Interesting times.
The armchair generals are seeking flaws in the RF/LPR/DPR strategies when there is none.
For the good little armchair general. Forever focused on the 2%. Will never see the big picture in their entire lives.
The RF strategy is obvious if you open your eyes.
One person has gone as far as using the possibility of US submarine-launched cruise missiles armed with a nuke warhead. Land-based ICBMs are far too easy to trace back to their origin. Just far too many eyes in the sky.
Will long and obsolete since 1989 NATO survive this proxy war? Will Europe grow a pair? Only the wind and the Russians know that answer.

Posted by: Bad Deal Motors On | Sep 7 2022 5:35 utc | 103

@Don Bacon | Sep 7 2022 2:39 utc | 99
Another hijacked account?

Posted by: aquadraht | Sep 7 2022 8:08 utc | 105

RE: Divergence Between Elites and Citizens
Various posts describe the fact that western elites are no longer responsive to the citizenry. This circumstance is explained by various models:
Lasch and The Revolt of the Elites
Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism
Fromm and Fear of Freedom
The merits of all of the above are open to debate. Lasch and Fromm posit psychoneurosis as the key cleavage. Wolin posits a structural cause.
It is suggested a more acute understanding may be derived from “financialization.”
Fundamental to the Western democratic process is the concept of “No taxation without representation.” In essence, the citizen purchases “services” from the state and the amount to be paid is calculated as “taxes.” Key state services are national defense (protection from external threat), legal services (protection of property rights), police services (protection from internal threat), social services (protection from various harms and vagaries of life).
There is a great quote from Winston Churchill on the importance of the citizen control of the state via control of the privy purse which I cannot immediately locate. The state can only spend what parliament approves and parliament is created by the will of the people as reflected in their voting. Western democracy has until recently hinged on citizen control of the privy purse but this means of control was eroded in the financial crisis of 2008 and has been in continual decay since that time.
In 2008 financiers, primarily US financiers, triggered a global economic melt down through the issue of new financial products particularly mortgage backed securities which were sold as tranches with the risk exposure of the investor based on the tranche purchased. Essentially this was a scheme for making exorbitant profit via reselling debt instruments. The underlying debt was intended to be secured by real property collateral but this requirement was fundamentally irrelevant. The financiers sold fancy products (CDOs) which no one fully understood, pocketed all the profit and socialized the totality of the losses.
This house of cards collapsed in 2008 and threatened to destroy the entire western financial system. This outcome could not be countenanced. Central bank intervention resulted in the immediate creation of new money which was then distributed to the financial sector whose conduct was responsible for the crisis. Ordinary citizens lost their homes; the financiers benefited from bail out funds and paid themselves handsome bonuses. Nobody went to jail for fraud. There was no investigation of what was in effect a massive ponzi scheme. There was no attempt to correct the circumstance that gave rise to the crisis.
“Democracies” now had a means to free themselves from electoral control of the privy purse. Money was created and distributed primarily to the wealthy; the benefits accrued to the 1% while the 99% were further impoverished, or rendered impotent (angry crowds of tens of thousands milling about in the streets).
We can observe something similar today. Western elites have created a crisis which creates a grave threat to the welfare of their domestic populations. The response does not involve addressing the roots of the crisis; the response involves the creation and distribution of money to mitigate the prohibitive cost of energy due to the sanctions imposed on RF for its response to the expansionism of Western elites (a contemporary Lebensraum).
From this perspective, the conflict in Ukraine is but one element in a much larger global conflict which concerns who ultimately holds control. This fight for control was clearly demonstrated in Brandon’s Independence Hall speech.
The conflict is, and remains, global in nature. There are many points of confrontation but the current location of kinetic conflict is within the Ukraine.
It is anticipated the bar will critique the above which is something of a pastiche of an explanatory thesis.
In summary we observe a clash between Western Elites and those they “govern.” Elite legitimisation is to be achieved by money printing and debt. Money printing and debt is intended to compensate for the lack of core economic inputs in the form of energy and similar critical raw materials which are primarily sourced from the global south. The peoples of the global south are expected to maintain adherence to a system in which their valuable raw materials are siphoned away to the West in return for increasingly worthless Western currency the value of which is undermined by an ever increasing level of unsupportable debt.
Since the Western Elites act independent of the interests of those they purport to represent, we can present the central issue as one between the existential interests of the global south, coupled with the existential interests of ordinary citizens of the west, contra the existential interests of a relatively small clique of Western Elite.
Given this framing of the issue the outcome is not in doubt. The key questions are: 1) how much further destruction is to be caused by the Western Elites before they acknowledge the impossibility of their situation? and 2) who will be the ultimate bagholders?

Posted by: Sushi | Sep 7 2022 9:10 utc | 107

According to reports, at 12 o’clock on the outskirts of Balakleya (Balakleya itself is under the control of the RF Forces), fighting is going on in Verbovka in the Volokhov Yar area (the enemy entered Volokhov Yar – Izyum road), as well as in the Semenovka area in the direction of Shevchenkovo ​​​​(on ​​the Chuguev-Kupyansk highway).
Since morning, the RF Aerospace Forces and artillery have been actively working. There are reports that the reserves transferred from the RF Armed Forces have already been deployed. The enemy is also actively working with artillery and MLRS, using its reserves, which were previously concentrated in the Chuguev area.
In general, there is a growing serious operational crisis. 11:57 a.m
.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has already officially confirmed the establishment of full control over the important Kodema settlement. The immediate clearing of the enemy fortifications in Kodem was carried out by the Wagner PMC assault groups.
11:58 a.m
.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported that due to the losses suffered, the enemy stopped large-scale offensive operations in the direction of Kherson. During the day 1 MiG-29 and 1 Su-25 were shot down there. The enemy also suffered losses in men and equipment. 4 tanks, 11 AFVs and more than 150 people were destroyed.
12:02 p.m

Posted by: Mo3 | Sep 7 2022 11:22 utc | 109

Peter AU 1 @ 98:
I agree that the British and the Americans are working more or less as equals, and that in some areas (particularly in generating propaganda) the British are leading the way and in others the Americans are. There may even be not that much distinction between the British and the Americans now, they may be working as one, and only their deluded publics believe otherwise.

Posted by: Jen | Sep 7 2022 11:33 utc | 111

Speculative observations:
“United Kingdom gives six underwater drones to Ukraine to hunt mines”
https://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php/naval-news/naval-news-archive/2022/august/12124-united-kingdom-gives-six-underwater-drones-to-ukraine-to-hunt-mines.html
“>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/REMUS_(AUV)
If the supplied drones are Remus 100/300/600, it looks like any of those could be fitted with an explosive charge and operated as a kind of cruise / suicide munition, especially against stationary / docked RF naval assets. They are designed to cruise around, locate mines and then contact a support vessel that’ll handle the mine clearance, so they have the navigation, range, depth, sensors and comms for that mission.
“HMS Prince of Wales to be dry-docked while HMS Queen Elizabeth takes on some of her tasking”
This is a rare event and a situation described by the First Sea Lord as “unprecedented” as few marine engineers can remember an instance of this happening.
“>https://www.navylookout.com/hms-prince-of-wales-to-be-dry-docked-while-hms-queen-elizabeth-takes-on-some-of-her-tasking/
Blithering incompetence is always an option but I will point out that this failure would have been easy to engineer and even easier / cheaper to simply fake. PWLS is now set to be dry docked in Rosyth so “… PWLS be out of action for some time …”.
In fact, if these is to be a UK-orchestrated escalation of UA attacks on RF naval assets, a reprise of the UK’s rumoured involvement in the Moskva sinking, PWLS will be safely out of the water, weapons and fuel offloaded. Even if hit, it would almost certainly not be destroyed, unlike a sinking, which would reduce it to scrap.

Posted by: anon2020 | Sep 8 2022 8:39 utc | 113