At this point, after the Kursk operation turned into a disaster, the war is essentially a mopping up operation...NATO is running on empty, and everyone is sick of Zelensky's begging operation..Meanwhile, the Russian military has been streamlined and modernized, with a lot of deadwood at the top either retired or jailed for corruption...Win/win for Putin...
Right. Depending on the goals of the RF, there could be lot more to do. Whatever they do it must be thorough. Half measures will only bite them in the arse later and they know this. I simply do not see how they can leave Odessa as it is…..
OR under full control, including traffic and cargo, if not possession. Feasible? Perhaps a legal precedent will be established, or it being just a "special contingency case" for, well, keeping-the-peace.
I think the triggering factor to go cynetic against a target regime is when the country, like Russian or Georgia, puts out legislation regulating the finance of NGO's, LGTB, Antifa or MSM by foreign actors, as plan A is to progressively permeate the public opinion, the political establishment in order to facilitate the peanut privatisation of the country's best assets. When the firewall legislation is enacted, colour revolutions, terrorism and war start off.
It seems to corroborate what you express - and I remember working at chemical plants large and small (some unionized and some not) when somebody commented - "if a place gets a "Unionized Workforce" - then that was likely deserved" - and same holds true for partisans I reckon.
And consider how rapid communication is these days - and partisan in place - justly there for a reason no doubt - can really harm just about all logistical activity, and then the place falls.
Ask the 3rd Reich in WWII about the effects of partisans - they are equivalent to a magnifying force within enemy lines!
IMO Ukraine won't be able to function without its Black Sea coast, and in relatively short time (10 to 20 years?) will split into several smaller regions, some (most) of which will be absorbed by their neighbors.
In fact Ukraine's plan for victory in 2022 was to crush Donestk by a gruesome massacre. They had the green light from NATO, as they were positive Putin was not domestically strong enough to defend the Donbass. However, Putin had already shown rapid reactivity both in Syria and Crimea, so, it is likely that in 2022, Ukraine was already mandated by NATO aiming to destabilize and eventually politically shortcircuit and break Russia. The 5th column was ready for action. Navalny, someone? And honestly, given the deep corruption inside the Russian army top commanders, and the pressure from the Russian capitalists, this wouldnt have been impossible.
I mean that, from the beginning, Ukranian plans are NATO plans. If we consider this perspective we can understand why Ukraine seems not to have a plan. But NATO hasnt given up its own plan: Break Russia, or at least, paralyse it, diverting most of the country's energy from the Caspian-Indian corridor, and the silk road connectivity with China. This is the strategic plan for NATO. For them, Ukraine is only a disposable reservoir of slavic flesh, Russian niggers indeed, that will be replaced by Polish flesh, Baltic flesh and so on. Stop Russia from economically merging with Iran and China. That's why peace is impossible. The west think they are winning.
Ukraine might be losing, but the West definitely is winning.
Are any places in the US, Canada or the EU being bombed daily?
No.
But Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod, and increasingly Tula, Oryol, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Rostov, Krasnodar, Volgograd, not to mention Crimea and the Donbass, are bombed daily.
When the fire exchange ratio is zero to non-zero, who is winning?
Not really zero though. West has exchanged a whole load of resources, money and most importantly, actual military equipment, for rather meager losses for us. Sure, it would be best we had no losses. Sure, currently they are winning (or at least at a draw) with us. But judging by the current trajectory, they will be losing a lot if Ukraine just breaks. That is exactly why Western media is trying their best to push the "Korean"-style ceasefire in Ukraine. This way, they lose very little and we don't gain all to much. If our leaders are sane, we would not take anything other than unconditional surrender at this point. We are winning. And the speed of progress in this war is only increasing. Bad time for ceasefire.
US is winning. Canada and EU are perpetual losers. It would be tragicomedy when EU is stuck with the bill for the war, while US just shrugs and forgets the whole thing even happened.
Crimea gets drones, and it is indeed daily, even if it does not affect regular people that much. Most of the time. There was that ATACMS attack on the beach in June.
Belgorod on the other hand is a completely different matter, because it is in MLRS range and gets shelled regularly.
Shebekino is half destroyed, and it was not a small village before most people evaucated but a moderate sized town of 40-45,000.
Do mothers and their babies get killed by shelling while walking their strollers on the street in NYC?
Do sunbathers on the Jersey Shore get TBMs with cluster warheads raining on them? That did happen in Sevastopol this summer.
Not that such atrocities against regular civilians should be happening in the US, of course, what has to happen is targeted strikes against the Western oligarchy.
Which Putin promised many times with his threats against "decision making centers", but it turned out to be a bluff. A bluff that the West has been calling every day for more than two years now.
I sincerely hope when reality finally hits you, you are severely harmed. Will be good for evil projectionists like you to suffer in terrible pain for a long time before you exit to the hell awaiting you.
>However, Putin had already shown rapid reactivity both in Syria and Crimea
That's the hopelessly optimistic way of looking at it.
The realistic way is to assess Putin's actions as reactive, always one step behind Russia's enemies (note -- Russia's enemies, not necessarily his in his own mind, which is a big problem), and then not decisive enough.
Because Syria is still a destroyed countries, 40% of which is occupied by Turkey and the US, and Russia didn't do anything to fix it beyond that.
And while Crimea was indeed recovered, in 2014 the situation demanded a tank army march on Kiev to reverse the Maidan. In order to avoid a big war in the future.
But Putin didn't do it then, so he got the big war further down the line.
In 2022 the situation required not the show of force that we get but the application of the kind of force that would end Ukraine for good. We didn't get it, so here we are nearly three years later...
Yes, Russia has not taken many opportunities for war, and made strenuous arguments for peace until 14000 people had been killed in the Donbass. Forced to act they launched a reckless advance to Kiev in order to panic Ukraine into negotiations. It nearly worked. But when it didn't, they retreated and dug in. The bad publicity was not a factor. I believe that Russia expected a NATO attack, when the time was right, and then made sure it never was. They still expect a NATO attack, because the expectation requires preparation and the preparation ensures that it will not happen.
What makes you think that Putin trusted the RuAF back in 2014? There is a reason so many RuAF officers were sent to Syria for short stints. The RuAF needed to learn how to crawl and how to walk before it could afford to learn how to run.
1) Whose responsibility was it to have the RuAF in shape back in 2014?
Putin had only been in power for what, 15 years at that point?
2) The Russian and Ukrainian armies actually fought in the Donbass in 2014. And it was a rout. Nothing was stopping even the RuAF of 2014 of going all the way to the Polish border. That is an objective fact that even Putin himself now acknowledges openly.
It is much, much, much more difficult now than it would have been in 2014.
It is also much, much more difficult now than it was in early 2022. Back then the Russian problem was that they went in with too few forces. But otherwise they had a huge materiel and technological advantage, and were slowly pulverizing the AFU with mass artillery barrages.
Right now there is still the problem of insufficient manpower, but there is also the much bigger technological one -- AFU has millions of FPV drones, plus Western GMLRS, TBMs, ALCMs, various other PGMs, armor, etc. etc.
Arguably, when Putin came to the Kremlin, Russia was close to total collapse on all fronts, including the moral and spiritual fronts. It is nearly miraculous that Russia managed to preserve its capabilities in, say, submarine-building. Arguably, far too many people in positions of power were merely interested in accumulating loot as quickly as possible and then fleeing the country. It is hard to rebuild a country quickly with such poor human capital. Perhaps the generation that wins the SMO will have the self-confidence and the spiritual strength to create a new Russia, rather than bovinely imitating Western nonsense. Russia, handed from the Chekist Sovoks to the young war heroes, while the generations in between are basically forgotten (for they are unworthy).
Also, I will never understand Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov's reforms. Was he trying to imitate NATO and convert the RuAF into a glorified gendarmerie designed to fight "stirred-up" (Brzeziński's words) Muslims in the Caucasus and Central Asia?
In 2014, was Russia ready to fight a counter-insurgency operation from the Don to the Carpathians? Arguably, it is much easier to kill Banderites on the steppe in a conventional war. What if NATO had intervened in 2014 after the RuAF had crushed the UAF in the Donbas? What if "sanctions from hell" had come 8 years sooner? Was Russia ready back then to resist the attack on the economic front? Arguably, the main duty of a Russian Tsar is to maintain stability and order, for every time a new Смута occurs, millions of Russians die. From this viewpoint, sacrificing 100K soldiers post-2022, though horribly tragic and revolting, is still better than losing millions of women and children.
That might be a bit optimistic. After WWII, the NKVD spent a whole decade in the Carpathians hunting Banderites. The NKVD was remarkably good at making Banderites kill each other over suspicions of treason.
In the first weeks of the war, in the north, in the forests around Kiev and Sumy, there were insurgency operations. Some of the POV videos can be found on YouTube. How would you defeat such an insurgency? By putting all males of military age in work camps in Siberia? If you lived in Ukraine, you must know how insanely stubborn and unstable East Slavic women can be. Would you also put them in work camps?
War can be a self-correcting phenomenon. It gathers the most fanatical and deep-sixes them, thereby reducing the average "temperature", similarly to how evaporation of water cools one's soup. After enough blood has been spilled and people have been disgusted en masse, there might be hope for peace.
I think the triggering factor to go cynetic against a target regime is when the country, like Russian or Georgia, puts out legislation regulating the finance of NGO's, LGTB, Antifa or MSM by foreign actors, as plan A is to progressively permeate the public opinion, the political establishment in order to facilitate the peanut privatisation of the country's best assets. When the firewall legislation is enacted, colour revolutions, terrorism and war start off.
The NATO plan was to put a dramatic end to Minsk II, restart the fighting, and then bring out the sanctions as the actual theory of victory. The latter part backfired dramatically, which wasn't actually very surprising, since the US/EU weren't anywhere close to getting China's cooperation after 4 years of overt hostility. In that light, the West was actually just as import-dependent if not more so. They didn't do a good job assessing the nuts and bolts of the military situation either. Same people who bungled Covid, bungled the financial crisis, bungled the Iraq and Afghan wars, made a mess of the health care and educational systems, etc etc
The tragedy is that while we in old europe know there is nothing behind the emerald curtain, the land of Oz is rubbish, the old Soviet satellite states were flooded with western propaganda back in the day and they actually believe we can do ANYTHING if only we can be persuaded to move our majestic might and bottomless well of resources to Ukraine's benefit.
Slowly the truth is beginning to penetrate. When it really sinks in NATO will find itself not with more NATO, but with more Russia, more RF, as not just Ukraine has a radical change of heart.
and yet, as it seems from outside at least, the old Europe is firmly following the general American course even though it clearly harms Europe economically. What I am saying is that once you zoom in and start looking from a political elites vs citizens perspective, the former one (elites) does not show a tremendous difference - elites are firmly following Washington, old Europe or Ukraine. As for the regular citizens, you might know what citizens of Europe think, and they might even be firmly against what their governments are doing, yet there is no huge protests, riots or revolutions. I also see no huge riots or revolutions in Ukraine, so superficially it is again rather similar. Whether people see what is behind the emerald curtain (as plausibly in Europe) or not (and I am not sure if in Ukraine they do not) is almost a moot point as the result is qualitatively the same. Except of course that Ukrainians die.
In Western Europe, a few retired generals have dared to utter statements that contradict the party line and, as a result, have been stalked by unhinged 70404 émigrés, received death threats, etc. People capable of thinking can still follow such Western patriots on social media. Mainstream media in NATO-occupied Europe is for acephalous NPCs. Do not underestimate how much money certain plutocrats have invested in trying to destroy Russia, as part of it was invested in acquiring "journalists" for character-assassination and mercenaries for actual assassination.
I totally agree. European elite and population are both satisfied with the war. They would love even more war. Not to mention Ukrainians who are far from being defeated. They like this war that gave them purpose in life - to kill Russians.
Although I cannot speak to that, I can say that if such bloodthirsty civilians were to be forced into mobilization and carted to another nation to fight the evil Rooskies I do not think they would display the same zeal you speak of. We all know the Russians wouldn’t bother to come to them. Who would want to have to babysit a bunch of spoiled brats?!
I have found this perplexing. OF course being in the USA I am ignorant and uncultured but I am still perplexed at just how passive the Euros appear to be…OF course I really have no idea, for all I know there could be massive volumes of simmering discontent read any to burst. Dunno, but here in Unistat we have plenty of that and it’s being engineered to blow sky high…..
Dunno, but one way to persuade a person not to continue to learn is to convince them that they already know it. IT can world on a mass behavioral scale as well.
It actually really was before it decided to foment this war and go down in flames. Maybe it is the urge of the undead to finally relieve themselves of the misery of a pointless joke of a life and die for real? It is a form of end life suicide, quite common in organisations as well as in people.
The West is delusional. Ukraine is delusional. Russia will dictate terms after it finishes its crushing of Ukraine’s army. This entire policy of NATO expansion to the gates of Moscow has been nothing but a wild hair across the ass of the West, a policy so deranged that George Kennan, and a legion of the wise, presciently shouted into the void that it would ultimately end in tears. But we like strategic imbecility, not wisdom.
It is ultimately about the US and UK and their controlling oligarchs wanting to steal Russia's vast resources and natural wealth. That's it. They attempted to use washed up old Nazi ideology and old ethnic hatreds, along with a massive campaign of lies and brainwashing of laughably naive "ukranians" to do it. They are failing and, as it becomes obvious to the world that they are failing and that the US is no longer the "envy of the world", the louder and shriller and more obnoxious their propaganda becomes.
Yes. Bear with me for a minute. Remember when we built that hugely expensive and hugely lengthy pipeline to transport crude oil from the Arctic Circle clear across Alaska? Why? Pipeline transportation is the least expensive mode, even cheaper than ocean transport. The entire EU economy was driven by German industry, which allowed its global competitiveness to be wrecked when it lost access to the world’s cheapest energy supply, pipeline-delivered natural gas from Russia. The Germans are so feckless that they did not demand the same landed price of liquified natural gas from the United States, in the event of forcible interruption of Russian supplies. So, as the war continues, Europe cannot continue its material support for Ukraine because its economy is in the tank. You would think the light would have dawned on someone that a war that cannot be won is an exceedingly bad option when you had access to critical energy supplies through trade agreements. You don’t go to Jerusalem by way of Jericho.
You would also think that a country that spends the vast sums we spend on intelligence services would have intensively analyzed the latent capacity of Russia’s defense industries to surge when mobilized. As Brian Berletic has meticulously demonstrated, the surge capacity of Russia was greater than the collective West, and its superiority has been evident subsequent to Russia’s decision to mobilize. Pick the category, you will see that Russia is producing at greater rates than the West, and our deficit has become worse as time proceeds. In a protracted war of attrition, the side that out-guns its adversaries usually wins, oh, about ninety percent of the time.
The brutal truth revealed by our folly in Ukraine is that the United States no longer has the material basis for unipolar, world wide economic, political, or military predominance. As the world’s largest creditor nation, we no longer have the financial capacity. The sinews of military power lies in a nation’s industrial base. We have around twelve percent; China, around forty percent of the world’s industrial capacity, and we have gone out of our way to poke China in the eye over Taiwan. China produces more capital ships in one week than the
But Putin is a real person, looking seeing, understanding, learning and changing. As Putin changed because he experienced US approach to Russia, first hand, US thinkers developed increasing animosity.
Not only because he opposed US plans, but because he reminded them and reminds to this day of vacuum at the heart of US strategy.
There is a strategic emptiness deserving to be analyzed by Big Serge
If you win World War twice, and win a Cold war with Soviet Union (giant Russia), it is understandable you think you can win against Putin.
As Big Serge writes, when he discusses strategies of victory, after winning Cold War US has been in a position to plan further steps.
US thinkers were unable to produce realistic strategy for 21st century.
if the Cold War is a victory why didn‘t US approach Russia in the same way as they approached defeated Germany, Japan…
Because a defeat of communism in Russia, was not a victory for the US.
Like leaving Sodom and Gomor, like a proverbial fox treading on ice, this victory should have been left behind, there should have been no turning back, no enjoying the victory
Communism in Russia was dead, buried, tsar and all of his family long dead, there was a new Russia getting born.
It could have been greeted as a friend, possibly future competitor in certain fields, not as an enemy.
unfortunately, US thinkers, remained fixed onto the past, the difficult, important fight with SSSR, and were unable to free their minds and dream, imagine, think about a strategy of the world
Instead they persisted in enjoying the victory over an enemy that ceased to exist, like Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Extremely simplified, winning the Cold war led to reevaluating and reinterpreting the most important moments in the fight, the Cuban missile crisis. A new verdict: Kennedy was weak, he should have pushed harder.
And this was still de facto looking towards the past, being turned in the wrong direction, not being able to see the future, because one‘s head is turned in the wrong way.
This produces colossal distortions in psyception of reality, underlies wrong attitudes and mistaken decisions.
Also as US is de facto deciding on future by clinging to the past, there is no real apprehension, no real respect for danger of nuclear war.
A blind giant, blinded by staring at the victorious past.
In a peace conference, invite the defeated power to attend, and they would thrash out, imperfectly and transitory as they knew, a new theory and practice of international relations. The Treaty of Westphalia, the Congress of Vienna were two of the more successful ones, each establishing a framework lasting decades. The Paris agreement after WW I failed because the victors failed to invite Germany, casting it out of the family of nations, blaming it as the sole nefarious cause of the conflict, determined to keep it crushed under the weight of reparations. The fact of the matter was each Great Power was as responsible as the others for the bumbling, stumbling into war, and equally responsible for not stopping it in 1916 when the full implications of bloody protracted stalemate became apparent.
Fast forward to the end of the Cold War. Read Tony Judt’s brilliant account of those events. The role of the USA was peripheral at best. It was a victory of the peoples of Eastern Europe who increasingly gained confidence the further WW II receded into history. Soviet dominion in Eastern Europe became an anachronism, which Gorbachev presciently recognized when he permitted his colonies to go without firing a single shot.
The implosion of the Soviet Union was equally the result of the dead hand of Stalin’s sclerotic economy and the spiritual vacuity of communism. It would have been entirely fitting and just if the Council of Europe had assembled in a continental peace conference and had addressed all the messy details resulting from the end of the Soviet system, particularly the paramount issue of securing permanent peace, security, and prosperity. The refusal to make durable peace with Russia, the refusal seriously to deal with the fact that the Russian economy had dissolved into mist, the ritual insistence of humiliating Russia by periodicity expanding NATO, all of this forms the worst episode of malfeasance and turpitude during the last millennium. When statecraft dies, people die.
We have also failed to grasp the significance of Vladimir Putin and his place in the broad sweep of Russian history. Let me digress for a second. I understand how bad the Great Depression was every day my Dad was alive. Every dime he spent, every nickel he saved was done with the Depression in mind. His frugality was astonishing. His ability to stretch every dollar he ever made was also astonishing. He told me his greatest fear was poverty. Multiply my Dad’s experience by the millions and you will begin to comprehend the Russian experience in the 1990’s. Everyone, except the oligarchs, had to draw his belt back to his spine. Hunger increased, and with it the fear that comes from not knowing when and where your next meal might occur. Pensions evaporated, and therefore life expectancy decreased, as seniors starved. Social cohesion crumbled. The oligarchs had seized command of the Crown Jewels of the economy, and ran their fiefs for their own benefit, the devil take the rest of Russian society.
Enter Putin. Whether by catching the eye of Boris Yeltsin, or pure circumstance, the man met his moment. We Americans lack the empathy needed to comprehend depths of the pit into which Russia had fallen and the sheer political skills exercised by Putin in hauling the ox out of that deep ditch
First of all, had the oligarchs known what was coming, they could have banded together and had Putin taken out and shot. Russian politics is not a demure game of beanbag. Putin did things the Russian way. He used the power of the state to wrest enough control of the economy so the Russian people could begin to breathe. Was it pretty? Of course not. The Russian way is seldom pretty. Those who decry the authoritarian character of Putin’ rule need to show the rest of us exactly when, during the past twelve hundred years, there was any extended period of time when Russia was not authoritarian. The Russian people have rewarded Putin’s resurrection of Russian society and economy, its re-emergence as a great power, by making him an elected Czar. Yes, he is a ruthless SOB, but the world is filled with ruthless SOB’s, but few have the steel trap he has for a mind. He has seldom got himself over his skis. He tried diplomacy several times but was met with bad faith (Minsk II), his rejected attempt at coercive diplomacy before hostilities began, and stark intransigence when the initialed Istanbul agreement was rejected. What did Putin and the entire Russian people want? A comprehensive, therefore durable, security architecture for all of Europe, enshrining the principle that none are secure until all are secure, precisely the agreement that should have been concluded after the Soviet Union dissolved. Whatever Putin is, he is not among the brain-dead. That cannot be said of the succession of western leaders post the remarkable team of Bush and Baker. The hubris of Clinton, clear down to and including Biden, has met Nemesis. Reconstituting its hard power into the most formidable military in Europe, Russia has destroyed Western policy. Suck your heads out of your asses, put on your big boy pants, sue for peace immediately and stop further poisoning of relations and the frightening potential of a century worth of unnecessary conflict.
My guess is that the western oligarchs came within a hair’s breadth of accomplishing this aim and failed but cannot and will not accept defeat. Therefore defeat must be total before it’s acknowledged. If I’m correct about this it means more pain for the west until this is truly over.
Picking up some themes of the comments above, Serge calls Ukraine's strategy a dissapation of effort. This is only true if the main player is Ukraine. In my view they are only a proxy for the UAS and NATO (who are led by the USA). The original USA plan was to provoke Russia into attacking Ukraine by having it mass troops opposite the LPR and DPR and threaten to restore them to Ukraine with some sort of genocidal invasion. If Russia reacted they would be the bad guys, and if they didn't it would be worse. The aim of the USA was to either badly wound Russia or to cause its collapse and/or regime change. The military stuff was never intended to create a military victory, it was intended to fight for long enough for sanctions and an information war to cripple Russia.
Russia attacked with less than 200,000 troops overall against a mobilised UAF of 250,000 with reserves of 500,000 - with more volunteers and conscripts to follow - as well as western advisors, mercenaries and arms, munitions and bags of cash. I like the idea that Istanbul was a play against Russia, but it makes sense in that it lulled Russia into thinking it could get what it wanted (more or less) and bring the SMO to an early and largely successful close. Anyway this was not to be and at that time the Rouble did look like rubble - and UAF counter-attacks did force the evacuation of Kherson and did create some panic at Kharkov. Whereas I don't think originally the USA/NATO thought that a military defeat could be inflicted on Russia, IMHO by late 2022 this calculation had changed. Meanwhile Russia had recovered its economy and started mobilising.
2023 was characterised by attrition, mainly on the UAF. Despite well publicised big red arrow offensive plans to retake Crimea, the UAF died in minefields in the security zone, and in the rubble of Bakhmut. It is a story that might never be satisfactorily be explained, but quite a feat that the RF has systematically destroyed the manpower and equipment of the larger UAF and at a fraction of the casualties. Not that this is the western narrative.
At the end of 2024 I wonder how the UAF is holding on at all. However as long as it continues to damage Russia then this might be seen as a NATO/USA win. What else might we say:
1 Russia has not been weakened by the war - it is internally more cohesive, its armed forces are stronger, its economy is growing fast, it has successfully decoupled from vulnerable western supply chains.
2 Russia's international relations have not necessarily weaked and BRICS continues to advance and develop.
3 Ukraine or large parts of it will fall under Russian control. The terms of any peace and the probable partion lines will determine whether or not Russian security interests have improved or not, but possibly this could never have been made good anyway after 2014.
4 Sanctions have largely backfired and accellerated a dedollarisation move but methinks it will be a while yet before the mighty Greenback is itself "rubble",
5 European economies are a basket case and in recession, with Germany deindustrialising, and buying US LNG not Russian gas. A win for the USA who has prevented a rival power from emerging.
6 NATO has been disarmed and it has been demonstrated that it has not the money, political will or industrial capacity to change that situation anytime soon.
7 The Janus like nature of the West has been exposed to the ROW and those within the West who care to open their eyes. The blatant propaganda and double standards applied to the USA, Russia and Israel are clear to see. The Rules Based Order has been discredited.
8 The USA has pushed Russia, China, North Korea and possible soon Iran into an alliance with more or less formal terms. A huge strategic error for the USA.
I probably have missed something here, but the only real for the USA win it seems to me is that Europe has lost, and done so willingly.
Coming back to the narrow issue of Ukraine, I expect it will continue its proxy fight until it is completely destroyed and partioned. Whatever military strategies it adopts now will run into the brick wall of a mobilised Russia and its armed forces. For sure there will be some fierce fighting and terrorist acts, with more James Bond type operations. But in the end it will fail and Russia will prevail. Whether the USA gets anything else out of the peace at that point it is hard to say. Though I expect to read how the West really won the war despite all the evidence to the contrary.
And I don't think the result of the US election will make much difference. Ukraine is being abandoned by the USA either way, and the Europeans are in no position to step in and do the heavy lifting.
The Russkies quit believing in anything coming out of that crack pipe years ago and organized themselves for victory (how high? I will tell you!) while preparing for any attack of stupid by NATO. All smart and very self protective moves.
The Russians should declare a Janet Yellen Commemoration Day to honor the day her so well organized 'Sanctions" started to bite. A Janet Yellen statue, somewhere, anywhere, would fit the picture. MSM would cover it.
Strategic Dissipation as a definitive theme in this essay is spot on. The AFU and it's leadership were always in a tight spot to say the least. Putin's MOD are slow learners but they are learners. Prior NATO expansion without proper military expenditure and real integration was all rainbows and unicorns. However, if the Ukraine can't hold together as a viable entity, it bodes ill for Moldova and Georgia. The economics of Air "Defense" against cheap drones and heavy glide-bombs without strategically 'offensive' bombing is unsustainable. The tragic loss of life and horrific destruction in this ongoing high intensity conflict are heartbreaking, but the numbers' (and the maps) don't lie. A realistic ⚖️ pragmatism needs to seek for some attainable solutions to this "carnage of dissipation" looking forward. The only winners so far are defense contractors and undertakers. 😣 🩻 🩼🔔 ⚙️ 🪖⚰️ 💀🪦 Grace🔥 and Peace🕊️ to you Amigo! Excellent historical insight as always, even if you may have given a bit too much cred 🐻 to Putin's tactical🩸 prowess.
Agreed. However, my estimation of the pragmatism displayed by the RF is that they simply cannot afford to have more missiles, nukes, biolabs, Russophobes etc in Ukraine and they will crush attempts to do so. If it means eliminating all the participants then i suspect that is what they will do. Kinda like a “It’s either you or me” scenario.
So is Putin planning on disarming all RussoPhobes in the neighborhood? The baltics? GEORGIA? Moldova? Poland....? Russia has had some very complex & "dynamic" (📯🌲☢️⚓✝️⚔️☦️🐎☪️🌙⛪⏳) historical relations with it's vast number of 'neighbors'. Not sure about 'where or how' this pragmatic policy ends or if it has limits? A kinda post-Soviet "Monroe Doctrine" for Eurasia with Putin's security services and Mod calling the shots? Not too appealing and a hard sell....
The point of disarming all the neighbouring "Rusophobe" as you put it does not exist until they represent a real danger to Russia.
The Baltic countries can criticize Russia as much as they like, but they speak Russian, study at Russian universities, buy Russian products and trade with Russia. For Russia and the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) it is cheaper than war. But if they attack the Kaliningrad region or Belarus it = war with Russia.
Georgia. Ancient but so poor country, 2/3 of the mountain territory, few minerals. There is no point in fighting Georgia until Georgia itself attacks Russia. After 08.08.08, the government in Georgia changed and now Georgia is oriented not to conflict with Russia, but as a thousand years ago on trade intermediaries between North and South. The Russian language in Georgia is known to 2/3 of the population. 10-12% of Georgians live and work in Russia.
Moldova. Another poor country on the border between Romania and Ukraine. 70% Moldovans speak Russian. 20% of Moldovans live and work in Russia. The West is rearming Moldova, possibly for war in Transnistria. If Moldova attacks Transnistria it = war with Russia. The people of Moldova do not want this, but the West and Sandu are pushing for escalation.
Poland. Poles More 500 years were still rusophobe, its can’t fix. Useless fix it. Well, they don’t like us :), but 45-50% of Poles know Russian. If Poland attack the Kaliningrad region or Belarus, they it = war with Russia, but for now they prefer to be intermediaries in trade between Russia and Europe throuth Belarus.
3/4 countries you named - war is possible only when attacking territory of Russia. Their rusophobe is not the basis for war. 1/4 (Georgia) was war, now there is no reason for war nor a show of rusophobe.
Thank you for this thoughtful ✍🏼✔️ analysis. Chevrus had brought up the 'RussoPhobe' term, and I was trying to clarify the limits or parameters where this was perceived as a "threat" (?) I still feel that Big Serge's overview that 'Strategic Dissipation' has set in 😔🩼🩻⚰️💀❤️🩹 is spot on. The political situation ⚖️ appears to be in quite a state of dynamic flux in ALL the regions you mention as we enter 2025. LORD, have mercy. 🌐⏳☦️🕯️📿⛪💫MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS, SAVE US!
I was referring to the Ukraine specifically and the far right sector primarily in the eastern part of the country
I was not presuming to know what any given world leader whose language I don’t even speak as planning on doing, but I think you know that and I just being an agent provocateur so keep up the disinteresting work you little prick
This war in Ukraine isn’t so much a tribal feud. There is a rather short history of this that goes back to about 1991. Certain actors from the west instigated a rolling downhill snowball to war.
Most of the US soldiers are foreigners. I do not see anything wrong with a mexican wearing US Army dying in a field in Ukraine bad. Not many Americans will die in the wars to come here in the states.
N Bear, I disagree. I don't want anyone, ANYONE from the New World dying in any more of these Old World wars. To hell with the Old World (Asia, Africa, Europe).
They are still not American and will only help the collapse of the USA. The wars will be fun here. Brown people are not good at war. Similar to blacks and arabs.
Still bad at war. How did they do vs Alexander? Just watched a video on an assault on a US base in africa. Them blackies just walked into a machine gun. The only casualty they caused was a chain link fence.
This is a scintillatingly clear outline of military failure (Ukraine) and success (Russia). Step back and look at the big picture and it is a MASSIVE failure for western (aka USA/UK) global military and economic dominance. Gaza exposes the utter hypocrisy of the wests 'democratic' values and motivation for helping 'poor Ukraine' and exposes the propaganda war. Ukraine and Gaza (for different but connected reasons) are gamechangers. All those who have watched the US/UK axis ride roughshod over the rest of the world should be inspired by this. I reserve most of my criticism for the idiots in the State department and Zelenskyy for swallowing their propaganda. Minsk 2 could have avoided all this. It would have been a defeat for the neo-Cons but would have preserved the territorial integrity of Ukraine - but I see now that this would have been only a pause in conflict and I think in the long run we will come to understand that a big war now was the most effective way to stop the advance of NATO. The Dnieper is the natural boundary to play for - but Odessa and a corridor to Transnistria would be an enormous bonus and help defend the Black sea from US/European incursion. On an emotional level and as a UK citizen and son of someone who fought on the side of Russia against the Nazi's and sailed on convoys to Murmansk with weaponry for the Red Army, I have found it humiliating the way that Russia's sacrifice in defeating the Nazi's has been airbrushed from western history. I would support Russia if for no other reason than this. Burt they are right politically, economically, militarily and geo-politically. Let's have a new world order NOW!!!
I originally thought the Dnieper would be the Russian stop line. I think it has gone too far for that now. I think Russia will take the lion's share of Ukraine except maybe a narrow buffer between them and NATO.
Main rationale behind the incursion was most likely a political destabilization in Russia -- it can be read beetween the lines in major western think tanks publications.
that's what I've been thinking, also goes along with their terror campaign of striking civilians and civil infrastructure. That combined with foreign action in Russian society by spies, agitators, and other outside political action, is their main hope which is the collapse of Russia and breaking apart its territory into smaller warring states. The entire point of baiting Russia into entering Ukraine per their plan was the collapse of the state and political stricture of Russian society.
They admit this is their plan very openly for decades now. Its only Russia itself that has been deaf to these calls
>their terror campaign of striking civilians and civil infrastructure
Who is supposed to do something about that though?
Because there is a very easy way to make it stop.
Threaten to start killing the people around Zelensky with precision strikes if they don't stop with the atrocities, then once they immediately strike civilians again, you actually do it. Ukrainian oligarchs, prominent Ukrainian Nazis, eventually Zelensky himself.
See if they still persist after a few dozen such people are taken out.
Although it has to be said that the prominent Nazis were supposed to be targets anyway the moment the task of "denazification" was set, and yet none of them have been touched even though they are not hiding at all. The sole exception being that drone strike on Ponomarenko's house.
You see how Israel is proceeding.
And Israel are in the wrong in that particular situation, plus their strikes will not destroy Hezbollah, because, again, Israel is in the wrong, and they are fighting a highly decentralized idea, not individuals.
So decapitation does not work there.
Nazism in Ukraine is also fairly decentralized, but it taking over politically is not. It was its alliance with politicians and oligarchs that enabled it to take over.
Those politicians and oligarchs very much care primarily for their own skin and wealth, so if you do start taking them out, there will be a real effect on the rest, unlike the case with Hezbollah.
But Putin has never done it.
Why? Because the Ukrainian oligarchs are dearer to his heart than random Russian peasants in the border areas. Putin represents the Russian oligarchs, and after 1991 the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs were mostly one single whole. For example, we know with a fair amount of certainty that Ukrainian oligarchs were still pulling strings with the Kremlin to protect their assets even after the SMO started, and that directly hampered the Russian war effort on many, many occasions.
The rationale was to test the Kremlin's resolve, shift the red lines, and destroy deterrence.
If a NATO invasion of pre-war Russia does not result in the Kremlin finally deciding to unshackle the Russian army and fight a real war, then what will?
If going in 70 kilometers inside Kursk does not result in the people responsible for this being vaporized by precision strikes and/or the countries doing (not Ukraine, it's not a real country, and it's Russian territory anyway) witnessing a sudden proliferation of extremely large and hot mushrooms on their territories, what will?
What prevents Japan from invading Sakhalin and the Kurils, Poland and Lithuania taking Kaliningrad, Finland invading Karelia and Murmansk, etc. if the only reaction will be an evacuation of the territory followed by sluggish and not very committed attempts to flush them out that drag on for years (because I would not be surprised if Sudzha is still in Ukrainian/NATO hands this time next year given the way things are going).
Kaliningrad is a particularly sore point.
Remember how Putin pushed Shoigu and Surovikin forward to take the PR hit (while he himself once again hid in some basement) and announce the surrender of Kherson because it could not be supplied, just across the river? Well, Kaliningrad is in a much, much worse situation -- there isn't a river, between it and the mainland are the Baltic Sea, now fully controlled by NATO, and NATO-occupied territory in Lithuania.
There is also the PMR where 600,000 people can be slaughtered by the Nazis at any moment, with no means to even escape to Russian-held territory.
When the Kherson fiasco was happening, Putin had plenty of military-technical means to stop it. He could have threatened to:
1) Start exterminating Ukrainian oligarch and politicians with precision strikes. One such person for every HIMARS shell that falls on that bridge. Eventually taking out Zelensky too. See if they persist with the attempts to take out the bridge once the first few such people are vaporized.
2) Start exterminating Western oligarchs if weapon supplies were not stopped. Again, take out the Blackrock execs, a few key mansions in Europe, etc., see if they wish to continue.
3) Physically block the supplies by destroying the transport links between Europe and Ukraine.
He didn't do any of that, instead he just surrendered the territory and whatever people remained in it to the Nazi death squads, who then proceeded to rampage through it.
Kursk was just yet another iteration of moving that pattern further and further to the east.
And it was a tremendous win for the West from that perspective.
Now why is it that Putin never defends the Russian people from such attacks despite having abundant military-technical means at his disposal?
Very simple -- because the "dear partners" in the West and the Ukrainian oligarchy are more dear to his heart than Russian peasants. It is a very consistent pattern of behavior that clearly points to that inescapable conclusion..
The "Kherson fiasco" ? You mean this clean, well organised, perfectly conducted retreat that cost Russian forces close to no loss at all, and that allowed to dispatch forces elsewhere on the front while extending Ukrainian resources, and while avoiding to remain in what could have become a trap?
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You obviously don't grasp the point that Big Serge made in the paper, an in every paper on the topic of Ukraine in the last two years, that Russians don't give a toss about losing land or giving up a position. They don't hold a score-card where they'd keep track of every hit they make or don't.
They're playing the long game. Kherson will be conquered again when there is no Ukrainian army left. Remaining in Kherson was not the best way to reach the stage where there is no longer a Ukrainian army. Everything else is irrelevant to Russian operative thinking.
What if decapitation strikes were not OK for China? For example, in early February 2022, the Kremlin published a joint Sino-Russian statement that mentioned the threat of Western decapitation strikes.
Far fetched idea that makes no logical sense. Would the United States not respond with massive force if invaded from Mexico? Yes of course so how the morons in Kiev thought this was the latest bright idea is a smh event. The Ukrainian leadership and their prognosticators are scratching their nuts to come up with the next “bright” idea.
True but was it necessary? They’re slowly but surely eliminating whatever is sent there, and the Uke’s keep sending their people to slaughter in so doing.
Except that a massive force response would mean that the Kremlin recognizes the incursion as a serious threat, which it is not.
I know many hoped to see Russia as a giant with feet of clay, but it was clear from day one that there is no military match between Russia and Ukraine. There’s no need for responses as if this were a war with an equal opponent, which is why it’s designated as a "Special Military Operation" in the first place. Decisions like reactive strikes and response to the incursion align perfectly with that position.
Russia is truly coherent not only on the battlefield. Press narratives do not win conflicts. It’s obvious that Russia cannot withstand the combined power of U.S. and EU propaganda on their playground, so why bother?
Yeah. I saw that. That person cannot be an American. Delusional. It looks like Trump will win and he'll attempt to start war in the muddled east or with Iran. Trump will probably try to cut off "ukraine". If the dumbocrats manage to cheat in a huge way and "win", they'll keep supplying "ukraine" with as many weapons as they can scrape together and with billions of dollars because some of them and their obscenely rich donors are closely tied to ukrainian oligarchs and to Der Fuhrer. It's that simple. However, they will not directly intervene or support direct NATO intervention.
We have problems no matter who the next US President is. The Uniparty has failed to practice diplomacy and is hell bent on continuing and starting new wars.
That or just a Hollywood inspired apparition. When taking the collective temperature of the USA in regard to appetite for more overseas military adventures, well it aint that good. On a practical note: with what?!
The US is going to be politically in turmoil after the election and probably paralyzed as far as decision making goes for months.
I hope NATO is smart enough not to become actively involved in this war. I don't think NATO can win a conventional war fought in Russia's backyard. They would be forced to resort to nuclear weapons. Then we all lose.
I agree NATO cannot win, but it can lose slowly, horribly and messily to absolutely no good at all. But it is not going to happen as NATO already knows this.
Nobody, that is to say an actual person rather than a troll bot interwebz being sincerely believes that the USA is capable of force projection anywhere close to what would be required. If one (such as Serge) even bothered to sketch out several possible route for intervention, I’d wager they all fall flat on their face with casualties in the thousands before they even got fully under way.
Great description of an unnecessary and wasteful war. The sooner it is over the better. I tell people that there has not been a history of Eurasia published in the UK since 1860 that does not talk about the great game, the importance of Crimea to Russia as a warm water port, despite the fact that, strategically, it is not all that flash. Long before the war I predicted that there must be a "Hong Kong moment", when the lost child would come home. The 99 year lease provoked the thought! New Zealanders who celebrate Anzac day often do not know that the reason Churchill took them to fight in the Dardanelles was to gain access to the Black sea and Crimea and help keep Russia in WW1. History can inform but increasingly we are deaf to it.
UKR victory plans, like those of the West is, at best, strategic ambiguity, but mostly wishful thinking. Reality does not have to coincide with reality in the fairytale FIRE land of the west, only the narrative matters. Right now, the narrative figleaf is not covering the pox-covered penis playing the piano. The victory plan has always been, once the original plan of collapsing RU with sanctions failed, is to provoke RU into striking at NATO. Maintaining chaos and uncertainty is better than losing publicly. So escalation and provocations will continue. We attended a think-tank function last week, and the keynote speaker was a British emigre now at Harvard....reeked of spook. He openly declared we should be preparing our children to go fight the Orc - once more our children must go to die in the mud of Europe (I'm in Oz). So make your plans accordingly.
How on earth does such obvious stupidity survive in each generation and at high levels? Thank God my son is 30 something already. These people are dumber than fence posts.
It's really nothing like the USSR. The USSR was strangled by sanctions, lack of useful alliances, and a system that ultimately smothered rights and initiative. The US has been smothered by a foolish, extreme belief in unfettered capitalism, competition, greed, and social Darwinism.
A system that “ultimately” smothered rights? Do have a soft spot for idiocy and incompetence when clothed in the rhetoric of For the People? But people had no rights other than to extend and maintain the power of the state. The USSR apparatchik system was designed to reward loyalty, period. That’s where we’re at in the US today.
Of course it is but it got there in a VERY DIFFERENT WAY. Uncontrolled capitalism led to a corporate fascist oligarchy. It's as plain as day. What are you? A college kid?
I’m old enough to spot the unwarranted idealism behind the word “uncontrolled.” I ask you, where oh where are all the good hearted collectivist bureaucrats who will put a stop to all this messy human striving and make us behave? Are they still asleep between the pages of your little red book?
Except this time, the people of Europe do not want war. At least not the people of the Western European countries who are the only ones on the continet capable to provide meaningful power. Previous times, Australia was drawn into wars that the people of Europe hotly desired.
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So the issue is whether the masses can rein in their dillusional elites. I won't make any prediction. My fear as a European is that this is not happening today and it will not happen tomorrow.
But on this point, I'd say Australians are in no position to lecture us. I mean... you know, the all Aukus circus, the soon to be officialise "no subs for you people", all because you let a conservative faction that never believed in Australian independence destroy more than a decade of strategic planning and partnership with France, and all in the least democratic way possible.
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So, if we end up in the same war once again, it will be because of our shared inability to exercise democratic sovereignty on those who rule us.
our shared inability, yes, but we should not place the 'blame' on us, the citizen. The 'leadership' does not listen and willfully marginilizes any opposition, and so far show no realisation that they need to change. It is do stupid harder as only response. We can only become ungovernable, and not turn up to any war. AS for post-covid, only 4% of adults are getting boosters....the 'elite' can talk all they like in their forums and echo chambers, but we have moved on more alert than ever of their malevolence. Sending $$ and weapons, without a motivated, willing and competent combatant force will not work. Why did the WEF make 'rebuilding trust' their take-away from the last meeting? They know that they need the masses, but it is too late, after locking down and poisoning their own. Same for offshoring, downsizing, deindustrialising and transitioning to 'green' power - not something you want when fighting an industrial war. Not a winning strategy.
Nobody cares what the people of europe want. Recall what the european Hermann Göring said on the subject.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
I remember near the beginning of the war you colored in a map showing which parts of Ukraine would take and labeled them "Almost certain", "Possible" and "Unlikely" (or something like that).
Have your opinions changed on this now that Russia has a much stronger position? Or do you still think they would be willing to concede part of the coast to Ukraine?
Thanks again for your work--it's been an interesting and educational read!
At this point, after the Kursk operation turned into a disaster, the war is essentially a mopping up operation...NATO is running on empty, and everyone is sick of Zelensky's begging operation..Meanwhile, the Russian military has been streamlined and modernized, with a lot of deadwood at the top either retired or jailed for corruption...Win/win for Putin...
Right. Depending on the goals of the RF, there could be lot more to do. Whatever they do it must be thorough. Half measures will only bite them in the arse later and they know this. I simply do not see how they can leave Odessa as it is…..
OH definitely...Odessa and all Black Sea ports must be in Russian hands...
OR under full control, including traffic and cargo, if not possession. Feasible? Perhaps a legal precedent will be established, or it being just a "special contingency case" for, well, keeping-the-peace.
I think the triggering factor to go cynetic against a target regime is when the country, like Russian or Georgia, puts out legislation regulating the finance of NGO's, LGTB, Antifa or MSM by foreign actors, as plan A is to progressively permeate the public opinion, the political establishment in order to facilitate the peanut privatisation of the country's best assets. When the firewall legislation is enacted, colour revolutions, terrorism and war start off.
Have you seen this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bq6vVDjAKs
It seems to corroborate what you express - and I remember working at chemical plants large and small (some unionized and some not) when somebody commented - "if a place gets a "Unionized Workforce" - then that was likely deserved" - and same holds true for partisans I reckon.
And consider how rapid communication is these days - and partisan in place - justly there for a reason no doubt - can really harm just about all logistical activity, and then the place falls.
Ask the 3rd Reich in WWII about the effects of partisans - they are equivalent to a magnifying force within enemy lines!
BK
Kiev should expect nothing more than the 1560 boundaries.
The so called 1991 boundaries are soviet administrative optimization, no more historic that the neocon planners in Washington can make them.
We are regularly assured that Boundaries Are Sacred.
Unless, it's Israel, of course.
Nah, give some credit to Kosovo as well. After all, the integrity of borders is definitely a global axiom, isn’t it?
Add Sudan/South Sudan and Ethiopia/Eritrea.
Plus the USSR and Yugoslavia more generally -- why, if borders are sacrosanct, did the West welcome their dissolution?
Or we are allowed to only break up countries?
Which does seem to be the case - the only example of reunification of countries was East and West Germany. Which suited the West's interests.
But other than that it is always the West's enemies that get broken up into smaller pieces. Weaker and easier to control...
another instance of reunification was Yemen, in 1990 as well
Good point. Borders Are Sacred, when that is in American interests at the moment.
When nit in American interests, then This Time Is Different.
Feral Finster, The only boundary that's sacred to me is my property line.
The US gov doesn't recognize your property line
Goldhoarder, Then we're even. I don't recognize the US gov.
Easy going lads…the fireworks display is coming right up/
Seems ok. A frozen conflict.
In 1560, Kiev was under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
And nobody even had any concept of a "Ukraine"
IMO Ukraine won't be able to function without its Black Sea coast, and in relatively short time (10 to 20 years?) will split into several smaller regions, some (most) of which will be absorbed by their neighbors.
Surreal situation because Kiev has absorbed Canada in the meantime.
And the problem is?
No problem, just an observation :)
In fact Ukraine's plan for victory in 2022 was to crush Donestk by a gruesome massacre. They had the green light from NATO, as they were positive Putin was not domestically strong enough to defend the Donbass. However, Putin had already shown rapid reactivity both in Syria and Crimea, so, it is likely that in 2022, Ukraine was already mandated by NATO aiming to destabilize and eventually politically shortcircuit and break Russia. The 5th column was ready for action. Navalny, someone? And honestly, given the deep corruption inside the Russian army top commanders, and the pressure from the Russian capitalists, this wouldnt have been impossible.
I mean that, from the beginning, Ukranian plans are NATO plans. If we consider this perspective we can understand why Ukraine seems not to have a plan. But NATO hasnt given up its own plan: Break Russia, or at least, paralyse it, diverting most of the country's energy from the Caspian-Indian corridor, and the silk road connectivity with China. This is the strategic plan for NATO. For them, Ukraine is only a disposable reservoir of slavic flesh, Russian niggers indeed, that will be replaced by Polish flesh, Baltic flesh and so on. Stop Russia from economically merging with Iran and China. That's why peace is impossible. The west think they are winning.
>The west think they are winning.
Ukraine might be losing, but the West definitely is winning.
Are any places in the US, Canada or the EU being bombed daily?
No.
But Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod, and increasingly Tula, Oryol, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Rostov, Krasnodar, Volgograd, not to mention Crimea and the Donbass, are bombed daily.
When the fire exchange ratio is zero to non-zero, who is winning?
Not really zero though. West has exchanged a whole load of resources, money and most importantly, actual military equipment, for rather meager losses for us. Sure, it would be best we had no losses. Sure, currently they are winning (or at least at a draw) with us. But judging by the current trajectory, they will be losing a lot if Ukraine just breaks. That is exactly why Western media is trying their best to push the "Korean"-style ceasefire in Ukraine. This way, they lose very little and we don't gain all to much. If our leaders are sane, we would not take anything other than unconditional surrender at this point. We are winning. And the speed of progress in this war is only increasing. Bad time for ceasefire.
The West has plenty more, and is indifferent to Ukrainian losses, any more than a farmer cares about the slaughter of veal calves.
I`d cleave away Canada and EU.
US is winning. Canada and EU are perpetual losers. It would be tragicomedy when EU is stuck with the bill for the war, while US just shrugs and forgets the whole thing even happened.
Now i'm confident that you're a troll. You are arguing for Russia to bomb cities in Europe.
Russia will create a sanitary region in a shape of remaining Ukraine and all bombing will stop.
Nobody is need to bomb anyone. It will be fine.
🤔
Kursk and Crimea are bombed daily… I learned stg today 🤡
You can follow in real time here:
https://t.me/s/treugolniklpr
It will open your eyes to what is happening on the ground
Got two friends in Crimea. Their daily life is probably less risky than in NYC
Crimea is out of MLRS range.
Crimea gets drones, and it is indeed daily, even if it does not affect regular people that much. Most of the time. There was that ATACMS attack on the beach in June.
Belgorod on the other hand is a completely different matter, because it is in MLRS range and gets shelled regularly.
Shebekino is half destroyed, and it was not a small village before most people evaucated but a moderate sized town of 40-45,000.
Do mothers and their babies get killed by shelling while walking their strollers on the street in NYC?
Do sunbathers on the Jersey Shore get TBMs with cluster warheads raining on them? That did happen in Sevastopol this summer.
Not that such atrocities against regular civilians should be happening in the US, of course, what has to happen is targeted strikes against the Western oligarchy.
Which Putin promised many times with his threats against "decision making centers", but it turned out to be a bluff. A bluff that the West has been calling every day for more than two years now.
Cope on man!
You live in a fantasy world of your own creation.
I sincerely hope when reality finally hits you, you are severely harmed. Will be good for evil projectionists like you to suffer in terrible pain for a long time before you exit to the hell awaiting you.
Do u have a magic wand ? U want a full scale attack ? Because aside of pushing forward chunk by chunk i dont see any option
>However, Putin had already shown rapid reactivity both in Syria and Crimea
That's the hopelessly optimistic way of looking at it.
The realistic way is to assess Putin's actions as reactive, always one step behind Russia's enemies (note -- Russia's enemies, not necessarily his in his own mind, which is a big problem), and then not decisive enough.
Because Syria is still a destroyed countries, 40% of which is occupied by Turkey and the US, and Russia didn't do anything to fix it beyond that.
And while Crimea was indeed recovered, in 2014 the situation demanded a tank army march on Kiev to reverse the Maidan. In order to avoid a big war in the future.
But Putin didn't do it then, so he got the big war further down the line.
In 2022 the situation required not the show of force that we get but the application of the kind of force that would end Ukraine for good. We didn't get it, so here we are nearly three years later...
Yes, Russia has not taken many opportunities for war, and made strenuous arguments for peace until 14000 people had been killed in the Donbass. Forced to act they launched a reckless advance to Kiev in order to panic Ukraine into negotiations. It nearly worked. But when it didn't, they retreated and dug in. The bad publicity was not a factor. I believe that Russia expected a NATO attack, when the time was right, and then made sure it never was. They still expect a NATO attack, because the expectation requires preparation and the preparation ensures that it will not happen.
It does not matter whether Russia was reasonable or not.
What matters is winning.
What makes you think that Putin trusted the RuAF back in 2014? There is a reason so many RuAF officers were sent to Syria for short stints. The RuAF needed to learn how to crawl and how to walk before it could afford to learn how to run.
1) Whose responsibility was it to have the RuAF in shape back in 2014?
Putin had only been in power for what, 15 years at that point?
2) The Russian and Ukrainian armies actually fought in the Donbass in 2014. And it was a rout. Nothing was stopping even the RuAF of 2014 of going all the way to the Polish border. That is an objective fact that even Putin himself now acknowledges openly.
It is much, much, much more difficult now than it would have been in 2014.
It is also much, much more difficult now than it was in early 2022. Back then the Russian problem was that they went in with too few forces. But otherwise they had a huge materiel and technological advantage, and were slowly pulverizing the AFU with mass artillery barrages.
Right now there is still the problem of insufficient manpower, but there is also the much bigger technological one -- AFU has millions of FPV drones, plus Western GMLRS, TBMs, ALCMs, various other PGMs, armor, etc. etc.
Arguably, when Putin came to the Kremlin, Russia was close to total collapse on all fronts, including the moral and spiritual fronts. It is nearly miraculous that Russia managed to preserve its capabilities in, say, submarine-building. Arguably, far too many people in positions of power were merely interested in accumulating loot as quickly as possible and then fleeing the country. It is hard to rebuild a country quickly with such poor human capital. Perhaps the generation that wins the SMO will have the self-confidence and the spiritual strength to create a new Russia, rather than bovinely imitating Western nonsense. Russia, handed from the Chekist Sovoks to the young war heroes, while the generations in between are basically forgotten (for they are unworthy).
Also, I will never understand Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov's reforms. Was he trying to imitate NATO and convert the RuAF into a glorified gendarmerie designed to fight "stirred-up" (Brzeziński's words) Muslims in the Caucasus and Central Asia?
In 2014, was Russia ready to fight a counter-insurgency operation from the Don to the Carpathians? Arguably, it is much easier to kill Banderites on the steppe in a conventional war. What if NATO had intervened in 2014 after the RuAF had crushed the UAF in the Donbas? What if "sanctions from hell" had come 8 years sooner? Was Russia ready back then to resist the attack on the economic front? Arguably, the main duty of a Russian Tsar is to maintain stability and order, for every time a new Смута occurs, millions of Russians die. From this viewpoint, sacrificing 100K soldiers post-2022, though horribly tragic and revolting, is still better than losing millions of women and children.
>In 2014, was Russia ready to fight a counter-insurgency operation from the Don to the Carpathians?
There wasn't going to be one.
In 2014 Ukraine was nowhere near as Banderized as it is now.
It became so after Putin gave it a decade to brainwash a whole new generation.
That might be a bit optimistic. After WWII, the NKVD spent a whole decade in the Carpathians hunting Banderites. The NKVD was remarkably good at making Banderites kill each other over suspicions of treason.
The one thing that every successful insurgency in recent decades has in common is a young population.
The media age in Yemen is some 19 years of age. In Ukraine, it is over 40, and that from before the war.
"Putin had to because guerilla war" is just cope.
In the first weeks of the war, in the north, in the forests around Kiev and Sumy, there were insurgency operations. Some of the POV videos can be found on YouTube. How would you defeat such an insurgency? By putting all males of military age in work camps in Siberia? If you lived in Ukraine, you must know how insanely stubborn and unstable East Slavic women can be. Would you also put them in work camps?
War can be a self-correcting phenomenon. It gathers the most fanatical and deep-sixes them, thereby reducing the average "temperature", similarly to how evaporation of water cools one's soup. After enough blood has been spilled and people have been disgusted en masse, there might be hope for peace.
I think the triggering factor to go cynetic against a target regime is when the country, like Russian or Georgia, puts out legislation regulating the finance of NGO's, LGTB, Antifa or MSM by foreign actors, as plan A is to progressively permeate the public opinion, the political establishment in order to facilitate the peanut privatisation of the country's best assets. When the firewall legislation is enacted, colour revolutions, terrorism and war start off.
Great take on Ukraine by Kit Klarenberg and Alexander McKay. It is worth every minute of it. https://youtu.be/ze52NurnGjQ
The NATO plan was to put a dramatic end to Minsk II, restart the fighting, and then bring out the sanctions as the actual theory of victory. The latter part backfired dramatically, which wasn't actually very surprising, since the US/EU weren't anywhere close to getting China's cooperation after 4 years of overt hostility. In that light, the West was actually just as import-dependent if not more so. They didn't do a good job assessing the nuts and bolts of the military situation either. Same people who bungled Covid, bungled the financial crisis, bungled the Iraq and Afghan wars, made a mess of the health care and educational systems, etc etc
Sober observation there, Yoni 👍
The tragedy is that while we in old europe know there is nothing behind the emerald curtain, the land of Oz is rubbish, the old Soviet satellite states were flooded with western propaganda back in the day and they actually believe we can do ANYTHING if only we can be persuaded to move our majestic might and bottomless well of resources to Ukraine's benefit.
Slowly the truth is beginning to penetrate. When it really sinks in NATO will find itself not with more NATO, but with more Russia, more RF, as not just Ukraine has a radical change of heart.
and yet, as it seems from outside at least, the old Europe is firmly following the general American course even though it clearly harms Europe economically. What I am saying is that once you zoom in and start looking from a political elites vs citizens perspective, the former one (elites) does not show a tremendous difference - elites are firmly following Washington, old Europe or Ukraine. As for the regular citizens, you might know what citizens of Europe think, and they might even be firmly against what their governments are doing, yet there is no huge protests, riots or revolutions. I also see no huge riots or revolutions in Ukraine, so superficially it is again rather similar. Whether people see what is behind the emerald curtain (as plausibly in Europe) or not (and I am not sure if in Ukraine they do not) is almost a moot point as the result is qualitatively the same. Except of course that Ukrainians die.
In Western Europe, a few retired generals have dared to utter statements that contradict the party line and, as a result, have been stalked by unhinged 70404 émigrés, received death threats, etc. People capable of thinking can still follow such Western patriots on social media. Mainstream media in NATO-occupied Europe is for acephalous NPCs. Do not underestimate how much money certain plutocrats have invested in trying to destroy Russia, as part of it was invested in acquiring "journalists" for character-assassination and mercenaries for actual assassination.
Europeans like being slaves.
I totally agree. European elite and population are both satisfied with the war. They would love even more war. Not to mention Ukrainians who are far from being defeated. They like this war that gave them purpose in life - to kill Russians.
Although I cannot speak to that, I can say that if such bloodthirsty civilians were to be forced into mobilization and carted to another nation to fight the evil Rooskies I do not think they would display the same zeal you speak of. We all know the Russians wouldn’t bother to come to them. Who would want to have to babysit a bunch of spoiled brats?!
I have found this perplexing. OF course being in the USA I am ignorant and uncultured but I am still perplexed at just how passive the Euros appear to be…OF course I really have no idea, for all I know there could be massive volumes of simmering discontent read any to burst. Dunno, but here in Unistat we have plenty of that and it’s being engineered to blow sky high…..
You are correct about the eastern european mentality, but I question whether any truth is seeping in anywhere.
Dunno, but one way to persuade a person not to continue to learn is to convince them that they already know it. IT can world on a mass behavioral scale as well.
Oh, and arrogance helps.
Jullianne, NATO is a dead man walking.
It actually really was before it decided to foment this war and go down in flames. Maybe it is the urge of the undead to finally relieve themselves of the misery of a pointless joke of a life and die for real? It is a form of end life suicide, quite common in organisations as well as in people.
Interesting idea as many of the armchair war fanatics are 80 plus or approaching 80
Biden has always been evil even when young
Interesting Blinken is not maybe he is just a moron
Not hearing much from him recently was he stealth fired?
The West is delusional. Ukraine is delusional. Russia will dictate terms after it finishes its crushing of Ukraine’s army. This entire policy of NATO expansion to the gates of Moscow has been nothing but a wild hair across the ass of the West, a policy so deranged that George Kennan, and a legion of the wise, presciently shouted into the void that it would ultimately end in tears. But we like strategic imbecility, not wisdom.
It is ultimately about the US and UK and their controlling oligarchs wanting to steal Russia's vast resources and natural wealth. That's it. They attempted to use washed up old Nazi ideology and old ethnic hatreds, along with a massive campaign of lies and brainwashing of laughably naive "ukranians" to do it. They are failing and, as it becomes obvious to the world that they are failing and that the US is no longer the "envy of the world", the louder and shriller and more obnoxious their propaganda becomes.
Yes. Bear with me for a minute. Remember when we built that hugely expensive and hugely lengthy pipeline to transport crude oil from the Arctic Circle clear across Alaska? Why? Pipeline transportation is the least expensive mode, even cheaper than ocean transport. The entire EU economy was driven by German industry, which allowed its global competitiveness to be wrecked when it lost access to the world’s cheapest energy supply, pipeline-delivered natural gas from Russia. The Germans are so feckless that they did not demand the same landed price of liquified natural gas from the United States, in the event of forcible interruption of Russian supplies. So, as the war continues, Europe cannot continue its material support for Ukraine because its economy is in the tank. You would think the light would have dawned on someone that a war that cannot be won is an exceedingly bad option when you had access to critical energy supplies through trade agreements. You don’t go to Jerusalem by way of Jericho.
You would also think that a country that spends the vast sums we spend on intelligence services would have intensively analyzed the latent capacity of Russia’s defense industries to surge when mobilized. As Brian Berletic has meticulously demonstrated, the surge capacity of Russia was greater than the collective West, and its superiority has been evident subsequent to Russia’s decision to mobilize. Pick the category, you will see that Russia is producing at greater rates than the West, and our deficit has become worse as time proceeds. In a protracted war of attrition, the side that out-guns its adversaries usually wins, oh, about ninety percent of the time.
The brutal truth revealed by our folly in Ukraine is that the United States no longer has the material basis for unipolar, world wide economic, political, or military predominance. As the world’s largest creditor nation, we no longer have the financial capacity. The sinews of military power lies in a nation’s industrial base. We have around twelve percent; China, around forty percent of the world’s industrial capacity, and we have gone out of our way to poke China in the eye over Taiwan. China produces more capital ships in one week than the
But Putin is a real person, looking seeing, understanding, learning and changing. As Putin changed because he experienced US approach to Russia, first hand, US thinkers developed increasing animosity.
Not only because he opposed US plans, but because he reminded them and reminds to this day of vacuum at the heart of US strategy.
There is a strategic emptiness deserving to be analyzed by Big Serge
If you win World War twice, and win a Cold war with Soviet Union (giant Russia), it is understandable you think you can win against Putin.
As Big Serge writes, when he discusses strategies of victory, after winning Cold War US has been in a position to plan further steps.
US thinkers were unable to produce realistic strategy for 21st century.
if the Cold War is a victory why didn‘t US approach Russia in the same way as they approached defeated Germany, Japan…
Because a defeat of communism in Russia, was not a victory for the US.
Like leaving Sodom and Gomor, like a proverbial fox treading on ice, this victory should have been left behind, there should have been no turning back, no enjoying the victory
Communism in Russia was dead, buried, tsar and all of his family long dead, there was a new Russia getting born.
It could have been greeted as a friend, possibly future competitor in certain fields, not as an enemy.
unfortunately, US thinkers, remained fixed onto the past, the difficult, important fight with SSSR, and were unable to free their minds and dream, imagine, think about a strategy of the world
Instead they persisted in enjoying the victory over an enemy that ceased to exist, like Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Extremely simplified, winning the Cold war led to reevaluating and reinterpreting the most important moments in the fight, the Cuban missile crisis. A new verdict: Kennedy was weak, he should have pushed harder.
And this was still de facto looking towards the past, being turned in the wrong direction, not being able to see the future, because one‘s head is turned in the wrong way.
This produces colossal distortions in psyception of reality, underlies wrong attitudes and mistaken decisions.
Also as US is de facto deciding on future by clinging to the past, there is no real apprehension, no real respect for danger of nuclear war.
A blind giant, blinded by staring at the victorious past.
Bingo, you nailed it. At the conclusion of past conflagrations, the Council of the Great Powers would assem
In a peace conference, invite the defeated power to attend, and they would thrash out, imperfectly and transitory as they knew, a new theory and practice of international relations. The Treaty of Westphalia, the Congress of Vienna were two of the more successful ones, each establishing a framework lasting decades. The Paris agreement after WW I failed because the victors failed to invite Germany, casting it out of the family of nations, blaming it as the sole nefarious cause of the conflict, determined to keep it crushed under the weight of reparations. The fact of the matter was each Great Power was as responsible as the others for the bumbling, stumbling into war, and equally responsible for not stopping it in 1916 when the full implications of bloody protracted stalemate became apparent.
Fast forward to the end of the Cold War. Read Tony Judt’s brilliant account of those events. The role of the USA was peripheral at best. It was a victory of the peoples of Eastern Europe who increasingly gained confidence the further WW II receded into history. Soviet dominion in Eastern Europe became an anachronism, which Gorbachev presciently recognized when he permitted his colonies to go without firing a single shot.
The implosion of the Soviet Union was equally the result of the dead hand of Stalin’s sclerotic economy and the spiritual vacuity of communism. It would have been entirely fitting and just if the Council of Europe had assembled in a continental peace conference and had addressed all the messy details resulting from the end of the Soviet system, particularly the paramount issue of securing permanent peace, security, and prosperity. The refusal to make durable peace with Russia, the refusal seriously to deal with the fact that the Russian economy had dissolved into mist, the ritual insistence of humiliating Russia by periodicity expanding NATO, all of this forms the worst episode of malfeasance and turpitude during the last millennium. When statecraft dies, people die.
We have also failed to grasp the significance of Vladimir Putin and his place in the broad sweep of Russian history. Let me digress for a second. I understand how bad the Great Depression was every day my Dad was alive. Every dime he spent, every nickel he saved was done with the Depression in mind. His frugality was astonishing. His ability to stretch every dollar he ever made was also astonishing. He told me his greatest fear was poverty. Multiply my Dad’s experience by the millions and you will begin to comprehend the Russian experience in the 1990’s. Everyone, except the oligarchs, had to draw his belt back to his spine. Hunger increased, and with it the fear that comes from not knowing when and where your next meal might occur. Pensions evaporated, and therefore life expectancy decreased, as seniors starved. Social cohesion crumbled. The oligarchs had seized command of the Crown Jewels of the economy, and ran their fiefs for their own benefit, the devil take the rest of Russian society.
Enter Putin. Whether by catching the eye of Boris Yeltsin, or pure circumstance, the man met his moment. We Americans lack the empathy needed to comprehend depths of the pit into which Russia had fallen and the sheer political skills exercised by Putin in hauling the ox out of that deep ditch
First of all, had the oligarchs known what was coming, they could have banded together and had Putin taken out and shot. Russian politics is not a demure game of beanbag. Putin did things the Russian way. He used the power of the state to wrest enough control of the economy so the Russian people could begin to breathe. Was it pretty? Of course not. The Russian way is seldom pretty. Those who decry the authoritarian character of Putin’ rule need to show the rest of us exactly when, during the past twelve hundred years, there was any extended period of time when Russia was not authoritarian. The Russian people have rewarded Putin’s resurrection of Russian society and economy, its re-emergence as a great power, by making him an elected Czar. Yes, he is a ruthless SOB, but the world is filled with ruthless SOB’s, but few have the steel trap he has for a mind. He has seldom got himself over his skis. He tried diplomacy several times but was met with bad faith (Minsk II), his rejected attempt at coercive diplomacy before hostilities began, and stark intransigence when the initialed Istanbul agreement was rejected. What did Putin and the entire Russian people want? A comprehensive, therefore durable, security architecture for all of Europe, enshrining the principle that none are secure until all are secure, precisely the agreement that should have been concluded after the Soviet Union dissolved. Whatever Putin is, he is not among the brain-dead. That cannot be said of the succession of western leaders post the remarkable team of Bush and Baker. The hubris of Clinton, clear down to and including Biden, has met Nemesis. Reconstituting its hard power into the most formidable military in Europe, Russia has destroyed Western policy. Suck your heads out of your asses, put on your big boy pants, sue for peace immediately and stop further poisoning of relations and the frightening potential of a century worth of unnecessary conflict.
My guess is that the western oligarchs came within a hair’s breadth of accomplishing this aim and failed but cannot and will not accept defeat. Therefore defeat must be total before it’s acknowledged. If I’m correct about this it means more pain for the west until this is truly over.
Picking up some themes of the comments above, Serge calls Ukraine's strategy a dissapation of effort. This is only true if the main player is Ukraine. In my view they are only a proxy for the UAS and NATO (who are led by the USA). The original USA plan was to provoke Russia into attacking Ukraine by having it mass troops opposite the LPR and DPR and threaten to restore them to Ukraine with some sort of genocidal invasion. If Russia reacted they would be the bad guys, and if they didn't it would be worse. The aim of the USA was to either badly wound Russia or to cause its collapse and/or regime change. The military stuff was never intended to create a military victory, it was intended to fight for long enough for sanctions and an information war to cripple Russia.
Russia attacked with less than 200,000 troops overall against a mobilised UAF of 250,000 with reserves of 500,000 - with more volunteers and conscripts to follow - as well as western advisors, mercenaries and arms, munitions and bags of cash. I like the idea that Istanbul was a play against Russia, but it makes sense in that it lulled Russia into thinking it could get what it wanted (more or less) and bring the SMO to an early and largely successful close. Anyway this was not to be and at that time the Rouble did look like rubble - and UAF counter-attacks did force the evacuation of Kherson and did create some panic at Kharkov. Whereas I don't think originally the USA/NATO thought that a military defeat could be inflicted on Russia, IMHO by late 2022 this calculation had changed. Meanwhile Russia had recovered its economy and started mobilising.
2023 was characterised by attrition, mainly on the UAF. Despite well publicised big red arrow offensive plans to retake Crimea, the UAF died in minefields in the security zone, and in the rubble of Bakhmut. It is a story that might never be satisfactorily be explained, but quite a feat that the RF has systematically destroyed the manpower and equipment of the larger UAF and at a fraction of the casualties. Not that this is the western narrative.
At the end of 2024 I wonder how the UAF is holding on at all. However as long as it continues to damage Russia then this might be seen as a NATO/USA win. What else might we say:
1 Russia has not been weakened by the war - it is internally more cohesive, its armed forces are stronger, its economy is growing fast, it has successfully decoupled from vulnerable western supply chains.
2 Russia's international relations have not necessarily weaked and BRICS continues to advance and develop.
3 Ukraine or large parts of it will fall under Russian control. The terms of any peace and the probable partion lines will determine whether or not Russian security interests have improved or not, but possibly this could never have been made good anyway after 2014.
4 Sanctions have largely backfired and accellerated a dedollarisation move but methinks it will be a while yet before the mighty Greenback is itself "rubble",
5 European economies are a basket case and in recession, with Germany deindustrialising, and buying US LNG not Russian gas. A win for the USA who has prevented a rival power from emerging.
6 NATO has been disarmed and it has been demonstrated that it has not the money, political will or industrial capacity to change that situation anytime soon.
7 The Janus like nature of the West has been exposed to the ROW and those within the West who care to open their eyes. The blatant propaganda and double standards applied to the USA, Russia and Israel are clear to see. The Rules Based Order has been discredited.
8 The USA has pushed Russia, China, North Korea and possible soon Iran into an alliance with more or less formal terms. A huge strategic error for the USA.
I probably have missed something here, but the only real for the USA win it seems to me is that Europe has lost, and done so willingly.
Coming back to the narrow issue of Ukraine, I expect it will continue its proxy fight until it is completely destroyed and partioned. Whatever military strategies it adopts now will run into the brick wall of a mobilised Russia and its armed forces. For sure there will be some fierce fighting and terrorist acts, with more James Bond type operations. But in the end it will fail and Russia will prevail. Whether the USA gets anything else out of the peace at that point it is hard to say. Though I expect to read how the West really won the war despite all the evidence to the contrary.
And I don't think the result of the US election will make much difference. Ukraine is being abandoned by the USA either way, and the Europeans are in no position to step in and do the heavy lifting.
The Russkies quit believing in anything coming out of that crack pipe years ago and organized themselves for victory (how high? I will tell you!) while preparing for any attack of stupid by NATO. All smart and very self protective moves.
The Russians should declare a Janet Yellen Commemoration Day to honor the day her so well organized 'Sanctions" started to bite. A Janet Yellen statue, somewhere, anywhere, would fit the picture. MSM would cover it.
My only request is that it be placed on a podium with a logo affixed to the front which falls off every day at high noon!!
Wearing a gimpsuit tailored from a large end-of-service Rus Fed flag!
Strategic Dissipation as a definitive theme in this essay is spot on. The AFU and it's leadership were always in a tight spot to say the least. Putin's MOD are slow learners but they are learners. Prior NATO expansion without proper military expenditure and real integration was all rainbows and unicorns. However, if the Ukraine can't hold together as a viable entity, it bodes ill for Moldova and Georgia. The economics of Air "Defense" against cheap drones and heavy glide-bombs without strategically 'offensive' bombing is unsustainable. The tragic loss of life and horrific destruction in this ongoing high intensity conflict are heartbreaking, but the numbers' (and the maps) don't lie. A realistic ⚖️ pragmatism needs to seek for some attainable solutions to this "carnage of dissipation" looking forward. The only winners so far are defense contractors and undertakers. 😣 🩻 🩼🔔 ⚙️ 🪖⚰️ 💀🪦 Grace🔥 and Peace🕊️ to you Amigo! Excellent historical insight as always, even if you may have given a bit too much cred 🐻 to Putin's tactical🩸 prowess.
Agreed. However, my estimation of the pragmatism displayed by the RF is that they simply cannot afford to have more missiles, nukes, biolabs, Russophobes etc in Ukraine and they will crush attempts to do so. If it means eliminating all the participants then i suspect that is what they will do. Kinda like a “It’s either you or me” scenario.
So is Putin planning on disarming all RussoPhobes in the neighborhood? The baltics? GEORGIA? Moldova? Poland....? Russia has had some very complex & "dynamic" (📯🌲☢️⚓✝️⚔️☦️🐎☪️🌙⛪⏳) historical relations with it's vast number of 'neighbors'. Not sure about 'where or how' this pragmatic policy ends or if it has limits? A kinda post-Soviet "Monroe Doctrine" for Eurasia with Putin's security services and Mod calling the shots? Not too appealing and a hard sell....
Reply from Russia.
The point of disarming all the neighbouring "Rusophobe" as you put it does not exist until they represent a real danger to Russia.
The Baltic countries can criticize Russia as much as they like, but they speak Russian, study at Russian universities, buy Russian products and trade with Russia. For Russia and the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) it is cheaper than war. But if they attack the Kaliningrad region or Belarus it = war with Russia.
Georgia. Ancient but so poor country, 2/3 of the mountain territory, few minerals. There is no point in fighting Georgia until Georgia itself attacks Russia. After 08.08.08, the government in Georgia changed and now Georgia is oriented not to conflict with Russia, but as a thousand years ago on trade intermediaries between North and South. The Russian language in Georgia is known to 2/3 of the population. 10-12% of Georgians live and work in Russia.
Moldova. Another poor country on the border between Romania and Ukraine. 70% Moldovans speak Russian. 20% of Moldovans live and work in Russia. The West is rearming Moldova, possibly for war in Transnistria. If Moldova attacks Transnistria it = war with Russia. The people of Moldova do not want this, but the West and Sandu are pushing for escalation.
Poland. Poles More 500 years were still rusophobe, its can’t fix. Useless fix it. Well, they don’t like us :), but 45-50% of Poles know Russian. If Poland attack the Kaliningrad region or Belarus, they it = war with Russia, but for now they prefer to be intermediaries in trade between Russia and Europe throuth Belarus.
3/4 countries you named - war is possible only when attacking territory of Russia. Their rusophobe is not the basis for war. 1/4 (Georgia) was war, now there is no reason for war nor a show of rusophobe.
Thank you for this thoughtful ✍🏼✔️ analysis. Chevrus had brought up the 'RussoPhobe' term, and I was trying to clarify the limits or parameters where this was perceived as a "threat" (?) I still feel that Big Serge's overview that 'Strategic Dissipation' has set in 😔🩼🩻⚰️💀❤️🩹 is spot on. The political situation ⚖️ appears to be in quite a state of dynamic flux in ALL the regions you mention as we enter 2025. LORD, have mercy. 🌐⏳☦️🕯️📿⛪💫MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS, SAVE US!
I was referring to the Ukraine specifically and the far right sector primarily in the eastern part of the country
I was not presuming to know what any given world leader whose language I don’t even speak as planning on doing, but I think you know that and I just being an agent provocateur so keep up the disinteresting work you little prick
Copy
Europe is not worth the bones of one U.S. soldier, the festering mass of tribal feuds.
This war in Ukraine isn’t so much a tribal feud. There is a rather short history of this that goes back to about 1991. Certain actors from the west instigated a rolling downhill snowball to war.
Most of the US soldiers are foreigners. I do not see anything wrong with a mexican wearing US Army dying in a field in Ukraine bad. Not many Americans will die in the wars to come here in the states.
N Bear, I disagree. I don't want anyone, ANYONE from the New World dying in any more of these Old World wars. To hell with the Old World (Asia, Africa, Europe).
Tiny Tim, I disagree. You ready for the wars and collapse here in the west? You still in debt? Watch pornos? How is the wife and kids?
What if the parents and 400 siblings of the dead Mexican mercenary are granted US citizenship "par le sang versé"?
They are still not American and will only help the collapse of the USA. The wars will be fun here. Brown people are not good at war. Similar to blacks and arabs.
Which blacks? Which Arabs? There is a tribe known as "the Prussians of Africa". It seems that Shia Arabs are much better at combat than Sunni Arabs.
Still bad at war. How did they do vs Alexander? Just watched a video on an assault on a US base in africa. Them blackies just walked into a machine gun. The only casualty they caused was a chain link fence.
Two can play at this game
What if PWC Wagner or African Corps or IRGC teach negroes how to fight, how to use FPV and EW and StarLinks?
For example Hussites were taught how to block the Red Sea
This is a scintillatingly clear outline of military failure (Ukraine) and success (Russia). Step back and look at the big picture and it is a MASSIVE failure for western (aka USA/UK) global military and economic dominance. Gaza exposes the utter hypocrisy of the wests 'democratic' values and motivation for helping 'poor Ukraine' and exposes the propaganda war. Ukraine and Gaza (for different but connected reasons) are gamechangers. All those who have watched the US/UK axis ride roughshod over the rest of the world should be inspired by this. I reserve most of my criticism for the idiots in the State department and Zelenskyy for swallowing their propaganda. Minsk 2 could have avoided all this. It would have been a defeat for the neo-Cons but would have preserved the territorial integrity of Ukraine - but I see now that this would have been only a pause in conflict and I think in the long run we will come to understand that a big war now was the most effective way to stop the advance of NATO. The Dnieper is the natural boundary to play for - but Odessa and a corridor to Transnistria would be an enormous bonus and help defend the Black sea from US/European incursion. On an emotional level and as a UK citizen and son of someone who fought on the side of Russia against the Nazi's and sailed on convoys to Murmansk with weaponry for the Red Army, I have found it humiliating the way that Russia's sacrifice in defeating the Nazi's has been airbrushed from western history. I would support Russia if for no other reason than this. Burt they are right politically, economically, militarily and geo-politically. Let's have a new world order NOW!!!
I originally thought the Dnieper would be the Russian stop line. I think it has gone too far for that now. I think Russia will take the lion's share of Ukraine except maybe a narrow buffer between them and NATO.
Main rationale behind the incursion was most likely a political destabilization in Russia -- it can be read beetween the lines in major western think tanks publications.
The incursion did exactly what it was intended to do, change the narrative from Ukrainian defeat to Russian incompetence.
that's what I've been thinking, also goes along with their terror campaign of striking civilians and civil infrastructure. That combined with foreign action in Russian society by spies, agitators, and other outside political action, is their main hope which is the collapse of Russia and breaking apart its territory into smaller warring states. The entire point of baiting Russia into entering Ukraine per their plan was the collapse of the state and political stricture of Russian society.
They admit this is their plan very openly for decades now. Its only Russia itself that has been deaf to these calls
>their terror campaign of striking civilians and civil infrastructure
Who is supposed to do something about that though?
Because there is a very easy way to make it stop.
Threaten to start killing the people around Zelensky with precision strikes if they don't stop with the atrocities, then once they immediately strike civilians again, you actually do it. Ukrainian oligarchs, prominent Ukrainian Nazis, eventually Zelensky himself.
See if they still persist after a few dozen such people are taken out.
Although it has to be said that the prominent Nazis were supposed to be targets anyway the moment the task of "denazification" was set, and yet none of them have been touched even though they are not hiding at all. The sole exception being that drone strike on Ponomarenko's house.
You see how Israel is proceeding.
And Israel are in the wrong in that particular situation, plus their strikes will not destroy Hezbollah, because, again, Israel is in the wrong, and they are fighting a highly decentralized idea, not individuals.
So decapitation does not work there.
Nazism in Ukraine is also fairly decentralized, but it taking over politically is not. It was its alliance with politicians and oligarchs that enabled it to take over.
Those politicians and oligarchs very much care primarily for their own skin and wealth, so if you do start taking them out, there will be a real effect on the rest, unlike the case with Hezbollah.
But Putin has never done it.
Why? Because the Ukrainian oligarchs are dearer to his heart than random Russian peasants in the border areas. Putin represents the Russian oligarchs, and after 1991 the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs were mostly one single whole. For example, we know with a fair amount of certainty that Ukrainian oligarchs were still pulling strings with the Kremlin to protect their assets even after the SMO started, and that directly hampered the Russian war effort on many, many occasions.
It is just that simple.
Has it been that deaf? https://youtu.be/lAjruwb-yms&t=1015
And a propaganda "victory" to attract additional money.
The rationale was to test the Kremlin's resolve, shift the red lines, and destroy deterrence.
If a NATO invasion of pre-war Russia does not result in the Kremlin finally deciding to unshackle the Russian army and fight a real war, then what will?
If going in 70 kilometers inside Kursk does not result in the people responsible for this being vaporized by precision strikes and/or the countries doing (not Ukraine, it's not a real country, and it's Russian territory anyway) witnessing a sudden proliferation of extremely large and hot mushrooms on their territories, what will?
What prevents Japan from invading Sakhalin and the Kurils, Poland and Lithuania taking Kaliningrad, Finland invading Karelia and Murmansk, etc. if the only reaction will be an evacuation of the territory followed by sluggish and not very committed attempts to flush them out that drag on for years (because I would not be surprised if Sudzha is still in Ukrainian/NATO hands this time next year given the way things are going).
Kaliningrad is a particularly sore point.
Remember how Putin pushed Shoigu and Surovikin forward to take the PR hit (while he himself once again hid in some basement) and announce the surrender of Kherson because it could not be supplied, just across the river? Well, Kaliningrad is in a much, much worse situation -- there isn't a river, between it and the mainland are the Baltic Sea, now fully controlled by NATO, and NATO-occupied territory in Lithuania.
There is also the PMR where 600,000 people can be slaughtered by the Nazis at any moment, with no means to even escape to Russian-held territory.
When the Kherson fiasco was happening, Putin had plenty of military-technical means to stop it. He could have threatened to:
1) Start exterminating Ukrainian oligarch and politicians with precision strikes. One such person for every HIMARS shell that falls on that bridge. Eventually taking out Zelensky too. See if they persist with the attempts to take out the bridge once the first few such people are vaporized.
2) Start exterminating Western oligarchs if weapon supplies were not stopped. Again, take out the Blackrock execs, a few key mansions in Europe, etc., see if they wish to continue.
3) Physically block the supplies by destroying the transport links between Europe and Ukraine.
He didn't do any of that, instead he just surrendered the territory and whatever people remained in it to the Nazi death squads, who then proceeded to rampage through it.
Kursk was just yet another iteration of moving that pattern further and further to the east.
And it was a tremendous win for the West from that perspective.
Now why is it that Putin never defends the Russian people from such attacks despite having abundant military-technical means at his disposal?
Very simple -- because the "dear partners" in the West and the Ukrainian oligarchy are more dear to his heart than Russian peasants. It is a very consistent pattern of behavior that clearly points to that inescapable conclusion..
The "Kherson fiasco" ? You mean this clean, well organised, perfectly conducted retreat that cost Russian forces close to no loss at all, and that allowed to dispatch forces elsewhere on the front while extending Ukrainian resources, and while avoiding to remain in what could have become a trap?
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You obviously don't grasp the point that Big Serge made in the paper, an in every paper on the topic of Ukraine in the last two years, that Russians don't give a toss about losing land or giving up a position. They don't hold a score-card where they'd keep track of every hit they make or don't.
They're playing the long game. Kherson will be conquered again when there is no Ukrainian army left. Remaining in Kherson was not the best way to reach the stage where there is no longer a Ukrainian army. Everything else is irrelevant to Russian operative thinking.
Why take out Zelya? So he can be replaced by someone who is actually competent? Same for Western oligarchs.
You take out Zelya to make sure nobody dares fire at your civilians.
You kill everyone who replaces him who dares to do it.
Again, this isn't Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah, in which you have genocidal setller colonialists against people who have nothing to lose.
Decapitation will actually have an effect here.
If you refuse to even contemplate it, then you don't care about your own civilians.
Which is really the story of the last three years.
What if decapitation strikes were not OK for China? For example, in early February 2022, the Kremlin published a joint Sino-Russian statement that mentioned the threat of Western decapitation strikes.
Far fetched idea that makes no logical sense. Would the United States not respond with massive force if invaded from Mexico? Yes of course so how the morons in Kiev thought this was the latest bright idea is a smh event. The Ukrainian leadership and their prognosticators are scratching their nuts to come up with the next “bright” idea.
Except that Russia did not respond with massive force.
Months later, and Ukrainians are still there. Another Russian red line ignored.
True but was it necessary? They’re slowly but surely eliminating whatever is sent there, and the Uke’s keep sending their people to slaughter in so doing.
Depends. The incursion did and does exactly what it was intended to do, which is, shift the anrrative from Ukrainian defeat to Russian incompetence.
"[Russia] is a rotten building. Kick down the door and the entire thing will collapse!" is what Western leaders are telling themselves.
Except that a massive force response would mean that the Kremlin recognizes the incursion as a serious threat, which it is not.
I know many hoped to see Russia as a giant with feet of clay, but it was clear from day one that there is no military match between Russia and Ukraine. There’s no need for responses as if this were a war with an equal opponent, which is why it’s designated as a "Special Military Operation" in the first place. Decisions like reactive strikes and response to the incursion align perfectly with that position.
Russia is truly coherent not only on the battlefield. Press narratives do not win conflicts. It’s obvious that Russia cannot withstand the combined power of U.S. and EU propaganda on their playground, so why bother?
It ain't a matter of hope. Russia got suckerpunched and was unprepared. Right on their own border.
You’re angry. This can cloud one’s critical thinking.
Well, we can agree that we disagree. :)
Some one in the comments thinks NATO is going to intervene directly once the US elections are over!
Even Zelenskiiy does not think that. Quite the reverse. And NATO-Europe is in a tailspin at the prospect of becoming the latest US dumpee.
Still, it is always good to hear from the other side of the reality divide.
Yeah. I saw that. That person cannot be an American. Delusional. It looks like Trump will win and he'll attempt to start war in the muddled east or with Iran. Trump will probably try to cut off "ukraine". If the dumbocrats manage to cheat in a huge way and "win", they'll keep supplying "ukraine" with as many weapons as they can scrape together and with billions of dollars because some of them and their obscenely rich donors are closely tied to ukrainian oligarchs and to Der Fuhrer. It's that simple. However, they will not directly intervene or support direct NATO intervention.
We have problems no matter who the next US President is. The Uniparty has failed to practice diplomacy and is hell bent on continuing and starting new wars.
That or just a Hollywood inspired apparition. When taking the collective temperature of the USA in regard to appetite for more overseas military adventures, well it aint that good. On a practical note: with what?!
I think both of you underestimate the insane desperation of the current regime.
If so, they truly are insane. They have been driven insane by a few decades of unbridled capitalism, financial privilege, and the rot it brings.
Complete lack of accountability for failure can do it. Especially failure rewarded with professional success.
We don’t have unbridled capitalism. We have crony socialism.
Gore Vidal wrote or said it's "capitalism for the poor & socialism for the rich".
Unbridled capitalism leads to crony capitalism. Every. Goddamn. Time.
I ain’t trusting you to bridle it though.
The US is going to be politically in turmoil after the election and probably paralyzed as far as decision making goes for months.
I hope NATO is smart enough not to become actively involved in this war. I don't think NATO can win a conventional war fought in Russia's backyard. They would be forced to resort to nuclear weapons. Then we all lose.
Haha. "ukraine" was NATO's best army.
Certainly the largest. And that has been destroyed what….3 or 4 times now?!
I agree NATO cannot win, but it can lose slowly, horribly and messily to absolutely no good at all. But it is not going to happen as NATO already knows this.
I hope you're right about them knowing NATO can't win but I don't have as much faith in them as you. So far, NATO has miscalculated at every step.
Nobody, that is to say an actual person rather than a troll bot interwebz being sincerely believes that the USA is capable of force projection anywhere close to what would be required. If one (such as Serge) even bothered to sketch out several possible route for intervention, I’d wager they all fall flat on their face with casualties in the thousands before they even got fully under way.
Great description of an unnecessary and wasteful war. The sooner it is over the better. I tell people that there has not been a history of Eurasia published in the UK since 1860 that does not talk about the great game, the importance of Crimea to Russia as a warm water port, despite the fact that, strategically, it is not all that flash. Long before the war I predicted that there must be a "Hong Kong moment", when the lost child would come home. The 99 year lease provoked the thought! New Zealanders who celebrate Anzac day often do not know that the reason Churchill took them to fight in the Dardanelles was to gain access to the Black sea and Crimea and help keep Russia in WW1. History can inform but increasingly we are deaf to it.
UKR victory plans, like those of the West is, at best, strategic ambiguity, but mostly wishful thinking. Reality does not have to coincide with reality in the fairytale FIRE land of the west, only the narrative matters. Right now, the narrative figleaf is not covering the pox-covered penis playing the piano. The victory plan has always been, once the original plan of collapsing RU with sanctions failed, is to provoke RU into striking at NATO. Maintaining chaos and uncertainty is better than losing publicly. So escalation and provocations will continue. We attended a think-tank function last week, and the keynote speaker was a British emigre now at Harvard....reeked of spook. He openly declared we should be preparing our children to go fight the Orc - once more our children must go to die in the mud of Europe (I'm in Oz). So make your plans accordingly.
How on earth does such obvious stupidity survive in each generation and at high levels? Thank God my son is 30 something already. These people are dumber than fence posts.
Our elites have been showered with money and positions for their stupidity and incompetence. USSR territory
It's really nothing like the USSR. The USSR was strangled by sanctions, lack of useful alliances, and a system that ultimately smothered rights and initiative. The US has been smothered by a foolish, extreme belief in unfettered capitalism, competition, greed, and social Darwinism.
A system that “ultimately” smothered rights? Do have a soft spot for idiocy and incompetence when clothed in the rhetoric of For the People? But people had no rights other than to extend and maintain the power of the state. The USSR apparatchik system was designed to reward loyalty, period. That’s where we’re at in the US today.
Of course it is but it got there in a VERY DIFFERENT WAY. Uncontrolled capitalism led to a corporate fascist oligarchy. It's as plain as day. What are you? A college kid?
I’m old enough to spot the unwarranted idealism behind the word “uncontrolled.” I ask you, where oh where are all the good hearted collectivist bureaucrats who will put a stop to all this messy human striving and make us behave? Are they still asleep between the pages of your little red book?
The big fish in our national “pond” ate most of the small and medium size fish.
Except this time, the people of Europe do not want war. At least not the people of the Western European countries who are the only ones on the continet capable to provide meaningful power. Previous times, Australia was drawn into wars that the people of Europe hotly desired.
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So the issue is whether the masses can rein in their dillusional elites. I won't make any prediction. My fear as a European is that this is not happening today and it will not happen tomorrow.
But on this point, I'd say Australians are in no position to lecture us. I mean... you know, the all Aukus circus, the soon to be officialise "no subs for you people", all because you let a conservative faction that never believed in Australian independence destroy more than a decade of strategic planning and partnership with France, and all in the least democratic way possible.
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So, if we end up in the same war once again, it will be because of our shared inability to exercise democratic sovereignty on those who rule us.
our shared inability, yes, but we should not place the 'blame' on us, the citizen. The 'leadership' does not listen and willfully marginilizes any opposition, and so far show no realisation that they need to change. It is do stupid harder as only response. We can only become ungovernable, and not turn up to any war. AS for post-covid, only 4% of adults are getting boosters....the 'elite' can talk all they like in their forums and echo chambers, but we have moved on more alert than ever of their malevolence. Sending $$ and weapons, without a motivated, willing and competent combatant force will not work. Why did the WEF make 'rebuilding trust' their take-away from the last meeting? They know that they need the masses, but it is too late, after locking down and poisoning their own. Same for offshoring, downsizing, deindustrialising and transitioning to 'green' power - not something you want when fighting an industrial war. Not a winning strategy.
Nobody cares what the people of europe want. Recall what the european Hermann Göring said on the subject.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Difficulty - fat chance getting the migrants enlisted.
Hey Big Serge,
I remember near the beginning of the war you colored in a map showing which parts of Ukraine would take and labeled them "Almost certain", "Possible" and "Unlikely" (or something like that).
Have your opinions changed on this now that Russia has a much stronger position? Or do you still think they would be willing to concede part of the coast to Ukraine?
Thanks again for your work--it's been an interesting and educational read!
Excellent article, but get a proofreader. Immanent? Perquisite?
Came to the comments to see if anyone else caught these. Nice work!
There was one other….I’ll find it. But yeah, do everything NOT to allow detractors to point out petty shit….generally speaking