ukrainian army are remotely micromanaged by special teams back in the US.
Zelensky was groomed by Jewish oligarch Kolomoskiy.
This is ultimately a Rothschild & Co operation. They have been trying to get Russia under their control for a few hundred years.
They wanted to create Big Israel where Ukraine is.
Dnipro, Ukraine is the Jewish capital of Ukraine. Near Zelenskys home town and the base of Kolomoskiys criminal empire.
Indeed. Z has explicitly stated that he wants to emulate Israel,
that the state of Israel is a rolemodel to him.
So the removal of generations of ukrainians from the Ukraine by means of war fits this mindset in more than one way.
LIKE
so all the decision makers have families outside the former Ukraine, where they have accounts and real estate. There are no reasons at all to believe that they cannot engage in nuclear terrorism. The only thing is that the sponsors who own land from funds like Vanguard may be against it.
Vlad, Yes, Vanguard may not like the nuclear plant blowing up, but the millionaires who own wheatland in the USA will get rich just like the wheat farmers did during WWI.
It's just business.
Was waiting for this to drop, had no doubt Sergiao's analysis on this Kursk gambit by the AFU would have come soon!
Like most political acts, there is less to this - much less - than meets the eye. Simply put, the Kiev mob understand - how could they fail to? - that they cannot successfully defend their conquests in Donbass, despite all the years of assiduous trench-digging and bunker-building. Nor can they prevent or significantly delay the inexorable push of the Russian armed forces into the heart of Ukraine itself. All this looks really terrible in the media, which is where Western politicians get most of their beliefs from.
Since the Kiev mob cannot hope to win anywhere on the main line of contact, but can look for nothing but continuous grinding defeats and retreats, what they wanted was anything at all that could be presented in the media as a "win". Even for a short time. And the incursion into Russia gave them that - for a short time. Sometimes it really seems as though the Kiev mob is being led personally by the ghost of Adolf Hitler himself. But actually it is being led by the Washington gang, who think very much like him.
Over on Moon of Alabama, Bernard has proposed it was done to prolong the war. https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/08/ukraine-sitrep-kursk-campaign-designed-to-keep-war-going.html Martyanov (SmoothieX12) seems to orbit a similar idea, that it was done for PR for **Western** audiences.
The general gist is that it was done to "prove" Ukraine can still fight, and so to justify continued Western support (read: money).
It's a strange dichotomy. They need to show they can still fight to western observers. But they can't really show that over the developed battle space. So instead they, invade Kursk. They also want to fish for money by showing losses, so they lose in the Donbass. It does make sense from a .... idk kinda fund raising perspective.
I would agree. All the forms of provocation have this in common
If you read western MSM, it certainly looks to be a plausible theory.
By the way you totally jumped the battle of Diu of 1509 in your attempt at an history of naval warfare, went straight at Lepanto 1570:
"The Battle of Diu is considered one of the most important battles in history. It marked the beginning of Western European dominance in the Indian Ocean. The author William Weir in his book 50 Battles That Changed the World, ranks this battle as the 6th most important in history, losing only to the Battle of Marathon, the Nika Rebellion, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Battle of Arbela (Gaugamela) and the Battle of Hattin. He says: "When the 15th century began, Islam seemed about ready to dominate the world. That prospect sank in the Indian Ocean off Diu.""
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Diu
How come this oversight? I had to resort consulting the schematic sketch for this battle from that wikipedia page in order to fully appreciate that exotic scuffle
I stand corrected now.
Sergiao however didn't mention that the Mamluks' carracks were built in Egypt by Venetian shipwrights. Portuguese enterprises around Africa and to India for the sake of reaching her spice markets directly, hurt not only Arabs, but also Venetians in their quality of middlemen bringing Oriental merchandise from Constantinople to Europe.
This prompt and heavy Venetian involvement in matters half the world away, just a few years after the Portuguese reached India the first time and did not achieve really anything meaningful yet, underscores how important monopoly of the spice trade must have been at the time.
typo: you wrote "hair brained" but meant "harebrained", it is dumb as a rabbit, not dumb because of ingrown hair
Joshua, Whoever is in charge of the Ukrainian policy is hair brained. Their brains reside in their hair follicles.
Thanks. I’m not sure I would have used the correct word!
Although this new front is ocurring in Kursk, it seems a lot more similar to the Ardennes offensive than the OG Battle of Kursk. For Germany in 1943, much like Ukraine in 2023, there was still hope that they could engage the main body of enemy troops and defeat them, but both "counteroffensives" hit a brick wall. But by 1945, much like Ukraine today, Germany felt that their only hope was to hit the enemy where they *weren't,* so they attacked a lightly defended and heavily wooded area where they could achieve concealment and suprise.
I expect this battle to have a similar result as the Battle of the Bulge, in that it will ultimately hasten the defeat of Ukraine by squandering irreplacable assets.
The difference is that Germany in 1944 could not hope for a NATO to ride to their rescue.
Although, as far as I know, the Ardennes offensive was supposed to trap the main Allied grouping and cut their supply lines. As far as I'm aware, what saved the Allies was the fact they pulled their main group back just fast enough to block the Axis breakthrough.
Many comentators compare the ukranian operation to Ardennes offensive simply because of the notoriety of Battle of the Bulge, Bastongne defense by the 101st airborne and so on. But as Serge himself showed in previous posts - despite being unrealistically ambitious, lacking unit strenght and air cover, the operational objective was sound - cutting allied army group behind a river in Belgium and improve the overall situation in the West.
Better analogue in my opinion would be to compare this ukranian gamble to Operation Spring Awakening in March of 1945 - with Zhukov an Konev gathering strenght 30km from Berlin, Hitler sent precious tanks and battle worthy SS elements to attack in Hungary for vague objectives of oil fields and defense of Vienna - all irrelevant at this point. The operation is known very little today, exactly because in the overall picture it was completely inconsequential and disjointed from the key battlefields of Ruhr and Berlin.
I know I'm just a dumbass, but I think Russia should really turn up the heat and assign the Southern Army to activate the front toward Odesa. You know, before NATO does it. Stress Ukraine assets even more. It's going to happen anyhow, why not create the initiative. A land, sea, and air assault should do wonders for Ukraine morale.
Russia should have done such things a long time ago.
The problem is Russian indecision.
Russia should come down from Kiev to Odessa
Russia should have done this a long time ago.
It needs to mobilize to 3 million standing army.( Mearsheimer number) . This war will continue even if russia stops at donbass. NATO/ EU dreaming of cold war repeat with Ukraine as germany
Perhaps you are being too generous with just how rational at this point Ukrainian leadership is. It has never been monolithic and became even more fragmented in the past 10 years. I can imagine some of the ones hailing from the Western Ukraine perfectly willing to ruin parts of North Eastern / Eastern Ukraine for a chance to ruin part of European RF. More to the point, these kind of projects (operation Krepost) require multiple internal sponsors to get off the ground so I can see multitude of justifications coming from political, military and other wings. And after that you have a committee effect: everyone thinks it is a good idea and in the absence of better ideas it becomes a plan.