by English Outsider 

lifted from a comment

Such a lot of nonsense being talked at the moment.  Sorry, Gentlemen, (the Ladies, fortunately, are immune) but there’s any amount of it I’ve been reading here too.

I’d guess that a good half here are Ritter acolytes.  Lay waste Europe.  Bomb them to hell.  Don’t let’s pussyfoot around any more.

On Martyanov’s site I saw the video of Ritter delivering that message in Russia.   At the St Petersburg conference.   Has Ritter  lost his mind?  I wrote in to reply to Larch on the subject.  Many of “b’s” commenters will know Larch because he’s a fund of information on the ins and outs of the Ukrainian war since 2014.  Great bloke.

Larch – Ritter’s way off in that video clip. Karaganov plus. They’ll be listening to him at SPIEF and thinking, is that sort of rabid nonsense all Ritter has to offer us? It’s Curtis LeMay thinking, make the rubble bounce, no use at all when working out how to defuse a confrontation the Russians aren’t looking to extend.

Ritter’s Intel and arms control background, plus his ability to marshal a whole lot of information he has at his fingertips and that most of us don’t, make him a valuable analyst – when he’s not going off the deep end which he does far too often. And for all his undoubted analytical ability he doesn’t seem to grasp the underlying reality.

That is, that the Americans, for all Trump’s increasingly lame PR, are still key players in the conflict in Ukraine. Those drone and missile attacks into Russia would not be possible but for American ISR and planning assistance to go with it. Same for the sabotage and assassination missions being run into Russia. Much of the supply of arms is also still down to the US. Indirectly, again in spite of Trump’s PR, financial support too. The logistics are still being run from Wiesbaden and we’re fools if we think that the Americans, whose expertise in logistics is far superior to the European’s, aren’t key in that too.

So the full scale attack Ritter is calling for would be an attack on American assets too. What’s Ritter up to, going to a big conference in St Petersburg and calling for that?

All Ritter’s doing is showing the Russians that the Americans, whether it’s hawks like Blumenthal and Lindsey Graham or dissidents like Ritter, are in an advanced state of hysteria all round and need to be handled very carefully if they’re not to harm themselves and others. But I think the Russians know that already.

I should add that there are plenty of good people in Europe who have the gravest reservations about EU foreign policy. Believe it or not, that goes for Britain too. Responsible voices in England are calling for our UK foreign policy to be changed. Ian Proud, Commodore Jermy, the late Lord Skidelsky, the invaluable Mercouris, Dr Rob Campbell, many others.

Far as I can see they’re not making much headway but they’re all in their various ways working at getting a more accurate and rational view of the Ukrainian conflict through to the public here and abroad. Ritter can do that when he’s not losing it but when he does lose it as he does in that video, he discredits all those attempts and his own too.

And I’m going to guess that many of the commenters on “b’s” site bellowing “nuke everything” are just shooting a line.  They’re just thoroughly fed up with the mess their various countries have got themselves into and are expressing that dissatisfaction through hyperbole.

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b here:

I agree with the above. Ritter is talking nonsense (with Larry Johnson and Pepe Escobar not far behind).

The current ‘Ukraine is wining’ propaganda coming from all NATO channels seems to have influenced quite a few of these people. It is bullshit.

Professor Mearsheimer has studied at West Point and was an air-force officer for some ten years before becoming an academic expert in international relations. His assessments of military realities are sound and grounded in facts.

In his latest talk with Judge Napolitano just hours ago, he agrees with my view that the situation in Ukraine has not changed:

The Russians are winning on the battlefield. For sure. And not as quickly as I’m sure the Russian people and Russian leaders would like, but they are moving inexorably forward. And the Ukrainian military is in deep trouble.

They’re unable to raise large numbers of troops to replace those who are killed in battle. And furthermore, they have a huge problem with desertions. I would estimate that the Russians outnumber the Ukrainians in terms of in terms of combat forces on the front lines uh probably two to one.

The Russians have an abundance of equipment or weaponry to use against Ukraine because of their massive industrial base. And because the United States and a number of European countries are no longer able to provide as much weaponry to Ukraine as they have in the past, the Ukrainians are having real trouble uh matching the Russians in terms of weaponry available on the battlefield.

Yes, drones are helping uh the Ukrainians maintain the front lines, somewhat on the front lines, but only up to a limited extent. And I think as we move forward, what you’ll see is that the Russians will end up capturing all of the territory in those four Oblasts that they have formally annexed. […] So they’re in an excellent position and very importantly Ukraine is not in a position to ever join NATO which was the principal goal of Russia from the beginning of this campaign.