Let’s begin with the biggest news: the AFU has launched a large multi-vectored counterattack on Bakhmut as has been expected for weeks, or even months, now.
Fuck the Ukro-Nazi Azov types and their USA and Ukrainian government enablers/oligarchs who all hide a safe distance away and siphon off millions of $ to their own personal bank accounts. Fuck the Banderites. But not even Putin or the Duma really wants to "fuck" or destroy Ukraine, hence the fact this war has dragged out as long as it has. I don't wish any ill will on the average non-nationalist Azov or Bandera supporter Ukrainian citizen including those who live in and have fled from the eastern part of the country since 2014. It almost has me wanting Russia to do to western Ukraine what the post-Maidan Ukrainian gov't in Kiev has done to the Donbass, etc. for many years now. But it's in all our best interest for this shit to end...soon.
Another comprehensive look into latest events. I was watching Alexander Mercouris analysis today. He seems to think that a lot of the seeming angst caused by these Ukrainian attacks come from the dialogue coming from Prigozhin. It seems like he’s getting information that once Wagner is finished in Bakmudt they will be refitted and he will be replaced. Thanks again for attempting clarity into a situation where nothing seems very clear.
Mercouris said Prigozhin is sick(not new), with a bipolar disorder and maybe he did not take his lithium?Bipolar people have very high and low periods if you don't take your medication or if you stop it suddenly. They don't handle stress very well, it was called in the past manic depression psychotic. Burn out is also logical after so many months even if he does not fight.
An "advertising campaign for presidential candidate Yevgeny Prigozhin" is developing on the Web
Strangers have launched a corresponding website and have been trying to buy publicity for their project since mid-March.
On the "presidential candidate" website, Prigozhin is described as "a person who will not sell Russia for European castles and American bank accounts. Prigozhin did not bow to NATO bullets! He does not will not bow to American diplomats either!
Officially, Yevgeny Prigozhin does not comment on this.
OTOH, I don't see Prigozhin as presidential material. But he is a proven excellent businessman and entrepreneur, having built his empire from a hotdog stand in St Petersburg.
I didn’t know this. Thank you for that. I had heard he may have political aspirations but find him having success hard to fathom. But what do I know. Thanks again.
Have you ever had a very close friend, a friend that shares your views on many subjects, a friend that you miss if not heard from for a few days, and when you do hear them ring the doorbell you drop everything and rush to open the door?
Why is it that all the units fighting on the Russian side are either LPR or 'volunteer'? Where is the regular Russian army and why are they missing in action? Isn't this exactly what Rolo is saying, that the regular army has abdicated because the entire officer corps from Shoigu on down, is corrupt? Where is any evidence to prove otherwise?
No, the entire officer corp is not corrupt and is silly to say so.
The answer to your question Re "MIA" has been stated more times than Trump fucked strippers, RF are in reserve in the event NATO/JUSA tries a sneak attack.
So when there's an analysis comparing the strength of Russian defenders vs. Ukrainian forces, mercenaries and adventurers on tap, we should only count the LPR and 'rag tag volunteers' on the Russian side, because the regular Russian army is unavailable; and will remain unavailable unless regular NATO troops also join the war?
How does the balance of power look on that basis? I would think it wouldn't be good: Ukraine is smaller than Russia but bigger than Donbass, and there can't be that many volunteers.
As to what extent the regular Russian officer corps is corrupt, the claim is coming from Prigozhin and Strelkov. I haven't a clue whether they're right, but I don't see the evidence to the contrary.
Well I've already debunked Strelkov as a pathological liar so that's interesting that he's your only source of info when he's been proven completely wrong time and time again on every major occasion. https://i.imgur.com/KJu8pFJ.jpg
Have you really proven that Strelkov is a "pathological liar"? Or just that some of his predictions haven't come to pass (yet)?
I also quoted Prigozhin, is he on your shitlist now as a pathological liar too?
The Strelkovite version of this narrative is that Prigozhin and Wagner saved Putin and Assad's ass in Syria. But the Americans are still there too, and in control of the best oil fields.
Rolo's transliteration of Prigozhin's latest video says that in fact the Russian MOD's regular troups were routed around Berhovka. The strategic blockade of Bakhmut is now over, and the Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut can be resupplied at will. The gains near Berhovka won at great cost last February have been lost.
Prigozhin reportedly said that "the MOD promised to cover our flanks, but didn't" and that Bakhmut will soon be surrounded.
From Prigozhin: "There were 4 points made to us on may 7th. We were told that if we retreat, we would be accused of treason to the state. We were promised the supplies that we wanted. We were given Surovikin as a liaison, and our flanks were to be covered by the MoD. It is better that they had not even tried to help considering the poor job that they did.
So, regarding the first point, why are treason accusations not leveled at the people who abandoned the flanks?"
Simplicius gave a different answer, in the same column where he stated that the Russians would be giving up some ground in the flanks of Bakhmut. He wrote:
"So let’s summarize. General Syrsky (commander of all UA ground forces) is reportedly accumulating massive amounts of men, upwards of 50k+ with (according to one UA report) secretly smuggled in Leopards, new main battle tanks, etc., to punch a huge shock fist through Wagner flanks and completely deblock Bakhmut."
"This relates to the sudden mass probe attacks on the Zaporozhe line because, presumably, if the Bakhmut grand counter-offensive is true, then it would go to figure that UA may be attempting diversionary strikes to throw Russia off-balance, make them think that the Zaporozhe offensive is in fact imminent, pulling reserves there. Remember, to shore up Bakhmut’s defenses and help Wagner’s flanks, Russia was reportedly intending to send actual Russian units to the region to work in tandem with Wagner on those flanks."
So what's going on here? If the UA has 50K troops in the region ready to attack these flanks, is Russia expecting the DPR and 'volunteers' to defend against them? Or if the regular Russian units are going to show up, why aren't they there already?
Dear Strelkovite you should listen to this (https://youtu.be/g66BiirMj14) or maybe move to Kiev, to London(bellingcat) or why not go to Bakhmut to help save the RF oh sorry LPR.
What you just quoted of my accurate prediction from months ago answers your own question. Russia is clearly holding back its reserves precisely for the purpose of being able to inject them at the front line where AFU actually utilizes its own newly Western-trained reserves.
Well, supposedly Russian VDV units are somewhere on the flanks also. But you haven't heard of them in this recent bout probably because they didn't retreat, for obvious reasons being that they're elite. It seems the AFU has good intelligence and knows where the elite units are and where the ragtag volunteers are and it bulldozed the ragtaggers, which is why it seems by way of selection bias that all there are are volunteer/LPR when in reality you've only heard about them in this episode because they're the ones that seemed to have retreated.
As for whatever you said about Shoigu: how it works is, the burden of proof rests with the one making the extraordinary claim or accusation. So it's not up to us to disprove your theory about Shoigu, it falls on YOU to prove it with evidence, and I don't see any.
I think you need to understand that as Maryanov says, neither you, nor Rolo, nor Strelkov, nor Simplicius or any other person outside of the Russian General Staff knows what the hell is going on. The Russians make mistakes - all armies do - some at the tactical level, some operational, some even strategic, but above all, Russians are supreme planners with war in their DNA. None of us know the real truth of what is currently going on because we don't have access to the same level of information that the Russian General Staff have, and frankly, we don't have the military experience and training that the General Staff possess - we can only guess (some apparently far better than others... ;-) ). The likes of Simplicius and Mercouris just happen to be better at these educated guesses than the likes of doomers like Strelkov who often have hidden personal motives.
Let's assume the 10x number = 11 miles of front coverage per 10K-15K men. Divided into 600 miles of front - that's 550K to 820K troops' worth of divisions.
Obviously neither Russia nor Ukraine have remotely that density of coverage.
The original point remains: the LDPR troops are an important part of the Russian military effort.
I don't doubt that divisional coverage, in areas of not maximum but still important military value, can be higher.
But there is no question that the 200K to 300K Russian, Wagner, other PMC, Rosgardia, Chechen, Foreign Legion, and LDPR troops actually on the line are not at the aforementioned coverage densities for huge stretches. The numbers just don't add up.
The original SMO force also didn't have the (per BigSerge) typical Russian followup formations; that is still not really true vs. what Russian doctrine recommends but is clearly far higher than it was 6 months ago.
Any loss of territory in bakhmut is completely unacceptable. I don't know what Russia is doing but it's infuriating seeing ukraine have so much success lately
Because that's been the case for Russia this whole war. It's bad enough they didn't capture bahkmut. Now they're losing ground. No spin on this is going to make it look good
If the stated goals of the SMO were to "demilitarize Ukraine", you don't really need to hold terrain. If the enemy recovers ground but paying a great price in soldiers and hardware, you are fulfilling your mission.
However, I hear you: I would also prefer that Russia crusehd AFU and its NATO handlers as soon as possible. That's perhaps why I'm so bad at strategy games XD
Germ, as has been pointed out before, to understand RF tactics think of it as a naval battle, the land as the sea; so taking or holding a sq klmtr of surface ocean is neither here nor there.
What counts is how many enemy battleships and aircraft are destroyed. And their NAZI sailors.
With defense in depth strategy, the attacked will often retreat to the second line so the attackers find themselves surrounded and in an offensive caldron. The retreats may actually be offensive.
Thanks for this massive update. Found this on a pro RF blog.What do you think ?Tks coop.
I know a lot of you are sceptical a Kinzhal was shot down but it's quite possible if they've deployed the PAC-3 MSE kinetic interceptor....we'll see if further info is published in coming days
PAC-3 MSE already mentioned in link below....description from the manufacturer in pic
About the two ukie general in chief: if still alive, why would they hide them for so long? They did not even go to Ramstein and (if true did not even meet online via some secured military zoom).Maybe it is another Brit feint or deception, anyway even if kia, there are plenty of other general I guess to replace them ?Remember last year famous RF general were also supposedly KIA it seems at least Shoigu + Gerasimov are alive( but kicking not sure lol).
Doubtful. Two objects traveling towards each other, one going Mach 3.5, the other going upwards of Mach 10, for a combined Mach 13+ speed, and all their collision created was a tiny hole on the front of one of the objects? You'd think given Newtonian Law that a Mach 13 object slamming into a wall would literally vaporize.
"Hypersonic weapons are extremely difficult to detect and counter given the weapons' speed and maneuverability, low flight paths and unpredictable trajectories," he said.
I'd also note that in the context of hypersonic missile use at the theater level: it would require defending AD batteries to pretty much fire at anything that moves. Mach 10 = 7600 miles per hour = 126 miles per minute. A target on the Polish/Ukrainian border would be struck in 7 minutes by a Kinzhal fired from the Donbass; a Kinzhal fired from the Russian border at Kiev would hit in less than 2 minutes.
Given that Patriot missiles are already in shortfall worldwide - not clear how much it matters even if said Patriots could shoot down Kinzhals.
That supposed Kinzhal has a hole punched at what would have been 90 degrees to its direction of flight. Given the relative speeds involved (Mach 10 is 3300 m/s i.e. in 1/1000th of a second the Kinzhal moves 3 metres+) that is a level of precision that means Patriot would be 100% effective against anything lesser (never seen in the real world)....or shear, blind luck.
TBH I'm leaning towards it being a warheadless (empty) Iskander, expensive decoy, but cheaper than a Patriot..
The Patriot System is simply not capable of downing such a missile, even by accident as the missile operates far out of its combat capability - detection, tracking, targeting, firing - such activity requires far more time to calculate since the missile is simply too fast. The missile conducts a AD evasion maneuver just before its final objective is met, and suddenly climbs to an altitude over its objective to come down vertically at 13+ mach (I think), a move that no AD today (exc possibly S-400/500) can defend against.
May 13, 2023·edited May 13, 2023Liked by Simplicius
The only blog I read about this conflict. The tech info is over my head but the strategic and tactical info is unbiased and detailed. Appreciate your efforts for truth. Noticed you are on Twatter, will follow.
BTW: Re: " It means your weapons systems are inferior, point blank." Might be better said in English by e.g., "Game, set, match." Or "End of story." "Nuff [enough] said."
I definitely agree that your more balanced approach is the reason for growth. You aggregate and analyze so much information in each of these sitreps, which makes it much easier to cut through all the grand narratives and find the more nuanced facts.
Wagners pr guy is becoming about as reliable as zelensky. But you probably dont want to say 'yes!, the ukies are falling into our multi layered trap!'
I dont understand the decoy missile, if you launch a decoy and a real missile, wont the AD just have 2 things to shoot at? This isnt 1970s Atari Space Invaders, you dont have to wait until your shot goes of the screen before you can fire again.
I think the Let them come to us, strategy has been working ok so far, might as well go on with it.
Well actually they fired multiple of the decoys. Apparently several debris were found but not sure how many total. And yes a decent AD should still be able to handle several of them plus the missile, although one report said there were actually multiple GROM-2 missiles as well, at least 2. So it all depends how much AD they had there. Ukraine likely heavily researched a precise spot (by way of U.S./CIA ISR / Satellite recon) that had the lowest amount of AD, perhaps only one unit, for instance, with only 4-6 missiles etc.
With that said, TYPICALLY the standard operating procedure for most AD systems in the world is to fire 2 missiles at any given object so that eats up your missiles fast as well.
May 13, 2023·edited May 13, 2023Liked by Simplicius
Very interesting and thanks. One wonders the kind of world we could have if so much energy were spent not killing each other? It surely profits a few. Take away profit and it ends.
Thought this would be ignored or scoffed at. We need to understand and address why war takes precedence.
Like our efforts to control drug abuse, so many law enforcers become part of the problem, another drain on the budget at best. The problem is not drug trade workers, the problem is the demand the user's misery creates. If no one bought, who cares how much supply there is.
In our effort to destroy Russia, we utterly forget, they've been our allies. War is not a sport, we create separate vendettas with each new casualty, there are no winners.
We would find those who profit, they could care less who wins, as despicable fools, they do not see themselves this way, psychopaths have few constraints. Tyrants seek many new powers to control dissent, it is they who need to be restrained.
Good honest sitrep as always. Also exhaustive and it took me a long time to get through it. At some point here soon I'm going to tire of this war and reading about it. I hope that Russia can end it before the fucking idiots running NATO manage to convince themselves (and the 75% of the western public that are their useful idiots) to escalate in a more direct fashion. Keep up the good work.
All the back and forth does get exhausting but I'm used to it already as that's how most modern conflicts go. Following and reporting on the Syrian conflict years ago was hell. Constant taking and retaking of the same territory. Russia famously "lost" Palmyra literally 2-3 times and had to keep retaking it from ISIS. I've already mentally accepted that this will go on for a very long time, possibly minimum 2-3 years with max 10+.
Very good points and yeah I have a short attention span already but it gets even worse with these wars involving death and destruction on both sides of any conflict. After Iraq 1.0 and about halfway through 2.0 I lost most of my ability to care unless the losing side was Uncle Scam, which I sure as hell hope is the case this time and I'm an American. LOL
Ukraine's ability for sure. But NATO/USA/UK? They will scrounge up deadenders from all corners of the world to form terrorist armies, and when destroyed then small terrorist cells will be deployed.
Russians took Palmyra; Syrians couldn't keep it. I remember Paul Craig Roberts years ago berating the Russians for not going in stronger because that would just give Ukraine hope and prolong the war. This war will not last 2-10 years, even as an insurgency. We have seen a steady escalation by both sides, and the bombs the Russians use will just get bigger. The advantage the Ukrainians have is NATO ISR and if the war last beyond summer, satellites will disappear, and we will discover the global nature of the war.
I didn't even know there were still respectable US officers. But if the Thinker says there is, ok.
What I was sure of this week is that Ukraine's great counter-offensive is nothing more than a fantasy. As I had already calculated, Ukraine no longer has any capacity to fulfill half of what MSM continues to announce. In fact, it never had. And whoever is pressuring Ukraine for a counter-offensive only wants an exit ramp from Ukraine! And let's be honest, regardless of the training and equipment of Ukrainian troops, the disproportion in military power is such that Ukraine could never be asked to do more than try to defend its territory! Which has also worked because Russia liberated practically all the territory it wanted right at the beginning of the conflict. Any UA attack would always be suicide!
Regardless of the hysteria on the net - always very sensitive - in the last few hours and I'm going there.
Since February 24, 2022, the only certainty that Ukrainians have whenever they leave the trenches is that they die faster! Also because it has long been understood that the only training they received from NATO since 2014 was to stay in the trenches killing Russians. It was no coincidence that they didn't even go to the frontier to wait for the "invader"! Unfortunately for NATO, Russia knows more about land warfare when sleeping - or with Prigozhin - than NATO when awake! And instead of sending the infantry as NATO wanted, it introduced the famous and fearsome Russian artillery to the Ukrainian troops. Of which we read good personal reports - horrifics - from the battlefield at Peski.
So anyone who still expects more from the AFU than localized pushes like we are seeing now around Bakhmut, mainly to divert attention from Bakhmut's collapse, is daydreaming. And Russia too, we should all have realized by now that it won't move much until it annihilates or at least completely neutralizes the AFU to avoid casualties. Especially now with the West pressuring Ukraine for an offensive. Its Ukraine and Western economies that are running out of time, not Russia. Neither the FED can continue to raise interest rates nor the EU can enter winter with war in Europe. The West is not Syria and those who think of much more war time in Ukraine are wrong! Especially the Kiev regime!
Regardless of also never believing in any offensive from either side before June! Even if the ground is already dry and I don't know if it is, the risk of raining again until June is always very high. Which for NATO's quick maneuvering type was worse than a nightmare. And no headline in MSM is worth such a risk! That said it's worth bearing in mind someone with the military experience and sources on the ground of Douglas McGregor who continues to speak from an accumulation of 750K Russian troops with all sort of ammunition in the rear, all the way by the south to Belarus, to sooner or later free what's left of the east of Dnieper, from Kharkov to Odessa. City to which he draws attention to the destruction of the road bridge with Moldova to isolate Ukrainian troops in Odessa from NATO forces in Romania. We'll see!
I continue to think that the Kiev regime will fall sooner or later and that the solution to the conflict will be political and not military. Because Russia pursues other goals beyond Ukraine, such as a new European security architecture. And that it is very important for Moscow to keep some Russians regions in Ukraine as a way of exercising some political power in Kiev! Furthermore, Ukraine with no exit to the Black Sea has no future and a failed state is a problem Moscow does not want on its border!
Finally, it was himself UA Secretary of National Security and Defense Danilov, who came to say this week that pressure has already begun for Ukraine to negotiate on Russia's terms! And the disgusting propagandist Podolyak wasted no time in threatening the EU with terrorist attacks if the arms supply stops! Maybe Borrell finally realizes who his Ukrainian friends are!
Wagner can incur heavier losses than the regular army because they are considered a mercenary force, at least in the eyes of regular people. Would the MoD necessarily tell Wagner or any other units for that matter that they are meant to position as weak pockets in order to entice enemy units to attack? General Staff will use the fact that Ukraine is, for one reason or another, driven to advance to their advantage, won't they? You want to draw out their bishops and queen by sacrificing a few pawns, do you not? If you do not present convincing weak points, the enemy won't take the bate. Ukraine's imperative to take back lost territory makes this easier I assume. If the ideal position is to have your enemy to come to you as much as possible, your offensive will start when the enemy can clearly no longer come to you. Like the fortresses Russia is forced to besiege. I think Simplicius is right about low intensity warfare. It suites Russia in that it keeps casualties relatively low and makes escalation management easier. It will probably go on like this until Ukraine is simply unable to go on the offensive having exhausted themselves. And if Ukraine is willing to oblige, why stop them. If I were say, Prigozhin, I'd probably encourage it. At that point of exhaustion, the Russian offensive will begin. By that time with overwhelming force to boot, with the added bonus of again reducing probable casualties.
Was waiting for this analysis and mostly ignored the other commentary over the last couple of days
All said, Ru strategy appears to be.... fill in the blank. I can't figure out what is their plan to actually win/end the war, and I daresay that there is some indecision in Moscow as well as to whether to park it and wait for negotiations, or to win it and force them
As Simplicius notes above, the Russian Strategy is to move as far and as fast as their ongoing supply of arms and ammunition will take them. There is no negotiable outcome that NATO and Russia will agree to that doesn't include outright lies from NATO...
Do actually take the time to UNDERSTAND what S has written, please.
It's all about the trade-off between having missiles, rockets, artillery shells etc to spend or warm bodies to spend.
The collective West has looked at the rate Russia has/can sustain, and let out a resounding "Shiiiit!!! You better fight to the last Ukrainian, because we can't do those logistics"
I think we are all speculating here, this is Internet generalship after all. Ru is fighting very strangely in my view, and that is shared by many others. Spare me your patronising comment, please
There was nothing patronising in my comment, whatsoever.
Just like there is nothing strange about Russia choosing to conserve its fighting men by waging a grinding artillery war.
Now I WILL be patronising, and point out that a famous General once said "War is not about dying for your country, but getting the other guy to die for his"
Like the Russians are getting Ukrainians to do.
Yes, the Internet crowd is all about "Russian Bulldozer, whaar iz, whaar iz, hurr durr", having been weaned on US "shock and awe" (Simplicius has covered that flummery too).
You can bet, behind the scenes, in NATO and the US, they are suitably shocked and awed, whatever their public face says
Russian strategy is to demilitarize the Ukraine and all of the West by destroying its supplies of equipment and shells/missiles/rockets - one handy packet at a time in whatever meatgrinder Ukraine obligingly shoves its bits into.
This process also includes letting the West's economic sanctions push up inflation and increase popular unrest; replace Western hegemony in the 3rd world by switching out Western financial and commodity markets with BRICS ones; and let Western hypocrisy and ham-handed "diplomacy" continue to convince the ROW that the West is not the horse anyone should be betting on.
The economic aspect is particularly damaging. It is now clear that a major part of the prosperity of the West was control over international finance and trade. In particular: if trade including oil is denominated in dollars, then any country that needs energy and food imports (which is most of them) must get dollars. The process of getting dollars is difficult because Western companies controlled the commodity markets - and set low prices. You can see this dynamic most clearly with Sri Lanka - despite that nation having a large tourism, tea, spice and rubber export capability, they compiled a massive dollar denominated debt.
However, due to Western sanctions, the control over commodity markets by entities like Glencore is effectively over. 3rd world exporters no longer have to sell just to the West - BRICS countries are happy to buy from them and BRICS has a larger share of world GDP than the G7 does (and the gap is growing literally every year).
So to summarize: Russian strategy is not based on movie, or video game, or even German Blitzkrieg type master strokes but on the meatgrinder - attritional conventional and economic warfare.
I think if Ru is planning to sit back and wait for West to run out of ammo and vehicles and men... this is not a strategy, and if it is, they will lose.
Russia isn't sitting back - the number of troops deployed in Ukraine has more than doubled.
Nor is the strategy of depleting Western military logistics the end point of Russian strategy. In the real world of strategic military operations - there are plans which will only be executed after pre-conditions are met. For example: running out of S300/Buk missiles means ever greater Russian glide and conventional bombing - inching ever closer to air supremacy.
The recognition of Western futility also takes time.
Note that I do not say that the West could not ramp up - they absolutely could. But it would take years to decades under current social and economic conditions or a full mobilization which would in turn create far more stress on already declining Western standards of living.
Winning a war is not about taking land or even killing soldiers - it is about the other side recognizing that it has lost. The North Vietnamese and Vietcong were willing to suffer 3 times as many deaths over nearly a decade as the US and South Vietnam to win.
Ukraine is losing at an even worse ratio than that - perhaps double or more in just a bit over 1 year.
The country has depopulated via annexation, refugees and war dead at an enormous rate on top of the multi-decade depopulation from 1991 to 2022.
The Ukrainian economy sucked before the SMO - it is a zombie now.
Are Ukrainians willing to continue dying en masse to "win" - and what would they get out of winning, exactly?
Is Russia unwilling to take more casualties, at the present rates of exchange, in order to win?
I more or less agree with everything you're saying. To that extent, Ru may be willing to just inflict suffering on Ukraine till it comes to the table. But, will its Western backers allow it? Who is wagging who? And I maintain that after the Ukrainians have been ground down, all that will happen is the Poles and Romanians will follow. And then the Estonians. This is not Kievs war, even though they happen to be fighting it for now
This is why I am critical of what Ru is doing now. Every red line is meaningless, and all behavior seems to only motivate the West to escalate further. A year ago, cruise missiles and MBTs and fighter aircraft were unthinkable. Where will we be in a year from now?
My view is that Russia doesn't have a fixed plan. What Russia likely has, is a series of options depending on the situation.
For example: Let's say Ukraine doesn't want to surrender but its military degrades to the point where the AFU can not mount any serious resistance. Russia has beneficial strategic objectives besides just the 2D's: demilitarization and denazification.
One benefit would be to link up Hungary and Serbia (and Transnistria) with Russia proper. That would certainly spell the end of NATO although it would have the negative aspect of occupying West Ukraine and having to pacify all the Galicians/Banderites.
It would be this situation where Poland might feel it has to try and intervene. The problem is, Poland might be a pretty prickly porcupine in say, 5 to 10 years but it has effectively disarmed itself now. Poland has given up almost all of its Soviet equipment to Ukraine and its incoming new US and South Korean gear won't be arriving in a critical mass for a long, long time.
What exactly would Poland fight with?
Would Poles be willing to die in 1:6 ratios in order to defend Ukraine?
Not really clear to me, but you can never discount stupidity.
Poles fighting in Ukraine would also very likely trigger Belarus entry into the conflict - both Belarussian and Russian forces in Belarus. That would certainly not be winnable for Poland.
The same can be said for Romania and Moldova - except they have serious geographic issues even attempting to deploy against Russia in Ukraine - especially now that the main bridge connecting Odessa to Moldova is out. The rest of NATO? Outside of France, a joke at best.
But your question is whether Ukraine can decide whether to stop fighting. The answer is unequivocably yes. But that's not the only path to peace. The US has made it fairly clear that the Biden administration will no longer have a blank check to issue to Ukraine and the US is the primary funder of Ukraine right now.
The EU is the other major source of funds - but again the governments in Germany and France are both seriously wobbling, and the economic impact of the EUs self-imposed energy blockade will only grow as time progresses. The EU coughed up something like an extra 1 trillion euros to prepare for last winter - but it seems an extra 1 trillion euros is going to be an annual event for the foreseeable future. This means the EU has turned itself into a 3rd world nation with a massive dollar currency account shortfall of more than 1 trillion dollars a year - effectively a 5.5% tax via inflation, just for energy, on the entire economic union.
Then there's the UK. The economic situation in the UK is so bad, it is like they are under economic blockade only they are doing it to themselves. Mercouris has been reporting - on the ground as he lives in London - how even that city is seeing shortages and outages of eggs, potatoes, chicken, fruits and vegetables. And that is on top of double digit food inflation at levels that are literally a generation plus record.
So what I am seeing is a West that is seeing declining standards of living to go along with declining military logistics stocks, with no immediate or even short term prospects for improvement. I see weak Western governments ranging from the UK PM game of musical chairs to massive French protests to a bizarre German minority party apparently dominating the entire German government - against which Russia is doing quite well and is more united than ever.
As for escalation: where has the Western escalation gotten Ukraine or the West so far? Every Wunderwaffen has failed. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that F16s would fare any better than Mig 29s against Russian air defenses, or Abrams vs. T72s.
As for red lines: Provocations have been answered in a militarily beneficial way. The part which many people don't understand is that mindless flailing by Russia against Ukrainian civilians in response to terrorist attacks ranging from the Kremlin stunt to assassinations to the ongoing Donbass shelling - there can be no positive outcome from doing it. Attacking Ukrainian leadership is equally pointless. Doing either could galvanize the Western public with "real" atrocities as opposed to the tired rehashes of "raping babies" and "WMD attacks" and so forth.
Where we will be in a year from now? The most likely outcome is a Western retreat which they call a victory or a draw, but in reality is an utter tactical and strategic defeat like Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam.
The much less likely outcome is a Korean war style frozen conflict because Russia will not accept failure and has escalation dominance in Ukraine.
The zero probability outcome is Russia stopping before its 2D objectives are met.
You make very good points. Nevertheless, we have to remember there are many other cogs moving alongside the military one, probably more important overall than the Ukrainian one.
None of these cogs are moving the machine in the West’s desired direction. A lot of what you rightly point as possibilities in the future might not happen because the west won’t have the necessary access to the relevant resources. The whole thing has a momentum of its own and events now are the result of geopolitical forces that got unleashed in the past. The west could claim a victory of sorts in this battle and Russia might have to take a breather but sure as the sun comes up every morning America’s age is over.
All that’s happening is happening of necessity. It’s the corollary of a predatory culture that knows no bounds, knows no limits. But limits are limits and brick walls always win in the end. The west is dodging and turning but there is no viable future with the present ideology.
To start with, the people who control our access to resources, corporation masters, capitalists, politicians, the families that control Washington, would need to grow a patriotic, cooperative backbone, but that’d go against the whole essence of their worldview. But it’s precisely that worldview that’s losing the west this struggle. Now, if different people ruled, peace and prosperity for all would ensue. But that’s improbable, so the usual people will pursue things in the usual world, like they’ve been doing for over 500 years. Only that their actions have changed the world in a way that’s turned it into a trap for them. And it was forecast too by several observers, most notably Marx.
There is an intriguing question. Once China and Russia assert themselves, what’s going to be the nature of the economic system? Because removing the US’s hegemony might go some way towards slowing down some serious global problems but is not going to be the definitive solution.
The war has definitely taken on a life of its own, youre right about that. But war is an incendiary event and its always easier to expand them than end them. But honestly I just want the conflict to end. Too many dead boys and men.
I would put it in more stark terms: it isn't about "competition" or "backbone" in the West - it is about systemic corruption, societal decadence and a trans-Atlantic elite that is utterly out of touch with reality.
For example: you could term Dick Cheney corrupt, but he is/was a very smart man who converted 9/11 to an attack on Iraq, then an ongoing occupation which yielded billions for the corporation he formerly headed. But even then - these events led Iraq to go from a counterbalance to Iran to being more or less a partial proxy to Iran.
Let's contrast this instead with Biden and Saudi Arabia. Biden's policies have led a Saudi Arabia that cooperated with the US on an oil price war vs. Russia, to a Saudia Arabia that is now a strong ally with Russia on oil prices in OPEC+. Saudia Arabia is asking to join BRICS, it now accepts yuan for oil payments and has studiously stood aside for every UN, US, or EU attempt to sanction Russia. And Biden didn't even get billions out of it...
As for the nature of the economic system: I have referenced many times in other posts in this thread. The events following the SMO have:
1) Broken the Western stranglehold on international commodity trade. Before, it was Glencore and a handful of other corporations plus Chicago and London commodity market dominating international trade in US dollars. That monopsony is gone and replaced with sovereign activity: China and India have significantly supplanted previous structure with their own state and private trade organizations. The US (and dollar and the rumps of pre-2022 orgs) still dominate the G7 sphere but the G7 share of world GDP falls every quarter, meaning the rest of the world will consume ever more of what they produce.
2) Shattered the myth of Western military superiority.
3) Shattered the myth of good intentions behind American policy. Between Nord Stream attacks, unilateral sanctions that have hurt every food importing nation on earth, energy disruption in the form of LNG and piped natural gas shifts, UN strong arming, outright threats from the "diplomatic" US State Department under Anthony Blinken - the list goes on and on.
4) Destroyed the sovereignty *and* economic prosperity in the EU for a generation to come.
I could go on, but these 4 are the biggest. The G7 is still wealthy in absolute per capita terms but its ability to siphon value from the rest of the world is gone. Persistent inflation driven by massive arms, climate change and encumbered commodities spending (read Zoltan Pozsar, December 2022 to January 2023 writing) will lead to equally persistent decline in G7 standards of living which in turn accelerates the BRICS vs. G7 contrast in share of global GDP.
All that about Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Estonia etc. is predicated on the view of Russia having imperialist ambitions, and would be reasonable if that were indeed so, but it does not. However, if Russia`s strategy includes bleeding the collective Atlanticist block and their economies dry, their strategy is working, and time is ticking until the debt, derivatives, bond bubble bursts, and I believe the insanity we see in the West will be resolved.
I believe Bash was referencing a Polish, Romanian and/or Moldovan military intervention in Ukraine - not a Russian invasion of these countries.
This has nothing to do with Russian imperialism - it has everything to do with just how stupid leaders (and the military, and the people) in those countries might be.
What you are describing is the massive profiteering by the Western Military Industrial Complex.
The problem is: you can't buy artillery shell components from civilian stocks. I also doubt that resistors or whatever are the problem with making more missiles and/or rockets; it is far more likely that the issue is first factory production capacity (i.e. factories were torn down or never built) followed by raw material availability.
The examples I have seen - and which Simplicius has noted - include:
1) One single factory for bullets by the US military which burned down
2) One single factory for 155 mm shell casing production ramping up from 3000 to 5000 output per month; this implies only around 4 factories supplying the entire US military for artillery shells. And note this is just the metal casing; the tricky part is filling the shell with explosives and primer, then sealing it. But of course you also have to have the explosives and primer to fill with.
3) I have a friend who worked for TI Defense back in the 1990s. He was in the design side, but TI Defense is who created and manufactured the Stinger. TI Defense was sold in 2000 and the Stinger production line basically shut down. So making more Stingers now is basically a craftsman affair much like a fancy woven basket - the factory and workers which made them have been idled for literally 20+ years now. I would bet money that at least some of the components for the Stinger are literally no longer available - even more difficulties arise in re-creating or substituting for them.
That's where the West's MIC is today: they have to (re)start the process of making the tools, to make the tools, to make the factories, to make the stuff needed. That is absolutely possible but will take years if not decades.
Fuck Ukraine
Fuck the Ukro-Nazi Azov types and their USA and Ukrainian government enablers/oligarchs who all hide a safe distance away and siphon off millions of $ to their own personal bank accounts. Fuck the Banderites. But not even Putin or the Duma really wants to "fuck" or destroy Ukraine, hence the fact this war has dragged out as long as it has. I don't wish any ill will on the average non-nationalist Azov or Bandera supporter Ukrainian citizen including those who live in and have fled from the eastern part of the country since 2014. It almost has me wanting Russia to do to western Ukraine what the post-Maidan Ukrainian gov't in Kiev has done to the Donbass, etc. for many years now. But it's in all our best interest for this shit to end...soon.
Pithy!
Well said.
Another comprehensive look into latest events. I was watching Alexander Mercouris analysis today. He seems to think that a lot of the seeming angst caused by these Ukrainian attacks come from the dialogue coming from Prigozhin. It seems like he’s getting information that once Wagner is finished in Bakmudt they will be refitted and he will be replaced. Thanks again for attempting clarity into a situation where nothing seems very clear.
Mercouris said Prigozhin is sick(not new), with a bipolar disorder and maybe he did not take his lithium?Bipolar people have very high and low periods if you don't take your medication or if you stop it suddenly. They don't handle stress very well, it was called in the past manic depression psychotic. Burn out is also logical after so many months even if he does not fight.
An "advertising campaign for presidential candidate Yevgeny Prigozhin" is developing on the Web
Strangers have launched a corresponding website and have been trying to buy publicity for their project since mid-March.
On the "presidential candidate" website, Prigozhin is described as "a person who will not sell Russia for European castles and American bank accounts. Prigozhin did not bow to NATO bullets! He does not will not bow to American diplomats either!
Officially, Yevgeny Prigozhin does not comment on this.
t.me/russiejournal
OTOH, I don't see Prigozhin as presidential material. But he is a proven excellent businessman and entrepreneur, having built his empire from a hotdog stand in St Petersburg.
I didn’t know this. Thank you for that. I had heard he may have political aspirations but find him having success hard to fathom. But what do I know. Thanks again.
"Feed the Grinder" is all I hear. The objectives of the SMO will be accomplished.
Things I look forward to: Substack notifications advising me of a new Simplicius post.
Have you ever had a very close friend, a friend that shares your views on many subjects, a friend that you miss if not heard from for a few days, and when you do hear them ring the doorbell you drop everything and rush to open the door?
Simplicius is that friend.
As always, thank you! Here is the link from comments’ section on MoA - it is rather disturbing. Have you seen it? I would appreciate your thoughts. https://roloslavskiy.substack.com/p/alex-mercouris-continues-to-play
Why is it that all the units fighting on the Russian side are either LPR or 'volunteer'? Where is the regular Russian army and why are they missing in action? Isn't this exactly what Rolo is saying, that the regular army has abdicated because the entire officer corps from Shoigu on down, is corrupt? Where is any evidence to prove otherwise?
No, the entire officer corp is not corrupt and is silly to say so.
The answer to your question Re "MIA" has been stated more times than Trump fucked strippers, RF are in reserve in the event NATO/JUSA tries a sneak attack.
So when there's an analysis comparing the strength of Russian defenders vs. Ukrainian forces, mercenaries and adventurers on tap, we should only count the LPR and 'rag tag volunteers' on the Russian side, because the regular Russian army is unavailable; and will remain unavailable unless regular NATO troops also join the war?
How does the balance of power look on that basis? I would think it wouldn't be good: Ukraine is smaller than Russia but bigger than Donbass, and there can't be that many volunteers.
As to what extent the regular Russian officer corps is corrupt, the claim is coming from Prigozhin and Strelkov. I haven't a clue whether they're right, but I don't see the evidence to the contrary.
"As to what extent the regular Russian officer corps is corrupt, the claim is coming from Prigozhin and Strelkov"
This should tell you what we all know. Strelkov? FFS!
Well I've already debunked Strelkov as a pathological liar so that's interesting that he's your only source of info when he's been proven completely wrong time and time again on every major occasion. https://i.imgur.com/KJu8pFJ.jpg
Have you really proven that Strelkov is a "pathological liar"? Or just that some of his predictions haven't come to pass (yet)?
I also quoted Prigozhin, is he on your shitlist now as a pathological liar too?
The Strelkovite version of this narrative is that Prigozhin and Wagner saved Putin and Assad's ass in Syria. But the Americans are still there too, and in control of the best oil fields.
Rolo's transliteration of Prigozhin's latest video says that in fact the Russian MOD's regular troups were routed around Berhovka. The strategic blockade of Bakhmut is now over, and the Ukrainian troops in Bakhmut can be resupplied at will. The gains near Berhovka won at great cost last February have been lost.
Prigozhin reportedly said that "the MOD promised to cover our flanks, but didn't" and that Bakhmut will soon be surrounded.
From Prigozhin: "There were 4 points made to us on may 7th. We were told that if we retreat, we would be accused of treason to the state. We were promised the supplies that we wanted. We were given Surovikin as a liaison, and our flanks were to be covered by the MoD. It is better that they had not even tried to help considering the poor job that they did.
So, regarding the first point, why are treason accusations not leveled at the people who abandoned the flanks?"
Simplicius gave a different answer, in the same column where he stated that the Russians would be giving up some ground in the flanks of Bakhmut. He wrote:
"So let’s summarize. General Syrsky (commander of all UA ground forces) is reportedly accumulating massive amounts of men, upwards of 50k+ with (according to one UA report) secretly smuggled in Leopards, new main battle tanks, etc., to punch a huge shock fist through Wagner flanks and completely deblock Bakhmut."
"This relates to the sudden mass probe attacks on the Zaporozhe line because, presumably, if the Bakhmut grand counter-offensive is true, then it would go to figure that UA may be attempting diversionary strikes to throw Russia off-balance, make them think that the Zaporozhe offensive is in fact imminent, pulling reserves there. Remember, to shore up Bakhmut’s defenses and help Wagner’s flanks, Russia was reportedly intending to send actual Russian units to the region to work in tandem with Wagner on those flanks."
So what's going on here? If the UA has 50K troops in the region ready to attack these flanks, is Russia expecting the DPR and 'volunteers' to defend against them? Or if the regular Russian units are going to show up, why aren't they there already?
Dear Strelkovite you should listen to this (https://youtu.be/g66BiirMj14) or maybe move to Kiev, to London(bellingcat) or why not go to Bakhmut to help save the RF oh sorry LPR.
What you just quoted of my accurate prediction from months ago answers your own question. Russia is clearly holding back its reserves precisely for the purpose of being able to inject them at the front line where AFU actually utilizes its own newly Western-trained reserves.
Well, supposedly Russian VDV units are somewhere on the flanks also. But you haven't heard of them in this recent bout probably because they didn't retreat, for obvious reasons being that they're elite. It seems the AFU has good intelligence and knows where the elite units are and where the ragtag volunteers are and it bulldozed the ragtaggers, which is why it seems by way of selection bias that all there are are volunteer/LPR when in reality you've only heard about them in this episode because they're the ones that seemed to have retreated.
As for whatever you said about Shoigu: how it works is, the burden of proof rests with the one making the extraordinary claim or accusation. So it's not up to us to disprove your theory about Shoigu, it falls on YOU to prove it with evidence, and I don't see any.
But then I suppose it’s to be assumed that these “lesser” units are given less crucial stretches of the front?
Also, it's a very long front and regular Russian army unit are heavily engaged in various places. For ex. Avdeevka, Ugledar, etc.
as well as the flanks of the Bahkmut salient.
I think you need to understand that as Maryanov says, neither you, nor Rolo, nor Strelkov, nor Simplicius or any other person outside of the Russian General Staff knows what the hell is going on. The Russians make mistakes - all armies do - some at the tactical level, some operational, some even strategic, but above all, Russians are supreme planners with war in their DNA. None of us know the real truth of what is currently going on because we don't have access to the same level of information that the Russian General Staff have, and frankly, we don't have the military experience and training that the General Staff possess - we can only guess (some apparently far better than others... ;-) ). The likes of Simplicius and Mercouris just happen to be better at these educated guesses than the likes of doomers like Strelkov who often have hidden personal motives.
Simplicius is at another level when you compare him to Mercuris who is just some random Gonzalo Lira
Have you internalized just how long the war front in Ukraine is?
It is at least 600 miles.
In a set piece conventional battle, a division (10K to 15K men) covers something like 1.1 miles.
In a professionally conducted war campaign, you need reserves. You need logistics. You need reinforcements.
a division can cover 10x that stretch you quote, especially if the terrain is flat
Let's assume the 10x number = 11 miles of front coverage per 10K-15K men. Divided into 600 miles of front - that's 550K to 820K troops' worth of divisions.
Obviously neither Russia nor Ukraine have remotely that density of coverage.
The original point remains: the LDPR troops are an important part of the Russian military effort.
I'll concede the LDPR are strategic. About line of defense densities I got my estimate from the twitter thread linked in this Simplicius' post
I don't doubt that divisional coverage, in areas of not maximum but still important military value, can be higher.
But there is no question that the 200K to 300K Russian, Wagner, other PMC, Rosgardia, Chechen, Foreign Legion, and LDPR troops actually on the line are not at the aforementioned coverage densities for huge stretches. The numbers just don't add up.
The original SMO force also didn't have the (per BigSerge) typical Russian followup formations; that is still not really true vs. what Russian doctrine recommends but is clearly far higher than it was 6 months ago.
Any loss of territory in bakhmut is completely unacceptable. I don't know what Russia is doing but it's infuriating seeing ukraine have so much success lately
There a two basic ways to defend punches. Blocking and evading. Muhammad Ali famously preferred the second one.
Giving Territory at this stage is nothing more than evading. Why that is supposed to be unacceptable is beyond me.
Because that's been the case for Russia this whole war. It's bad enough they didn't capture bahkmut. Now they're losing ground. No spin on this is going to make it look good
If the stated goals of the SMO were to "demilitarize Ukraine", you don't really need to hold terrain. If the enemy recovers ground but paying a great price in soldiers and hardware, you are fulfilling your mission.
However, I hear you: I would also prefer that Russia crusehd AFU and its NATO handlers as soon as possible. That's perhaps why I'm so bad at strategy games XD
Germ, as has been pointed out before, to understand RF tactics think of it as a naval battle, the land as the sea; so taking or holding a sq klmtr of surface ocean is neither here nor there.
What counts is how many enemy battleships and aircraft are destroyed. And their NAZI sailors.
With defense in depth strategy, the attacked will often retreat to the second line so the attackers find themselves surrounded and in an offensive caldron. The retreats may actually be offensive.
yes Ali's body "evaded" Foreman by letting him pounding on his head instead. Ali famously didn't end up dying as a vegetable
the terrain losses are nearer Soledar than Bakhmut. It's open countryside so far, nothing to call home about
Thanks for this massive update. Found this on a pro RF blog.What do you think ?Tks coop.
I know a lot of you are sceptical a Kinzhal was shot down but it's quite possible if they've deployed the PAC-3 MSE kinetic interceptor....we'll see if further info is published in coming days
PAC-3 MSE already mentioned in link below....description from the manufacturer in pic
https://t.me/CyberspecNews/30235
About the two ukie general in chief: if still alive, why would they hide them for so long? They did not even go to Ramstein and (if true did not even meet online via some secured military zoom).Maybe it is another Brit feint or deception, anyway even if kia, there are plenty of other general I guess to replace them ?Remember last year famous RF general were also supposedly KIA it seems at least Shoigu + Gerasimov are alive( but kicking not sure lol).
https://www.voltairenet.org/article219290.html
https://www.voltairenet.org/article219299.html
Or maybe ukies don't trust NATO too much now?
Doubtful. Two objects traveling towards each other, one going Mach 3.5, the other going upwards of Mach 10, for a combined Mach 13+ speed, and all their collision created was a tiny hole on the front of one of the objects? You'd think given Newtonian Law that a Mach 13 object slamming into a wall would literally vaporize.
Here's an image of the result of a hypervelocity impact + a replica of the object that made it to really drive your point home: https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2013/04/hypervelocity_impact/12635239-1-eng-GB/Hypervelocity_Impact_pillars.png
I would also note that a hypersonic missile has a literal wall of plasma all around it.
It is a good question whether any normal AD missile can penetrate that because the plasma would set off the warhead.
The plasma also makes the hypersonic much more difficult to target - the amount of electromagnetic noise generated is enormous.
Note this isn't just me saying so - US generals are saying it:
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3391322/general-says-countering-hypersonic-weapons-is-imperative/
"Hypersonic weapons are extremely difficult to detect and counter given the weapons' speed and maneuverability, low flight paths and unpredictable trajectories," he said.
I'd also note that in the context of hypersonic missile use at the theater level: it would require defending AD batteries to pretty much fire at anything that moves. Mach 10 = 7600 miles per hour = 126 miles per minute. A target on the Polish/Ukrainian border would be struck in 7 minutes by a Kinzhal fired from the Donbass; a Kinzhal fired from the Russian border at Kiev would hit in less than 2 minutes.
Given that Patriot missiles are already in shortfall worldwide - not clear how much it matters even if said Patriots could shoot down Kinzhals.
That supposed Kinzhal has a hole punched at what would have been 90 degrees to its direction of flight. Given the relative speeds involved (Mach 10 is 3300 m/s i.e. in 1/1000th of a second the Kinzhal moves 3 metres+) that is a level of precision that means Patriot would be 100% effective against anything lesser (never seen in the real world)....or shear, blind luck.
TBH I'm leaning towards it being a warheadless (empty) Iskander, expensive decoy, but cheaper than a Patriot..
Firstly, that is not a Kinzhal missile that he is supporting. It looks more like a BETAB-500 Concrete-Piercing Bomb - http://roe.ru/eng/catalog/aerospace-systems/air-bombs/betab-500/
Secondly, read what Andrei Martyanov says about this:
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2023/05/told-ya.html
The Patriot System is simply not capable of downing such a missile, even by accident as the missile operates far out of its combat capability - detection, tracking, targeting, firing - such activity requires far more time to calculate since the missile is simply too fast. The missile conducts a AD evasion maneuver just before its final objective is met, and suddenly climbs to an altitude over its objective to come down vertically at 13+ mach (I think), a move that no AD today (exc possibly S-400/500) can defend against.
The only blog I read about this conflict. The tech info is over my head but the strategic and tactical info is unbiased and detailed. Appreciate your efforts for truth. Noticed you are on Twatter, will follow.
Nice work S.
BTW: Re: " It means your weapons systems are inferior, point blank." Might be better said in English by e.g., "Game, set, match." Or "End of story." "Nuff [enough] said."
I definitely agree that your more balanced approach is the reason for growth. You aggregate and analyze so much information in each of these sitreps, which makes it much easier to cut through all the grand narratives and find the more nuanced facts.
The next two months will be revealing.
Wagners pr guy is becoming about as reliable as zelensky. But you probably dont want to say 'yes!, the ukies are falling into our multi layered trap!'
I dont understand the decoy missile, if you launch a decoy and a real missile, wont the AD just have 2 things to shoot at? This isnt 1970s Atari Space Invaders, you dont have to wait until your shot goes of the screen before you can fire again.
I think the Let them come to us, strategy has been working ok so far, might as well go on with it.
Well actually they fired multiple of the decoys. Apparently several debris were found but not sure how many total. And yes a decent AD should still be able to handle several of them plus the missile, although one report said there were actually multiple GROM-2 missiles as well, at least 2. So it all depends how much AD they had there. Ukraine likely heavily researched a precise spot (by way of U.S./CIA ISR / Satellite recon) that had the lowest amount of AD, perhaps only one unit, for instance, with only 4-6 missiles etc.
With that said, TYPICALLY the standard operating procedure for most AD systems in the world is to fire 2 missiles at any given object so that eats up your missiles fast as well.
Very interesting and thanks. One wonders the kind of world we could have if so much energy were spent not killing each other? It surely profits a few. Take away profit and it ends.
Thought this would be ignored or scoffed at. We need to understand and address why war takes precedence.
Like our efforts to control drug abuse, so many law enforcers become part of the problem, another drain on the budget at best. The problem is not drug trade workers, the problem is the demand the user's misery creates. If no one bought, who cares how much supply there is.
In our effort to destroy Russia, we utterly forget, they've been our allies. War is not a sport, we create separate vendettas with each new casualty, there are no winners.
We would find those who profit, they could care less who wins, as despicable fools, they do not see themselves this way, psychopaths have few constraints. Tyrants seek many new powers to control dissent, it is they who need to be restrained.
Perhaps, just perhaps, what we need to understand is that "talk of war" and "rumours of war" is not war, and that "make war" is not war.
Good honest sitrep as always. Also exhaustive and it took me a long time to get through it. At some point here soon I'm going to tire of this war and reading about it. I hope that Russia can end it before the fucking idiots running NATO manage to convince themselves (and the 75% of the western public that are their useful idiots) to escalate in a more direct fashion. Keep up the good work.
All the back and forth does get exhausting but I'm used to it already as that's how most modern conflicts go. Following and reporting on the Syrian conflict years ago was hell. Constant taking and retaking of the same territory. Russia famously "lost" Palmyra literally 2-3 times and had to keep retaking it from ISIS. I've already mentally accepted that this will go on for a very long time, possibly minimum 2-3 years with max 10+.
Very good points and yeah I have a short attention span already but it gets even worse with these wars involving death and destruction on both sides of any conflict. After Iraq 1.0 and about halfway through 2.0 I lost most of my ability to care unless the losing side was Uncle Scam, which I sure as hell hope is the case this time and I'm an American. LOL
"I've already mentally accepted that this will go on for a very long time, possibly minimum 2-3 years with max 10+."
Боже мой! I hope you are wrong!
2-3 years maybe 10?? I was thinking by summer’s end Ukraine ability to fight would be depleted, having no soldiers.
Ukraine's ability for sure. But NATO/USA/UK? They will scrounge up deadenders from all corners of the world to form terrorist armies, and when destroyed then small terrorist cells will be deployed.
Russians took Palmyra; Syrians couldn't keep it. I remember Paul Craig Roberts years ago berating the Russians for not going in stronger because that would just give Ukraine hope and prolong the war. This war will not last 2-10 years, even as an insurgency. We have seen a steady escalation by both sides, and the bombs the Russians use will just get bigger. The advantage the Ukrainians have is NATO ISR and if the war last beyond summer, satellites will disappear, and we will discover the global nature of the war.
I didn't even know there were still respectable US officers. But if the Thinker says there is, ok.
What I was sure of this week is that Ukraine's great counter-offensive is nothing more than a fantasy. As I had already calculated, Ukraine no longer has any capacity to fulfill half of what MSM continues to announce. In fact, it never had. And whoever is pressuring Ukraine for a counter-offensive only wants an exit ramp from Ukraine! And let's be honest, regardless of the training and equipment of Ukrainian troops, the disproportion in military power is such that Ukraine could never be asked to do more than try to defend its territory! Which has also worked because Russia liberated practically all the territory it wanted right at the beginning of the conflict. Any UA attack would always be suicide!
Regardless of the hysteria on the net - always very sensitive - in the last few hours and I'm going there.
Since February 24, 2022, the only certainty that Ukrainians have whenever they leave the trenches is that they die faster! Also because it has long been understood that the only training they received from NATO since 2014 was to stay in the trenches killing Russians. It was no coincidence that they didn't even go to the frontier to wait for the "invader"! Unfortunately for NATO, Russia knows more about land warfare when sleeping - or with Prigozhin - than NATO when awake! And instead of sending the infantry as NATO wanted, it introduced the famous and fearsome Russian artillery to the Ukrainian troops. Of which we read good personal reports - horrifics - from the battlefield at Peski.
So anyone who still expects more from the AFU than localized pushes like we are seeing now around Bakhmut, mainly to divert attention from Bakhmut's collapse, is daydreaming. And Russia too, we should all have realized by now that it won't move much until it annihilates or at least completely neutralizes the AFU to avoid casualties. Especially now with the West pressuring Ukraine for an offensive. Its Ukraine and Western economies that are running out of time, not Russia. Neither the FED can continue to raise interest rates nor the EU can enter winter with war in Europe. The West is not Syria and those who think of much more war time in Ukraine are wrong! Especially the Kiev regime!
Regardless of also never believing in any offensive from either side before June! Even if the ground is already dry and I don't know if it is, the risk of raining again until June is always very high. Which for NATO's quick maneuvering type was worse than a nightmare. And no headline in MSM is worth such a risk! That said it's worth bearing in mind someone with the military experience and sources on the ground of Douglas McGregor who continues to speak from an accumulation of 750K Russian troops with all sort of ammunition in the rear, all the way by the south to Belarus, to sooner or later free what's left of the east of Dnieper, from Kharkov to Odessa. City to which he draws attention to the destruction of the road bridge with Moldova to isolate Ukrainian troops in Odessa from NATO forces in Romania. We'll see!
I continue to think that the Kiev regime will fall sooner or later and that the solution to the conflict will be political and not military. Because Russia pursues other goals beyond Ukraine, such as a new European security architecture. And that it is very important for Moscow to keep some Russians regions in Ukraine as a way of exercising some political power in Kiev! Furthermore, Ukraine with no exit to the Black Sea has no future and a failed state is a problem Moscow does not want on its border!
Finally, it was himself UA Secretary of National Security and Defense Danilov, who came to say this week that pressure has already begun for Ukraine to negotiate on Russia's terms! And the disgusting propagandist Podolyak wasted no time in threatening the EU with terrorist attacks if the arms supply stops! Maybe Borrell finally realizes who his Ukrainian friends are!
Wagner can incur heavier losses than the regular army because they are considered a mercenary force, at least in the eyes of regular people. Would the MoD necessarily tell Wagner or any other units for that matter that they are meant to position as weak pockets in order to entice enemy units to attack? General Staff will use the fact that Ukraine is, for one reason or another, driven to advance to their advantage, won't they? You want to draw out their bishops and queen by sacrificing a few pawns, do you not? If you do not present convincing weak points, the enemy won't take the bate. Ukraine's imperative to take back lost territory makes this easier I assume. If the ideal position is to have your enemy to come to you as much as possible, your offensive will start when the enemy can clearly no longer come to you. Like the fortresses Russia is forced to besiege. I think Simplicius is right about low intensity warfare. It suites Russia in that it keeps casualties relatively low and makes escalation management easier. It will probably go on like this until Ukraine is simply unable to go on the offensive having exhausted themselves. And if Ukraine is willing to oblige, why stop them. If I were say, Prigozhin, I'd probably encourage it. At that point of exhaustion, the Russian offensive will begin. By that time with overwhelming force to boot, with the added bonus of again reducing probable casualties.
Was waiting for this analysis and mostly ignored the other commentary over the last couple of days
All said, Ru strategy appears to be.... fill in the blank. I can't figure out what is their plan to actually win/end the war, and I daresay that there is some indecision in Moscow as well as to whether to park it and wait for negotiations, or to win it and force them
As Simplicius notes above, the Russian Strategy is to move as far and as fast as their ongoing supply of arms and ammunition will take them. There is no negotiable outcome that NATO and Russia will agree to that doesn't include outright lies from NATO...
Do actually take the time to UNDERSTAND what S has written, please.
It's all about the trade-off between having missiles, rockets, artillery shells etc to spend or warm bodies to spend.
The collective West has looked at the rate Russia has/can sustain, and let out a resounding "Shiiiit!!! You better fight to the last Ukrainian, because we can't do those logistics"
I think we are all speculating here, this is Internet generalship after all. Ru is fighting very strangely in my view, and that is shared by many others. Spare me your patronising comment, please
There was nothing patronising in my comment, whatsoever.
Just like there is nothing strange about Russia choosing to conserve its fighting men by waging a grinding artillery war.
Now I WILL be patronising, and point out that a famous General once said "War is not about dying for your country, but getting the other guy to die for his"
Like the Russians are getting Ukrainians to do.
Yes, the Internet crowd is all about "Russian Bulldozer, whaar iz, whaar iz, hurr durr", having been weaned on US "shock and awe" (Simplicius has covered that flummery too).
You can bet, behind the scenes, in NATO and the US, they are suitably shocked and awed, whatever their public face says
Russian strategy is to demilitarize the Ukraine and all of the West by destroying its supplies of equipment and shells/missiles/rockets - one handy packet at a time in whatever meatgrinder Ukraine obligingly shoves its bits into.
This process also includes letting the West's economic sanctions push up inflation and increase popular unrest; replace Western hegemony in the 3rd world by switching out Western financial and commodity markets with BRICS ones; and let Western hypocrisy and ham-handed "diplomacy" continue to convince the ROW that the West is not the horse anyone should be betting on.
The economic aspect is particularly damaging. It is now clear that a major part of the prosperity of the West was control over international finance and trade. In particular: if trade including oil is denominated in dollars, then any country that needs energy and food imports (which is most of them) must get dollars. The process of getting dollars is difficult because Western companies controlled the commodity markets - and set low prices. You can see this dynamic most clearly with Sri Lanka - despite that nation having a large tourism, tea, spice and rubber export capability, they compiled a massive dollar denominated debt.
However, due to Western sanctions, the control over commodity markets by entities like Glencore is effectively over. 3rd world exporters no longer have to sell just to the West - BRICS countries are happy to buy from them and BRICS has a larger share of world GDP than the G7 does (and the gap is growing literally every year).
So to summarize: Russian strategy is not based on movie, or video game, or even German Blitzkrieg type master strokes but on the meatgrinder - attritional conventional and economic warfare.
I think if Ru is planning to sit back and wait for West to run out of ammo and vehicles and men... this is not a strategy, and if it is, they will lose.
Russia isn't sitting back - the number of troops deployed in Ukraine has more than doubled.
Nor is the strategy of depleting Western military logistics the end point of Russian strategy. In the real world of strategic military operations - there are plans which will only be executed after pre-conditions are met. For example: running out of S300/Buk missiles means ever greater Russian glide and conventional bombing - inching ever closer to air supremacy.
The recognition of Western futility also takes time.
Note that I do not say that the West could not ramp up - they absolutely could. But it would take years to decades under current social and economic conditions or a full mobilization which would in turn create far more stress on already declining Western standards of living.
Winning a war is not about taking land or even killing soldiers - it is about the other side recognizing that it has lost. The North Vietnamese and Vietcong were willing to suffer 3 times as many deaths over nearly a decade as the US and South Vietnam to win.
Ukraine is losing at an even worse ratio than that - perhaps double or more in just a bit over 1 year.
The country has depopulated via annexation, refugees and war dead at an enormous rate on top of the multi-decade depopulation from 1991 to 2022.
The Ukrainian economy sucked before the SMO - it is a zombie now.
Are Ukrainians willing to continue dying en masse to "win" - and what would they get out of winning, exactly?
Is Russia unwilling to take more casualties, at the present rates of exchange, in order to win?
The answer to the first question is: we will see.
The answer to the 2nd question is: absolutely.
I more or less agree with everything you're saying. To that extent, Ru may be willing to just inflict suffering on Ukraine till it comes to the table. But, will its Western backers allow it? Who is wagging who? And I maintain that after the Ukrainians have been ground down, all that will happen is the Poles and Romanians will follow. And then the Estonians. This is not Kievs war, even though they happen to be fighting it for now
This is why I am critical of what Ru is doing now. Every red line is meaningless, and all behavior seems to only motivate the West to escalate further. A year ago, cruise missiles and MBTs and fighter aircraft were unthinkable. Where will we be in a year from now?
My view is that Russia doesn't have a fixed plan. What Russia likely has, is a series of options depending on the situation.
For example: Let's say Ukraine doesn't want to surrender but its military degrades to the point where the AFU can not mount any serious resistance. Russia has beneficial strategic objectives besides just the 2D's: demilitarization and denazification.
One benefit would be to link up Hungary and Serbia (and Transnistria) with Russia proper. That would certainly spell the end of NATO although it would have the negative aspect of occupying West Ukraine and having to pacify all the Galicians/Banderites.
It would be this situation where Poland might feel it has to try and intervene. The problem is, Poland might be a pretty prickly porcupine in say, 5 to 10 years but it has effectively disarmed itself now. Poland has given up almost all of its Soviet equipment to Ukraine and its incoming new US and South Korean gear won't be arriving in a critical mass for a long, long time.
What exactly would Poland fight with?
Would Poles be willing to die in 1:6 ratios in order to defend Ukraine?
Not really clear to me, but you can never discount stupidity.
Poles fighting in Ukraine would also very likely trigger Belarus entry into the conflict - both Belarussian and Russian forces in Belarus. That would certainly not be winnable for Poland.
The same can be said for Romania and Moldova - except they have serious geographic issues even attempting to deploy against Russia in Ukraine - especially now that the main bridge connecting Odessa to Moldova is out. The rest of NATO? Outside of France, a joke at best.
But your question is whether Ukraine can decide whether to stop fighting. The answer is unequivocably yes. But that's not the only path to peace. The US has made it fairly clear that the Biden administration will no longer have a blank check to issue to Ukraine and the US is the primary funder of Ukraine right now.
The EU is the other major source of funds - but again the governments in Germany and France are both seriously wobbling, and the economic impact of the EUs self-imposed energy blockade will only grow as time progresses. The EU coughed up something like an extra 1 trillion euros to prepare for last winter - but it seems an extra 1 trillion euros is going to be an annual event for the foreseeable future. This means the EU has turned itself into a 3rd world nation with a massive dollar currency account shortfall of more than 1 trillion dollars a year - effectively a 5.5% tax via inflation, just for energy, on the entire economic union.
Then there's the UK. The economic situation in the UK is so bad, it is like they are under economic blockade only they are doing it to themselves. Mercouris has been reporting - on the ground as he lives in London - how even that city is seeing shortages and outages of eggs, potatoes, chicken, fruits and vegetables. And that is on top of double digit food inflation at levels that are literally a generation plus record.
Is Russia seeing even a fraction of this type of economic disruption? The answer is absolutely not. Inflation in Russia is at generation lows. Russia's reserves are only slightly lower today than March 2022: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1188294/monthly-foreign-exchange-reserves-in-russia/
The supposed $300B "frozen" by the West, only $38B has actually been found: https://tass.com/economy/1574329
So what I am seeing is a West that is seeing declining standards of living to go along with declining military logistics stocks, with no immediate or even short term prospects for improvement. I see weak Western governments ranging from the UK PM game of musical chairs to massive French protests to a bizarre German minority party apparently dominating the entire German government - against which Russia is doing quite well and is more united than ever.
As for escalation: where has the Western escalation gotten Ukraine or the West so far? Every Wunderwaffen has failed. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that F16s would fare any better than Mig 29s against Russian air defenses, or Abrams vs. T72s.
As for red lines: Provocations have been answered in a militarily beneficial way. The part which many people don't understand is that mindless flailing by Russia against Ukrainian civilians in response to terrorist attacks ranging from the Kremlin stunt to assassinations to the ongoing Donbass shelling - there can be no positive outcome from doing it. Attacking Ukrainian leadership is equally pointless. Doing either could galvanize the Western public with "real" atrocities as opposed to the tired rehashes of "raping babies" and "WMD attacks" and so forth.
Where we will be in a year from now? The most likely outcome is a Western retreat which they call a victory or a draw, but in reality is an utter tactical and strategic defeat like Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam.
The much less likely outcome is a Korean war style frozen conflict because Russia will not accept failure and has escalation dominance in Ukraine.
The zero probability outcome is Russia stopping before its 2D objectives are met.
You make very good points. Nevertheless, we have to remember there are many other cogs moving alongside the military one, probably more important overall than the Ukrainian one.
None of these cogs are moving the machine in the West’s desired direction. A lot of what you rightly point as possibilities in the future might not happen because the west won’t have the necessary access to the relevant resources. The whole thing has a momentum of its own and events now are the result of geopolitical forces that got unleashed in the past. The west could claim a victory of sorts in this battle and Russia might have to take a breather but sure as the sun comes up every morning America’s age is over.
All that’s happening is happening of necessity. It’s the corollary of a predatory culture that knows no bounds, knows no limits. But limits are limits and brick walls always win in the end. The west is dodging and turning but there is no viable future with the present ideology.
To start with, the people who control our access to resources, corporation masters, capitalists, politicians, the families that control Washington, would need to grow a patriotic, cooperative backbone, but that’d go against the whole essence of their worldview. But it’s precisely that worldview that’s losing the west this struggle. Now, if different people ruled, peace and prosperity for all would ensue. But that’s improbable, so the usual people will pursue things in the usual world, like they’ve been doing for over 500 years. Only that their actions have changed the world in a way that’s turned it into a trap for them. And it was forecast too by several observers, most notably Marx.
There is an intriguing question. Once China and Russia assert themselves, what’s going to be the nature of the economic system? Because removing the US’s hegemony might go some way towards slowing down some serious global problems but is not going to be the definitive solution.
The war has definitely taken on a life of its own, youre right about that. But war is an incendiary event and its always easier to expand them than end them. But honestly I just want the conflict to end. Too many dead boys and men.
I would put it in more stark terms: it isn't about "competition" or "backbone" in the West - it is about systemic corruption, societal decadence and a trans-Atlantic elite that is utterly out of touch with reality.
For example: you could term Dick Cheney corrupt, but he is/was a very smart man who converted 9/11 to an attack on Iraq, then an ongoing occupation which yielded billions for the corporation he formerly headed. But even then - these events led Iraq to go from a counterbalance to Iran to being more or less a partial proxy to Iran.
Let's contrast this instead with Biden and Saudi Arabia. Biden's policies have led a Saudi Arabia that cooperated with the US on an oil price war vs. Russia, to a Saudia Arabia that is now a strong ally with Russia on oil prices in OPEC+. Saudia Arabia is asking to join BRICS, it now accepts yuan for oil payments and has studiously stood aside for every UN, US, or EU attempt to sanction Russia. And Biden didn't even get billions out of it...
As for the nature of the economic system: I have referenced many times in other posts in this thread. The events following the SMO have:
1) Broken the Western stranglehold on international commodity trade. Before, it was Glencore and a handful of other corporations plus Chicago and London commodity market dominating international trade in US dollars. That monopsony is gone and replaced with sovereign activity: China and India have significantly supplanted previous structure with their own state and private trade organizations. The US (and dollar and the rumps of pre-2022 orgs) still dominate the G7 sphere but the G7 share of world GDP falls every quarter, meaning the rest of the world will consume ever more of what they produce.
2) Shattered the myth of Western military superiority.
3) Shattered the myth of good intentions behind American policy. Between Nord Stream attacks, unilateral sanctions that have hurt every food importing nation on earth, energy disruption in the form of LNG and piped natural gas shifts, UN strong arming, outright threats from the "diplomatic" US State Department under Anthony Blinken - the list goes on and on.
4) Destroyed the sovereignty *and* economic prosperity in the EU for a generation to come.
I could go on, but these 4 are the biggest. The G7 is still wealthy in absolute per capita terms but its ability to siphon value from the rest of the world is gone. Persistent inflation driven by massive arms, climate change and encumbered commodities spending (read Zoltan Pozsar, December 2022 to January 2023 writing) will lead to equally persistent decline in G7 standards of living which in turn accelerates the BRICS vs. G7 contrast in share of global GDP.
All that about Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Estonia etc. is predicated on the view of Russia having imperialist ambitions, and would be reasonable if that were indeed so, but it does not. However, if Russia`s strategy includes bleeding the collective Atlanticist block and their economies dry, their strategy is working, and time is ticking until the debt, derivatives, bond bubble bursts, and I believe the insanity we see in the West will be resolved.
I believe Bash was referencing a Polish, Romanian and/or Moldovan military intervention in Ukraine - not a Russian invasion of these countries.
This has nothing to do with Russian imperialism - it has everything to do with just how stupid leaders (and the military, and the people) in those countries might be.
The west would win this war if they noticed a mistake they have been making all these years running our industry into the ground.
One little clue is we used to buy a very precise resistor for a product we made.
It cost 7.52 even though we were buying it by the stick.
Then my boss noticed the exact same component in a remote control car that his son bought retail for 4.98.
From then on we used to buy those cars from a little shop.
We would snip out the resistor (it was in the remote control which was also the battery charger).
We then threw the rest of the toy away.
The only problem was the legs were not as long as when you bought the resistors brand new.
Anyone who thinks it is the cost of labour that is stopping us making stuff - you got your opinions by reading what other people think.
The truth is we can not do anything at a reasonable price even if everyone works for free.
Our economies are run into the ground by know it all busy bodies.
Nobody has the slightest clue what stuff really costs (or more importantly should cost).
We should not be getting into an industrial contest of who can make the most weapons.
Somebody somewhere is eventually going to figure out how to make drones as cheap as chips and then the other side can kiss their arses goodbye.
John,
What you are describing is the massive profiteering by the Western Military Industrial Complex.
The problem is: you can't buy artillery shell components from civilian stocks. I also doubt that resistors or whatever are the problem with making more missiles and/or rockets; it is far more likely that the issue is first factory production capacity (i.e. factories were torn down or never built) followed by raw material availability.
The examples I have seen - and which Simplicius has noted - include:
1) One single factory for bullets by the US military which burned down
2) One single factory for 155 mm shell casing production ramping up from 3000 to 5000 output per month; this implies only around 4 factories supplying the entire US military for artillery shells. And note this is just the metal casing; the tricky part is filling the shell with explosives and primer, then sealing it. But of course you also have to have the explosives and primer to fill with.
3) I have a friend who worked for TI Defense back in the 1990s. He was in the design side, but TI Defense is who created and manufactured the Stinger. TI Defense was sold in 2000 and the Stinger production line basically shut down. So making more Stingers now is basically a craftsman affair much like a fancy woven basket - the factory and workers which made them have been idled for literally 20+ years now. I would bet money that at least some of the components for the Stinger are literally no longer available - even more difficulties arise in re-creating or substituting for them.
That's where the West's MIC is today: they have to (re)start the process of making the tools, to make the tools, to make the factories, to make the stuff needed. That is absolutely possible but will take years if not decades.