I hope Kagan is right about that! What infuriates me is Zelensky's portray of the Ukraine as the victim. The Ukraine is like a neighbour who invites your worst enemy into his house in order to threaten you. This is hardly a country just minding its own business. What guarantees can the squirrel get that it can punch the bear on the nose and not get a response? The only real guarantee is for the squirrel not to do that - but Z. refuses to learn.
Ukrainian commoners are finding out the hard way what happens when Ukrainian elites let themselves get dogwalked into a war that the U.S. foreign policy establishment craved, but failed to prepare for.
Amen! The pathetic state of western defense industry is exhibit “A”. A war of attrition in which your adversary has a five-fold superiority in artillery and other long range fires indicates, with ninety-five percent confidence, that you are on the road to defeat.
I doubt there are many left even among Western Kaganist true believers who think Ukraine is the former. I think it is rapidly dawning on even the low information, easily led cretins that it's more of the latter.
>The Ukraine is like a neighbour who invites your worst enemy into his house in order to threaten you.
That's still not a good comparison, because most of Ukraine is core historic Russian territory and most Ukrainian are ethnic Russians, so it's not even a neighbor, it's an invader, one who takes over much of your property and even abudcts some of your children, then raises them to hate you.
The proper analogy, in fact it is not even an analogy, it is exactly what is happening, is if we rolled back the tape of time to late 1941 with the Nazis occupying huge portions of Russian territory.
That is exactly what we have -- open Nazis in the form of the Bandera heirs in charge in Kiev, and covert Nazis in the form of NATO.
The big question is why the Kremlin is not reacting like it should to such a development (i.e. pulling out hte big guns and erasing the responsible individuals and countries off the face of the planet).
your questions, worries are appreciated. Most commentators in their heart of hearts not only understand, but mostly agree, but....
But... emotion shows you the truth, mind shows you the most efficient way. US does not want nuclear war with Russia, what we call the red lines are not what Lavrov, or Putin says, but what Americans think might really provoke nuclear war.
Making Russian answer less rational, more populist, more emotional could help in deterring US aggressive moves, but would also significantly raise the level of risk of nuclear war.
Some kind of answer, against a lesser enemy, e.g. Britain could help, sinking Prince of Wales, making Gibraltar ammunition depots explode, making Storm shadow factory to explode, destroying Norwegian underwater oil installation...
but realistically it has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine. It is for public consumption like an Instagram post.
Real battlefield is Ukraine, and technology,
Russia that can make 2 nanometer chips?, or replicate or improve Elon Musk rockets and satellites.
"We will soon find out whether the American people share his indifference, because if there is not soon a large new infusion of aid from the United States, Ukraine will likely lose the war within the next 12 to 18 months. Ukraine will not lose in a nice, negotiated way, with vital territories sacrificed but an independent Ukraine kept alive, sovereign, and protected by Western security guarantees. It faces instead a complete defeat, a loss of sovereignty, and full Russian control."
A good big picture summary, and in line with my own thinking so naturally I like it...
We can absorb a lot of daily detail, but the wider view is more important.
My sense last year was that the UAF would "collapse" in the fall. Well that did not occur, but it has increasingly been unable to effectively resist and hold ground. I think the collapse will be like bankruptcy, very slowly at first then all at once. Once the prospect of defeat takes hold, I suspect the PBI in the UAF will find reasons not to fight. I've commented elsewhere that Mr T should cut and run on day 1 as this is a no-win situation for him, and he will get blamed for the "Biden" debacle anyway. But we will wait and see.
Let's hope for everyone's sake that President Trump walks away from the Zelensky regime. If he fails to do that promptly, then he will inevitably meet the same fate that President Nixon met in Vietnam -- the Democrats war will become Trump's war, and everything else he wants to achieve will be thwarted because of that.
Better would be to embrace Zelensky. Not his regime, just him. A very early trip to Ukraine. Trump tells Z that right now, Z and family and 3 people who can testify are going to pack up all the evidence of graft, corruption and kickbacks and fly to Mar a Lago where they will be kept safe. Or . . . Trump leaves announcing that he just made that deal.
With the evidence of graft and kickbacks he can eliminate Democrats in Congress and blackmail the Republicans until he can replace them in a primary. The Kiev regime falls, it's not Trump's fault, it's the corruption of these Congress critters looking for graft.
>same fate that President Nixon met in Vietnam -- the Democrats war will become Trump's war
Because Eisenhower had absolutely nothing to do with that war?
Here we have one of the best historical examples of how little US foreign policy is affected by who is in the White House and people are still finding ways to make it partisan...
"Of course, modern communications make it extremely unlikely that anybody could be cut fully out of the loop for years at a time, like Shackleton and his men."
I'm in UK - I beg to differ. The whole of western Europe is cut out the loop.
I think differently. Sure some people willingly take the MSM line on Israel where the facts are clear but the media presents it as something too complex to take a side on.
On Ukraine there really is no information out there at all. Sure there are a dozen or more people on judging freedom speaking truths, but they don't get to appear on mainstream at all (which is why they resort to the excellen judging freedom).
I don't blame anyone for misunderstanding Ukraine or Syria, they have been systematically lied to.
It is not just the missing news and the fake news, it is all the unimportant news we get overloaded with.
When I worked in finance and it was important that clients and colleagues saw me as clever and well informed, I took the bait too. The Financial Times slogan at the time was No FT, No comment. So I felt that only by reading the Economist and a few articles and the FT would I be that smart. Of course if you read 80% of the Economist each week, it really gives you no time to challenge what you are reading excepts on things you have to have expertise on. For me at the time it was Telecoms and Eastern Europe, so I knew the Economist was consistently putting out the PR of Telcoes and western banks (one of which I worked for) and western governments rather than doing its own research. But I had to accept it for everything else.
Only when I stopped working full time (and stopped reading the economist) did I really start to get it. Having lived long in Poland meant that 2014 Ukraine reporting obviously stank (to me but not to many Poles).
You cannot judge others by your standards and abilities without failing. People are sheeple. The follow the leaders wo effectively through rhetoric and authority affect their emotions. That's why people go to wars. Even in these days. I personally don't get what people in Ukraine think they are fighting for. But that's the point. Neither do they, they follow their leaders as people have done through the ages. Same with the vax. It's been an eye opener for me.
The lesson I learned is, they are not like me. And we can't build a society that if we don't acknowledge that is how most people are. Sheeple.
90% I agree. 2 exceptions. Anyone about Israel - the media is 20% honest on Israel (especially the picture editors) and you'd have to be wilfully blind or stupid not to see what is really happening (and indeed most people can see, even if they don't feel obliged to do anything). And Ukrainians in Ukraine, ditto - pretty sure most Ukrainians know what is going on but they'd have to be incredibly brave to say anything.
I note two things - in pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London there is a significant Jewish presence in support. And there are almost no pro-Kiev protests which feature Ukrainians across Europe. [in modern media it is the things not reported which usually gives the game away].
An important detail of Kagan's latest article is that he calls the loss of Ukraine 'Trump's defeat'. The narrative is already shifting to paint the Ukraine defeat as a millstone around Trump's neck. Let's hope Trump's team is smart enough to wash their hands off Ukraine early and ensure the blame sits on Biden and his idiotic bloodthirsty foreign policy team.
Should be a pretty easy thing to do, he could bring back afghanistan too and claim the dems ruin everything (they do). Biden has sat on this war throughout his time in office, his admin has shipped more and more money and supplies into that whole while US domestic concerns have been ignored.
I mean just ask biden where carolina is on a map of ukraine.
In the past, degradation of the economy was also a factor in debellation. Yadda, yadda, yadda, as fires rage through the Los Angeles area of California, attention has been given to how resources were diverted to Ukraine. Bottom line, there will a steady decrease in appetite within the US government to continue to prop up the regime in Ukraine. And as Uncle Sam starts providing less, the governments of Europe will have a growing unease over telling the voters why they need to suffer so as to prop up a war effort that seems doomed to fail anyway. Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing breeds failure like failure. Confidence in the Ukrainian experiment will collapse from without and within, and the current government will likely soon have to flee for their lives, and seek refuge in other countries.
One comment- I'm not sure that the government in Ukraine was ever fighting to win. It had a clear opportunity for peace early in the war, and a meaningful faction was interested in that peace. But the intransigence of the Hard Right and the opposition to peace from the USA and UK put peace off the table. Zelensky is deeply unpopular and there have been no elections. What has occurred since then has been a stage-managed war fought for different audiences and constituencies. A few outstanding priorities of the Ukraine Government underlie, in my opinion, the poor decisions mentioned in the article. First, managing propaganda for Ukraine and Global audiences with news victories prioritized over field victories. This is to keep the aid and graft flowing, and to maintain as much optimism and domestic support as possible. Secondly, to give the US/UK/NATO bloc time to re-arrange political membership, arms transfer agreements, and re-organize force postures and logistics in Europe; to complete the vassal status of Europe and to break it completely away from Russia. And thirdly, to manage the political and military rivalries within Ukraine- deliberately destroying forces like the Ukrainian Navy that were outside the orbit of the ruling clique, liquidating brigades or other force structures that might prove more loyal to the Ukrainian nation than the current governing clique, and ensuring that other domestic political rivals were sidelined, excluded, or sent to their doom; while ensuring the military primacy of Hard Right factions and their support in the capital. Knowing that peace was blocked, that victory was impossible, and retaining political power was the ultimate goal, the decision of the Kiev regime make total logical sense. They will now blame their defeat on feckless global partners and Donald trump, and try to secure their to manage the even more lucrative rebuilding phase, where complete ownership of a rump state of Ukraine will fall to them and their henchmen.
Yep exactly. They're fighting in Ukraine for a variety of subgroup interests and lining of pockets, and are thus okay if Ukraine's overall well-being doesn't make the list of goals as seen by the US/NATO sponsors.
Well, no, Kiev has not been "fighting to win"; they'd rather get paid for fighting, however. The realistic path to "winning" has always been through baiting a scenario in which NATO could credibly mount its white horse and intervene to the enthusiastic nodding of the Rest of the World. When that scenario has proved hard to come by, the End is a matter of time and bean-counting cost.
Note that if NATO intervenes without the support of the Rest of the World, then Russia simply starts blowing up whole countries in the West and no one blames them for it. That result is unacceptable, the blame must point away from the West's elites.
thoughts if you add some empty lines in proper places.
Zelensky is a jew.
A Russian predicted in the end of the 1900 that Israel would depopulate Ukraine to keep the option open to move there once they are thrown out of Israel.
That might be what is happening. Though if so, then they will fail as Russia won't let them take Ukraine after the depopulation finishes, I predict. I don't think the Russians hate the Ukrainians, like the Ukrainians hate Russians.
So the US is keen to get Sth Korean Artillery Weapons and particularly Boots on the ground in The Ukraine. 85% of Sth Koreans are against this hence the Nth Korean rhetoric and the Martial Law/Coup in Seoul last month by the US puppet Yoon.
The Empire is desperate to enlarge this bf Trump takes Office.
Great update. Any specific predictions as to what the front line will look like in say march? Your prediction from the article in October was very interesting in comparison to this update. Russia made more progress on the Pokrovsk encirclement than was expected, as well as in V. Novsilka, but didn't close the Kurahove/Toretsk-Pokrovsk pockets as much as you predicted. Where do you think the important advances are likely to occur in early 2025?
The Spring Raputitsa will start in March and last for maybe 2 months. Deep mud puts a dampner on off road movement big time. So you might well see a slower change in any rate of advance at that time, albeit positional battles will continue to erode the UAF. If you were Stavka you might want to set a number of these up, ready to be fought in the mud season - over maybe towns or other pieces of ground that Ukraine will find it difficult to lose. Assuming the whole thing does not collapse by then.
>The Spring Raputitsa will start in March and last for maybe 2 months
Real winter in that part of the world is largely a thing of the past because of climate change. It used to be that everything was frozen from the Balkans and the Panonian plain to the north and east, now it only starts somewhere past Kursk.
It never really properly froze for a third winter of the war in a row. It still might, but the autumn Raputitsa never really left, which is one reason for the Russian slowdown in recent weeks.
Also, maneuver warfare is a thing of the past too, so it is debatable how much it even matters whether it is Raputitsa season or not.
In fact, the much bigger problem seems to have been the fact that it was very cloudy and foggy for many weeks, resulting in reconnaissance drones not being able to do their job, in turn making it impossible to do UMPK strikes at the same rate.
We've been hearing similar reports almost since the beginning of this war. So what is Russia waiting for?
For that matter, if Russia has a manpower and firepower advantage, I do not understand why Russia does not use the Bylorussian frontier to further stretch Ukraine.
For that matter, the entire analysis assumes that, once Ukraine starts really running low on warm live bodies this time, that NATO will not directly and openly intervene.
There is nothing for Ukraine to defend on the Bialorussian border, Russia could just charge wherever they wanted and Ukraine's formal forces would have to run. As the nazis found out and the French before that, over vast lands like this you have to defeat armies, not take land.
There would be no demilitarisation, not de-nazification, just a land grab and conflict with civilians - perfect for western PR of fake civilian killings (maybe even the odd real one) and real conflict with civilians who are far less pro-Russia than anyone still in Donbas.
Face to face fighting with a static militry enemy is precisely what Russia wants.
The whole point of fighting has been to take apart piece by piece all those defence lines built by Nato over 2015-21. That is why it has been slow - but also that is wh Ukraine committed a lot of people to defend those lines. Sure attacking prepared defences is not easy and it was a lot nicer for Russia when Ukraine briefly went on the offensive. But it is much better for civilians. 15k civilians dead (UN number), 1million Ukrainian military dead - the most Civilian Friendly war ever (better described as a policing operation or SMO)
Who are you fighting? the odd Ukrainian with a rifle?
What are you gaining? Just land - and more and more local enemies.
Russia does not want land - does not need land, it needs Ukraine to be a neutral country. Pushing Russia right up to the Polish border would be as the equivalent of allowing Nato up to the Russian boarder.
Germany wanted land. It had an army of 13 million. Russia doesn't have enough troops to hold Ukraine even now.
As an aside, the idea that Russia must exterminate Ukrainians because insurgency is another one of those copes. The one thing that every successful insurgency has in common is a young population. The median age in Yemen is 19. The median age in Ukraine is over 40, and that statistic from before the war.
1m Ukrainian military dead, 15k civilians - the SMO is the most civilian friedly war EVER. That is Russian policy - no surprise over half of Ukraine was Russian speaking.
In Gaza it is about 200k civiliand dead and 4000 Hamas.
65:1 vs 1: 50.
Sure Russia could do a lot better than Israel - it would still be massive amounts of civilians dead in comparison to current methods (and a lot more Buchas where Ukrainians kille Russian speaking civilians out of spite)
>1m Ukrainian military dead, 15k civilians - the SMO is the most civilian friedly war EVER.
1) It is not 1M, it is 500K at most
2) Of that 500K, 400K are ethnic Russians
3) Of the physical destruction caused on Ukraine, practically everything is either on core historic Russian land or was built by the Soviets, i.e. Russia.
So we have the Kremlin killing ethnic Russians and destroying Russian infrastructure, with its own weapons. It's not even NATO doing it...
>Pushing Russia right up to the Polish border would be as the equivalent of allowing Nato up to the Russian boarder.
People are descending into more and more cartoonish idiocy trying to justify their continued belief in the Putin cargo cult.
The sole reason Putin finally started the war that it was an absolute must for him to start back in 2014, and in retrospective really should have been launched in 2005, is that the US was about to put missiles right at Moscow's doorsteps.
It wasn't about the Banderites taking over Ukraine (if it was about that, the war would have started during Yuschenko's term), because let's face it, Moscow elites desperately want to erase the USSR from the memory of Russians, as that memory threatens their current position, thus any reawakening of the WWII spirit is very dangerous, so it was much preferable for them to ignore what was happening in Ukraine all those years. And it wasn't about the protection of Russians in Ukraine either, because that is something that Moscow elites absolutely do not care about, and how could they given that they don't care much about the well-being of Russians in Russia either. In the exact same way US elites don't give a damn about the average American -- those are a lower category of human beings compared to the higher such category that is the oligarchic elite.
The only reason they were left with no option is the imminent prospect of missiles being put in Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkov.
Well, guess what happened in the third year of the war? Missiles were placed in Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkov, and the US started launching them into Russia.
Pushing to the Polish border will push the missiles back by a thousand kilometers. And that is what matters.
Of course, then you are still left with the similar problem in the Baltics and Finland, and given that Putin didn't find even that last drop of courage in him to fire back when the missiles started flying towards Russia proper, I don't see that problem being addressed any time soon either.
>For that matter, if Russia has a manpower and firepower advantage, I do not understand why Russia does not use the Bylorussian frontier to further stretch Ukraine.
The answer to this question is simple -- first, because Luskashenko is not an idiot.
With all restrictions on targeting dropped, if the Kremlin ever involves Belarus in the war in such a way, then missiles will be flying into Belarus immediately.
Lukashenko wants none of that, so it will not happen. He got his nukes, and if you notice from his statements, it is quite ambiguous who has the firing and targeting authority over them, i.e. it often sounds like they are not just situated there, but he has control over them, thus he is protected from direct aggression. And he wants none of the Kremlin's weakness and treachery after that. He nearly got burned once already in the beginning of the war.
Notice that they are not even flying sorties from Belarussian airspace. I would imagine some jets flying along the border with missiles ready to hit supplies coming into Ukraine from Poland would be quite helpful. But even that is not happening.
All of this is because what should have happened the moment the first HIMARS hit a Russian position (e.g. evaporation of the whole of Lockheed Martin, followed by a statement by Putin that "We are even now, and if you cross that line again, nukes will fly at cities, not just at Lockheed Martin factories and their execs' mansions") never happened, even when they started killing civilians in the Donbass for fun, even when they hit the beach in Sevastopol, even when they killed all those children in Belgorod.
Strength matters, displaying pathetic weakness and cowardice makes you a target. It's that simple.
P.S. The second answer is because Putin refuses to mobilize so Russia in fact does not have a manpower advantage. The Kursk fiasco revealed that for all to see. There was all this talk of an imminent Russian offensive into Sumy, then the Ukro-NATO-Nazis just walked into Kursk, and there was barely anyone to stop them. Units had to be scrambled from elsewhere along the front line, i.e. that army that had supposedly been assembled in Kursk to go into Sumy did not exist at all, and there weren't combat-ready reserves deeper in the rear either. That was the scariest aspect of that debacle. And also, naturally, the one that the Z-anons completely ignore.
You can go back a few months further back, to the Volchansk fiasco. The story went that the army group "North" had been assembled with 50,000 well trained soldiers to go into Kharkov and secure a buffer zone. So they went across the border in May 2024, got to the river, then were stopped at Volchansk and the grind began once again. Zero results ever since, seven months later. Volchansk doesn't exist, but there has been no further movement. Belgorod hasn't been protected, and all that changed was that NATO gave itself permission to begin strikes into official Russia. And the way whole operation went clearly indicated that there weren't 50,000 men ready to do serious things. Maybe there were 10,000, not more than that, and the AFU rather easily found the reserves to stop them.
Lukashchenko has no choice, because he if anything happens to Russia, he is surely next on the chopping block and no protestations about what he did or did not let Russia do will save him.
An excellent writeup, although use of the term "debellation" is simply different point of view expression of Suvorikin's "attrition" strategy.
I would also note that the references made to Oreshnik capabilities are very tenuous and almost certainly wrong. In particular, the complete lack of any substantial refutation of Putin's public claims via direct photographic evidence, is not a confidence builder given the poor state of Western reporting on anything involving Ukraine. The Western civilian OSINT attempts to analyze have similarly come up short, although they have revealed real Western manipulation of OSINT satellite data.
But ultimately, at this point there are enough references to metal-based explosives such that Postol's initial, good faith BDA analysis should be discounted. Nor did Postol express the stated view that Oreshnik was not very accurate - in fact, he said the literal oppsite: that the Oreshnik system demonstrated incredible accuracy.
The only divergence between Postol's BDA analysis and what Putin has publicly stated, multiple times, is the presence of new technology in the form of the speculated metal based explosive. Here is one of the OSINT civilian analyses for your reference: https://x.com/cheguwera/status/1873334757171339269
I would posit that - if this ESM conjecture is true to any degree, that Oreshnik is very much a game changing conventional weapon as it enables the suppression of large area targets like ports and airports, which otherwise are very difficult to make substantive damage to with any other conventional system excepting mass aerial bombardment.
Fairly competent in many particulars, as far as I can tell.
At the point writer goes on a speculative tangent about "Energetic Structural Materials" (ESM) it falters a bit. In particular, he thinks that adding fairly low density oxidizers to ESM impactors would be a beneficial thing, after first suggesting that a Chinese disclosed ESM alloy using substantial % by weight of aluminum would be beneficial (potassium chlorate?! PLEASE! along with fairly low density, KClO3 has a very low temperature of disassociation, the last thing wanted in a highly heated impactor!). So nope, assuming VOLUME is the chief constraint, every bit of mass you can shoehorn in is what is wanted, lowering impactor density in return for some chemical energy output is almost certainly a net loss.
And hell, if you absolutely MUST include an oxidizer, you would want to choose the densest and highest activation temperature ones possible. Say, lead tetroxide or bismuth trioxide.
The ESM reference is to a demonstrated material, as referenced in the Chinese paper.
I should also note that Mercouris has gotten a similar, but not identical, writeup on comparable explosive types - supposedly from someone involved in Oreshnik but not directly involved in the warhead. Mercouris has mentioned hexal in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-IX-2) but noted the above reference said the warhead was along the lines of what the Twitter link speculated about.
In neither case do the references have direct access to the actual material's specs - but again the point is that the line of inquiry seems valid in that the real point is that there definitely are materials from which a Mach10 to Mach12 impact is a multiplier.
I should also note that I have speculated before on whether there were materials for which massive impact would increase energetic/explosive output. The basic nuclear weapon principles are like this: the greater the compaction of the fissile material, the greater the output.
ESMs appear to fit in this category. They are not generating more energy from fission reactions, but compaction causes them both to get very hot and, presumably, attain a sufficient density to enable penetration despite being "gaseous". In this context - the density of the gas at room temperature is not as important as its properties when highly compressed by a Mach10 to Mach12 impact. I specifically reference stellar densities: stars are gaseous but are plasma and very dense.
Energetic materials and some related physics are at least tangentially related to my "day job" (and several life long avocations- I have always liked anything that goes bang).
So I've spent way too much time these last 3 weeks or so considering properties of materials & methods for optimizing kinetic impactor energy delivery, plus possibilities for various "additive effects".
Fair enough, although the plasma-like effect is more like a really hot, fast moving blowtorch as opposed to a bang per se or even a kinetic impact.
Anyway, I do think the Che Guevara speculations are in the right direction even if it is almost certain that any specifics on materials or methods are likely wrong.
There are a number of frequently repeated misconceptions about how things like shaped charge liners actually work- and SC liners are the only weaponry we've done a lot of work with in that velocity range, APFSD projectiles are getting close but not quite as fast as these.
Trust me, SC liners (and by corollary, most likely these kinetic impactors) aren't "plasma" or even liquid on impacting armor if engineered correctly. They are pretty much a solid ROD on impacting/penetrating armor if fired at optimum standoff distance for best penetration, however different parts of the rod formed after inverting the cone are also moving at different SPEEDS (front to back) so they come apart shortly after being formed & rapidly lose effectiveness in penetration.
Very hot, fast moving gas is still GAS, it won't be as dense as a solid and doesn't make as effective a penetrator. Maybe if you could wind it up to a good % of light speed and keep it coherent somehow? But we can't yet do such things.
There is no evidence that North Koreans are in Kursk. Attempts to pass off Asiatic Russian POWs (ethnic Tuvans, Buryat and Yakuts) as "captured North Koreans" have failed. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that there are ZERO North Korean troops on the frontlines of Kursk battlefield. Western officialdom and its media toadies are lying as usual.
Let’s not forget that Ukraine was part of USSR and then Khrushchev gave that part of Soviet Union to Ukrainians , western part of Ukraine is hostile towards Russia 🇷🇺 historically they are admirers of Germany especially when German Nazi where in power, Ukrainian SS Galicien Division, guards in concentration camps, hunting Jews , Russians, Gypsies , murdering Polish soldiers and civilians and much much more and of course Ukrainian national saint and hero Stephan Bandera who was equal to SS Himmler and Heydrich in murdering, torturing, killing children and women, so people need to read history before making any judgements ☠️☠️
Hello Serge, I'm a great admirer and voracious consumer of your writings. Having read your entire series on the WW2 battles, one point stands out as perplexing. During WW2, German and Russian armies, and the allied armies too, could muster MILLIONS of men for battle on a front. For example, for operation Barbarossa the German force was over 3 million men. The invasion of Poland had 1.5m German troops vs 1.3m Polish troops. Compared to these numbers, and given that populations have increased since that time, it is strange that the Russian army today is only 1.5m men, in total. Although the present war is technically a SMO, given the area it needs to recover, one might have expected a few million troops. The puzzle is ... why are armies today smaller?
To put it simply: Troops amassed are vulnerable to artillery and especially rockets. Also drones will make even midsized agglomerations suspectible.
The standart tactic is to use artillery to destroy fortfications and then to clean up with small troops. They are using now even motorbikes and scooters to make smaller targets.
I understand that troops will be dispersed to avoid artillery / rockets / drones. But the total number of troops in battle is much lower than it used to be in the past. What if either side could muster an army of 2 million men - that would certainly have a strong effect, even if losses are higher. That Russia is not even aiming to prepare an army of more than 1.5m total, including the eastern and southern borders, is very puzzling.
To amass these vast amounts of men (and equip them and procure hardware and transport and living quarters, etc, etc, and don't forget training) would require for the country to formally declare war, martial law and "put the economy on war footing", like the Western pundits have been declaring for the past 2-3 years about Russia. Which would grind their non-war related economy to a halt. And then basically it would put them on an extended timer, win by X or your country is "destroyed" - with the lack of anything but war materiel, food and basic necessities. That's how USSR and the rest operated in 1941-45. With the exception of the rich and far away US, the European/USSR economies did nothing except war for five years. Which required Marshall plan and huge work to rebuild after the war was over (the literal ruins from the constant artillery barrages and bombings didn't help either).
Putin is very careful NOT to do that because of the popular opinion and not wanting to have economical "ruins" in his own country after the war is over. Contrary to the Western propaganda, he's not Stalin so he might not survive politically a full war. At least the current Russian political system wouldn't. Not to mention that this act might well spook the Europeans in doing something retarded like declaring war on Russia through NATO and it will have a negative effect on the opinion of the rest of the world, too. In essence, there are no benefits for the Russian side to go total annihilation war. Yet. But there are many risks. Ukraine, OTOH, might do a full mobilization soon. Which wouldn't help because there's no industry and hardware to support that move anyway, the meat assaults may actually become real, except from the Ukrainian side.
The world has changed. Oswald Spengler predicted it in Decline of the West. Militaries would shift from large conscription forces to small volunteer forces. Russia was under a Faustian psuedomorphesis, but is now abandoning the west and coming into its own, so it does have limited conscription.
Also, equipping huge armies requires vast production, and so far only Russia has transitioned to a partial war economy.
In WW2 the nations typically spent 40 to 45% of GDP on the military, and moved to centrally planned output, labour allocation and rationing. That is why they were all able to raise and maintain huge militaries.
>If anything, we have the very opposite problem of Shackleton - at least as far as our wartime information infrastructure goes. We are saturated in information, with daily updates tracking advances of a few dozen meters and never ending bombast about new game changing weapons (which seem to change very little), and bluster about “red lines”. This war seems to have an unyielding dynamic on the ground, and no matter how many grand pronouncements we hear that one side or the other is on the verge of collapse, the sprawling front continues to grind up bodies and congeal with bloody positional fighting.<
and yet its great data for the AI companies that are gorging on it, promising the Pentagon a future where AI will take care of everything.
according to rumors, Israel's brutal campaign in the Middle East has all been run by AI, with automated systems choosing targets.
Amazing that Israel can blow up women and children and, magically, rocket fire from Gaza goes from 8,000 rockets/week to 16 rockets/week. That's some coincidence...
I hope Kagan is right about that! What infuriates me is Zelensky's portray of the Ukraine as the victim. The Ukraine is like a neighbour who invites your worst enemy into his house in order to threaten you. This is hardly a country just minding its own business. What guarantees can the squirrel get that it can punch the bear on the nose and not get a response? The only real guarantee is for the squirrel not to do that - but Z. refuses to learn.
Ukrainian commoners are finding out the hard way what happens when Ukrainian elites let themselves get dogwalked into a war that the U.S. foreign policy establishment craved, but failed to prepare for.
Amen! The pathetic state of western defense industry is exhibit “A”. A war of attrition in which your adversary has a five-fold superiority in artillery and other long range fires indicates, with ninety-five percent confidence, that you are on the road to defeat.
Why should Zelenskii learn? The war has brought him and his cronies nothing but benefits.
Take away Russia and Ukraine would go from The Lighthouse Of Muh Democracy(R), to a corrupt, autocratic and backward nazi-infested shithole.
I doubt there are many left even among Western Kaganist true believers who think Ukraine is the former. I think it is rapidly dawning on even the low information, easily led cretins that it's more of the latter.
I doubt that anyone of influence and authority really buys the propaganda, but that is how Ukraine is marketed.
The same Kagan who is married to the war loving harridan, Victoria Nuland?
Neither of them aged well. Especially Vickie.
Yup
>The Ukraine is like a neighbour who invites your worst enemy into his house in order to threaten you.
That's still not a good comparison, because most of Ukraine is core historic Russian territory and most Ukrainian are ethnic Russians, so it's not even a neighbor, it's an invader, one who takes over much of your property and even abudcts some of your children, then raises them to hate you.
The proper analogy, in fact it is not even an analogy, it is exactly what is happening, is if we rolled back the tape of time to late 1941 with the Nazis occupying huge portions of Russian territory.
That is exactly what we have -- open Nazis in the form of the Bandera heirs in charge in Kiev, and covert Nazis in the form of NATO.
The big question is why the Kremlin is not reacting like it should to such a development (i.e. pulling out hte big guns and erasing the responsible individuals and countries off the face of the planet).
GM
your questions, worries are appreciated. Most commentators in their heart of hearts not only understand, but mostly agree, but....
But... emotion shows you the truth, mind shows you the most efficient way. US does not want nuclear war with Russia, what we call the red lines are not what Lavrov, or Putin says, but what Americans think might really provoke nuclear war.
Making Russian answer less rational, more populist, more emotional could help in deterring US aggressive moves, but would also significantly raise the level of risk of nuclear war.
Some kind of answer, against a lesser enemy, e.g. Britain could help, sinking Prince of Wales, making Gibraltar ammunition depots explode, making Storm shadow factory to explode, destroying Norwegian underwater oil installation...
but realistically it has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine. It is for public consumption like an Instagram post.
Real battlefield is Ukraine, and technology,
Russia that can make 2 nanometer chips?, or replicate or improve Elon Musk rockets and satellites.
West, US, Britain, zionist, really respect success, victories, power, and money, profit, success.
If Russia could find a gold mine that can produce 13 thousand tons of gold annually...
What's your prognosis for why they don't destroy London or England off the face of the planet, GM?
Also what do your wargames predict as a response from the Empire OTAN etc?
Here is the full quote. Kagan is still Kagan. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/01/trump-putin-ukraine-russia-war/681228/
"We will soon find out whether the American people share his indifference, because if there is not soon a large new infusion of aid from the United States, Ukraine will likely lose the war within the next 12 to 18 months. Ukraine will not lose in a nice, negotiated way, with vital territories sacrificed but an independent Ukraine kept alive, sovereign, and protected by Western security guarantees. It faces instead a complete defeat, a loss of sovereignty, and full Russian control."
Good analogy
A good big picture summary, and in line with my own thinking so naturally I like it...
We can absorb a lot of daily detail, but the wider view is more important.
My sense last year was that the UAF would "collapse" in the fall. Well that did not occur, but it has increasingly been unable to effectively resist and hold ground. I think the collapse will be like bankruptcy, very slowly at first then all at once. Once the prospect of defeat takes hold, I suspect the PBI in the UAF will find reasons not to fight. I've commented elsewhere that Mr T should cut and run on day 1 as this is a no-win situation for him, and he will get blamed for the "Biden" debacle anyway. But we will wait and see.
Let's hope for everyone's sake that President Trump walks away from the Zelensky regime. If he fails to do that promptly, then he will inevitably meet the same fate that President Nixon met in Vietnam -- the Democrats war will become Trump's war, and everything else he wants to achieve will be thwarted because of that.
Better would be to embrace Zelensky. Not his regime, just him. A very early trip to Ukraine. Trump tells Z that right now, Z and family and 3 people who can testify are going to pack up all the evidence of graft, corruption and kickbacks and fly to Mar a Lago where they will be kept safe. Or . . . Trump leaves announcing that he just made that deal.
With the evidence of graft and kickbacks he can eliminate Democrats in Congress and blackmail the Republicans until he can replace them in a primary. The Kiev regime falls, it's not Trump's fault, it's the corruption of these Congress critters looking for graft.
What a devious and nasty mind you have. Luv it!
>same fate that President Nixon met in Vietnam -- the Democrats war will become Trump's war
Because Eisenhower had absolutely nothing to do with that war?
Here we have one of the best historical examples of how little US foreign policy is affected by who is in the White House and people are still finding ways to make it partisan...
Looking back, that may well have been the aim all along.
Great stuff thanks.
"Of course, modern communications make it extremely unlikely that anybody could be cut fully out of the loop for years at a time, like Shackleton and his men."
I'm in UK - I beg to differ. The whole of western Europe is cut out the loop.
That is voluntary. The truth is out there but sheeple wilfully look towards the MSM instead.
I think differently. Sure some people willingly take the MSM line on Israel where the facts are clear but the media presents it as something too complex to take a side on.
On Ukraine there really is no information out there at all. Sure there are a dozen or more people on judging freedom speaking truths, but they don't get to appear on mainstream at all (which is why they resort to the excellen judging freedom).
I don't blame anyone for misunderstanding Ukraine or Syria, they have been systematically lied to.
It is not just the missing news and the fake news, it is all the unimportant news we get overloaded with.
When I worked in finance and it was important that clients and colleagues saw me as clever and well informed, I took the bait too. The Financial Times slogan at the time was No FT, No comment. So I felt that only by reading the Economist and a few articles and the FT would I be that smart. Of course if you read 80% of the Economist each week, it really gives you no time to challenge what you are reading excepts on things you have to have expertise on. For me at the time it was Telecoms and Eastern Europe, so I knew the Economist was consistently putting out the PR of Telcoes and western banks (one of which I worked for) and western governments rather than doing its own research. But I had to accept it for everything else.
Only when I stopped working full time (and stopped reading the economist) did I really start to get it. Having lived long in Poland meant that 2014 Ukraine reporting obviously stank (to me but not to many Poles).
You cannot judge others by your standards and abilities without failing. People are sheeple. The follow the leaders wo effectively through rhetoric and authority affect their emotions. That's why people go to wars. Even in these days. I personally don't get what people in Ukraine think they are fighting for. But that's the point. Neither do they, they follow their leaders as people have done through the ages. Same with the vax. It's been an eye opener for me.
The lesson I learned is, they are not like me. And we can't build a society that if we don't acknowledge that is how most people are. Sheeple.
90% I agree. 2 exceptions. Anyone about Israel - the media is 20% honest on Israel (especially the picture editors) and you'd have to be wilfully blind or stupid not to see what is really happening (and indeed most people can see, even if they don't feel obliged to do anything). And Ukrainians in Ukraine, ditto - pretty sure most Ukrainians know what is going on but they'd have to be incredibly brave to say anything.
I note two things - in pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London there is a significant Jewish presence in support. And there are almost no pro-Kiev protests which feature Ukrainians across Europe. [in modern media it is the things not reported which usually gives the game away].
>sheeple wilfully look towards the MSM instead
And the people still listening to Martyanov and co. are not sheeple?
An important detail of Kagan's latest article is that he calls the loss of Ukraine 'Trump's defeat'. The narrative is already shifting to paint the Ukraine defeat as a millstone around Trump's neck. Let's hope Trump's team is smart enough to wash their hands off Ukraine early and ensure the blame sits on Biden and his idiotic bloodthirsty foreign policy team.
Should be a pretty easy thing to do, he could bring back afghanistan too and claim the dems ruin everything (they do). Biden has sat on this war throughout his time in office, his admin has shipped more and more money and supplies into that whole while US domestic concerns have been ignored.
I mean just ask biden where carolina is on a map of ukraine.
In the past, degradation of the economy was also a factor in debellation. Yadda, yadda, yadda, as fires rage through the Los Angeles area of California, attention has been given to how resources were diverted to Ukraine. Bottom line, there will a steady decrease in appetite within the US government to continue to prop up the regime in Ukraine. And as Uncle Sam starts providing less, the governments of Europe will have a growing unease over telling the voters why they need to suffer so as to prop up a war effort that seems doomed to fail anyway. Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing breeds failure like failure. Confidence in the Ukrainian experiment will collapse from without and within, and the current government will likely soon have to flee for their lives, and seek refuge in other countries.
I’d LOVE to see the EU fight the die spectacularly on that hill.
Great, thoughtful, and fact-filled write up.
One comment- I'm not sure that the government in Ukraine was ever fighting to win. It had a clear opportunity for peace early in the war, and a meaningful faction was interested in that peace. But the intransigence of the Hard Right and the opposition to peace from the USA and UK put peace off the table. Zelensky is deeply unpopular and there have been no elections. What has occurred since then has been a stage-managed war fought for different audiences and constituencies. A few outstanding priorities of the Ukraine Government underlie, in my opinion, the poor decisions mentioned in the article. First, managing propaganda for Ukraine and Global audiences with news victories prioritized over field victories. This is to keep the aid and graft flowing, and to maintain as much optimism and domestic support as possible. Secondly, to give the US/UK/NATO bloc time to re-arrange political membership, arms transfer agreements, and re-organize force postures and logistics in Europe; to complete the vassal status of Europe and to break it completely away from Russia. And thirdly, to manage the political and military rivalries within Ukraine- deliberately destroying forces like the Ukrainian Navy that were outside the orbit of the ruling clique, liquidating brigades or other force structures that might prove more loyal to the Ukrainian nation than the current governing clique, and ensuring that other domestic political rivals were sidelined, excluded, or sent to their doom; while ensuring the military primacy of Hard Right factions and their support in the capital. Knowing that peace was blocked, that victory was impossible, and retaining political power was the ultimate goal, the decision of the Kiev regime make total logical sense. They will now blame their defeat on feckless global partners and Donald trump, and try to secure their to manage the even more lucrative rebuilding phase, where complete ownership of a rump state of Ukraine will fall to them and their henchmen.
Yep exactly. They're fighting in Ukraine for a variety of subgroup interests and lining of pockets, and are thus okay if Ukraine's overall well-being doesn't make the list of goals as seen by the US/NATO sponsors.
Well, no, Kiev has not been "fighting to win"; they'd rather get paid for fighting, however. The realistic path to "winning" has always been through baiting a scenario in which NATO could credibly mount its white horse and intervene to the enthusiastic nodding of the Rest of the World. When that scenario has proved hard to come by, the End is a matter of time and bean-counting cost.
Note that if NATO intervenes without the support of the Rest of the World, then Russia simply starts blowing up whole countries in the West and no one blames them for it. That result is unacceptable, the blame must point away from the West's elites.
It will be easier to read your
thoughts if you add some empty lines in proper places.
Zelensky is a jew.
A Russian predicted in the end of the 1900 that Israel would depopulate Ukraine to keep the option open to move there once they are thrown out of Israel.
That might be what is happening. Though if so, then they will fail as Russia won't let them take Ukraine after the depopulation finishes, I predict. I don't think the Russians hate the Ukrainians, like the Ukrainians hate Russians.
So the US is keen to get Sth Korean Artillery Weapons and particularly Boots on the ground in The Ukraine. 85% of Sth Koreans are against this hence the Nth Korean rhetoric and the Martial Law/Coup in Seoul last month by the US puppet Yoon.
The Empire is desperate to enlarge this bf Trump takes Office.
This was also the underlying cause behind the recent self-coup in Seoul.
Great update. Any specific predictions as to what the front line will look like in say march? Your prediction from the article in October was very interesting in comparison to this update. Russia made more progress on the Pokrovsk encirclement than was expected, as well as in V. Novsilka, but didn't close the Kurahove/Toretsk-Pokrovsk pockets as much as you predicted. Where do you think the important advances are likely to occur in early 2025?
Mostly depends on how much snow there is over the next 2-3 months.
The Spring Raputitsa will start in March and last for maybe 2 months. Deep mud puts a dampner on off road movement big time. So you might well see a slower change in any rate of advance at that time, albeit positional battles will continue to erode the UAF. If you were Stavka you might want to set a number of these up, ready to be fought in the mud season - over maybe towns or other pieces of ground that Ukraine will find it difficult to lose. Assuming the whole thing does not collapse by then.
>The Spring Raputitsa will start in March and last for maybe 2 months
Real winter in that part of the world is largely a thing of the past because of climate change. It used to be that everything was frozen from the Balkans and the Panonian plain to the north and east, now it only starts somewhere past Kursk.
It never really properly froze for a third winter of the war in a row. It still might, but the autumn Raputitsa never really left, which is one reason for the Russian slowdown in recent weeks.
Also, maneuver warfare is a thing of the past too, so it is debatable how much it even matters whether it is Raputitsa season or not.
In fact, the much bigger problem seems to have been the fact that it was very cloudy and foggy for many weeks, resulting in reconnaissance drones not being able to do their job, in turn making it impossible to do UMPK strikes at the same rate.
We've been hearing similar reports almost since the beginning of this war. So what is Russia waiting for?
For that matter, if Russia has a manpower and firepower advantage, I do not understand why Russia does not use the Bylorussian frontier to further stretch Ukraine.
For that matter, the entire analysis assumes that, once Ukraine starts really running low on warm live bodies this time, that NATO will not directly and openly intervene.
There is nothing for Ukraine to defend on the Bialorussian border, Russia could just charge wherever they wanted and Ukraine's formal forces would have to run. As the nazis found out and the French before that, over vast lands like this you have to defeat armies, not take land.
There would be no demilitarisation, not de-nazification, just a land grab and conflict with civilians - perfect for western PR of fake civilian killings (maybe even the odd real one) and real conflict with civilians who are far less pro-Russia than anyone still in Donbas.
Face to face fighting with a static militry enemy is precisely what Russia wants.
The whole point of fighting has been to take apart piece by piece all those defence lines built by Nato over 2015-21. That is why it has been slow - but also that is wh Ukraine committed a lot of people to defend those lines. Sure attacking prepared defences is not easy and it was a lot nicer for Russia when Ukraine briefly went on the offensive. But it is much better for civilians. 15k civilians dead (UN number), 1million Ukrainian military dead - the most Civilian Friendly war ever (better described as a policing operation or SMO)
Compare to civilian casualties in Gaza….
Not a good comparison, because in Gaza, civilian casualties are entirely intentional.
I agree
Exactly. 65:1 vs 1:50.
But compare UK in WW2 where my country wasn't even near the front line.
384k military, 70k civilian. 5.5:1
And going around those lines is somehow worse for civlians and military, because......?
It's like the Germans wasted years, taking the Maginot Line apart piece by piece.
Who are you fighting? the odd Ukrainian with a rifle?
What are you gaining? Just land - and more and more local enemies.
Russia does not want land - does not need land, it needs Ukraine to be a neutral country. Pushing Russia right up to the Polish border would be as the equivalent of allowing Nato up to the Russian boarder.
Germany wanted land. It had an army of 13 million. Russia doesn't have enough troops to hold Ukraine even now.
If I want to destroy an army, I'd surround it.
The Blitzkrieg isn't about land.
As an aside, the idea that Russia must exterminate Ukrainians because insurgency is another one of those copes. The one thing that every successful insurgency has in common is a young population. The median age in Yemen is 19. The median age in Ukraine is over 40, and that statistic from before the war.
1m Ukrainian military dead, 15k civilians - the SMO is the most civilian friedly war EVER. That is Russian policy - no surprise over half of Ukraine was Russian speaking.
In Gaza it is about 200k civiliand dead and 4000 Hamas.
65:1 vs 1: 50.
Sure Russia could do a lot better than Israel - it would still be massive amounts of civilians dead in comparison to current methods (and a lot more Buchas where Ukrainians kille Russian speaking civilians out of spite)
Gaza is nit a fair comparison and you know it. The Israeli military mist intentionally sets out to kill civilians.
>1m Ukrainian military dead, 15k civilians - the SMO is the most civilian friedly war EVER.
1) It is not 1M, it is 500K at most
2) Of that 500K, 400K are ethnic Russians
3) Of the physical destruction caused on Ukraine, practically everything is either on core historic Russian land or was built by the Soviets, i.e. Russia.
So we have the Kremlin killing ethnic Russians and destroying Russian infrastructure, with its own weapons. It's not even NATO doing it...
Think about the insanity of it
>Pushing Russia right up to the Polish border would be as the equivalent of allowing Nato up to the Russian boarder.
People are descending into more and more cartoonish idiocy trying to justify their continued belief in the Putin cargo cult.
The sole reason Putin finally started the war that it was an absolute must for him to start back in 2014, and in retrospective really should have been launched in 2005, is that the US was about to put missiles right at Moscow's doorsteps.
It wasn't about the Banderites taking over Ukraine (if it was about that, the war would have started during Yuschenko's term), because let's face it, Moscow elites desperately want to erase the USSR from the memory of Russians, as that memory threatens their current position, thus any reawakening of the WWII spirit is very dangerous, so it was much preferable for them to ignore what was happening in Ukraine all those years. And it wasn't about the protection of Russians in Ukraine either, because that is something that Moscow elites absolutely do not care about, and how could they given that they don't care much about the well-being of Russians in Russia either. In the exact same way US elites don't give a damn about the average American -- those are a lower category of human beings compared to the higher such category that is the oligarchic elite.
The only reason they were left with no option is the imminent prospect of missiles being put in Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkov.
Well, guess what happened in the third year of the war? Missiles were placed in Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkov, and the US started launching them into Russia.
Pushing to the Polish border will push the missiles back by a thousand kilometers. And that is what matters.
Of course, then you are still left with the similar problem in the Baltics and Finland, and given that Putin didn't find even that last drop of courage in him to fire back when the missiles started flying towards Russia proper, I don't see that problem being addressed any time soon either.
>For that matter, if Russia has a manpower and firepower advantage, I do not understand why Russia does not use the Bylorussian frontier to further stretch Ukraine.
The answer to this question is simple -- first, because Luskashenko is not an idiot.
With all restrictions on targeting dropped, if the Kremlin ever involves Belarus in the war in such a way, then missiles will be flying into Belarus immediately.
Lukashenko wants none of that, so it will not happen. He got his nukes, and if you notice from his statements, it is quite ambiguous who has the firing and targeting authority over them, i.e. it often sounds like they are not just situated there, but he has control over them, thus he is protected from direct aggression. And he wants none of the Kremlin's weakness and treachery after that. He nearly got burned once already in the beginning of the war.
Notice that they are not even flying sorties from Belarussian airspace. I would imagine some jets flying along the border with missiles ready to hit supplies coming into Ukraine from Poland would be quite helpful. But even that is not happening.
All of this is because what should have happened the moment the first HIMARS hit a Russian position (e.g. evaporation of the whole of Lockheed Martin, followed by a statement by Putin that "We are even now, and if you cross that line again, nukes will fly at cities, not just at Lockheed Martin factories and their execs' mansions") never happened, even when they started killing civilians in the Donbass for fun, even when they hit the beach in Sevastopol, even when they killed all those children in Belgorod.
Strength matters, displaying pathetic weakness and cowardice makes you a target. It's that simple.
P.S. The second answer is because Putin refuses to mobilize so Russia in fact does not have a manpower advantage. The Kursk fiasco revealed that for all to see. There was all this talk of an imminent Russian offensive into Sumy, then the Ukro-NATO-Nazis just walked into Kursk, and there was barely anyone to stop them. Units had to be scrambled from elsewhere along the front line, i.e. that army that had supposedly been assembled in Kursk to go into Sumy did not exist at all, and there weren't combat-ready reserves deeper in the rear either. That was the scariest aspect of that debacle. And also, naturally, the one that the Z-anons completely ignore.
You can go back a few months further back, to the Volchansk fiasco. The story went that the army group "North" had been assembled with 50,000 well trained soldiers to go into Kharkov and secure a buffer zone. So they went across the border in May 2024, got to the river, then were stopped at Volchansk and the grind began once again. Zero results ever since, seven months later. Volchansk doesn't exist, but there has been no further movement. Belgorod hasn't been protected, and all that changed was that NATO gave itself permission to begin strikes into official Russia. And the way whole operation went clearly indicated that there weren't 50,000 men ready to do serious things. Maybe there were 10,000, not more than that, and the AFU rather easily found the reserves to stop them.
Lukashchenko has no choice, because he if anything happens to Russia, he is surely next on the chopping block and no protestations about what he did or did not let Russia do will save him.
Empire has grabbed the tarbabby of Kiev, it is more convenient to watch it wrestle in shame than throw them both in the briar patch too soon.
Don't be silly. As far as the empire is concerned, things are going swimmingly.
This.
Ukraine is losing the war.
But so is Russia.
The empire is winning handily.
An excellent writeup, although use of the term "debellation" is simply different point of view expression of Suvorikin's "attrition" strategy.
I would also note that the references made to Oreshnik capabilities are very tenuous and almost certainly wrong. In particular, the complete lack of any substantial refutation of Putin's public claims via direct photographic evidence, is not a confidence builder given the poor state of Western reporting on anything involving Ukraine. The Western civilian OSINT attempts to analyze have similarly come up short, although they have revealed real Western manipulation of OSINT satellite data.
But ultimately, at this point there are enough references to metal-based explosives such that Postol's initial, good faith BDA analysis should be discounted. Nor did Postol express the stated view that Oreshnik was not very accurate - in fact, he said the literal oppsite: that the Oreshnik system demonstrated incredible accuracy.
The only divergence between Postol's BDA analysis and what Putin has publicly stated, multiple times, is the presence of new technology in the form of the speculated metal based explosive. Here is one of the OSINT civilian analyses for your reference: https://x.com/cheguwera/status/1873334757171339269
I would posit that - if this ESM conjecture is true to any degree, that Oreshnik is very much a game changing conventional weapon as it enables the suppression of large area targets like ports and airports, which otherwise are very difficult to make substantive damage to with any other conventional system excepting mass aerial bombardment.
@c1ue
Thanks for the link to Twatter:
https://x.com/cheguwera/status/1873334757171339269
Fairly competent in many particulars, as far as I can tell.
At the point writer goes on a speculative tangent about "Energetic Structural Materials" (ESM) it falters a bit. In particular, he thinks that adding fairly low density oxidizers to ESM impactors would be a beneficial thing, after first suggesting that a Chinese disclosed ESM alloy using substantial % by weight of aluminum would be beneficial (potassium chlorate?! PLEASE! along with fairly low density, KClO3 has a very low temperature of disassociation, the last thing wanted in a highly heated impactor!). So nope, assuming VOLUME is the chief constraint, every bit of mass you can shoehorn in is what is wanted, lowering impactor density in return for some chemical energy output is almost certainly a net loss.
And hell, if you absolutely MUST include an oxidizer, you would want to choose the densest and highest activation temperature ones possible. Say, lead tetroxide or bismuth trioxide.
The ESM reference is to a demonstrated material, as referenced in the Chinese paper.
I should also note that Mercouris has gotten a similar, but not identical, writeup on comparable explosive types - supposedly from someone involved in Oreshnik but not directly involved in the warhead. Mercouris has mentioned hexal in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-IX-2) but noted the above reference said the warhead was along the lines of what the Twitter link speculated about.
In neither case do the references have direct access to the actual material's specs - but again the point is that the line of inquiry seems valid in that the real point is that there definitely are materials from which a Mach10 to Mach12 impact is a multiplier.
I should also note that I have speculated before on whether there were materials for which massive impact would increase energetic/explosive output. The basic nuclear weapon principles are like this: the greater the compaction of the fissile material, the greater the output.
ESMs appear to fit in this category. They are not generating more energy from fission reactions, but compaction causes them both to get very hot and, presumably, attain a sufficient density to enable penetration despite being "gaseous". In this context - the density of the gas at room temperature is not as important as its properties when highly compressed by a Mach10 to Mach12 impact. I specifically reference stellar densities: stars are gaseous but are plasma and very dense.
Energetic materials and some related physics are at least tangentially related to my "day job" (and several life long avocations- I have always liked anything that goes bang).
So I've spent way too much time these last 3 weeks or so considering properties of materials & methods for optimizing kinetic impactor energy delivery, plus possibilities for various "additive effects".
Fair enough, although the plasma-like effect is more like a really hot, fast moving blowtorch as opposed to a bang per se or even a kinetic impact.
Anyway, I do think the Che Guevara speculations are in the right direction even if it is almost certain that any specifics on materials or methods are likely wrong.
@cute
Are you some flavor of engineer by chance?
There are a number of frequently repeated misconceptions about how things like shaped charge liners actually work- and SC liners are the only weaponry we've done a lot of work with in that velocity range, APFSD projectiles are getting close but not quite as fast as these.
Trust me, SC liners (and by corollary, most likely these kinetic impactors) aren't "plasma" or even liquid on impacting armor if engineered correctly. They are pretty much a solid ROD on impacting/penetrating armor if fired at optimum standoff distance for best penetration, however different parts of the rod formed after inverting the cone are also moving at different SPEEDS (front to back) so they come apart shortly after being formed & rapidly lose effectiveness in penetration.
Very hot, fast moving gas is still GAS, it won't be as dense as a solid and doesn't make as effective a penetrator. Maybe if you could wind it up to a good % of light speed and keep it coherent somehow? But we can't yet do such things.
There is no evidence that North Koreans are in Kursk. Attempts to pass off Asiatic Russian POWs (ethnic Tuvans, Buryat and Yakuts) as "captured North Koreans" have failed. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that there are ZERO North Korean troops on the frontlines of Kursk battlefield. Western officialdom and its media toadies are lying as usual.
Nigger
Of course, that is the only thing your broken brain can come up with.
Bro, don't mind him. I'm from Russia, and you're absolutely right.
Let’s not forget that Ukraine was part of USSR and then Khrushchev gave that part of Soviet Union to Ukrainians , western part of Ukraine is hostile towards Russia 🇷🇺 historically they are admirers of Germany especially when German Nazi where in power, Ukrainian SS Galicien Division, guards in concentration camps, hunting Jews , Russians, Gypsies , murdering Polish soldiers and civilians and much much more and of course Ukrainian national saint and hero Stephan Bandera who was equal to SS Himmler and Heydrich in murdering, torturing, killing children and women, so people need to read history before making any judgements ☠️☠️
No,western Ukraine was doing fine in USSR except for covert action by NATO in 1947 -1952. Then the Nazis from Canada,USA came back in 1990's
Your maps are the best! Also, totally agree with your predictions.
Hello Serge, I'm a great admirer and voracious consumer of your writings. Having read your entire series on the WW2 battles, one point stands out as perplexing. During WW2, German and Russian armies, and the allied armies too, could muster MILLIONS of men for battle on a front. For example, for operation Barbarossa the German force was over 3 million men. The invasion of Poland had 1.5m German troops vs 1.3m Polish troops. Compared to these numbers, and given that populations have increased since that time, it is strange that the Russian army today is only 1.5m men, in total. Although the present war is technically a SMO, given the area it needs to recover, one might have expected a few million troops. The puzzle is ... why are armies today smaller?
To put it simply: Troops amassed are vulnerable to artillery and especially rockets. Also drones will make even midsized agglomerations suspectible.
The standart tactic is to use artillery to destroy fortfications and then to clean up with small troops. They are using now even motorbikes and scooters to make smaller targets.
I understand that troops will be dispersed to avoid artillery / rockets / drones. But the total number of troops in battle is much lower than it used to be in the past. What if either side could muster an army of 2 million men - that would certainly have a strong effect, even if losses are higher. That Russia is not even aiming to prepare an army of more than 1.5m total, including the eastern and southern borders, is very puzzling.
To amass these vast amounts of men (and equip them and procure hardware and transport and living quarters, etc, etc, and don't forget training) would require for the country to formally declare war, martial law and "put the economy on war footing", like the Western pundits have been declaring for the past 2-3 years about Russia. Which would grind their non-war related economy to a halt. And then basically it would put them on an extended timer, win by X or your country is "destroyed" - with the lack of anything but war materiel, food and basic necessities. That's how USSR and the rest operated in 1941-45. With the exception of the rich and far away US, the European/USSR economies did nothing except war for five years. Which required Marshall plan and huge work to rebuild after the war was over (the literal ruins from the constant artillery barrages and bombings didn't help either).
Putin is very careful NOT to do that because of the popular opinion and not wanting to have economical "ruins" in his own country after the war is over. Contrary to the Western propaganda, he's not Stalin so he might not survive politically a full war. At least the current Russian political system wouldn't. Not to mention that this act might well spook the Europeans in doing something retarded like declaring war on Russia through NATO and it will have a negative effect on the opinion of the rest of the world, too. In essence, there are no benefits for the Russian side to go total annihilation war. Yet. But there are many risks. Ukraine, OTOH, might do a full mobilization soon. Which wouldn't help because there's no industry and hardware to support that move anyway, the meat assaults may actually become real, except from the Ukrainian side.
The world has changed. Oswald Spengler predicted it in Decline of the West. Militaries would shift from large conscription forces to small volunteer forces. Russia was under a Faustian psuedomorphesis, but is now abandoning the west and coming into its own, so it does have limited conscription.
Also, equipping huge armies requires vast production, and so far only Russia has transitioned to a partial war economy.
In WW2 the nations typically spent 40 to 45% of GDP on the military, and moved to centrally planned output, labour allocation and rationing. That is why they were all able to raise and maintain huge militaries.
>If anything, we have the very opposite problem of Shackleton - at least as far as our wartime information infrastructure goes. We are saturated in information, with daily updates tracking advances of a few dozen meters and never ending bombast about new game changing weapons (which seem to change very little), and bluster about “red lines”. This war seems to have an unyielding dynamic on the ground, and no matter how many grand pronouncements we hear that one side or the other is on the verge of collapse, the sprawling front continues to grind up bodies and congeal with bloody positional fighting.<
and yet its great data for the AI companies that are gorging on it, promising the Pentagon a future where AI will take care of everything.
according to rumors, Israel's brutal campaign in the Middle East has all been run by AI, with automated systems choosing targets.
The Future looks dystopian by the minute
Agreed, we're oversaturated by the "wartime information," but 98.5 % of it is crap.
"according to rumors, Israel's brutal campaign in the Middle East has all been run by AI, with automated systems choosing targets."
lmao no, the israelis just blew up whichever women and children they wanted and said "muh AI" after the fact
Amazing that Israel can blow up women and children and, magically, rocket fire from Gaza goes from 8,000 rockets/week to 16 rockets/week. That's some coincidence...
Maybe AI really has some insights, after all.
Well, Serge, few, if any of us are surprised that you were telling the truth and the entire establishment of the West was lying to us. Again.