Paid Subscriber Weekly Mailbag Answers - 5/21/23 - [Part 1]
Well, folks, as this channel grows, there’s getting to be more and more of you, so I will have to try and keep my answers a bit shorter than usual because the last mailbag had something like 15 questions and came in at a gargantuan ~14,000 words, almost novella length. And this one appears to have 30-40 questions. So I’ll be releasing this in two parts, and will have to make some minor adjustments in the future to keep the size manageable, such as one question per person, etc.
This will be Part 1, and I’ll release the second part with the remainder of the questions tomorrow.
Without further ado, let’s dig in:
1
Have heard that the Depleted Uranium explosion's fallout cloud blew over to Poland. Talk about a miss-direction oops! Anyways, what do you know, and as always, truly marvel at your depth of knowledge & quality of work. Cheers!
You may have addressed this but a definitive / informed view on the potential impact of depleted uranium rounds being blown up by the Russian strike on a storage depot would be good.
I have seen comments that are all over the place with respect to whether this will have generated radiation, plus long term risks to crops, public health and so forth. The Russians are obviously claiming that it will have done, it seems. It suits their vilification of the UK for supplying the things! The western side has on the other hand every incentive to play these risks down. But I am not sure what the truth is. Realise that this is likely a super tricky topic to address too, with unclear science.
Thanks. Great blog. You very much deserve the increase in paid subscribers.
DU: Was there really a increase in radiation from the Khimelnitsky strike? Or was it Maskirovka? (A short Yes/No will suffice)
There were several questions about the radiation situation, so I’ll roll them into one.
And as one of you said, it is a very tricky and ‘controversial’ topic to the extent that the science is “said” to be not settled insofar as whether depleted uranium is harmful or not.
But to start at the beginning, there have been a rash of reports that do point to a radiation release. There’s this aforementioned Sputnik article: https://sputnikglobe.com/20230519/ukraines-depleted-uranium-blast-europe-on-brink-of-environmental-disaster-1110462939.html
And this one:
https://bulgaria.postsen.com/world/amp/164840
Which claims that:
New alarm bells are ringing in Moldova. There, residents of the northeastern part of the country began to complain of headaches, dizziness and deterioration of the general condition.
The Bulgaria article goes into a lot of detail of what exactly was detected and where, if you’re interested. It also mentions a weather map that was published, which was likely this one:
The middle of the map shows Ternopil and the direction of the wind heading towards Poland. The article mentions that the “Polish University named after Maria Skladowska-Curie published data from environmental monitoring: on May 15, the sensors registered a sharp jump in the level of bismuth pollution – 6-7 times.”
This is the chart seen below:
The article purports the following about Bismuth, which was detected:
Bismuth, the increase in concentration of which was recorded in Lublin, Poland, is a half-life product of depleted uranium. For a long time it was considered non-radioactive, but only recently – in 2003 – scientists detected its alpha decay, albeit extremely slowly. Its half-life is (1.9 ± 0.2)⋅1019 years. This is more than the age of the universe by 9 orders of magnitude. That’s a billion times. In other words, bismuth-contaminated land will never clean itself. You will need to at least remove the top layer of soil.
And yes, as one of your questions mentioned, the main danger to Ukraine, which makes it even much more dangerous than the DU poisoning in Iraq, is that Ukraine is filled with fertile soil that is used by people to grow crops, one of the ‘bread baskets’ of the world. Iraq was mostly desert, any radioactive contamination that seeped into the ground there would be left inert and untouched. But in Ukraine, many generations will be tilling that contamination from their soil into their crops and food.
And as I understand it, the main contamination of DU is not actually the radioactive properties, which are minimal alpha decay which can’t penetrate skin, compared to the heavy metal poisoning that seeps into the ground, similar to lead and mercury, poisoning anyone who ingests it. However, that’s in reference to DU that might be just sitting in the ground. DU that has been deflagrated, vaporized, and aerosolized into the atmosphere likely poses much more radioactive risks from these new particles like Bismuth and such which they mention above.
For instance from the Sputnik article:
What you need to know is that Uranium 238, when it decays with its alpha emission, turns into Thorium-234 and Protoactinium-234m which then turns into Uranium 234. Thorium 234 is a beta and gamma emitter delivering 6% of its decay energy as a gamma ray. Thus, large clouds of DU particulate aerosol will be detectable by gamma detectors.
It’s difficult to 100% verify the below, but it’s claimed to be a release from the Ukrainian ministry of health, urgently warning people about radiation contamination:
Similarly, these are impossible to verify but several photos were published which claimed to be showing people in hazmat suits checking cars at the Polish-Ukrainian border after the incident:
💥💥💥Poles near Warsaw carry out a CBRN countermeasures exercise
And the above quote is referring to the second photo on the right.
Others have noted strange anomalies, for instance that the main radiation monitoring map of Europe suddenly went “offline” and now won’t load or show the actual results. It stays in perpetual “loading mode”: https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Simple.aspx
They claim that this happened only after the ‘incident’. It’s as if someone is trying to cover up the increase of European radiation levels, but you can check it for yourself, as of this writing it’s still out.
There were other reports claiming that residents in Moldova began to massively complain of dizziness, disorientation, etc.:
Today it became known that the radiation surge that occurred in Ukraine reached Moldova.
Residents of the northeastern part of the country massively complain of headaches, dizziness and deterioration in general health.
Fires in Ukrainian warehouses, where British radioactive munitions were allegedly stored, were extinguished by robots, not people. The level of radiation jumped sharply for a while, the movement of trains was stopped.
At the same time, the Kiev regime continues to deny the release of radiation in the Khmelnytsky region.
In the city of Khmelnitsky itself, ‘spiritual healer’ ads have even gone up promising to cleanse people’s apartments of radiation:
But of course, the most important and ominous warning came from Russia’s Nicolai Patrushev, one of Putin’s top lieutenants, ex-head of FSB:
“The destruction of Ukrainian shells with depleted uranium led to the fact that the radioactive cloud headed towards Western Europe,” Patrushev said RIA Novosti. He added that an increase in the level of radiation is already being recorded in Poland. The United States is also working on the creation of biological and chemical weapons and using them on Ukrainian territory.
This means that the radioactive cloud has state level confirmation from one of the top figures in Russia. So while Ukraine still claims the entire incident as fake news, Russian leadership disagrees.
In the end it’s difficult to know with absolute certainty, but it’s definitely plausible given the fact that we do know the UK was shipping DU rounds as per their own confirmation. And an allotment of rounds would have to be enough for the ~32 Challengers they claimed to have provided, which likely should be in the thousands at the least. What’s interesting is that in one of the closeup shots of the Khmelnitsky strike, I saw what looked to me like molten metal pouring down from the mushroom cloud which formed. It’s probably not the DU, but it gave me a really creeping sense that it might’ve been.
And to answer the question, as I said the heavy metal poisoning in the soil is the biggest issue of all. Considering that Ukraine is one large breadbasket, there’s potential for big heavy metal contamination which causes all sorts of thyroid conditions in humans. Unfortunately Britain will likely send much more of the ammo, as it’s probably not particularly scarce.
2
1) Kinzhal: Do we have a tally of when Kinzhals were used since the start of the SMO?
There was the Lviv hit early on, the Patriot. Not sure if the one with Klitchko pic (that was funny 😄 ) was also a Kinzhal or they were just completely fibbing.
As much as I like to see NATO freak out I think no matter what Kinzhals should be used sparingly. The Lviv was a warning and the Patriot was a demonstration/prep. But Kinzhal is still a strategic advantage and we know that the West is not sending their best weapons, so Russia should keep as much of their capability secret.
The Kinzhal page on wiki is the closest I’ve seen that appears to cover each or most of the launches. And just going by memory it appears accurate, since there hasn’t been that many and each time the missile is alleged to be used is fairly prominent and memorable.
There were two in March, 2022, then a couple more in May. Then nothing until January of this year, 2023. Then the March attack which is the infamously claimed “six Kinzhals” used at once, including the now mythic ‘NATO bunker’ said to be targeted.
And after that, just the ones this month of May, which includes the claimed Ukrainian shoot down of one that Klitschko showed off, and the alleged strike days ago which hit the Patriot. No one knows exactly how many were fired for sure, in any of these.
What we know is that Shoigu has confirmed that Russia fires about 1/3 of the Kinzhals that Ukraine claimed to have shot down, or something to that effect. So for instance, that could mean on the incident where UA claimed 6 Kinzhals were used, instead only 2 actually were.
The total above would put Kinzhal usage at somewhere around 12-15 total fired, give or take.
Yesterday, a new report I had planned to include in a future Sitrep came out from Ukrainian intelligence sources, claiming to know the exact number of Russia’s missile production.
They believe that Russia currently produces 67 total missiles per month, which includes only 2 Kinzhals, 25 Kalibrs, 35 Kh-101s, 5 Iskanders, etc. It’s an interesting perspective, though I think the production is a decent amount higher than that. For instance, it was reported by Russian soldiers who were complaining about Wagner at the time—so this is ‘insider info’ straight from them—that Wagner alone was allotted 2 Kalibrs and 1 Iskander missile per day in Bakhmut. That means that just Wagner in one city, was reportedly shooting 30 Iskanders per month, which is difficult to square with a “5 per month” production. With that said, that production number is fairly accurate for low-demand, non-conflict years. Most ‘first power’ nations can produce something like 60-100 ballistic missiles per year, and 200-250 cruise missiles. But the above report also leaves out many other types of missiles that Russia fires/produces, such as R-500s for Iskander-K system, P-800 Onyx from Bastion K-300P launchers, Kh-22s, Kh-35s, not to mention a host of other shorter range air to ground missiles they fire from aircraft like Kh-59s, Kh-32s, Izdeliye 305E’s, the new UMPC glide bombs, etc.
Furthermore, several Russian figures have confirmed in recent months that Kinzhal production specifically has gone up exponentially. It would be strange to describe a production of 1 per month going to 2 as ‘exponential’.
As for the Klitschko ‘Kinzhal’, it’s impossible to say because the missile is classified and no one actually knows what its internals look like. However, as I mentioned in a comment to someone recently, they claimed it was a Kinzhal based on a comparison to the internals of another missile that fell in Stavropol, Russia last September, which they claimed was a Kinzhal. However, the photos/videos of the Stavropol missile showed anomalies that would appear to preclude it from being a Kinzhal, such as the fact that it had an active radar seeker, which Kinzhal is not said to have in any known literature. Also, the distance from Stavropol to Donbass or other important Ukrainian targets in the West is anywhere from 500-800km which is not a realistic distance for a Kinzhal to be fired as the Iskander it’s based on is said to have 500km max range and is typically fired at much shorter ranges.
So that’s all to say that the missile that Klitschko showed is premised on some faulty detective work from the ‘Stavropol’ missile incident. Not to mention that the ‘warhead’ he’s standing next to appears it could be 100-200kg at the most, compared to similar sized warheads of that weight. But the Iskander has a 500-700kg (1000-1500lbs) that the Kinzhal presumably inherited as well. The tiny object next to Klitschko does not appear 1000-1500lbs, not even close.
2) Turkey's S400: What of Turkey’s S400? They were asked by the US to be examined or sent to Ukraine - no shame with these people - but isn’t it dangerous to have such a system with a NATO country? I can’t reconcile the decision to sell it to them unless they’re missing serious features or there is way to remotely disable it.
This is something about which a lot of discussion was had long ago, at least in my circles. But the common consensus was that:
1. There are precautions and safety measures one can take against U.S. snooping.
2. Yes, they’re missing features because Turkey has the ‘export version’, which is a dumbed down version anyway.
3. There are possible big benefits to be gained from it that can outweigh the risks. For instance, the S-400 can hypothetically be placed with certain secret recorders/transmitters which can transmit radar data about aircraft to Russian scientists. Turkey has juicy NATO F-35s sometimes in the vicinity of the S-400, which would give Russia very rare looks at F-35 stealth profiles measured against the S-400 radar system. This alone could outweigh all possible risks. Either that, or Russia’s own spies, of which there are many in Turkey (in fact some believe Turkey is one of the biggest hot spots in the world where Russian FSB/GRU runs amock, given previous involvements in high profile assassinations of Chechen warlords and such that were hiding in Turkey) can glean this info from Turkish operators after the S-400 has been exposed to NATO’s top stealth craft and recorded their radar signatures.
This article goes into why it’s not as easy as you’d think to reverse engineer Russia’s system anyway:
The Russian military expert confirms that the export version Turkey has is a far downgraded one:
In fact, Murakshovsky said, the combat characteristics of the S-400's export models are significantly inferior to those found in Russia's arsenal, and lack the latest technologies protected as state secrets by the Defense Ministry.
He also states that disassembling it won’t help and that U.S. will not be able to learn the secrets of the most important modules by disassembling them.
The truth is, S-400s are not too much different than S-300s, or at least the latest variants of S-300s, they just have longer ranges for the most part. And the U.S. already has had access to Russian S-300s from various NATO members (Greece, etc.) for a long time. In fact, there are photos of Russian S-300s in Groom Lake, aka Area 51 being tested, and from what I recall the guy who took them got his door kicked in and all equipment/computers seized by the FBI last year.
3
My question... Your assessment about the current situation?
Top Ukr generals disappearing/killed?
Ze enrolled in worldwide (all but home) tour?
Patriot wunderwaffe demolition show?
clock ticking???
So... more/less/same scary than the previous q&a?
Thanks Sir!
As for the stuff about the generals, I’d refer everyone to my post just last night, where I went in depth about Zaluzhny’s situation (at the end/bottom of the post):
In short, there appear indications more and more that Zaluzhny is in critical care after being struck by Wagner on May 11, 12, or 13, when he was ‘in their zone of destruction’ according to Prigozhin. Zaluzhny’s wife was “claimed” to have been seen going to the hospital in Kiev for a four hour stay, amongst other things. And now a report claims that Ukraine is preparing to accuse Russia of trying to ‘assassinate’ Zaluzhny and Syrsky, which smells very much like they’re just laying the ground work to break the news about his demise to the public.
This could all be baloney, of course, but the confluence of so many reports from different directions at once sure seems to point to something going on. And it’s true that he hasn’t been seen in public for over a month, cancelled an important NATO meeting, and the only awkward attempt from Ukraine to confirm his existence was the bizarre publication of photos of him ‘swimming in Cyprus’ which were later confirmed to be years old.
So, the jury is still out, but they can’t expect to hold the secret for long. Surely his inexplicable absence would reach a critical point sometime soon. With that said, maybe it’s true he was ‘injured’ but is recovering well and will eventually reappear and claim that nothing happened.
Where is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny? One possibility is.
Someone noticed that an employee of the main military hospital of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Alyna Slobodyanyuk, wrote on May 8, 2023 on her Facebook that they received a large number of wounded, with one patient described as very important and in critical condition.
Unfortunately, it cannot be verified as her account is locked.
As of this writing though, a new update has worked its way through the channels, that Zaluzhny has finally ‘appeared’ to show his face for the first time in some strange academic, science academy video posted today by a University in Odessa:
However, it’s said that his message was not ‘live’ and was in fact pre-recorded, and there is no telling when it was actually recorded. But it does represent the first public appearance, whether real or not, in over a month.
As for Zelensky, yes it appears in line with the other main thrust of my report from yesterday, he appears to be on a grand desperate tour to shore up that next morale booster to stave off what is beginning to look like the final denouement of the AFU. I outlined in my report how that 4-5 month time limit appears to be forming in the mass consciousness, and Zelensky is now truly desperate to get guarantees because UA is in its most dire state now and this summer is not looking promising at all. Not to mention the fact that I think Russia destroyed a large amount of the Western arms shipped in for the ‘big offensive’, and so this is adding increased urgency to Zelensky’s globehopping.
As for the Patriot, the only thing I’ll say, which I forgot to include yesterday is there appeared reports that parts from the destroyed Patriot are now being sold on the Dark Web:
So, that’s really not an optimistic outlook as far as the recent Patriot strikes go.
4
Do you agree that "time" is on Russia's side?
If Russia stretches this out far enough that will give NATO time to deliver advanced fighters and other weapons and provide training plus giving plenty of time to hire mercenaries.
It seems to me that NATO and Ukraine are nimbler than Russia. What is your opinion of Russia's ability to maneuver, do reconnaissance, do good intel work, react in real time, etc.?
Shouldn't they be turning loose some of that fabled Kremlin gold to buy open gates?
Well, I believe that nothing is black and white, there is always nuance and degrees of positives and negatives for each side. There are some pros for the NATO side in terms of the long “time” outlook, and there are cons; and the same for Russia.
However, if I had to give an advantage, I’d say Russia has the advantage of time. You say it will give time to deliver advanced fighter jets and weapons—which ones? They’ve delivered almost all their most advanced weapons already and none of them have proven of much use.
Remember the new Wunderwaffe that were the Brimstone missiles? Swept under the rug and memory-holed already after completely failing. How about the Hellfires, remember those? And the AGM-88 Harms? They were supposed to have completely wiped out all Russian AD. Have you ever heard of one even hitting an AD system? They don’t mention them anymore, have you noticed? How about Harpoons? Seen a Javelin hit lately? Or a Starstreak? How’s HIMARs? They do about one strike a month at most now. Patriot was unceremoniously destroyed and sold on the Dark Web in its first week. How about GLSDB’s and JDAMs, seen them taking out Russian command centers lately? I haven’t. And on and on it goes.
I stated yesterday that fighter jets is the arena that has the single largest disparity between Ukraine-Russia. You’re going to supply what, a token force of 10, or 20, or even 50 fighter jets against a country that has an airforce of 4,200 total, about 1,500 of them being fighter/bomber/attack craft? It’s a drop in the bucket and will make no difference at all. Russian jets are simply superior in every conceivable way, outnumber them by grotesque amounts, and are actually aided in the theater by systems like S-400, A-50U AWACs etc., which can network radar details to them, while the poor F-16s will be all alone (U.S. AWACs can’t reach from Polish border).
By the way, early reports state Ukraine may be getting the Block 50/52 F-16s which, as I understand it, have the new AN/APG-83 radars swapped in, which are radars derived from the powerful F-22 AESA APG-77. However, I’d still recommend for people to look up the power of the legendary Zaslon-M radar of the Mig-31 and even the Irbis-E of the Su-35. There are many arguments on whose side is superior, depending on who you ask, but despite having certain draw backs, the Russian radars have longer detection ranges and I’d favor them against the F-16. Not to mention many people forget that the Su-35 is actually built to be somewhat stealthy, with radar absorbent material and certain redesigned angles on it are said to make its cross section half that of the Su-27 it’s based on. There is just no logical argument that can be made for the F-16s standing any chance.
But besides that, Russia stretching this out means rebuilding their industries and massively ramping up their production, training new generations of skilled workers which will allow the construction of entirely new factories and production lines. The West claims to be doing this, or rather attempting to, but it’s going no where near the pace compared to Russia because the West doesn’t have the human capital, energy, materials needed for such ramp ups as their societies and supply chains are currently undergoing huge stagnation and malaise.
As for the second question, I’m not 100% sure what you mean by nimbler, exactly. However, I’ve written in great detail about some of the C4ISR disparities between the West and Russia here:
And then here:
You can read a wealth of info on that topic, which does show NATO/5Eyes/U.S./EU all combined do have an edge in ISR/Recon capability, as there’s no matching their total cumulative satellite output, for instance.
However, Russia has also been pumping out military satellites at a much faster rate than anyone recently and evening up the scales. Particularly read #6 called ‘Reconnaissance Strike Complex’ from the first article ‘All Seeing Eye’ above, you will get all the info you’ve ever wanted on your question regarding Russia’s abilities vis a vis the OODA loops, kill chains and Russia’s elasticity and agility in that regard, etc. And make sure to watch roughly the second half of this video, which I often post:
Dr. Karber’s speech to West Point about his experiences on the Donbass front, studying the Russian way of war will answer all your questions regarding that.
Only thing I’ll add is that the Russian-commanded force in Ukraine is very ‘uneven’ and a lot of faults or deficiencies are often ascribed to ‘Russia’ proper which are actually the fault of forces that aren’t the nominal Russian army, rather some volunteer unit, LDPR, PMC, paramilitary, etc.
In almost 90% of cases where I’ve heard of Russia purportedly doing something incompetently it typically turns out to be some volunteer/LDPR unit. Sure, they’re all under the auspices of ‘Russian command’ now, but Russia’s SMO forces are a huge patchwork of uneven units, and to treat the topic with honesty would be to acknowledge this.
But that’s not to say Russia is perfect, of course. Even their own units suffer from great unevenness as well, just not as much as the aforementioned. For instance, some backwater non-Guards-designated motor rifle brigade from the Far East may have some patchy standards and equipment compared to an elite Guards Tank Army from the Western Military District, or more obviously some Airborne unit, etc.
And there are areas where Russia has lagged behind in development to other countries, particularly drones being the most obvious. But there’s many areas every Western country also lags behind compared to Russia, so it evens out. For instance, Russia doesn’t have UCAV drones as good as those of the U.S., yet Russia has 3 in service hypersonic missiles of each variety while U.S. has none.
The rest of Ukraine’s putative ‘nimbleness’ advantage over Russia is down to a perceived ability to conquer territory faster. But this is a misleading canard as they conquer territory faster simply because they have a doctrinally far higher casualty acceptance threshold. The AFU is fine with taking 5000 losses to take a small region, whereas Russia takes 100 for an operation and immediately calls it off or redesigns it, as in the case of Ugledar. If Russia operated like Ukraine, they would have kept ramming through and captured Ugledar but sustained 5000-10,000 losses in the process.
Instead, they saw their error, immediately went back to the drawing board and then successfully captured the dachas areas afterwards anyway with far less casualties. Don’t mistake ‘nimbleness’ with an indifference to losses, which is the banner the AFU operates under.
5
The pot at the end of the rainbow for BRICS would seem to be a far tether to Israel. If Israel signed up with BRICS that'd create a critical fracture in the Western Alliance. The benefits to BRICS seem obvious. The benefits to Israel would be BRICS running interference with their neighbors, acquiring a backup plan to reliance on the US military and a hedge against the dedollarization movement.
Given the fractured nature of the Knesset, donations to the appropriate folks to develop a positive attitude towards BRICS would seem like a prudent investment. It'd ultimately far less expensive (and kinetic) than other approaches to modifying the current "world order."
Have you heard any rumblings of this from the Russian / Chinese / Israeli agents of influence?
To be honest, I’ve never heard of that before. I don’t think there’s been any even remote indication of Israel having anything to do with Brics that I know of. It’s a nice thought and bit of theory-crafting but as of right now there’s no such pathway.
It would be hard to pull Israel away from the Western bloc in my opinion simply because Israel is the brainchild of UK and is likely controlled by MI6. Many conspiracy theorists believe that Mossad controls the world, controls both CIA/MI6 but it’s really the opposite. Israel was always the ‘forward operating base’ for the UK to gain a foothold into the Middle East to continue their Sykes-Picot and Great Game imperialism. MI6 of course completely controls and owns the CIA as well, and controls the entire U.S. establishment by way of it, but that’s another story.
My point being, the way I see it is Israel is nothing more than a clandestine colony of the UK-shadow elite/MI6, and I’m not sure if prying it away from them would be a realistic task any time soon.
But definitely as the BRICs get stronger and cement their control over Mid-East politics, it will be heavily in Israel’s interests to butter up to Russia/China rather than being hostile towards them. Maybe in the deep future Russia/China can even mediate some sort of truce between Iran-Israel and bring true ‘peace to the Middle East’. Because slowly but surely the entire Mid-East is coming under the Russia/China umbrella and in the future they will be able to make life a living hell for Israel at the snap of a finger if need be, which the Pentagon leaks showed already, by the way. One of the leaks intimated how Israel refused to give weapons to Ukraine because they were terrified of Russia’s response in terms of arming Iran, Syria, etc., with more sophisticated weapons that would neutralize Israeli strikes.
6
I have been following the escalation of Russian and NATO weapons technology. An interesting, but generally "unreliable" site said the the burst over Kiev was a non-nuclear EMP. They are usually nuclear and highly effective in destroying electronics. Put your cel phone in a micro-wave for three minutes. A non-nuclear EMPs seems possible as we are talking an electro-magnetic event - "a pinch" as they call it. I also assumed that Russian denial of access weaponry included something like a wave generated EMP and maybe quite a bit of their EW equipment. It all sounds very Tesla. How would a non-nuclear EMP work? What are the Iranians doing with their missiles to give everyone traumatic brain injuries. Lasers are another technological loose end. Why not micro-wave or x-ray lasers? Bet you could knock out a satellite with those.
“Non-nuclear EMPs” are mostly a big red herring that conspiracy theorists have fawned over for decades. They don’t really exist, at least not in the way people think or comic books might portray. Sure there are things like what one commenter mentioned, flux compression generators, but they create very limited effects compared to common imaginings of, for instance, knocking out entire cities or shutting down the entire country, etc.
Most of these applications can only knock out a very limited area of electronics, mostly owing to the fact that large energies are required for larger effect, and you simply will never generate the same type of energy that a nuclear blast can achieve, unless you actually go nuclear. So ‘non-nuclear EMP’ will never be able to take out an entire country’s power grid and things of that nature.
There are “directed energy weapons” like HERF (High Energy Radio Frequency) guns and such which are basically equivalent to highly focused microwaves that can kill electronics which they are focused on. So you’d have to actually aim the beam onto what you want to shut down. This is obviously very limited in application compared to shutting down entire city’s in some kind of widespread/distributed blast.
To have a massive, widespread effect you have to be able to generate billions of watts or equivalent, and unfortunately that means you either need a huge power reactor or a huge blast potential like a nuke, there’s just no way of getting around that.
So yes, there are denial of area or ‘active denial’ weapons like this one:
But they have limited applications as that radar dish has to be pointed at a specific object; and look at how huge the generator beneath it is, showing the massive amounts of power it has to generate just to create a little effect. You won’t be shutting down cities or entire countries with anything like that.
Maybe non-nuclear flux compression bombs can be made powerful enough to shut down a base, or a part of a city or something like that at the most—at least that’s my guess. But I don’t think they will ever compare to the nuclear kind and that’s why their usefulness will remain on the low end.
7
Thx for youre awesome work!
I have two questions:
- If Erdogan looses the second round of elections, this could prove to be a huge blow for RF. Maybe not so much for the SMO in the shortterm, but in many ways longterm. Whats your take on this?
It seems the opposition figure is fairly liberal, Western-inclined, has support in the ‘big cities’, while Erdogan has support from the rural salt-of-the-earth types, is more conservative/traditional and looks more ‘East’ than West, to some extent at least.
Turkey as all countries is complex though, and there are many top political figures who back Erdogan’s views rather than those of his opponent.
Also, Kılıçdaroğlu himself appears to have made many friendly or at least hospitable statements towards Russia previously, up until his infamous outburst and accusation of Russian interference in the election. The truth is, it seems that even Turks did not quite understand his accusations, so it’s very difficult to really analyze where he stands and what exactly was the cause of that. I don’t follow Turkish politics close enough to really have a finger on the ‘pulse’ of the nuances in this case, unfortunately.
So I would agree that it’s definitely not better for Russia if he wins, but I’m not sure that it would necessarily be “a huge blow” simply because, apart from that one outburst, Kılıçdaroğlu appears to have had previously decent views towards Russia. He strikes me as a similar figure to someone like Tokaev, the president of Kazakhstan, who likewise is Western-leaning but has somewhat cordial relations with Russia that are not overtly bad but not good either.
So I’d have to say that I don’t think it would be catastrophic for Russia, but Erdogan winning would likely be much better.
Second question:
- I read somewhere - most probably here - but I cant find this anymore, that the US has some 'secret developments' in an ukr NPP and warned the RF from intervening there. If true, could the US assist Ukr in building a nuclear weapon or could this be something else? I just cant see the US being so stupid of escalating the conflict on the nuclear front.
Yes, the U.S. itself warned Russia not to touch their ‘sensitive nuclear technologies’ in the Zaporozhye / Energodar ZNPP plant:
But no one knows exactly what it is:
According to the report, Washington DC has “sensitive nuclear technologies” in at least one (former) Ukrainian nuclear power plant (NPP). CNN claims that “the US has already warned Russia not to touch them”, citing a letter Department of Energy (DoE) allegedly sent to Moscow’s Rosatom corporation. CNN supposedly reviewed the letter (dated March 17) in which the director of DoE’s Office of Nonproliferation Policy, Andrea Ferkile, told Rosatom that the Zaporozhye NPP in Energodar “contains US-origin nuclear technical data that is export-controlled by the United States Government”.
Some people do believe U.S. was assisting Ukraine in a nuclear program, and Arestovich has stated here that Ukraine can easily create nukes in under a year if it had to.
Previously, there had been several reports that Russia already recovered fissable, weapons-grade nuclear material of some type from Ukraine; one report by Russell Bentley claimed it was from the Chernobyl plant. The video interview was taken down by youtube though you can see a partial transcript here.
With that said, they won’t be able to build anything during the active SMO, but if the conflict were to ‘freeze’ in the near future like some Korea DMZ style scenario I outlined in yesterday’s report, then I certainly could see them trying to build nukes in that interim as a deterrence against Russia—which is why I believe Russia must not let up, and must go all the way to the end in this.
There was another question of whether USA would allow Ukraine to build a nuke? Well, the famed Russian “pranksters” (likely GRU agents) ‘Lexus and Vova’ tricked UK defense minister Ben Wallace last year into thinking he was talking to Zelensky. In that conversation they asked him about acquiring a nuclear weapon. Wallace’s response appeared agreeable if cautious, and said that he would talk to the prime minister about that. In short, this is the highest minister of defense of the country, telling “Zelensky” that he is open to helping them obtain nuclear weapons. This is not a hoax, the interview is on video which you can easily find, though it’s usually scrubbed from places like Youtube for obvious reasons.
So, to me, that tells us everything we need to know whether the West would allow Ukraine to get nukes.
8
I'm very curious about Nato's behind the scenes reaction to the breadth and success of Russia's missile strikes. Whatever you can piece together as the situation evolves will be most appreciated.
The only truly ‘insightful’ piece about this we have is the claimed report about an emergency NATO meeting after Russia’s Kinzhal strikes on the Patriot system. As I’ve written before, this would be the first time in history that such premier weapons of the opposing ‘blocs’ would go head to head in such a way. The entire Cold War was spent theorizing how such and such NATO weapons would do against Russian counterparts and vice versa, but the actual theories were rarely ever tested, apart from some rare instances of proxy wars like perhaps during the Arab-Israeli conflicts. But even then, truly ‘strategic’ level weapons were never pitted against each other.
So for Kinzhal to have exposed the premier NATO Pac-3 system, which is charged with protecting all of NATO’s most critical assets around the world, this surely would have rung emergency alarm bells throughout their structures.
As for Russian missile strikes in general, apart from the Kinzhal itself, I’m sure that they’ve greatly impressed NATO, however not in the same way simply because a majority of previous strikes during the course of the SMO went against their own Soviet style air defense. I.e. Russian missiles against Russian BUKs, S-300s, Strelas, Osas, TORS, Pantsirs, etc., in Ukrainian hands.
With that said, there’s no way not to be impressed given the fact that the official figure given by Zelensky’s office himself is that Russia fired over 5,000 missiles thus far just in the SMO, while the U.S. only fired 2000+ total Tomahawks in the entire existence of the Tomahawk missile from the 1980s onwards, through a dozen or more conflicts. It’s rare for U.S. or the West in general to give any ‘credit’ to Russia at all, yet last year Biden himself said somewhat humorously about the Kinzhal missile that, “It’s like any other missile….except it’s almost impossible to stop.” So, I think they’re impressed.
But the area where I think NATO is most impressed is not in the strike capabilities of the weapons systems themselves, but rather with the industrial and productive capacities of Russia to continue churning these systems out at mass scale and ramping up their economy under sanctions to do so. This is evident from the many articles strewn with ‘inside sources’ and government officials who appear quite staggered at Russia’s ability to husband such productive capabilities. And it’s easy to see why, judging by the multitude of headlines in the early part of the SMO which depicted the West entirely expecting Russia to ‘run out’ of missiles merely weeks or a few months at most into the operation. Yet here they are, soon to be a year and a half later and pumping them out more than ever before.
I’ve posted several times before videos/quotes from American generals like Christopher Cavoli who marveled at the sheer munition expenditures that modern warfare takes, and how they’re “rewriting their doctrines” in the West based on this experience. This shows that the West had no idea about that and that Russia’s sustainment abilities really shocked them.
9
What do you think the ratio of Russian killed and severely wounded to Ukrainian killed in severely wounded is?
The common impression created among the public is in my opinion some thing like 2:1 or 3:1 more Russians killed and severely wounded versus Ukrainians. My own total guess is that it’s like 2:3 or less--I.e. fewer Russians than Ukrainians.
What do you think the ratio is? Or range of ratios? What do you think decision makers in various capitals think the ratio is?
My personal figures for the current losses are about 15-20k KIA for Russian army proper, 5-10k KIA for Wagner, 7-10k KIA for LPR and other paramilitary forces for a grand total on Russia’s side of ~30-35k and about 70-100k wounded but this counts lightly wounded, and Russian figures state that 90% of wounded return to combat duty.
Ukraine likely has 80-150k purely KIA, another 60-80k irrecoverably lost (this number was leaked internally) with severe injuries not allowing them to return to combat (lost limbs, eyesight, brain damage, etc.), and then another 200-300k regularly wounded but most of those returning to combat after being patched up.
The blanket term of ‘casualties’ can be parsed out many different ways, so in terms of ratios, just taking KIA to keep it simple, I would say the KIA ratio between all allied forces and the AFU is somewhere between 1:3 to 1:5 at the most. I.e. roughly ~30-35k to 80-150k total dead.
That’s counting all Russian allied forces though, for the Russian army only, the ratio has even greater disparity, as the Russian armed forces alone only have about 15-20k KIA max, maybe even less.
One recent figure that was released for Ukrainian losses I figure I’d post:
Many people might have seen this report from a Turkish source which claimed that Mossad’s secret internal casualty leaks were as follows:
UKRAINE:
157,000 Dead
234,000 injured
17,230 Captives
234 Dead – NATO military trainers (US and UK)
2,458 Dead – NATO soldiers (Germany, Poland, Lithuania, …)
5,360 Dead – Mercenaries
302 Planes
212 Helicopters
497 Air defense systems
2,750 (S)UAV
6,320 Tanks and armored vehicles
7,360 Howitzer (Artillery systems)
RUSSIA:
18,480 dead
44,500 Injured
323 Captives
23 Planes
56 helicopters
12 Air defense systems
200 (S)UAV
889 Tanks and armored vehicles
427 Howitzer (Artillery systems)
It’s impossible to know if this is an actual Mossad leak or not but the numbers for Russia at least are very close to what I personally have, and my personal calculations have proven very accurately before. If you’re wondering “how”, well in the early part of the war, I was posting my own projections on the Saker site for what my calculated losses were, and when the Russian MOD published their official figures twice, my calculations were +- 10% within the figure each time.
Of course, the above figure also corresponds to the current most official casualty trackers like MediaZona and BBC. With that said, the above ‘Mossad leak’ appears to be only for Russian forces, not all “allies” which includes PMCs, paramilitaries, LDPR, etc. But the figure is very accurate.
To more precisely answer your ‘ratios’ question, OrientalReview writes the following, based on the above:
As regards the reliability of the Hürseda Haber report, each reader will have to evaluate that oneself. However, if the report is anywhere near accurate, then Ukraine has lost around 8.5 soldiers dead for every one Russian soldier dead, and the other multiples are: 5.25 Injured, 15 Planes, 4 Helicopters, 41 Air Defense Systems, 14 UAV’s, 7 Tanks, and 17 Howitzers.
Lastly: how do we know Russian casualty ratios are really that steep against Ukraine? There is one key thing which no one on the planet seems to ever look at, strangely enough, particularly not on the Ukrainian side, yet proves without a shadow of a doubt the disparity in losses. That is: POW figures.
You see, all casualty figures are fairly subjective, especially considering that Ukraine has never released official ones themselves, at least not until recently, and they are clearly ‘cooked’.
But the one thing that both sides released official figures for are POWs. I’ve posted the proof before, showing that Ukraine released a figure in March to May of 2022 that they had about 500 Russian POWs while at the same time, Russia had upwards of 5000 of theirs, and eventually as high as 10-13k.
We know that in casualty figures, things like WIA, POW typically scale with the KIA. For instance, it’ll usually be about 4:1 or 5:1 in WIA to KIA, etc. Similarly, POW scales to KIA. So, for Ukrainian supporters who believe that Ukraine has less losses than Russia, how do you reconcile the fact that the official POW figures show that Russia has had upwards of a 10:1 POW ratio?
The fact is, the winning side will be inflicting more KIAs on the enemy as they advance and capture territory, and this will always result in more POWs being taken as well. Russia has objectively, provably taken a massive disparity in POWs over the AFU which proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the KIA figures are similarly uneven.
10
Hi dear Simplicius, first of all, Big Thanks for your amazing articles!
I read on a blog from **Valeriy Pyakin** that Vladimir Putin is surrounded by a lot of traitors and he mentioned the general Gerassimow as one of them.
Q1: what do you know about Valery Pyakin?
Q2: from your point of view, what is the propability that RF can be destabilized from inside by traitors?
Q3: are there reasons to believe that general Gerassimow is one of these traitors?
Thank you
Sorry but I’ve never heard of Valery Pyakin. He appears to be an obscure Russian commentator of some kind, so I can’t really make a judgment as to his credentials or accuracy.
Of course, it’s well known Russia has a wing of liberal ‘traitors’, as does every country on the planet. Gerasimov being one of them is very difficult to believe and I’ve never seen any evidence of such a nature, so I would have to see something to judge it for myself.
To answer the question, there’s no reason to believe Gerasimov is a traitor of any kind. However, there is more reason to believe perhaps he’s not as competent as we all hope. I’m not saying I do believe that, I’m simply saying that given the two choices, I’d far more likely believe that than the ‘traitor’ designation. And I surmise that some people may subconsciously confuse the two; i.e. perhaps attribute to ‘treason’ or malice that which can instead be attributed to incompetence.
The reason for that is, when you don’t like how something is going or what someone is doing, it’s very easy to say “they’re a traitor” when in reality it can just as easily be explained by that person simply being inept. Is that what Pyakin really seems to be describing? I don’t know, I’d have to see the actual article or viewpoint you are referring to in order to judge.
The jury is still out on Gerasimov’s competence only insofar as that he was relatively recently appointed to the ‘supreme commander of the SMO’ position. And for now, Russia remains in a relatively static, defensive posture as it builds up its arms and trains its mobilized, so we can’t judge his prowess yet. But once Russia starts a more active phase, we will see how good he really is. But all the scant evidence we do have for now points to him being greatly respected.
For instance, Ukraine’s own General Zaluzhny repeatedly praises him. Not only famously saying he’s read all his books and that all of worldly strategy resides in Russia, i.e. Russia is the epicenter of military strategic thought in the world, with Gerasimov, by implication, being at the head of that. But even recently, Zaluzhny was said to have made another statement about Gerasimov
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Zaluzhny called the head of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Gerasimov a "strong and unpredictable enemy" The Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Alexander Zaluzhny in an interview with the project "Behind the scenes" called the chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov "a strong and unpredictable enemy."
Some people consider Zaluzhny himself a ‘genius’ because of how much Ukraine has been able to do with so little, giving Russia a very strong fight thus far. So for this ‘genius’ to be praising Gerasimov repeatedly in such a way is very telling.
As far as being a traitor, there’s nothing but utmost loyal service to Russia in Gerasimov’s resumé and history that I know of.
As to the question of destabilization. Well, any country can be destabilized from the inside. However, Russia has adopted by far the strongest anti-destabilization measures of probably any country on earth. This is due to Russia’s previous intimate experiences with Western color revolution measures. Russia has learned and adapted and purged the 5th column elements much more than almost anyone on the planet besides maybe China.
One of those ways came recently with yesterday’s announcement that Russia is even booting Greenpeace from the country for being a CIA-run front:
There are endless ways in which Russia has shielded and fortified itself against outside provocation, liberal influence, etc. And yet there are still echelons of these things in the country, but they are not as strong as they are everywhere else. As with everything, it’s not all or nothing but rather a scale. Russia is on the strongest end of the scale. So, is it possible to destabilize it? It’s possible but highly unlikely, more unlikely than almost any other nation on earth, so we probably won’t see it happening anytime soon.
11
Question: Why hasn't the shelling of Donetsk City been stopped? Thanks.
As for the pedantic explanation: because Donetsk remains within the 30-40km artillery envelop of Ukraine’s artillery systems, and now HIMARs, which are even far greater 80-90km range.
As to the natural follow up of why does Donetsk remain in that range, that’s more complicated. There’s the standard response which is that that region surrounding Donetsk has the oldest and strongest AFU fortifications, which means they’re the most difficult to breach in order to push the AFU back away from the city.
Russia simply never had enough forces to afford extra men towards that theater, because they were busy plugging up a lot of other more critical holes, such as the Kharkov region where AFU was strongly pushing.
Most of this revolves around the fact I explained in my very first inaugural post:
Which is that, Russia has used far fewer forces thus far in this conflict than most people know. Most believed Russia was utilizing 200-250k even prior to the mobilization when in fact they were using 80-100k or less. That meant these forces had to be really strategically dispersed only to the utmost critical areas. And while Donetsk being shelled is bad, it wasn’t critical in terms of being in danger of being breached and completely overrun as other areas were.
Secondly, the main prerequisite for clearing Donetsk region and pushing AFU back is capturing the flanks, and those have proved the most challenging to Russia’s limited forces thus far:
Donetsk’s southern flank as can be seen is primarily comprised of the highly intractable Marinka and Vugledar, where Russia already dashed its head a bit trying to capture. The top flank is Avdeevka, another famously long fight where Ukraine has some of its deepest fortifications. These zones have entire underground cities of concrete fortifications that the AFU has built over the course of nearly 10 years.
One good question might be: why did Russia choose to focus on the northern theater, pour resources into Bakhmut etc., rather than sending Wagner and all those forces to clear Donetsk, for instance.
The likely reason is as I said before, Bakhmut’s job was to help take the load off of outnumbered Russian forces being pushed back nearby in the Kharkov-Lugansk-Kremennaya front. They must have felt that pushing nearby in Bakhmut would help divert AFU forces more conveniently from Kremennaya zone towards Bakhmut-Seversk, etc. Like I said, the southern zone had no such danger of AFU ‘breakthrough’ so it was deemed stable for now. The northern zone, the AFU was pushing very dangerously and had huge momentum.
So the last big question is, now that Russia has mobilized, and have much more men, why can’t they push them out of Donetsk now? That is indeed the best current question and no one knows for certain but the likely reason which I’ve espoused in previous reports is that Russia is currently waiting for AFU to exhaust itself in their own much more necessary offensive first. Russia is presumably taking the threat of their offensive seriously so Russia is wary of committing huge forces elsewhere and then getting ‘caught with their pants down’ by a huge AFU offensive in a different area.
After that offensive is dealt with, we can assume Russia will be much more ready and willing to commit major forces to things like pushing the Donetsk boundary far enough to put the city out of artillery range.
12
With the destruction of multiple large ammo depots, we can assume that Ukraine will be forced to position munitions in smaller caches spread out further, possibly even further from the front lines. Considering the lower remaining supplies, will this dispersal make logistics even more problematic and slow supplies reaching the fronts? Do you think that this could also hinder attempted Ukrainian advances in the near term?
Well, firstly, you can’t get much further from the frontline than two of the recent biggest hits: Ternopil and Khmelnitsky; both are in West Ukraine not far from Lvov and Russia still reached them fine. In fact, Russia has a far easier time hitting things in Western Ukraine than it does in places like Kiev and Odessa because these much more important areas have higher concentrations of UA AD whereas Ukraine can’t spare much AD for the West of the country and they’re forced to just eat the cruise missiles each time, relying on the hope that they can hide the depots well enough that Russia doesn’t identify them.
However, your other point about dispersing the stocks out into smaller caches in general is probably true. The only thing is, it’s not as simple as many people make it out. Of course, ideally everyone would naturally disperse their entire logistics line into a million untraceable locations. But given the various exigencies of a real ongoing conflict, where often speed and necessity outweigh certain risks, and where their supply lines are already greatly strained by every conceivable constraint, be it manpower, fuel, resources, transports, etc. Given these factors, it will never be possible for them to fully satisfy such ideals. Given the real, on the ground exigencies and constraints, there will simply always have to be some big depots to collect a large amount of materiel out of convenience.
After all, think about it, these recent hits were no where close to being the first such hits. Maybe recency bias blinds us all a bit, but Russia has struck many, many other huge warehouse hits of that nature all throughout the war. Every month there’s a few big ones like that. That goes to show that no matter how many big ones they blow up, the AFU is forced by constraints to continue piling them up in such a way, which is fairly revealing in and of itself. It simply takes a massive amount of disproportionate effort, manpower, resources, etc., to truly distribute thousands of tons of materiel in a way that would keep it all fully secure.
But as to your last questions, yes they still will likely try to disperse them more, and it will slow things down which will only compound with the losses they already took in destroyed materiel. This goes in line with my belief that their offensive may not even happen, or will only in some aborted, syncopated fashion; because all these things add up, the logistics problems, the already destroyed warehouses, etc., it’s just a mountain to keep up with and they will never be comfortable with their level of logistics as Russia is simply attriting them too regularly with unstoppable long range strikes.
For instance, as of this writing, tonight Russia has launched another large round of Kh-101 strikes on targets all over Ukraine. And there are reports of massive explosions in Dnieperpetrovsk, particularly ones where secondary explosions are heard for over half an hour afterwards, which means some kind of huge ammo depot was hit. This is almost a nightly—and certainly is a weekly—occurrence at this point, and it will be impossible to ever fully crawl out of the logistics nightmare hole for the AFU.
13
New subscriber here - thanks so much for your insights. Do you have any visibility on European leaders’ appetite for this conflict to continue? Or the public? I’m American but live in Ireland - I’m sensing ‘refugee fatigue’ as resources get tight and Irish citizens suffer. But I’m not sure how many understand what this conflict is about (US hegemony) and how Europe is being sacrificed (surge in immigration and energy costs, etc). EU elections are coming up so some sucking up to be done for favours?
It’s funny you ask because this was one of the main topics I just covered yesterday with the so-called ‘bombshell’ from Sy Hersh:
In yesterday’s report, I spoke about Sy Hersh’s claim that his ‘insiders’ have told him Poland and several other eastern European countries are tiring of the Ukraine war specifically for the reason you noted, the influx of refugees.
Taken alone, his report could be questionable, but the fact that it was supported by a lot of recent news revolving around the general European ‘fatigue’ and the new deadlines of 4-5 months they appear to be giving Ukraine behind closed doors, this confluence seems to indicate that the European people’s and leaders’ appetites for the war are in fact souring.
With that said, as I explained in the report, there is another faction of the fanatical ultra-hawks who do the direct bidding of the banking cabal ruling the globe, and these do not want to let up no matter what, and will push, coerce, strongarm, browbeat, etc., the ‘softening’ faction into continuing the war. The ultimate question of which faction will win will likely revolve around how well Russia does in the coming months, or rather, how badly Ukraine’s so-called coming ‘offensive’ is repulsed or destroyed.
If Russia’s able to truly strike a massive decisive blow against the AFU in the coming critical months of the summer, then there’s good chance the ‘fatigued’ pacifist faction may finally gain momentum and gather enough consensus to stop the endless funding of Ukraine. But if an uncertain stalemate continues, it could put wind in the sails of the hawks and boost the morale of the AFU and its supporters towards further funding and continuation of the conflict.
14
Thanks. In your opinion which will come first; collapse of the western financial system (still defying gravity) or the loss/defeat (edit: of NATOstan/US) in Ukraine?
That’s a good question. I’ve espoused before that basically this war is in some ways all about the delaying and staving off of the Western financial system collapse. The banking cabal which pulls the strings of their Eurocrat-Technofascist puppets is trying to create some kind of event by which they can flush the system’s money without taking the blame themselves. The Covid hoax was used to shore up the system for a little while longer, by concealing the historically unprecedented printing of 4+ trillion dollars, but even that now is beginning to wear off and the system is critical with banking collapses mounting up.
It’s still difficult to tell whether the banksters want a full blown European WW3 style war between all the major powers or whether they are ‘banking’ (no pun intended) on averting that but creating enough instability whereby they can still pump up the system with money printing and have a scapegoat to blame it on (“See, it wasn’t us! It was the big war that cratered the global economies!”).
To some extent, it feels like the two poles are actually magnetically attracting each other, where the monetary collapse is in fact racing toward its singularity point at the same rate as the arc of the Ukrainian conflict. There’s a chance they will converge, not out of ‘coincidence’ but because they are both seep holes sucking one another into each other, like two colliding black holes.
The reason is, as one collapse speeds up, the other is naturally made to go faster to catch up, since each depends on the other. E.g. if the banksters see the system coming closer to collapse, they will add even more pressure on their puppets to provoke and escalate the Ukrainian situation. And if the Ukrainian situation edges closer to a U.S./NATO loss, then it naturally becomes a confidence destroyer in the system, whose floor may go out under it.
With that said, instinctively it feels like the financial system still has tricks up its sleeve in floating its corpse a while longer, so I’d lean towards the West losing in Ukraine as being the more likely thing to happen first. However, there are some prominent people speculating that the system is on the brink. For instance, Martin Armstrong, who famously predicted several historic economic crashes in the past, and has trademarked a patented mathematical calculation for predicting various economic shifts and global events, believes that there won’t even be a 2024 election, and the U.S. as a whole won’t exist by 2032.
Not to use that as a plug but, it happens to accord with my own prediction for civil war or secession by 2030+:
The U.S. has begun to float some very frighteningly bizarre ideas, which lets us know we’re in some sort of terminal phase of the decay:
With that said, though I think there’s a good chance for the Ukrainian conflict to continue for many years, there’s still a fairly good chance for it to end by next year as well, while the financial system will still stay afloat likely quite a while longer than that. I simply think that it will take a confluence of several major events for the conflict to end by next year, which would include large decisive military defeats coupled with some political mini black swans.
Without going into too much detail, as there’s endless nuance and economic theory involved everyone can argue over, but one of the reasons it’s so difficult for the Western financial system to die is because all that money printing the West does to float itself gets exported out to the ‘global south’. Since the global economies are so interlinked and financialized, when the Federal Reserves of the West print their money, it does its job then the debt gets purchased and redistributed all throughout the world so the entire globe ‘socializes’ the inflation that comes with that, and the Western countries don’t collapse into hyper inflation.
In order to change that, the global south has to dedollarize such that they no longer need to hold dollars, purchase Western cash, debt, bonds, etc. And while this process is on the way, it’s not as easy as it looks. For instance, recently it was announced that Russia’s idealized ‘payment settlements in national currencies’ went belly up, and they resorted to trading in dollars again. The reason was, when Russia sells oil or other commodities to India and is paid in Indian currency, they accumulate Rupees. But since India doesn’t produce that many things which Russia actually needs and buys (imports), then Russia can’t do anything with those Rupees it’s accumulating.
The natural solution, of course, would be for them both to use Chinese Yuan, for instance, and have the entire global south slowly transition to that. But clearly that’s an impasse as India is nearly enemies with China and refuses to use their currency—thus the problem.
So my point is, until the global south and non-Western world slowly build up their own economies, industries, etc., to such a level where they can be independent of the West, trade in their own currencies and have the actual imports/exports available to then purchase from each other with that currency rather than always needing the dollar—until that point, the Western financial system may find a way to stay up on one leg.
But the process is accelerating. The top 10 economies are starting to be dominated by the ‘global south’ and non-Western world, for instance with Indonesia and Brazil displacing UK/France/Italy on the PPP GDP top 10. And everyday there’s news, like this from a few days ago, that Indonesia, too, is developing their own national payment card to ditch the SWIFT system:
But of course, the Western financial industry can likely collapse long before the rest of the world is fully de-dollarized, as the financial industry is so heavily leveraged and fragile that the shocks to come in the near and medium term future could already undo it.
Ultimately though, as I said, the two poles may end up sucking into each other and converging, and as the terminal phase of the Ukraine war accelerates, it may very well suck the world into financial collapse as the banking cabal will probably try some last ditch desperation efforts that could lead to big, unforeseen (to them) circumstances.
Well, that’s all for now, folks. Join me tomorrow for Part 2, as there is still another batch of excellent questions remaining.
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I don’t know how you manage to pump out so much fantastic content so quickly, but we all appreciate it a lot. A very insightful read as always!
I'm looking forward to reading more about what you wrote here:
"It would be hard to pull Israel away from the Western bloc in my opinion simply because Israel is the brainchild of UK and is likely controlled by MI6. Many conspiracy theorists believe that Mossad controls the world, controls both CIA/MI6 but it’s really the opposite. Israel was always the ‘forward operating base’ for the UK to gain a foothold into the Middle East to continue their Sykes-Picot and Great Game imperialism. MI6 of course completely controls and owns the CIA as well, and controls the entire U.S. establishment by way of it, but that’s another story. "