More AFU Downers from the Press Mill + Persian Gulf Updates
Another raft of MSM headlines have served to inure the gormless Western lumpen to the realities on the ground:
NYTimes brings us this stark highlight:
With Ukraine’s military facing mounting deaths and a stalemate on the battlefield, army recruiters have become increasingly aggressive in their efforts to replenish the ranks, in some cases pulling men off the streets and whisking them to recruiting centers using intimidation and even physical force.
In fact, this has been happening since the beginning, but it’s only now that MSM finally feels at liberty to reveal it. What next, they’ll start reporting on all the pole-tying saran-wrap incidents?
Times goes on to report that disabled people and even those meant to be exempt are all part of the recent corralling efforts, which sees AFU commissars steal their passports to keep them from running. The article highlights various intimidation methods and outright dead-of-night body-snatching:
These kinds of experiences have increased “massively in the last six months,” said Ms. Fefchak, the lawyer. At the beginning of the war, she said, there was no shortage of volunteer fighters. But in recent months, she has sometimes received 30 to 40 calls a day about men being forced into service. Other lawyers told of a notable increase in complaints.
This report is particularly salient given that Ukraine’s GUR head Kiril Budanov just released his own damning admission about the current state of recruitment in the country, during a panel called “2024: Challenges and Prospects”:
“We don’t have so many people willing to do anything. I’m not even talking about fighting, but this is current. There will be losses and this number must be maintained constantly,” added the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate. Now the effectiveness of forcibly mobilized Ukrainians is almost zero. This was stated by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate Budanov.
“Everyone who wanted to came in the first six months. Who is being called up now? Unfortunately, there will not be a good answer here. If you don’t find motivation for these people, then how many people are not forced or according to the law, then their efficiency will be almost zero. What in principle, this is what has been happening lately,” Budanov said.
He believes that financial benefits for those mobilized are no longer in first place. “Most of our people, although everyone shouts “I am Ukrainian, Ukraine is above all,” have not felt themselves to be citizens of Ukraine. They do not have the feeling that the enemy has captured the territory and this is my sacred duty to defend this country. Everyone is rooting for Ukraine , but everyone is running,” added the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate.
He candidly admits that not only have mobilization pools dried up, with everyone who actually wanted to be there already having signed up in the first 6 months of war; but further, and more damningly, that the effectiveness of soldiers who were forcibly mobilized is ‘near zero’.
Recall what I wrote previously about how Ukraine’s number one issue is not necessarily rounding up the bodies themselves, it’s getting trained and motivated bodies who are capable of carrying out assaults. AFU commanders on every line are complaining that their soldiers are literally incapable of assaulting. Defending is much easier because it doesn’t require the same level of physical fitness or coordination.
The Times article above talks about a 58 year old being pulled off the street. What kind of assault can 58 year olds conduct? And the few assault-worthy brigades Ukraine has left are being sacrificed by criminal political orders to fight for useless symbolic objectives.
Which brings us to the second article, again from NYTimes, about the AFU Marines’ horrific struggles on the Dnieper front. In the last report I covered a BBC article about this same issue, but this doozy from NYTimes is even more eye-openingly forthright:
Just a few choice highlights:
Soldiers and marines who have taken part in the river crossings described the offensive as brutalizing and futile, as waves of Ukrainian troops have been struck down on the river banks or in the water, even before they reach the other side.
“We were sitting in the water at night and we were shelled by everything,” the marine, Maksym, said. “My comrades were dying in front of my eyes.”
Fresh troops arriving on the east bank have to step on soldiers’ bodies that lie tangled in the churned mud, said Oleksiy, an experienced soldier who fought in Krynky in October and has since crossed multiple times to help evacuate the wounded.
The Marines, who spoke under anonymity, confirmed that any putative ‘success’ in Khrynky is being overstated by their command; in fact, they consider it a pointless suicide mission to a place that doesn’t even have any real ‘positions’ to speak of:
“There are no positions. There is no such thing as an observation post or position,” said Oleksiy. “It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It’s impossible to move equipment there.”
“It’s not even a fight for survival,” he added. “It’s a suicide mission.”
As validation to the article, just today a new post from an AFU-linked channel had this harrowing cry for help:
"I don't know if this will help or not anymore. But I will write it here once again! We are being exterminated by our own command. I am asking for help from everyone who can provide it. Knock on all doors, hold rallies and actions! Record a video! Do something. We are almost openly threatened with execution if we record videos ourselves and ask for help. Help us!
Krynkyi is a real hell. Mountains of corpses of our brothers. This will not end if everyone remains silent...
Reach out to the global community! It is useless to appeal to the country's authorities! They give the order for our extermination. They will not punish themselves.
I have found people who will be willing to translate your videos into English!
Record and send. It is necessary to reach the Hague International Court.
What is happening now is a crime against one's own people. Genocide of Ukrainians. I can't call it anything else.
👉Ukrainian Post
As I’ve stated before, the only reason Ukraine continues to persist in this area is due to sunk cost fallacy, as well as a refusal to destroy credibility by ending the operation. They’ve already built it up so grandly that to abandon it now would be an admission of defeat almost equal to losing one of the prized cities, like Bakhmut or Avdeevka. So they’re now forced to squander on and continue exterminating some of their best units just to “keep up appearances” and keep the world from witnessing another massive, demoralizing setback which could kill the last bit of Western support.
The only question is, why now? Are these press outlets angling to draw attention and coverage to these horrors for the purpose of increasing aid at such a critical time? That’s probably likely, though there may be more to it, like the gradual campaign of tarnishing Zelensky in order to effect his ouster later.
The truth is, I almost didn’t cover it because it all feels so same-y after a while. I prefer to do reports that expand our awareness or understanding of new issues rather than treading the same ground, with the same dreary tales telling us things we’ve known for a long time. However, it does make the important revelation that much of Russia’s contentions are slowly being proven right as time goes by.
Many of these reports merely repeat what the Russian side has been saying for months—which they were heavily criticized and lampooned for.
It was “Russian propaganda!” to dare contradict that the valiant Marines were slaughtering all the orcs in Khrynky, and advancing day by day. It was “Russian propaganda!” to call into question Ukraine’s supposedly bottomless resource pool, and dare assert that the side taking a mere “15,000 total casualties”—as per Zelensky and co.—would ever begin to “run out of men.”
But suddenly we have it from ever-tight-lipped Budanov himself that not only does the Ukrainian society now lack willing able-bodied men, but that the body-snatched ones are effectively useless in real combat.
Lastly, there’s just one thing I wanted to highlight from this new CNN piece:
On the topic of major ‘sobering’ admissions, CNN quotes a senior US defense official as stating that Ukraine may not just suffer “setbacks” but total defeat by summertime:
When they blow the whistle like that, you know things have gotten dire.
They even admit again that Russian forces now regularly fire 5-7 times more shells than Ukraine:
Ukrainian forces are already rationing ammunition, US and Ukrainian officials told CNN, as Russian forces fire back at a ratio of five to seven times greater than Ukrainian forces are able to. A senior Ukrainian military official told CNN that Ukrainian commanders believe the impact on their firepower has led to additional Ukrainian casualties.
They state that Ukraine would first run out of long range missiles like Storm Shadows, then air defense, then artillery, citing the Storm Shadows in particular as having single-handedly pushed the Russian fleet away from Crimea and won control of the entire Black Sea for their grain corridor.
I keep hearing this narrative being spouted on the Ukrainian side. First of all—the Black Sea fleet wasn’t wholly pushed back anywhere, only some of its ships relocated to Novorossiysk, many if not most are still in Sevastopol and the ‘wunderwaffen’ missiles have yet to reach them.
Secondly, as I’ve stated before, the grain corridor has nothing whatsoever to do with Russian ships being pushed anywhere as Russia has never claimed they would “shut down” the corridor. Russia merely withdrew participation in the grain deal, implicitly allowing Ukraine to move its grain but under the warning to international shippers that the lane’s security can no longer be guaranteed with Russian protection. If Russia wanted to stop any ship moving there it could easily do so with an instant strike from a variety of platforms.
Once again, here’s a current livemap of maritime traffic in the region:
The red circle is the Odessa region, the green circle is already Romanian territory. Note the dozens of ships actively trafficking in and out of Romania, yet not a single ship visible in the waters toward Odessa (those red squares aren’t ships but are actually danger warning signs, maybe mines or other obstructions). That’s their miraculously ‘liberated’ grain corridor?
This broader view captures the lacuna more strikingly:
Every region has bountiful ship traffic except one. Yet we’re supposed to believe this is the heroically “liberated” region, according to CNN and Zelensky.
Speaking of maritime warfare, as a last topic I wanted to make a few quick notes on the developing situation around the Arabian peninsula.
Firstly, it’s major news when 4/5 of the world’s largest bulk carriers have completely suspended shipping in the Red Sea after a series of successful strikes and takeovers by the Houthis:
Over a thousand miles from Gaza, a naval crisis is unfolding that could transform the war between Israel and Hamas into a global affair with implications for the world economy. Since December 15th four of the world’s five largest container-shipping companies, cma cgm, Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk and msc, have paused or suspended their services in the Red Sea, the route through which traffic from the Suez Canal must pass, as Iran-backed Houthi militants, armed with sophisticated weapons, escalate their attacks on global shipping flows.
The Economist describes how on December 15th the Houthis launched a very sophisticated ballistic missile strike on a ship called the Pallatium III, which they claim is the first ever use of an anti-ship ballistic missile.
Rybar’s map of the incident timeline:
At the same time, the USS Carney reportedly had to shoot down 14 drones aimed at it, while the British HMS Diamond downed another.
Now, NATO armadas are moving in and some believe are preparing to strike Yemen.
First of all, here’s the current positioning of Western assets:
The most noteworthy thing is that the USS Eisenhower carrier group scrammed away from Iran with tail tucked betwixt legs just as I thought it would. Recall I wrote a while back that US carrier groups seldom go past the Gulf of Oman during confrontations, as it begins to get within range of Iranian striking assets.
Amid the usual bluster, the Eisenhower arrived in the region, but has now turned around and whimpered away to try and bully the much smaller Yemen instead.
In fact the above map may be out of date by a few hours, but it’s still useful to see all the other ships. An updated one shows just the Eisenhower already right by Yemen’s coast:
Several commentators made note of the fact that the US needs to make some token ‘show of force’ in the region, and Yemen is unfortunately the easiest “punching bag” the US can get away with bullying. So it’s now looking more and more likely that the US and allies may launch some type of symbolic attacks on Yemen. However, they will have little effect because a country as decentralized and dispersed in its force structure as Yemen is not going to be easy to ‘cripple’ in any meaningful way by air strikes alone.
In reality, given that US’s tough-guy grandstanding against Iran didn’t work, and after more than a month now of circling around the region, desperately looking for some way to look useful or “in control” to preserve the image of imperial hegemon, these strikes could offer an urgently needed face-saving out to ‘remind the world’ of US’s putative ‘military dominance.’
Reports claim that “Operation Prosperity Guardian” is set to be launched by US and partners to clear the Red Sea:
Austin, who will be visiting the region early next week with Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, will announce Operation Prosperity Guardian, which will be similar to the existing Task Force 153, the official told us. That's an international effort focusing "on international maritime security and capacity building efforts in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden."
However, it’s uncertain as of yet what this will entail exactly—whether any strikes or simply patrolling the sea to deter Houthi attacks.
But ultimately, the destabilizing of every region under US proxy means only one thing, which I emphasized with these telling quotes on X:
"It's a telling day when one of the world's largest container companies effectively says the Red Sea isn't safe for commercial shipping despite the presence of TWO American carrier groups" +
"This is genuinely one of the prime signs of a collapsing imperial order; the trade routes aren't safe anymore."
In fact, there’s a new initiative to reroute the Red Sea corridor through KSA by a land route:
This naval expert also gives some important context. To summarize:
The US navy no longer has any warship resupply tenders and each warship’s air defense missiles must be restocked only in calm waters and in port, which makes resupply very time consuming and means that shooting down a bunch of cheap drones and rockets is not sustainable.
Lastly, the US navy has been undergoing some major structural, recruitment, and cultural problems. I’ve written before about the mass suicides and other deeply-ingrained issues. But one of the most detrimental are the recruitment woes being suffered by all branches.
The US now has the smallest active-duty military since WW2, as shown below:
This week Ashish Vazirani, the Pentagon’s acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, told the House Armed Services Committee that the individual services missed their recruitment goals in 2023 by a combined 41,000 personnel.
That means, after its recent Putin-announced boost, Russia now has slightly more total active duty troops than the US. This is mindblowing, as up until recently, US active duty numbers dwarfed that of Russia with nearly 1.4M active versus ~800k. Now it’s 1.2M and change for the US and over 1.3M for Russia, with a soon-to-be reached goal of 1.5M. What a shocking reversal.
And this is everywhere in the West; here’s yesterday’s article on the UK armed forces:
Funnily enough, in the first article the US DOD blames the issues on Gen Z’s lack of trust in “institutions”—gee, I wonder why!
Military recruiters say Generation Z - those born between 1997 and 2012 generally have a 'low trust in institutions' and have 'decreasingly followed traditional life and career paths.'
The US Army alone lost nearly 10% of its forces in just the past 3 years:
The defense says the Army will have 445,000 active-duty soldiers, down more than 40,000 - 8.4 percent - over the last three years.
The Marines are down 5%.
But this problem comes most strikingly into relief in the ongoing crisis, because Forbes now reports that:
“In the face of a massive shortage of Navy sailors, America’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has downsized, cutting the crew aboard by hundreds of sailors.”
This represents a shocking deterioration of America’s armed forces—they’re literally unable to find crews for their carrier groups, and are forced to operate them at bottom limits:
The cuts appear to be deep and dramatic. Over the past six months to a year, some 500 to 600 sailors have left the USS Ford and not been replaced. In fact, the USS Ford has shed so many crew members that the ship’s company (core crew members that operate the vessel) is now below the Ford-class Carrier Program’s original Acquisition Program Baseline objective of 2,391 billets—a goal set back in 2004 that many observers considered unrealistic.
This is just the reductions in one year’s time. The problems are getting utterly endemic, and they stem from America’s cultural and societal ills, which means they aren’t going to improve any time soon—in fact they will be getting much worse.
The fact is the US and all NATO countries’ militaries are falling apart, plagued by massively deep problems. There are endless recent stories about the cuts being forced onto the US armed forces:
And as usual, the US MIC commentariat’s solution to these problems is always “just throw some money at it”:
Sure, you can “afford it” because you print worthless paper that means nothing when you lack an industrial base to actually manufacture key systems. Recall the images of tired and aging workers in the dilapidated Scranton factory. MacGregor accurately defined the problem:
It’s truly beginning to feel like the entire US is in a downward spiral, particularly after the events of this week:
The country is turning into an outright circus, and I don’t mean that in a partisan fashion as the above, merely illustrative, Tweet suggests. Both sides are equally sick, and the festering rot is deep. There is every hallmark of a calamitously crumbling empire.
On a related note, let me clarify something pertaining to the broad topic of troop numbers.
In the earlier video, amongst his many admissions, Budanov again claimed the AFU’s size is currently 1.1M total troops. I recently wrote a lot on that topic, and what the troop dispositions look like on the frontline.
The important thing to note which I left out in previous comments is that in military parlance there’s a concept known as ‘tooth to tail’ ratios, which describes how many combat (tooth) units there are in relation to the logistics (tail) units needed to support them.
It’s common for militaries to have only somewhere around 10-30% of their forces as the ‘tooth’ portion. Here’s the U.S. percentage through different wars from this good writeup on it:
It’s said that as militaries become more technologically advanced, their “tail” grows disproportionately in size because you need much more maintenance and other types of logistics to support your fancy next generation hardware. You can see that by the 2005 era, the U.S. army had a mere 11% combat versus support personnel, which is likely the lowest in the world as most countries are hovering somewhere around 30% for direct combat units vs. 70% noncombat support roles.
This also ties into why it’s being called extremely ‘dangerous’ that the US navy is experiencing such personnel shortages. They have very precise calculations for these sort of things which show that when a highly sophisticated piece of equipment like an aircraft carrier is undermanned, it has immediate long lasting and detrimental effects on everything, from its maintenance to its lifespan. I.e. an understaffed ship will experience a much shorter life span as it will incur far greater mechanical and other problems due to the inability of the small crew to rigorously maintain everything necessary.
But in regard to the Ukraine war, it explains why we see such farflung numbers like over a million active troops for each side, yet potentially only 200-300k fighting on the front, and even a portion of those being noncombat roles. Let’s say the relatively less sophisticated AFU has a 35% tooth to tail ratio for argument’s sake, that means we could expect 1.1M x .35 = only 385,000 of them to be direct combat roles. Then out of that portion, half need to be on rotation, in reserves, etc., which means the portion actually taking part in active hostilities at any given time could be as little as 150-250k, which is roughly what we’re seeing.
But this also explains why most American-made weapons systems like the Abrams tanks are said to be highly inappropriate for the AFU, as they’re built with the US’s own unique tooth-to-tail in mind, and few countries have the same support role pools. That being said, we also have to take into account the fact that most of neighboring NATO can actually be counted as a “tail” for the AFU, since they effectively provide direct support/supply infrastructure and manpower for transport, repair, etc. It’s just not quite an ‘efficient’ tail.
A couple small sundry items:
One of the most definitive pieces of proof that ORYX’s infamous accounting of Russian losses is totally bogus. DW news agency interviewed Ukrainian Colonel Oleksandr Saruba who stated that the AFU has captured ~800 total pieces of Russian equipment:
Meanwhile, Oryx’s list cites nearly 3000 allegedly captured:
Quite a difference, huh?
Furthermore, the Colonel specifically states that they have 300+ captured Russian tanks:
Meanwhile Oryx’s fraudulent list claims nearly ~550 captured tanks:
One would think the actual AFU bigwig knows the real numbers better than Oryx’s team of Twitter midwits. Given the previous audits which showed the high inaccuracy of Oryx’s list, I think we can safely conclude there are massive markup percentages that grossly inflate Russian ‘losses’. But then anyone with a brain has already long known that.
Next:
Another clear shot of Russian glide-bombs being released from extreme altitudes for max range:
Lastly:
Ukrainian Rada deputy Alexandra Ustinova confirmed in an on-air telethon that not only is Ukraine abandoning offensive action in the winter and switching to full defensive mode, but even admitted that no matter whether aid will be allocated or not, the entire world simply lacks the productive capacities to supply the needed artillery shells to Ukraine:
Like Macgregor and many others have been saying: “You can print cash, but ya can’t print shells, baby.”
I even asked an AI to build us a swanky plaque of it, so no one forgets. Which do you prefer? Feel free to steal it and use it.
Your support is invaluable. If you enjoyed the read, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to a monthly/yearly pledge to support my work, so that I may continue providing you with detailed, incisive reports like this one.
Alternatively, you can tip here: Tip Jar
The vax mandates further weakened the US military. No one would fight for an incompetent racist regime. Start keeping receipts on all of the warmongering substacks - Alexander Vindman, Adam kinzinger, Tim mak, Philips O’Brien, mick Ryan. They need to be thoroughly embarassed and discredited.
Many thanks Simplicius!
'Another raft of MSM headlines have served to inure the gormless Western lumpen to the realities on the ground:'
Just had to say it, that opening statement alone serves to remind what an incredibly rich language English is, in the hands of a true scholar and scribe of course. Just brilliant! Now, on to the rest of the analysis.