Zelensky's Last Hail Mary Gets Off to Rocky Start

It seems every news cycle there is now some major new development surrounding Ukraine, which threatens to plunge the war into some elevated state of risk and threat. This is by design because Zelensky and his curators need to constantly drum up a sense of advancement in the narrative, otherwise the increasingly dire situation on the front threatens to swallow the entire war effort whole.

Today that “shiny new object” meant to give UA supporters some small glint of hope is the information package surrounding permission for deep strikes into Russia.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/11/blinken-hints-us-will-lift-restrictions-on-ukraine-using-long-range-arms-in-russia

First let’s clear up the nuances to this report. Some believe the decision has already been made and the media is merely trotting out its regular theater to warm up the public. But the other missed detail is two-fold:

First the US apparently wants Ukraine to demonstrate a tangible plan for how it would utilize these ‘deep strikes’ to actually achieve victory, rather than merely some vague psychological effect.

And for this precise reason, Zelensky is traveling to the US to present his plan, which some sources have claimed has three points, which I outlined last time, but as reminder:

1. Zelensky wants the US to allow long-range strikes into Russia with foreign missiles to destroy all military bases, airfields, ammunition and fuel depots within the European part of Russia.

2. The West (US/NATO) must protect Western Ukraine with Polish and Romanian air defense systems from Russian retaliation strikes so Ukraine could transfer own air defense systems closer to the battlefield.

3. The West must guarantee to be prepared to get more involved by sending ground troops to certain parts of Ukraine to free up Ukraine's manpower which could be sent to the front lines. Zelensky believes after this campaign Russia would be forced to retreat, at some point Putin's leadership would be destabilized and replaced, with the new leadership signing a peace deal.

Another report:

Zelensky and Biden will meet in Washington in two days, US Secretary of State Blinken said.

Zelensky said that in two days he will present Joe Biden with a “plan for victory over Russia.” The latecomer said the plan would be, in particular, psychological and political in nature, as well as “weapons of various kinds,” which, according to Zelensky, should encourage Russia to end the war.

This is not corroborated officially as yet, so take it with a grain of salt. However, we already have some sand to throw on the above via another breaking story, which is that infamous Russian pranksters Vovan & Lexus had just caught Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in their net. Sikorski directly addresses two of the points above, totally dispelling them. He was under the impression he was speaking to Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko as part of the gag.

Here he plainly states that right now there is no chance for Poland, and likely the rest of NATO, in shooting down any Russian assets or joining the war:

In the slightly longer version, at the end he actually states: “We don’t want to confirm what Medvedev, Putin, and Russian propaganda has been accusing us of.” He’s saying that Poland does not want to validate the very reason behind Russia’s war on Ukraine, which is that the West intends to use Ukraine to directly attack Russia.

Sikorski says quite a few other extremely interesting things, which I’ll post later so as not to derail the current thread. However, the one snippet I’ll show is his affirmation that NATO membership is a carrot-on-a-stick being used by the West against Ukraine, and that Ukraine has no real chance of joining the alliance:

This is particularly timely because Blinken has just released a new statement claiming Ukraine will definitely join NATO.

The relief, of course, is that Sikorski confirms: “There is no willingness in Europe to have a war with Russia, this is an absolute red line.”

This is good news, as it shows behind the scenes Europe has a few saner and cooler heads than we sometimes imagine, and Sikorski even goes on to admit that much of his posturing is for the public’s sake to make Putin “wonder”—i.e. part of the infamous “strategic ambiguity” that Europe has banked on out of desperation.

But let’s continue on.

So: we know that the US wants to see concrete plans for why Ukraine needs to strike Russian territory in order to “win”. The only plausible scenario that Zelensky can sell them is that he intends to “hurt” Russia in some way, by striking sensitive sites, as to force it into a peace settlement. That would be the ostensibly public “plan”, whereas the real plan would be to force Russia and NATO into a confrontation—but Zelensky can’t say this part out loud. The former plan would lead to Zelensky’s political demise, as peace would see him removed from power; the latter plan would allow a continuation of his criminal regime’s rule.

One of the problems is: major transnational conglomerates like BlackRock and the Soros Empire have all signed deals with Zelensky’s regime—and it’s in their great interest to keep those contracts active. Should Zelensky be removed, they know a new leader could annul their deals, causing trillions in future losses. Thus, it serves the cabal’s interests to keep as corrupt a regime in Ukraine in power as long as possible.

Now, the second part of the ongoing developments is that even should the US give Ukraine some new discretion to strike Russia, it appears to be a limited one:

As you can see in the above, the US will likely attempt to “sit on both chairs” by acceding to Ukraine’s demands to give them some more leeway in strikes, but still hoping to not provoke Russia into an uncontrollable or runaway escalatory spiral. This would logically entail Ukraine given conditional permission to strike certain conventional targets, but not anything even remotely sensitive, with a long list of red-line “no-gos” which would of course include things like nuclear plants, but even likely governmental or institutional structures, for instance—at the extreme end of the case—striking the Kremlin.

This may sound absurd at face value, but Zelensky literally stated: “It’s a pity we can’t strike the Kremlin” in an interview days ago—citing the poor range of his weapons—and Ukraine would love the ability to “humiliate” Russia and boost its morale by doing something like that.

Now comes the final element. Ukraine is begging to strike Russian territory with long range weapons, but are there really that many remaining?

There have been reports that Ukraine has already used almost “all” of its supplied ATACMS. This was stated explicitly by CNN in their new article:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/10/politics/republicans-urge-biden-lift-restrictions-ukraine-targets-inside-russia/

From the earlier NYT article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/us/politics/biden-ukraine-weapons.html

You’ll recall a couple reports ago I had detailed how the US itself may only have 1000-1500 total ATACMS in its inventory remaining and Ukraine was said to have received upwards of 200-300 of them.

Here’s the problem:

People are underestimating just how expensive the ATACMS is. At upwards of $1.5 to $1.7 million each, the total complement of ~300 would have cost around $500,000,000 dollars. The problem with this is that the US has very little military aid left to Ukraine, and its recent “packages” have been only a couple hundred million each, and that is needed to pay for a vast array of different types of ammunition for all systems—you know, the systems actually fighting the real battle on the frontline, like artillery, not systems meant to be used for fancifully pointless PR attacks deep inside Russia.

Not only does the US not have many ATACMS left for itself in case of war, supplying another several hundred of them to Ukraine is prohibitively costly—do people just think these high-level prestige systems grow on trees? From the same CNN piece:

These $1.5+ million dollar missiles, by the way, are being shot down by Russian interceptors costing $100-200k or less. The math simply does not work from any perspective.

The second issue is that, as CNN noted above, “several hundred” of these ATACMS, which potentially represents upwards of 20-40% of the entire US stockpile, have already been expended—and to what effect? If a major portion of the entire US stockpile has had negligible effect in degrading Russia’s warfighting ability, don’t you think that might be a kind of bellwether of things?

Even some of Ukraine’s top ‘experts’ admit the fallacy:

Of course, now there’s talk of JASSM missiles, and the above is merely the underscoring of the point I had made several articles ago where I stated that JASSMs do not represent some “new” wunderwaffe ability but rather the desperate measure of carrying over Ukrainian strike capability from the depleted ATACMS. The JASSMs are much cheaper, at reportedly $700k or so, and on top of that, the US has far more of them in stock—supposedly in the several thousands.

Finally, we get to the most important part. Putin released his new statement regarding the recent developments about potentially greenlighting these deep strikes into Russia. He makes an extremely significant point that most people have missed, which explains why, specifically, Russia considers this as a direct involvement by NATO in the war.

Listen carefully:

Most people simply assumed that Russia fears having some important rear areas being destroyed. But what Putin points out is the distinction between Ukraine’s own paltry drone strikes deep into Russia, which can be carried out by Ukraine acting independently, with the long range strikes of these advanced weapons systems which require direct Western integration, support, and ultimately, participation in the strikes. That’s because many of these systems, like the Storm Shadows, as it was explained to us long ago, require the originating country’s direct involvement in programming the coordinates into them, not to mention the initial satellite surveillance necessary for obtaining the targeting itself.

This was why, you may recall, Germany expressly forbid sending Taurus missiles, as it was declared that German technicians would need to be on the ground directly programming the targeting solutions into the missiles, which would mean their explicit involvement in the war as combatants. You can hear the leaked German Army call discussing precisely this, here.

For those that still don’t understand, let me explain a little more clearly: when Ukraine sends its cardboard drones to Moscow, it can get the coordinates on google maps or whatever other open source database, and does not really need Western involvement. But advanced missiles and weapons systems are often run by proprietary software that requires special keys, programs, equipment, etc., to input the coordinates into them which cannot be done by the Ukrainians themselves, because giving them such digital ‘keys’ could compromise the entire system even in the home NATO countries in case of future conflict.

Thus, Putin is saying that for these systems to strike deep into Russia would necessarily mean NATO would be directly involved as a combatant in striking Russian territory in a more express way than ever before. The most obvious immediate Russian response would likely be to arm the Houthis with advanced anti-ship missiles which would straightaway endanger the entire US fleet.

The ramifications of this are far greater than most can imagine, given the cascading effect it would have. The US fleet is there to deter Iran and Hezbollah in protecting Israel. Should the Houthis possess an ability to completely cripple the US fleet, the falling chips would be: Israel’s defeat, which would mean the entire Empire’s defeat in the Middle East as Iran would reign supreme. This catastrophic sequence of events would result in the entire eventual collapse of the Western order. As such, the US obviously would not like to risk this scenario.

From today’s NY Times article, this angle is confirmed:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/us/politics/biden-ukraine-weapons.html

Further down, they note again:

In classified briefings, American intelligence officials have expressed deeper concerns about direct, visible American participation in Ukraine’s move to seize and hold positions near Kursk. There are indications, they have warned, that Russia could provide technological help that would allow Iran and its proxy forces to attack American forces in the Middle East.

For those interested here is Putin’s full statement transcribed, which clarifies my thesis:

Putin: The FULL Statement on the "permission" by US and UK for long range Western missiles attacking the territory of the Russian Federation:

"There is an attempt to substitute concepts. Because we are not talking about allowing or prohibiting the Kiev regime to strike at Russian territory. It is already striking with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles and other means. But when it comes to using high–precision long-range Western-made weapons, it's a completely different story. The fact is that, as I have already said, and any experts will confirm this (both here and in the West), the Ukrainian army is not able to strike with modern high-precision long-range systems of Western production. It can't do that. This is possible only with the use of satellite data, which Ukraine does not have — this is data only from satellites of either the European Union or the United States, in general, from NATO satellites. This is the first one. The second, and very important, perhaps key, is that flight missions to these missile systems can, in fact, only be carried out by military personnel of NATO countries. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this. And therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not to allow it. It's about deciding whether NATO countries are directly involved in a military conflict or not. If this decision is made, it will mean nothing more than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This is their direct involvement. And this, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict. This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created to us."

Lastly, let me state that despite the hubbub surrounding this, with many outlets reporting with near ‘certainty’ that permission is about to be, or has already been, granted, it seems to me like the opposite is the case, and Biden’s fear-stricken administration is flip-flopping as ever. The official statements today still resoundingly said “no policy change” is expected. My read is that they are desperately scrounging for some symbolic targets to allow Ukraine to hit, which can be approved with a secret backdoor handshake between Russia, where all parties can be satisfied. US and Russia will agree to not escalate, and US may even make some secret small concession in order to allow Ukraine their slight indulgence. But we’ll see what happens.

In light of the above, there have been some odd new reports claiming that drones flying from either Norway or Finland have been attacking Murmansk, with radar maps showing various NATO aircraft surveilling Russia’s borders at the time of the attack:

‼️ 🇷🇺🏴‍☠️The enemy is trying to attack the Olenya strategic aviation airbase in the Murmansk region

▪️2 drones were shot down near the village of Vysoky. Preliminary, the Ukrainian Armed Forces tried to attack the Olenya airfield with an A-22 Flying Fox UAV, the media writes.

▪️Against the backdrop of the attack, Rosaviatsia introduced temporary restrictions to ensure flight safety at Murmansk airport:

▪️ "The airport is temporarily not accepting or sending flights. Aircraft crews, air traffic controllers and airport services are taking all necessary measures to ensure flight safety - this is the top priority," the department said.

▪️On August 20, the Ukrainian Armed Forces also attacked the Murmansk region, and an enemy drone was shot down (on video).

RVvoenkor

Here’s an animated one showing two Swedish recon flights—the S102B and TP 102C SIGINT planes:

The Ukrainian Armed Forces attempted to attack the Olenya airfield with the support of NATO countries. Preliminary, the Ukrainian drones that were shot down in the Murmansk region were launched from Finland.

According to flight maps, two Swedish reconnaissance aircraft were previously monitoring the Russian border. This is the S102B radio and electronic reconnaissance aircraft, as well as the Gulfstream Aerospace TP 102C (G-IV-SP), which can intercept telephone calls, radio communications, digital and television networks.

The first aircraft constantly flies off the coast of the Kaliningrad region. The second was spotted in August last year, when it was conducting reconnaissance over the Finnish Lake Inari near the Russian border. Before that, such sorties were carried out exclusively by US Air Force aircraft.

After reconnaissance flights by NATO aircraft, two A-22 Flying Fox UAVs were launched from the (preliminary) Ivalo airfield (it is convenient to disguise the devices as civilian aircraft there).

The air defense system shot down all targets near the village of Vysoky. After this, the authorities introduced temporary restrictions on the operation of the airports of Murmansk and Apatity. The air harbors stopped accepting and sending civilian airliners.

The same has continued around Kaliningrad:

And a last report which makes an interesting connection to the A-22 repurposed drone craft that Ukraine used in a failed attempt to strike Olenya strategic base near Murmansk:

Things are unsettled again at Russia's northern borders. And again, a Swedish Gulfstream IV is flying there and... a small and inconspicuous Beech C-12D Huron with American government registration is taking off from a neighboring airfield in Kirkenes, Norway. It is also curious that a transponder for an A-22 aircraft, which is often used as a drone for raids on targets in the Russian Federation, suddenly appeared in Pudasjärvi, Finland. It is only 400 kilometers from Finland to the Olenya military airfield.

MChroniclesBot

Just more of the same provocations from the pipsqueak Baltic-region countries as usual:

Now let’s complete the overview of Sikorski’s very interesting compromised interview with the Russian pranksters.

A few of the choicest highlights:

He states that the electric grid problem is by far Ukraine’s gravest issue, and may cause entire sections of the country to become uninhabitable:

This is an incredible revelation because it includes secret material discussed behind the scenes; Sikorski states it was the Ukrainian side which told him 70% of their energy grid is now destroyed.

Here Sikorski openly celebrates the Nord Stream 2 attack—a must see—not to mention admitting that the Americans “had advanced knowledge of it” and didn’t stop it:

Well, that certainly leaves Germany looking like the most pathetic vassal of all.

Important one about nuclear weapons: Sikorski says Poland absolutely does not want American nuclear weapons on its territory. Make sure you listen to the last part, which is the clearest admission yet that Ukraine did not own its nukes in the ‘90s, which belonged to Russia:

Previously he stated that Ukraine joining NATO is just a carrot-on-a-stick, while here he states that Ukraine joining the EU is a pipedream that will take over a decade to realize:

Finally, here is the entire revealing 20+ minutes interview, with handy chapter timestamps:

FULL TALK: The Polish foreign minister spills the beans in this prank with Vovan and Lexus, a must see!

Checkpoints:

- 0:46 mobilization decision took long

- 1:36 Poland wants to send Ukranians back to fight

- 3:35 corruption can lead to end of support by the west

- 4:16 problems with electricity can make Ukraine uninhabitable

- 5:00 don’t involve many countries in peace negotiations, they don’t care about Ukraine

- 6:54 USA cannot pull out if Ukraine, its credibility is at stake

- 7:38 Trump wants to threaten Russia to get a deal

- 8:56 NATO does not get involved directly, not even shooting down missiles

- 10:05 Poland can train a brigade or two for Ukraine

- 11:04 Ukraine can’t join NATO, until it wins. The membership is a bargaining chip for the west with Russia.

- 12:32 Putin must wonder what NATO could do, so it’s not clarified

- 13:42 Joining the EU will take a decade

- 15:52 EU membership is a question of power, Ukraine and Poland would have more votes than Germany

- 16:44 Poland signed the deal at the Maidan knowing the Ukrainian government will collapse soon

- 18:10 The Polish president wants attention and talks about nukes, but Poland does not want US nukes

- 20:24 Ukrainian nukes were not Ukrainian but Russian

- 20:50 USA knew about NordStream and did not stop it!

- 22:04 Belarus and Russia invite migrants and send them to Poland, up to 400 a day

- 22:44 Belarus cannot be coupled until Russia is not regime changed, Belarus is step two not one

- 24:12 Bye inshallah

Sikorsky thinks he’s talking to former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and really says it all. That’s probably the most important prank of them all!

It really must be heard by everyone in its entirety to be believed. I think it’s a remarkable historic document of sorts, as it represents one of the few moments in history of sideline observers being given a glimpse ‘behind the curtain’ of how the true power players, movers and shakers align the pieces on the chessboard in pivotal historical moments like the present one.

One of the most significant revelations is that Sikorski states that the Trump team has privately told him Trump’s big “plan” to get Russia to agree to a ceasefire would essentially be to threaten Russia with escalation. This appears to confirm the rumors we’ve heard for a while and means that there’s no chance Trump could get Russia to actually accede because threats would be the last possible thing Russia would care about, particularly because this ‘escalation’ is claimed to be in the form of vastly increasing financial support to Ukraine. That would do nothing whatsoever—and Russia knows this—because you can print funny money but you can’t print arms, and US has little of significance left to really give Ukraine that could in any way affect the calculus of the war. That’s besides the fact that Trump’s disastrous debate loss to Kamala Harris somewhat shrinks his chances of winning to begin with.

The other huge admission by Sikorski is actually the gravest one, far eclipsing any laughably toothless threats by Trump: Sikorski answers “Poroshenko” that Poland would not join the war to help Ukraine. However, he goes on to say two critical things:

1. Do not lose Odessa, and do not let Russia “to the river”. He considers this as catastrophic for Ukraine.

2. He states that if the “front starts collapsing”, then Poland’s posture “could change” regarding involvement in the war. This is one of the clearest high-level admissions that NATO could very well join the conflict to save Ukraine at the eleventh hour if the AFU begins a total catastrophic collapse, particularly one that threatens to lose Odessa or bring Russian troops all the way to the Dnieper River.

As a last adjunction to the above, here is a new statement by Trump’s VP, JD Vance, outlining in the first clear terms precisely what Trump’s plan could really look like.

In short, it would be the DMZ-style demilitarization along the current LOC, with a guarantee of neutrality for Ukraine:

This is the height of blind American exceptionalism and arrogance, however, because it is nothing more than the same old Minsk 2 agreement rehashed again, which Russia has no interest in repeating, especially if it does not include the statutory demilitarization of Ukraine which reduces the AFU to a much smaller, non-threatening, token force.

Russia has zero incentive to take such a deal at a time when it’s winning easily and all future prospects are parabolically sloping up in Russia’s favor by every conceivable metric. Sikorski himself said that 70% of the electric grid is knocked out and that “if any more damage is done” it could lead to literally large parts of the entire country being an uninhabitable wasteland. Die Welt recently echoed this, as I reported last week, by stating that a new wave of millions of refugees could flee Ukraine en masse:

Die Welt predicts a mass exodus of people from Ukraine in winter

▪️ The article states:

Rolling power outages are already occurring across the country. In the summer, they are perhaps a minor inconvenience, and only cause real problems when it comes to refrigeration units or storage facilities. However, in the winter, such a situation could lead to a large-scale catastrophe. Millions of people would flee en masse.

Why would Russia simply give up right when Ukraine is on the precipice of such catastrophic conditions and total defeat? Trump has to maintain his ‘tough guy’ image in the media, but in reality it’s far more likely he will go the opposite route and—as he recently openly stated—will offer Russia the total abrogation of all sanctions in exchange for the freezing of the conflict; that would at least be a more reasonable and palatable approach.

That being said, from Russia’s perspective, such a thing is transitory because the next administration can easily reverse it, leaving Russia having lost its chance to change things permanently by conquering all of Ukraine. Thus, it makes far more sense for Russia to ignore such offers and physically subjugate Ukraine to make sure this whole thing can never happen again, and to ensure Russia’s security in perpetuity.

Last few disparate items of interest:

It turns out Ukraine may have been nothing more than a dumping ground for old junk too costly for NATO to dispose of properly:

Britain gave Ukraine military equipment to be disposed of

This "generous" approach has allowed the UK Ministry of Defence to reduce the costs of disposing of obsolete equipment.

"It's good that we've gotten rid of the old equipment and now we can replace it with new," a UK MoD source told the Financial Times.

‼️🇬🇧🇺🇦Most of UK military aid to Ukraine is decommissioned equipment and uniforms due for disposal, - Financial Times

▪️As the National Audit Office reported, military equipment was sent to Kyiv that was “often subject to disposal or replacement,” but was considered to have “direct military value” to Ukraine. But not only for Ukraine - sending it to Kyiv also “reduced waste or costs associated with disposal.”

▪️The FT notes that other Western allies also donated obsolete equipment to Kyiv: for example, 10 vehicles donated by the US, allegedly worth more than $7 million, had a total book value of zero.

▪️ Despite these shameful facts, NATO has flooded Kiev with all kinds of aid that helps our enemy hold on and even attack.

RVvoenkor

On a related note, an American M109 howitzer may have been heading to Ukraine for similar donation when it ran into its own minor problem in South Carolina:

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In light of Blinken’s visit and the Sikorski revelations above, here’s Polish MEP Grzegorz Braun sending a strong message:

"Blinken, go home as soon as possible. Get lost! We don't want you here. We don't want Polish people paying and dying for your wars."

—

A remarkable situation occurred in the city of Ukrainsk, south of Pokrovsk, where Russian forces had unexpectedly advanced so quickly that Ukrainian volunteer evacuation squads had not even had time to evacuate all the citizens yet.

This resulted in these ‘volunteers’ running headlong into Russian troops, who showed them mercy by letting them go. The first video is from the PoV of the Ukrainian “volunteer” who considers himself lucky to have escaped alive:

The second one is even more striking as the “volunteer” had just recorded himself mocking a dead Russian soldier, until he ran face first into a live one who spared him. Was his heart humbled somewhat, do you think?

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On that note, not only have Russian forces been speeding through Ukrainsk, which as of this writing they have reportedly entirely captured now, but the northern group also launched a lightning counter-offensive on Kursk, recapturing many villages and dealing a crushing blow to the AFU there. All day long videos of massive losses and POW captures streamed out, most of them too graphic to post here, though you can catch some here: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

The end of the above video shows Russians capturing a new Bradley; here’s another video of Russian engineers already restoring a captured Bradley so perhaps they can use it in combat—they even have a lot of captured 25mm ammunition for it:

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A sampling of how precisely Russian glide-bomb Fabs are now devastating Ukrainian depots and strong-points:

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Thanks to the attrition seen above:

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