Excellent, clear and logical narrative as usual. I essentially shut myself off from our Western media regarding this war several months ago.
There is a reason Germany is not currently ok-ing those Leopard tanks. I watched the BBC live reporting on the Ramstein meeting and just shook my head at the crass and ill-informed BBC reports breathlessly going on about Germany stopping the use of tanks which would help Ukraine to "win this war". The BBC is now just a shill rag for every woke issue under the sun and its cretinous reporting of the Ukraine war.
Thanks! Another interesting read and analysis. It definitely seems like the media has been quieter lately with the "Ukraine is WINNING!" narrative, but I do see the occasional story here and there. Russia's victory is inevitable, and I think anyone with a brain could see that from the beginning. It's unfortunate that the US, and other countries, decided to prop up Ukraine with billions of dollars, and loads of weapons. Ultimately, the end result is the same, and many, many more lives will have been lost along the way.
OTOH, the warmongers and their corporations are making lots of $$$$, so I guess it's easy to see why they persist.
The Russians initially misjudged the situation and attempted to to take out the corruptocrats in Kiev on the cheap with a limited operation. Reality has set in and the real war of destroying Ukraine’s army is well underway.
I recall that many Germans were surprised in 1945 by the arrival of the red army at their doorstep.
Having followed this horrid affair very closely for most of one year, using Russian, Ukrainian and Western sources, your analysis seems logical and factual to me. Thanks for putting all this together in such a coherent, well-written essay.
We need to look past the tactical outcome delineated here and consider the strategic aims which lead to this.
I will play the devil's advocate and propose the USA's deep state strategy is going as planned:
USA produced hydrocarbon energy is suddenly worth a lot more to a newly captive and somewhat desperate EU market, the USA energy company owners got a gigantic windfall profit.
Ukraine is being depopulated of military aged men, be they dead or be they fled. At the same time, Ukrainian farm land is becoming cheaper to buy up AND the present government has removed blocks to sale of effective control of their lands to foreign concerns. When the new owners show up, a lot less of the kind of young, potentially obstreperous men who would CONTEST their control of the BEST FARMLANDS IN THE WORLD will be on that land...
The EU (and most especially, German!) industrial economy is being destroyed.
Every EU nation is turning more sharply towards authoritarianism and implementing surveillance state control structures.
Every EU nation that TRIED to have some kind of social welfare cushion will be running out of funds for such, between all the previously accepted refugees, the crap ton of Ukrainian refugees showing up and their destroyed economies + sharply raised energy costs.
The last two scandinavian countries who previously had declined NATO membership got hornswoggled into the fold... Finland and Sweden are now NATO gofers.
Thank You, Big Serge, for more useful and constructive analysis.
Russia has a great advantage that the west is depleting munitions and equipment into a situation that can only grind them up, tragically, along with conscripted Ukrainian men, who are slaves-of-war.
The vast potential of Russian reserve threatens any offensive action by the west with sudden and humiliating defeat. The west pays the price of depleting it's military equipment to maintain the propaganda war at home, which is not thriving, but is merely maintained as a rented fiction.
Meanwhile, the US has hit its budgetary limits, which always take a long time to work out, as the $US is looking more and more like a lame-duck global reserve currency, and attention is drawn to the China-Saudi relationship, now including other gulf states, and with Iran already working with Russia, China, Venezuela, and India and Turkey playing as free-agents.
Fantastic analysis. Russia will win. I'm hoping Poland is stupid enough to feed their current generation of young people into the Russian meat grinder after it destroys Ukraine. It would be good to shut the bellicose Polish voices up for another generation or two or more. They think they have power and protection with NATO? Think again - they are just another expendable country that America wants between itself and having to deal with Russia in battle. They know they can't match Russia in Eurasia yet they comtine to destroy other countries and lives with their stupid games. The US State Depatment NeoCons should be held accountable - all of them - for the countless deaths and misery they have caused.
"My suggestion would simply be that NATO does not believe in Ukrainian victory."
Either that or they're saving their tanks for the entry of NATO troops directly into the war. It will be hard politically for them to accept Ukraine's defeat and back down at this point.
"It sends up a listening boom which, in coordination with a few ground componants, is able to locate enemy guns through seismic and acoustic detection."
Funny, that. When I spent two years in the Bundewehr in the late 1960s, I trained as a surveyor for a Sound Measuring Battery, part of an artillery Batallion, using earth microphones. Their position was exactly defined by our surveys, and from their position then the origin of enemy fire was triangulated. Advanced observers, who had to get close enough to the enemy to then observe the impact from out self propelled artillery, where trained to act without support for a prolonged time, including the ability to withstand some interrogation methods.
Western media nowadays reminds me of old Pravda, Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda - propaganda arms of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It’s actually more powerful, since it had digital presence and amazing amount of money. Reality of war is unforgiving.
Neocons did not study Russia and Russian spirit well enough. An attempt to weaken and destroy a great Orthodox Slavic Civilization is going to cost the west secedes of pain and distrust. Another Babylon is being destroyed. God works listeriosis ways
And what of the reports of Russian forces massing in Byelorus?
One thing among many that concerns me is the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Once Zaluzhnyi squanders his third army, the West will intervene more and more directly, rather than admit defeat, admit that all the treasure spent is now lost.
That Washington pays little direct cost only encourages further recklessness.
Your reflection on the complexity of supplying Ukraine with many different types of tanks does not take into account the possibility that they are operated by NATO "volunteers". No need for training for Ukrainians
Schelling Points. I recall a statement by a significant official in the USA a year or two after 9/11 (apologies, can't remember his name) who indicated that the Bush administration (namely, Vice-President Dick Cheney), behind the scenes and unbeknownst to most, had inserted into the Federal bureaucracy (intelligence agencies, security, the courts, State Department, Treasury, etc) literally hundreds of people favourable to the neo-con ideology to the point that the government would likely never be rid of them - when you think of the Federal bureaucracy, think Deep State. Cheney was obviously aware of the Schelling Points concept and exercised it competently. We see the effects of that "coup" in US history since those days even in today's events.
Excellent, clear and logical narrative as usual. I essentially shut myself off from our Western media regarding this war several months ago.
There is a reason Germany is not currently ok-ing those Leopard tanks. I watched the BBC live reporting on the Ramstein meeting and just shook my head at the crass and ill-informed BBC reports breathlessly going on about Germany stopping the use of tanks which would help Ukraine to "win this war". The BBC is now just a shill rag for every woke issue under the sun and its cretinous reporting of the Ukraine war.
Thanks! Another interesting read and analysis. It definitely seems like the media has been quieter lately with the "Ukraine is WINNING!" narrative, but I do see the occasional story here and there. Russia's victory is inevitable, and I think anyone with a brain could see that from the beginning. It's unfortunate that the US, and other countries, decided to prop up Ukraine with billions of dollars, and loads of weapons. Ultimately, the end result is the same, and many, many more lives will have been lost along the way.
OTOH, the warmongers and their corporations are making lots of $$$$, so I guess it's easy to see why they persist.
The Russians initially misjudged the situation and attempted to to take out the corruptocrats in Kiev on the cheap with a limited operation. Reality has set in and the real war of destroying Ukraine’s army is well underway.
I recall that many Germans were surprised in 1945 by the arrival of the red army at their doorstep.
Propaganda eventually collides with reality.
Having followed this horrid affair very closely for most of one year, using Russian, Ukrainian and Western sources, your analysis seems logical and factual to me. Thanks for putting all this together in such a coherent, well-written essay.
We need to look past the tactical outcome delineated here and consider the strategic aims which lead to this.
I will play the devil's advocate and propose the USA's deep state strategy is going as planned:
USA produced hydrocarbon energy is suddenly worth a lot more to a newly captive and somewhat desperate EU market, the USA energy company owners got a gigantic windfall profit.
Ukraine is being depopulated of military aged men, be they dead or be they fled. At the same time, Ukrainian farm land is becoming cheaper to buy up AND the present government has removed blocks to sale of effective control of their lands to foreign concerns. When the new owners show up, a lot less of the kind of young, potentially obstreperous men who would CONTEST their control of the BEST FARMLANDS IN THE WORLD will be on that land...
The EU (and most especially, German!) industrial economy is being destroyed.
Every EU nation is turning more sharply towards authoritarianism and implementing surveillance state control structures.
Every EU nation that TRIED to have some kind of social welfare cushion will be running out of funds for such, between all the previously accepted refugees, the crap ton of Ukrainian refugees showing up and their destroyed economies + sharply raised energy costs.
The last two scandinavian countries who previously had declined NATO membership got hornswoggled into the fold... Finland and Sweden are now NATO gofers.
Thank You, Big Serge, for more useful and constructive analysis.
Russia has a great advantage that the west is depleting munitions and equipment into a situation that can only grind them up, tragically, along with conscripted Ukrainian men, who are slaves-of-war.
The vast potential of Russian reserve threatens any offensive action by the west with sudden and humiliating defeat. The west pays the price of depleting it's military equipment to maintain the propaganda war at home, which is not thriving, but is merely maintained as a rented fiction.
Meanwhile, the US has hit its budgetary limits, which always take a long time to work out, as the $US is looking more and more like a lame-duck global reserve currency, and attention is drawn to the China-Saudi relationship, now including other gulf states, and with Iran already working with Russia, China, Venezuela, and India and Turkey playing as free-agents.
Fantastic analysis. Russia will win. I'm hoping Poland is stupid enough to feed their current generation of young people into the Russian meat grinder after it destroys Ukraine. It would be good to shut the bellicose Polish voices up for another generation or two or more. They think they have power and protection with NATO? Think again - they are just another expendable country that America wants between itself and having to deal with Russia in battle. They know they can't match Russia in Eurasia yet they comtine to destroy other countries and lives with their stupid games. The US State Depatment NeoCons should be held accountable - all of them - for the countless deaths and misery they have caused.
"My suggestion would simply be that NATO does not believe in Ukrainian victory."
Either that or they're saving their tanks for the entry of NATO troops directly into the war. It will be hard politically for them to accept Ukraine's defeat and back down at this point.
"It sends up a listening boom which, in coordination with a few ground componants, is able to locate enemy guns through seismic and acoustic detection."
Funny, that. When I spent two years in the Bundewehr in the late 1960s, I trained as a surveyor for a Sound Measuring Battery, part of an artillery Batallion, using earth microphones. Their position was exactly defined by our surveys, and from their position then the origin of enemy fire was triangulated. Advanced observers, who had to get close enough to the enemy to then observe the impact from out self propelled artillery, where trained to act without support for a prolonged time, including the ability to withstand some interrogation methods.
Western media nowadays reminds me of old Pravda, Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda - propaganda arms of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It’s actually more powerful, since it had digital presence and amazing amount of money. Reality of war is unforgiving.
Neocons did not study Russia and Russian spirit well enough. An attempt to weaken and destroy a great Orthodox Slavic Civilization is going to cost the west secedes of pain and distrust. Another Babylon is being destroyed. God works listeriosis ways
Excellent analysis
Another light shining in the darkness. Such is your truth shining out in the world of lies about Ukraine. Thank you.
Were to to God that you prove correct.
And what of the reports of Russian forces massing in Byelorus?
One thing among many that concerns me is the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Once Zaluzhnyi squanders his third army, the West will intervene more and more directly, rather than admit defeat, admit that all the treasure spent is now lost.
That Washington pays little direct cost only encourages further recklessness.
Your reflection on the complexity of supplying Ukraine with many different types of tanks does not take into account the possibility that they are operated by NATO "volunteers". No need for training for Ukrainians
Schelling Points. I recall a statement by a significant official in the USA a year or two after 9/11 (apologies, can't remember his name) who indicated that the Bush administration (namely, Vice-President Dick Cheney), behind the scenes and unbeknownst to most, had inserted into the Federal bureaucracy (intelligence agencies, security, the courts, State Department, Treasury, etc) literally hundreds of people favourable to the neo-con ideology to the point that the government would likely never be rid of them - when you think of the Federal bureaucracy, think Deep State. Cheney was obviously aware of the Schelling Points concept and exercised it competently. We see the effects of that "coup" in US history since those days even in today's events.
where will the big guy get his 10% if UKraine fails? Oh, wait, funds to rebuild Ukraine, more fraud, theft and bribes.