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Ukraine – Wrong Assumptions, Wrong Conclusions – And A Lot Of Dead Soldiers
As the war in Ukraine passes the half year mark lots of media produce their conclusions about the beginning of the war. But when looked at in detail these are most superficial write ups of what people assume Russia's plans at the start of the war were and how those assumed plans fit with the presumed reality.
The Washington Post has a long 'exclusive' piece headlined:
Battle for Kyiv: Ukrainian valor, Russian blunders combined to save the capital
It first describes the immediate start of the war and then states a false assumption:
The question everyone faced at that moment, [Ukrainian Interior Minister Denis] Monastyrsky said, was: “How far can the enemy go with that enormous fist?”
If the Russians could seize the seat of power in Ukraine, or at least cause the government to flee in panic, the defense of the country would quickly unravel. Moscow could install a puppet government.
That was the Kremlin’s plan.
I don't know why the authors think they know what the Kremlin's plan was. I am certain that the described one is not what Russia intended to strive for.
A piece in Newsweek makes similar assertions:
How Putin Botched the Ukraine War and Put Russia's Military Might at Risk
Ukrainian defenders have indeed been ferociously determined, while Russian troops have had to contend with bad battlefield leaders, inferior weapons and an unworkable supply chain. They've also been hobbled by Putin himself. He misread the world situation and personally ordered a disastrous invasion, looking to overthrow the government in Kyiv. He directed a botched effort to take Donbas, depleting the Russian armed forces in the process.
…
"Putin, like every other dictator we've known in the modern era, thinks he knows better, more than his own military, and more than any experts," one senior intelligence official who works on Russia (and requested anonymity to speak frankly) tells Newsweek.
…
The February invasion was designed to overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky and take over the entire country, and Russia deployed tens of thousands of troops in Belarus to Ukraine's north, threatening Kyiv.
Given Russia's overwhelming numerical superiority, Putin expected the government in Kyiv to fall in as little as 72 hours.
There is no evidence that any of those assertions are true.
At the beginning of the year Russia faced a problem. In the larger picture it had to prevent Ukraine's admission to NATO. Negotiations with the U.S. had failed to achieve that. In the immediate situation Russia also had to prevent an imminent Ukrainian attack on the Donbas republics.
There were several potential ways to achieve that each of which came with a different time lines and price point.
At the beginning of war Putin made one remark to the Ukrainian military command to give up, to make the necessary concessions, and to remove the civil government should it not agree with them. But during the first days of the war it became immediate clear that the Ukrainian military command did not want, or did not dare to do that. This military coup would have been the cheapest and fastest solution for both, Russia and Ukraine.
A second option was to press the Ukrainian government into agreeing to Russia conditions to end the war. To remove the Ukrainian army from the Donbas, to accept Crimea as part of Russia and to repudiate any NATO association plans.
The move of Russian forces to around Kiev was designed to achieve that. It nearly reached that aim during talks held at the end of March in Turkey. As soon as the Ukraine seemed to agree to the Kremlin's conditions, and to a potential summit, Russia ordered its troops to move back from the city.
On March 29 France24 summarized its daily report collection with this:
Ukraine proposed adopting neutral status and a 15-year consultation period on the future of Russian-occupied Crimea as long as a complete ceasefire with Russian forces is agreed, negotiators said at the conclusion of peace talks in Istanbul on Tuesday. Despite Russian vows to "radically" reduce military operations near Kyiv and Chernigiv, Western officials urged caution.
The Kremlin's hope for a fast end of the conflict was disappointed when, a few days later, Zelensky suddenly refuted all the concessions his negotiators in Istanbul had made.
This followed a phone call between the British prime minister Boris Johnson and Zelensky on April 2 and Johnson's visit to Kiev on April 9.
A report in the Ukrainian Pravda describe what happened (machine translation):
After the arrival of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Kyiv, a possible meeting between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin has become less likely.
…
[T]wo things happened, after which a member of the Ukrainian delegation, Mikhail Podolyak, had to openly admit that the meeting of the presidents was "out of time."
The first is the exposure of atrocities, rapes, murders, massacres, robbery, indiscriminate bombing, hundreds and thousands of other war crimes committed by Russian troops in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories…
The second obstacle to agreements with the Russians arrived in Kyiv on April 9."
Details: According to UP sources close to Zelensky, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who appeared in the capital almost without warning, brought two simple messages.
The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he needs to be squeezed, and not negotiated with him.
And secondly, if Ukraine is ready to sign any agreements on guarantees with him, then they are not.
This position of Johnson testified: the collective West, which back in February offered Zelensky to surrender and run away, now felt that Putin was actually not at all as omnipotent as he was imagined, and that right now there was a chance to squeeze him.
Three days after Johnson left for the UK, Putin went public and said talks with Ukraine "have reached an impasse."
The 'west', in form of Joe Biden's messenger Boris Johnson, told Zelensky – first in a phone call and then in person – that he would be on his own if he should sign a ceasefire agreement that made any concessions to Russia.
Russia's initiative to achieve fast concessions, and its motive to keep troops around Kiev, had failed because the 'west' did not agree to it. It wanted a long war to drag Russia down.
Zelensky accepted the 'western' pressure for a war 'down to the last Ukrainian' and ended the negotiations by making new demands that Russia could never accept.
Since then Russia removed its troops from the vicinity of the big cities Kiev, Chernihiv, Sumy and Karkiv. This to drag the Ukrainian troops away from the civilians in the cities into the countryside and to exposed them to the massive artillery strikes the Russians use along the frontlines.
There the Ukrainian troops get 'demilitarized' and 'denazified' just as Putin had ordered.
Anyone who says that Russia is 'too slow' and 'does not make progress' along the frontline misunderstands this situation. Russia is deliberately dragging the Ukrainian forces towards the rural frontline to destroy them there without creating massive civil casualties:
The Russian army deliberately slowed down its advance in the special military operation in Ukraine in order to reduce civilian casualties, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at a meeting of defense chiefs from Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states on Wednesday.
"We strictly comply with humanitarian law during the special operation. Attacks are carried out with high-precision weapons on the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ military infrastructure facilities, including command points, airfields, depots, fortified areas and defense industry sites. At the same time, every effort is being done to prevent civilian casualties. It certainly slows down the advance but we do it consciously," Shoigu pointed out.
If the following document is really original this approach seems to be quite successful.
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Up to July 1, according to the document, the losses of the Ukrainian military were:
- 76,640 dead
- 42,704 wounded or shell shocked
- 7,244 captured
- 2,816 missing
- 1,610 non-combat casualties (suicides?)
The total numbers look realistic to me. The number of dead is higher then my estimate but the number of wounded seems to be low in relation to the dead.
There may be several reasons for that. The evacuation of wounded soldiers from positions under artillery fire is extremely difficult and Ukraine's military medical service is not exactly up to date. There are no helicopter evacuations and no tracked medical transport vehicles that could take the wounded out.
A lot of wounded will thereby miss the 'golden hour' and simply die before they can be brought into effective medical care. We can also assume that the Ukrainian staff only counts the heavily wounded and that people who get patched up and send back to the front line are likely not included here.
July 1 was in the 17th week of the war and the total number of likely dead on the above list is 81,066. That makes for an average kill rate of 4.767 per week or 681 Ukrainian soldiers per day. As the first weeks of the war were not exceptionally bloody the number of current dead per day is likely higher.
Nine weeks have passed since the reference date of the above report. They have likely added another 42,000 dead to the list.
These numbers are consistent with the Russian military's daily 'clobber list' which reports of several hundreds Ukrainian casualties per day due to air strikes and well target artillery.
A recent New York Times piece about the costs of war also gives some numbers:
Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the top commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said Monday that about 9,000 Ukrainians had been killed at the front.
…
[T]his month, Pentagon officials estimated that 70,000 to 80,000 Russians had been killed or wounded; they put the number of deaths at 20,000.
Those numbers are simply not believable.
Here, from the same piece, is why:
Analysts estimate that Russia is firing around 10,000 artillery shells a day, down from a peak of as much as 20,000 during the campaign to take Luhansk, and that Ukraine is firing several thousand artillery rounds a month.
10 to 20 thousand rounds per day(!) means some 450,000 rounds per month fired from the Russian side. The Ukrainian counter fire is down to 'several thousand artillery rounds a month'. That is ratio of 100 to 1.
How the heck is that supposed to result in only 9,000 killed Ukrainians and 80,000 Russian casualties? It simply can't.
The deliberately slow advance Shoigu describes is achieving the war aim of 'demilitarizing' the Ukraine while Russia's army takes a minimum of casualties.
Most of the experienced younger officers, captains and majors and the senior sergeants that were the backbone of the Ukrainian army will by now be dead. Together with the high material losses and high troop casualties the Ukrainian army has taken this will make it less and less capable of any organized maneuver or resistance.
All that is left is Ukrainian cannon fodder which Russian artillery eats up with enormous ferocity.
It is sad that it has come to this.
Summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the progress of a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine (08242022)
As a result of the offensive actions of the Allied forces, the losses of the 68th Infantry-Jager, 66th Mechanized and 56th Motorized Infantry Brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine operating in the Donetsk direction amounted to more than 600. In addition, about 160 servicemen of the 66th Mechanized Brigade refused to take further part in further hostilities. The command of the operational-tactical group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “Donetsk” decided to withdraw these formations due to the loss of combat capability from their positions in the rear areas.
More than 50 percent of the personnel of the 20th Battalion of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were destroyed by the strikes of the operational-tactical aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces in the Artemovsk area. Due to the high losses, the soldiers of the battalion voluntarily left their positions and departed in an unknown direction.
In the area of the locality of Lozove, Kherson region, while trying to secretly cross the Ingulets River, the 18th battalion of the 35th Brigade of the AFU Marines was defeated. More than 80 nationalists and 6 cars were destroyed.
High-precision weapons of the Russian Aerospace Forces in the Konstantinovka area of the Donetsk People’s Republic hit the temporary deployment point of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. About 80 nationalists and 8 pieces of military equipment were destroyed.
During the day, seven control points were hit, including the 66th mechanized Brigade in the Novomikhailovka area, the 15th rocket Artillery Regiment in the Kurdyumovka area of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the 102nd Territorial Defense Brigade in the Gulyai-Pole area of the Zaporozhye region, as well as 47 artillery units in firing positions, manpower and military APU equipment in 212 districts.
Destroyed: five ammunition depots in the areas of Ilyinka, Krasnaya Gora of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Novoaleksandrovka of the Zaporozhye region, Shirokoye of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Snigirevka of the Mykolaiv region, as well as a Joint logistics point of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of the settlement of Orekhov of the Zaporozhye region.
As part of the counter-battery struggle, the following were hit: a rocket artillery battery of multiple launch rocket systems “Hurricane” in the Dzerzhinsk area of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a platoon of MLRS “Smerch” in the area of the settlement of Rogan, Kharkiv region.
In addition, four platoons of Grad multiple launch rocket systems were suppressed in the areas of the settlements of Seversk, Artemovskoye, Orlovka of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Barmashovo of the Mykolaiv region, as well as three platoons of D-30 howitzers in firing positions in the areas of the settlements of Soledar, Opytne and Antonovka of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Russian air defense means shot down seven Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in the areas of the settlements of Chernyanka, Belaya Krynitsa, Kherson region, Nikolskoye, Volnovakha and Trudovoye of the Donetsk People’s Republic during the day.
Also, two Ukrainian multiple rocket launches were intercepted near the village of Kamenka, Kharkiv region.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 268 aircraft, 148 helicopters, 1803 unmanned aerial vehicles, 369 anti-aircraft missile systems, 4382 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 819 multiple rocket launchers, 3339 field artillery and mortars, as well as 5034 units of special military vehicles have been destroyed.
Posted by: Summary | Aug 24 2022 18:17 utc | 6
Good explanation from the channel, Slavyangrad a few weeks back.
“Ukraine’s troops strength before the war was around 250,000 men, the National Guard around 60,000 and, border guard around 40,000. As well as troops directly under the supervision of the State security service of Ukraine roughly estimated at 30,000. All in all, around 400,000 men. The land force of the Ukrainian army has been repeatedly mentioned before so I will not write about it here again. So, 400,000 men against roughly 120,000 Russian troops and around 35,000 (at best) fighters from DNR and LNR, giving us 150,000+ troops committed to the SMO. The ratio in favour of defenders was around 1:2.66. Now, when we look at the facts presented, let us address them.
People complain about why Russia does not send an entire army. Well, it does not need to. The available number of troops is working perfectly fine.
Claim – “Operation is too slow“. I would answer here with a counter-question. SO WHAT? I must remind everyone about that famous Putin speech before the beginning of the operation. He emphasized two terms that, I think, many people do not remember or took for granted, not paying much attention to them. They are Denazification and Demilitarization. Denazification is a complex problem, which will require lots of work after the SMO is finished. The first step of it, is the neutralization of most extreme representatives of nationalists, either by physical elimination or by capturing. The most radical ones are those who even before openly calling themselves Nazis, were members of the bottom of society, so the natural desire to promote themselves somehow is explainable. The next step would come later. To persuade, re-educate and show where their cultural identity lies. All Ukraine’s self-called Ubermenchen. History doesn’t forgive mistakes and in the case of Ukraine’s Nazis, they will be treated according to historical tradition. Battlefield defeat will prove to those self-deluded individuals that their assessment of their capabilities and their “superiority” are just empty words. A much bigger challenge for Russia will be saving young generations of Ukrainians from the malign influence of their society and ruling elite. Why were their so-called elites spared from our wrath until now? We need them to sign the capitulation. No ceasefire, no peace treaty; but capitulation. We will get it in one way or the other.
Demilitarization is an unavoidable part of the first question “why Russia doesn’t send an entire army?” – Because I repeat, it does not need to. Translation of the term demilitarization is – be killed or be captured. The choice is up to you – Russia is using so-called “crawling” tactics, moving slowly, avoiding unnecessary casualties, while at the same time inflicting enormous casualties on Ukrainian troops. I will leave you to remind yourself how many waves of mobilization Ukraine has had so far. Now, mobilization is constant. They are throwing everything they have at the front lines. We then empty those lines quickly. So, they send again; the process is repeating itself non–stop. At the same time, we have managed to destroy approximately 60-70 percent of their military equipment, despite the help from the West. They do not have a rear, as such, anymore because they are painfully aware that we can hit them anytime, anywhere, at our leisure. This puts them under tremendous psychological pressure. We are practically almost begging them to face us in battle. Whenever they decide to do that, it finishes with a meat grinder for them, thus advancing the progress of SMO further. Our tactics have only one strategic goal to fulfill; to make their resistance useless or pointless. The people who see negatives all the time, the so-called “Doomers”, are proclaiming that the war is lost. That eternal shame and disgrace fall on our Motherland for the way we are running things in Ukraine.”
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/4819
Posted by: unimperator | Aug 24 2022 19:36 utc | 39
William Schryver weighs in……
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/08/19/russias-d..
“Unlike the Whore Western Media William Schryver Provides the Accurate Picture of Russia’s Destruction of the Western-trained Ukraine Military:
The “Demilitarization” of Ukraine has been precisely the Russian mentality in Ukraine. Their foremost objective, from the very beginning, as explicitly articulated by President Vladimir Putin in his historic speech of February 24, 2022, was to “demilitarize” Ukraine – to destroy its army.
When the war began, the most capable, experienced, well-armed, and well-positioned Ukrainian forces were NOT in Kiev, but in the Donbass and Mariupol. They had been positioning there for months, with the ultimate objective of retaking the Donbass and Crimea – a goal never far from the minds of Ukraine’s ideological and political leaders.
Indeed, they spoke of it openly and without qualification. They strongly believed the strength of their armed forces, after eight years of preparation, had reached a point where it was capable of actually achieving that objective.
Their benefactors in NATO encouraged them to believe this – for it was also NATO’s fondest dream to raise its banners over the naval base at Sevastopol, and thereby wield dominance over the entire Black Sea and the Bosporus.
Pursuant to this and many other geostrategic objectives – arresting Russian resurgence foremost among them – NATO had been providing arms to Ukraine for years, and those arms shipments were expanded and accelerated dramatically in late 2021.
Tens of thousands Ukrainian troops had been trained in the use of these NATO armaments. And, as was known to anybody paying even casual attention, thousands of western intelligence operatives, special forces, and mercenary contractors (predominantly American, British, and French – and lots of them) were embedded with front-line Ukrainian forces, where several have since been killed or captured, and a substantial contingent still remains.
Many of these western troops are there primarily to coordinate the reception, interpretation, and “actionable” use of highly prized and even more highly classified US/NATO “ISR” (Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance) data.
The Mother of All Proxy Armies
The army the US/NATO built in Ukraine, by the beginning of 2022, had swelled to become the largest and best-armed land force in Europe. By almost every metric, it was more potent than the combined armies of Germany, France, and Italy.
The Ukrainian military was purpose-built to serve the interests of the American Empire in its long-established goal to cripple Russia and prevent it from ever again being able to wield global influence; to effect its ultimate dismemberment and reduce it to a faint fragment of its former status and glory – to realize the geopolitical objective expressed in the popular cold-war-era board game RISK, which erased Russia from the world map.
The Russian decision to invade Ukraine in late February 2022 was motivated by and predicated upon all of these factors in aggregate, and was hastened by the widespread Ukrainian artillery strikes on the Donbass region that had commenced weeks previously.
To destroy this powerful “Mother of All Proxy Armies” which the United States and its NATO partners had methodically constructed on its borders was, logically and manifestly, Russia’s foremost objective.
There was no other.
The elimination of this substantial threat on their literal doorstep was understandably viewed by the Russians as an existential imperative.
Destroying the Mother of All Proxy Armies
And, in order to best achieve that objective, they effected a classic Russian stratagem to impede the possibility of the forces in northern Ukraine from reinforcing those in eastern and southern Ukraine once the fighting began.
THIS is why they conducted the elaborate “feint and fix” operation in and around Kiev.
And, all things considered, it worked perfectly.
That said, it is essential to understand that the greatest and most effective feints must be convincing. And, to be convincing, they very often risk being costly. The best feints are based on a cost/benefit analysis whose “benefit” often represents the foremost objective of a war.
In the case of the feint and fix operation in Kiev, there was a substantial cost – although it was not nearly as costly as western war propagandists have sought to portray it. This is because much of the feint consisted of demonstrations of intent, rather than concrete actions.
For example, after achieving air dominance in the first few days of the war, the Russians assembled a huge armored column, and casually drove it down the main highway from the north towards Kiev. Then they essentially just parked it there for many days, occasionally pretending to be heading in one direction or another, before eventually pulling back to their own borders, and sweeping around to join the forces preparing to launch the main offensive in the Donbass.
Everything it did north of Kiev was all for show. They didn’t break down; their troops didn’t run away; they didn’t run out of gas. It was just a big “feint-in-force”.
Even Belarus assisted in the theatrics by assembling troops and vehicles, moving them around aggressively just across the border from Ukraine, and making veiled threats to join the Russian assault on Kiev – which, of course, they never did, because no such assault was ever envisioned. And these aggressive Belarusian demonstrations ceased once the Russians concluded the feint operation and moved their forces to the southeast.
The result of this feint operation was that, over the course of several weeks, the Russians effectively “fixed” over 100,000 Ukrainian troops and their equipment in the vicinity of Kiev, took control of key transportation nodes and corridors between Kiev and the Donbass, and simultaneously conducted a major offensive to encircle and annihilate the 20,000-strong Ukrainian army group in Mariupol, a highly strategic port city on the coast of the Sea of Azov.
The forces in Mariupol included the notorious neo-Nazi “Azov Battalion”, whose arming and training had long been a US/NATO priority, and they were considered to be one of the most formidable components of the Ukrainian army.
The forces in Mariupol also included many dozens of NATO “advisors” (CIA, special forces, and so-called “contractors”). Also present were ~2500 foreign mercenaries, most of them NATO veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While potential reinforcements remained idle and immobile in and around Kiev, the powerful force in Mariupol was methodically surrounded and systematically annihilated in an operation I am confident will be studied in war colleges for generations as one of the most impressive prosecutions of urban warfare ever executed.
The Russians completely reversed the generally accepted casualty ratio between attacker and defender, and did so against an enemy shielded within massive and complex fortifications it had prepared for years inside the sprawling Azovstal steel plant.
While all of this was taking place, Russian forces and their allies from the Donetsk and Lugansk republics engaged in “shaping the battlefield” in the Donbass region in anticipation of the next and most important stage of the war.
Bear in mind, the Ukrainian forces in the Donbass had spent eight long years building an elaborate series of hardened fortifications in the region with the objective of resisting a Russian attack and inflicting severe damage upon them when they did.
Of course, the Russians knew all this, and they clearly planned out a course of action designed to overcome the advantages that accrued to the Ukrainians as a result of their fortifications and their reprehensible tactics of using civilians and their dwellings as shields.
As matters stand here in early July, it is now incontrovertible that the Russian operation in the Donbass has been an overwhelming victory. It is, in my estimation, the most impressive management of a quasi-urban battlefield in modern history. The original force, consisting of over 60,000 of the best-trained and best-equipped soldiers in the Ukrainian army, has been effectively destroyed. It has suffered catastrophic losses of its experienced, NATO-trained professional cadres. Its massive losses of personnel have been partially replenished by poorly trained territorial militia troops, but its even more massive losses of heavy weaponry cannot be replenished.
I described the Russian strategy and tactics in a previous post:
Here is a brief summation of the Russian tactical approach to the Battle of the Donbass:
Step #1: Advance reconnaissance units (often in force, with dozens or hundreds of drones overhead) to assess the situation; draw fire; relay to commanders raw video and geo-coordinates.
Step #2: With target-correcting drone swarms overhead, relaying real-time strike video, proceed to savage the fortifications with towed and mobile artillery, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (in gradations of strength and precision), and even horrific thermobaric munitions for particularly suitable targets.
Let smoke clear.
Repeat Step #1.
Still something moving there?
Repeat Step #2.
Repeat Step #1.
Dead bodies everywhere?
Step #3: Send in tanks and infantry to mop up.
Move to next series of fortifications.
And so on and so forth …
This is why Ukraine now suffers hundreds of battle deaths every single day. And why, for months, the Russians have suffered very few casualties – at least a 1 to 10 ratio – and quite likely much lower.
The artillery (with occasional air and precision missile strikes) is doing all the fighting.
The Russian objective was NEVER to “take Kiev”. I’ve heard all the arguments and rationalizations to the contrary. They are demonstrably fallacious. The foremost Russian objective was ALWAYS to destroy the Ukrainian army, the most potent groupings of which were positioned in the Donbass and in Mariupol. And they have done so COMPREHENSIVELY.
I am likewise persuaded that “demilitarization” will continue to be the Russian objective in Ukraine until the Ukrainians beg to surrender, accepting whatever terms the Russians propose.
Only then will the disposition of territory be decided once and for all, and if the map includes at all a toponym for a sovereign Ukraine, it will likely look somewhat like this:
We can only hope desperate #EmpireAtAllCosts fanatics in London and Washington don’t commit a fatal blunder in their futile attempts to retain hegemony in the face of a resurgent multipolar world.
At the beginning of the SMO, Ukraine had the largest and best equipped army in Europe with the exception of Russia & Belarus. It was larger than the combined French/German armies.
Today, the Ukrainian army is a shambles. That is 6 months to reduce the largest army in Western Europe to volksturm equipped with rifles.
NATO is now sending it’s reserve stocks of weapons to Ukraine so the Russians can destroy them. This expressly includes the USA.
You can’t make this stuff up!
INDY
Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Aug 24 2022 19:48 utc | 48
Thanks for the brain work b.
I’ve been following this blog for more years than I like to think of and commenting too. What interests me is politics, I know very little about military matters which is one reason I come here, where so many experts contribute.
Still, politics is what this is all about. NATO has been trying to trap Russia and that is what is continues to do- it is no accident that the NATO trolls who amuse us so much are constantly questioning Russia’s restraint. They almost demand that Russia commit more forces and advance more quickly.
But the Russians know that the real struggle here is not the one in which the poor bloody infantry die or become maimed for life, in the borderlands of the Black Sea but a wider contest in which the world learns that the Empire, which has left its bloody claw marks everywhere and whose long career of rape, plunder and massacre has been going on, without any let up, for centuries, can no longer get what it wants.
It is this simple but almost incredible fact which has dawned over the past few years, in Syria, most notably and, before that in Georgia.
And the leaders of every former colony or possession, protectorate or client state- for most of whom Rule #1 in politics was always ‘Do what the White Man in Washington says. Or prepare for a very bumpy ride’- have been watching with almost childlike awe as Moscow has demonstrated not just that the Empire is weak but that its weakness lies in its supposed strengths.
NATO is the perfect example of a coalition which has developed- what Frederick prayed for- ‘one neck’. A neck which Russia is slowly and publicly strangling.
One of the most interesting aspects of the past six months has been the precipitate haste with which every one of Europe’s neutrals, from Ireland and Sweden to Finland and Switzerland has rushed to make sure that its necks too are included in the strangling. Sad to say there is nothing mysterious about this: the power of the US Empire has long been directed at homogenising its allies- setting a Tony Blair at the head of every government it could. A Blair in Taiwan. Another Blair in Holland, Spain. And many of them are female, like Sturgeon in Scotland and the giggling Nordic gringophiles.
It is an old story-hubris. The Empire has forgotten that it holds power through threats and bribes and come to believe that it is admired, even loved. And its euroclones, from Stoltenberg to Boris to the new generation, many of whom were actually selected and trained in the the US. The cool and cuddly replacements for the Suhartos and Pinochets of yesteryear.
Hence its touching belief that the world will follow its ‘woke’ agenda, not to demonstrate its prostration and fealty but because if Boston and Biden are agreed it must be right. And up to date. And necessary for people who want to grow rich. And be like Hunter Biden.
The truth is that Washington has no idea what Russia, or China, or the growing number of states beginning to emulate their independence and sovereignty, applying for membership in Brics or the SCO, or, as in Mali, kicking out the neo-colonials in the knowledge that they are proofed against coups, terrorism and invasions… has no idea what is going to happen next.
Nor do I but I suspect that the final act of this production ‘The End of Empire’ will be set in lands closer to north America where the audience to the happy ending, in which the tyrant is humbled, will be those who have waited since the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine became evident, patient in the certainty that the bullying, stealing, disrespect could not last forever.
Nothing could be more appropriate for the Empire to be drowned in the Caribbean off the coast of Haiti.
In the meantime Russia knows that its main task is simply to survive the increasingly feeble blows that the Empire directs at it. And the hardest part is going to be doing this while holding its nose as NATO reaches deeper into the sewers for its tricks- saboteurs in Russia, assassins, shelling of power stations, blowing up hydro power dams. All will do damage but none will amount to more than pinpricks, while some will only disgust the world. And all will make clear what no amount of MSM propaganda can obscure that the governments of the Baltic countries, Poland and Ukraine are fascists of the worst kind, because unlike their predecessors of the thirties they cannot even claim to be patriotic or nationalistic, being merely limp tools in the hands of the lunatics running the Empire.
Posted by: bevin | Aug 24 2022 19:51 utc | 50
@Scotch Bingeington | Aug 24 2022 19:42 utc | 44
While pretzelattack already made some good points, commenting
A country as big and populous as Ukraine, unwaveringly supported by NATO, will never be “demilitarized” or “denazified”. Russia is permitting an endless stream of heavy weapons to reach Ukraine’s frontline units. Sure, those weapons get destroyed, preventing Ukraine from making any gains. But neither is Russia getting any closer to neutralizing Ukraine in the process. The weapons will keep coming. This can go on for 10 years. And yes, Russia has killed 10,000s of Ukrainian soldiers and she can keep doing so. But like I said, Ukraine being so big and populous, it has several 10,000 young men reaching military age each year.
A lot of misconceptions. Ukraine is big, sure, but populous?
When splitting off the USSR, Ukraine had 56 million inhabitants. By official numbers in April, 2020, there were 41 million left. And most probably, a considerable part thereof had not seen Ukraine for years, and did not intend to. And reality was even worse. As David Goldman wrote in January https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/ukraine-is-the-hollow-man-of-europe/
Ukraine is disappearing, for two reasons. It has one of the world’s lowest birth rates at just 1.23 children per female, and one of the world’s highest rates of out-migration. No other country has willed itself out of existence so decisively.
.. Ukrainians vote with their feet. Nine million have work abroad, according to the National Security and Defense Council of the Ukraine, and 3.2 million have full-time jobs in other countries. There are only 21 million Ukrainians between the ages of 20 and 55, which suggests that more than two-fifths of prime working-age Ukrainians earn their living elsewhere.
That was before the war. And mind that the 41 million include 3m Crimeans, and 6.4m Donbass habitants. Nowadays, something between 6 and 12m have left the country, over 4 million towards Russia. And since April 2020, when the 41m were posted, yearly emigration was 1.2m and rising. As to the “several 10,000 young men reaching military age each year” parents are already hiding their sons reaching age 18, sending them abroad, often under the pretext of studying, families sacrifice their savings for the bribes needed.
And many of the newborn will be born abroad, the youngsters reaching military age abroad, as mainly women with their children left, adult men are officially prohibited to leave (which makes it costly).
As to the flood of arms, the west widely lacks the resources for a production battle. See https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare . Just recently a military source conceded that the bloated weapon and ammo shipments Biden just promised may take up to 2-3 years to complete.
While I remain cautious, I do not see that Ukraine can sustain the war very long. The winter will become an additional challenge.
Posted by: aquadraht | Aug 24 2022 21:00 utc | 72
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