From spy to president: The rise of Vladimir Putin

Salaam

Another update.

The Kremlin, says Todd, made a mistake, calculating that a decomposed Ukraine society would collapse right away. Of course he does not get into detail on how Ukraine had been weaponized to the hilt by the NATO military alliance.

The attack and taking of Kyiv was meant to facilitate a quick victory (like the takeover Crimea). It didn't happen. Heres why.

Salaam

Oh oh

Embedded Tweet

US quietly shipping ammo to Ukraine from massive stockpile in Israel — report

New York Times says 300,000 artillery shells to be sent to Kyiv’s forces from American supplies kept in Israel for emergency use

The US military is quietly shipping hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine from a massive stockpile in Israel, according to a Tuesday report. The ammunition supply is located in Israel for the US military to use in regional conflicts. The US has also given Israel permission to use some of the supplies in emergency situations, The New York Times reported, citing American and Israeli officials.

The previous government approved of the move as Israel attempted to chart a course between maintaining ties with the US and Ukraine, and not antagonizing Russia. US officials first brought up the possibility of supplying Ukraine from the stockpile in Israel last year, sparking concerns in Jerusalem about how Russia would react, the report said.

The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, informed Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister at the time, that the US wanted to tap into the stockpile, an Israeli official said. Gantz discussed the request with the cabinet, which asked security officials to weigh in. The defense officials said Israel should accept the plan to head off any friction with Washington, and because the ammunition belonged to the US. Then-prime minister Yair Lapid approved the move after the talks with the cabinet and security officials, the report said.

The US and Israel agreed to ship around 300,000 shells to Ukraine, Israeli and US officials told the Times. The existence of the stockpile had been previously acknowledged, although it was not widely known. The Times was the first to report it was being used to supply Ukraine. Israeli officials told the Times that Jerusalem had not altered its position against giving Ukraine lethal weapons, but was agreeing to the US using its own supplies.

Israel has resisted providing weapons to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion. One major reason for Israel’s hesitance appears to be its strategic need to maintain freedom of operations in Syria, where Russian forces largely control the airspace. The issue has strained ties between Jerusalem and Kyiv, as the Ukrainians have consistently pressed Israel to provide more defense aid. The Ukrainian ambassador on Tuesday again urged Israel to supply his country with missile defense systems in the wake of continued deadly Russian strikes.

Israel has provided large amounts of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, as well as other types of assistance, and the new government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it intends to keep those supplies flowing. The US stockpile in Israel dates back to the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The US delivered weapons to beleaguered Israeli forces during the war, then set up storage facilities in Israel for use in a potential crisis.

US tanks and armored personnel carriers were stowed in the Negev desert in case American forces in the Middle East needed them. Later on, in the 2000s, munitions for the different branches of the US military were kept in Israel in locations that were only open to the US personnel, the report said.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-qui...israel-report/


Exiled chief rabbi says Jews should leave Russia while they can

Exclusive: Pinchas Goldschmidt warns Jewish population will be made scapegoat for hardship caused by war

Moscow’s exiled chief rabbi says Jews should leave Russia while they still can, before they are made scapegoats for the hardship caused by the war in Ukraine.

“When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community,” Pinchas Goldschmidt told the Guardian. “We saw this in tsarist times and at the end of the Stalinist regime.”

“We’re seeing rising antisemitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again. This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave,” he added.

Goldschmidt resigned from his post and left Russia in July after refusing to back the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Pressure was put on community leaders to support the war and I refused to do so. I resigned because to continue as chief rabbi of Moscow would be a problem for the community because of the repressive measures taken against dissidents,” he said.

Russia’s Jews have been emigrating in their tens of thousands during the past 100 years, first to Europe and the Americas and more recently to Israel. According to the 1926 census there were 2,672,000 Jews in the then Soviet Union, 59% of them in Ukraine. Today only about 165,000 Jews remain in the Russian Federation out of a total population of 145 million.

Goldschmidt said he believed that since the war began, 25% to 30% of those who remained had left or were planning to do so, although there were now few flights out of Moscow and the price of a flight to Tel Aviv had quadrupled to about $2,000 (£1,625).

In July, Russia’s government shut down the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency, a non-profit organisation that promotes immigration to Israel.

Overall, it is thought that about 200,000 Russians have fled Russia, an exodus that accelerated when conscription was introduced in September.

“There’s a section of Russian society called the creacle, the creative class of business and cultural leaders, intellectuals and artists,” said Goldschmidt, “and I think it’s safe to say a great percentage of those people have left Russia, which is and will be very detrimental to Russian society.”

He said a large part of the Jewish community in Ukraine had also left and were now refugees in Germany, Austria and Romania.

Ukraine has a long history of antisemitism from pogroms at the end of the 19th century to facilitating Nazi massacres during the second world war. The most notorious of these was the murder of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar in Kyiv in 1941.

Given this history, Goldschmidt said it was remarkable that Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who made no secret of his Jewishness, was elected Ukraine’s president with more than 70% of the vote.

That fact made a nonsense of Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine was being governed by neo-Nazis, the rabbi said. “Show me another country that is in the grip of Nazis where the Jewish community is thriving.

“However, I don’t know how Jewish the president [Zelenskiy] feels. He plays the Jewish card to ask Israel for help.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...dt-war-ukraine

Salaam

Another update

Embedded Tweet

The USA Attacked Germany

Seymour Hersh delivers the damning evidence: the USA not only destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines, but it was a premeditated attack that was planned even before the beginning of the Russian Special Military Operation in the Donbas.

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.

Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.

There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022…

In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.

It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). There was the usual back and forth chatter that eventually led to a crucial preliminary question: Would the recommendation forwarded by the group to the President be reversible—such as another layer of sanctions and currency restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinetic actions, which could not be undone?

What became clear to participants, according to the source with direct knowledge of the process, is that Sullivan intended for the group to come up with a plan for the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was delivering on the desires of the President.

Over the next several meetings, the participants debated options for an attack. The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”

At the time, the CIA was directed by William Burns, a mild-mannered former ambassador to Russia who had served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama Administration. Burns quickly authorized an Agency working group whose ad hoc members included—by chance—someone who was familiar with the capabilities of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Panama City. Over the next few weeks, members of the CIA’s working group began to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline.

If you’ve still got any vestige of belief that the USA are the good guys, this proof of the neocons in Washington ordering the US military to attack its own allies should suffice to destroy it. This isn’t even remotely a surprise; I assumed the US military was responsible for the destruction of the pipelines from the start. But even I am a little taken aback at how brazen and premeditated it was.

It’s 100-percent certain that the pipelines were destroyed on the orders of the US government, and most likely, by US military forces.

Vox Day, 29 September 2022

It will be interesting to see how the European slave-governments attempt to spin away the fact that it is the USA, not Russia, that is quite literally engaging in acts of war against the European nations.

https://voxday.net/2023/02/08/the-usa-attacked-germany/

Russia’s New Red Lines

Russia is sending a very clear warning to the neoclowns. Not because they expect the evil morons to heed them, but to give the people of the West one last chance to stop following the wicked satanists down the pathway to Hell.

As usual, Yevgeny Popov, State Duma member and host of “Sixty Minutes,” put a lot of video segments from Western television up on the screen, including a lengthy statement by Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former commander of all U.S. forces in Europe from 2014 to 2017, on how the Ukrainians must be given long range precision missiles for them to attack Russian Crimea and also further into the Russian heartland. The interview from which this declaration was made does not yet appear in Google search, but from interviews posted in 2022 it is clear that Hodges is no madman, and his statements must, as Popov said, be taken with utmost seriousness.

The context, of course, for the radical escalation now being discussed in the United States is the expectation of a massive Russian offensive to begin shortly as the anniversary of the Special Military Operation approaches. The imminent defeat of Ukrainian forces has focused minds in Washington.

One of the regular panelists on “Sixty Minutes” then faced the cameras directly and said that Russia’s nuclear doctrine is under revision in light of these aggressive plans being aired in the United States, so that Russia is headed towards a policy of ‘preventive’ tactical nuclear strikes, similar to what the United States has. Moreover, if Ukraine targets Crimea and heartland Russia, then Russia will respond according to plans now being laid down. These plans foresee counter strikes against U.S military installations in Europe and in the Continental United States using hypersonic missiles. The panelist calls for this threat of counter strikes in Europe and the US to be made public and explicit, so that no one is in doubt about what to expect from the Kremlin.

So here we are. The Russians are stripping away the fiction of a proxy war and revealing the co-belligerent status of the US and its NATO allies in preparation for a kinetic war with NATO.

Meanwhile, the slaves of Clown World are still playing their magic word games and pretending that they are relevant in a military context. Colonel Markus Reisner, the military strategist of the Austrian Ministry of Defence, takes on the difficult task of explaining why NATO soldiers fighting in Ukraine under NATO command-and-control with NATO weapons against Russian forces do not mean that NATO is at war with Russia.

If the military from Austria or NATO countries retired from service and became mercenaries, then they could no longer be considered representatives of the armies of their states. He explained that the serviceman takes off his uniform, signs a contract and goes to Ukraine – now he is not a soldier, for example, of the Austrian armed forces, but a contract mercenary. In his opinion, there are a large number of mercenaries on the territory of Ukraine and not soldiers of the alliance.

Wanna bet? I’m pretty sure the Russians are perfectly capable of considering these newly-minted “mercenaries” to be not only representatives of the armies of their states, but representatives of Clown World as well. The idea that the various European states, led by the USA, are merely providing weapons and money for Ukraine to pay for and supply these retired US and European soldiers, who are now “mercenaries”, is the application of talmudism to military grand strategy.

I expect it is going to be demonstrated, very soon, what a fundamental category error that will turn out to be.

https://voxday.net/2023/02/09/russias-new-red-lines/

Salaam

Another update. A more pro NATO perspective.

Blurb

After a year of hard fighting there are a rush of observers trying to make sense of the current balance of power in Ukraine. The focus in often on (often small) movements in the frontlines, casualties, or the performance of particular platforms and systems.

Those things matter, but wars are not generally fought to take individual trenches or solely to inflict casualties. They are fought for strategic objectives.

In this episode I dig into Russia's history of Empire, its modern strategic objectives, and try to assess whether or not the war in Ukraine represents a success or failure by Russia's own chosen metrics (as far as they can be determined). My suggestion is that in repeating a number of the mistakes previously made by leaders of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, it can be argued that Putin has already condemned the Russian federation to a strategic reverse.

What remains to be seen, is whether Ukraine can win a victory from Russia's defeat, or if it will be left to lose as well.



From Putin himself.

Embedded Tweet

Address to the Assembly

The President of Russia addresses the Federal Assembly. It does not appear to be a direct declaration of war or even an announcement of the launch of the anticipated military offensive. It’s wise to read the whole thing directly, as the Clown World media coverage of it is literally worse than useless, quoting the responses to the speech before the speech was even given or the transcript released.

So far, only the very first part of the official English transcript has been released, but the whole thing will eventually be posted here by the Kremlin’s press agency.

'This Presidential Address comes, as we all know, at a difficult, watershed period for our country. This is a time of radical, irreversible change in the entire world, of crucial historical events that will determine the future of our country and our people, a time when every one of us bears a colossal responsibility.

One year ago, to protect the people in our historical lands, to ensure the security of our country and to eliminate the threat coming from the neo-Nazi regime that had taken hold in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, it was decided to begin the special military operation. Step by step, carefully and consistently we will deal with the tasks we have at hand.

Since 2014, Donbass has been fighting for the right to live in their land and to speak their native tongue. It fought and never gave up amid the blockade, constant shelling and the Kiev regime’s overt hatred. It hoped and waited that Russia would come to help.

In the meantime, as you know well, we were doing everything in our power to solve this problem by peaceful means, and patiently conducted talks on a peaceful solution to this devastating conflict.

This appalling method of deception has been tried and tested many times before. They behaved just as shamelessly and duplicitously when destroying Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They will never be able to wash off this shame. The concepts of honour, trust, and decency are not for them.

Over the long centuries of colonialism, diktat and hegemony, they got used to being allowed everything, got used to spitting on the whole world. It turned out that they treat people living in their own countries with the same disdain, like a master. After all, they cynically deceived them too, tricked them with tall stories about the search for peace, about adherence to the UN Security Council resolutions on Donbass. Indeed, the Western elites have become a symbol of total, unprincipled lies.

We firmly defend our interests as well as our belief that in today’s world there should be no division into so-called civilised countries and all the rest and that there is a need for an honest partnership that rejects any exclusivity, especially an aggressive one.

We were open and sincerely ready for a constructive dialogue with the West; we said and insisted that both Europe and the whole world needed an indivisible security system equal for all countries, and for many years we suggested that our partners discuss this idea together and work on its implementation. But in response, we received either an indistinct or hypocritical reaction, as far as words were concerned. But there were also actions: NATO’s expansion to our borders, the creation of new deployment areas for missile defence in Europe and Asia – they decided to take cover from us under an ‘umbrella’ – deployment of military contingents, and not just near Russia’s borders.

I would like to stress –in fact, this is well-known – that no other country has so many military bases abroad as the United States. There are hundreds of them – I want to emphasise this – hundreds of bases all over the world; the planet is covered with them, and one look at the map is enough to see this.

The whole world witnessed how they withdrew from fundamental agreements on weapons, including the treaty on intermediate and shorter-range missiles, unilaterally tearing up the fundamental agreements that maintain world peace. For some reason, they did it. They do not do anything without a reason, as we know.

Finally, in December 2021, we officially submitted draft agreements on security guarantees to the USA and NATO. In essence, all key, fundamental points were rejected. After that it finally became clear that the go-ahead for the implementation of aggressive plans had been given and they were not going to stop.'

https://voxday.net/2023/02/21/address-to-the-assembly/

Salaam

Probably a bit of everything, Pakistan ruling classes have been on and off relationship with Western powers depending on the circumstances.

Another update.

US publishes new details of Russia-Iran military drone co-operation

Tehran sending material for assembly of unmanned aircraft in Russian factory, says Washington

The White House released new details of what it said was deepening co-operation between Russia and Iran on military drone production, including the supply route Tehran uses to send its unmanned aerial vehicles to the front lines in Ukraine and the site of a possible Russian factory to produce them.

The information is part of a steady stream of declassified intelligence about military ties between Moscow and Tehran, as Washington seeks to increase pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin over his war in Ukraine and starve him of military hardware.

“The drones are built in Iran, shipped across the Caspian Sea, from Amirabad, Iran, to Makhachkala, Russia, and then used operationally by Russian forces against Ukraine,” said John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesperson. “We are also concerned that Russia is working with Iran to produce Iranian UAVs from inside Russia.”

The US released a satellite image of Russia’s Alabuga special economic zone, which it said showed where Moscow was likely to produce Iranian drones. Kirby said Washington had information indicating Russia was receiving materials from Iran to build the drone manufacturing site.

“We are continuing to use all the tools at our disposal to expose and disrupt these activities including by sharing this with the public, and we are prepared to do more,” Kirby said.



The US on Friday announced a new government advisory to inform businesses and governments about the risks of Iran’s drone programme and the illicit ways Tehran obtains supplies for it. It previously blacklisted people and businesses it said were involved in transferring Iranian military equipment to Russia for use in Ukraine and has worked with European partners to impose restrictions to prevent electronic components found in Iranian drones ending up on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Iranian-made drones have been an important part of Russia’s air campaign against Ukraine that was increased in October. The UAVs have been used to attack critical infrastructure and residential targets in Kyiv, with many of the attacks resulting in the deaths of Ukrainian civilians.

Moscow last month further escalated its air attacks on the Ukrainian capital, launching dozens of the Shahed drones, along with cruise missiles and other rockets, in at least 18 bombardments in 31 days.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in one of his evening addresses last month that “about 1,160 Shaheds have been used against Ukraine” and that its air defences had “shot down almost 900 of these drones to date”.

In an appeal to the leadership in Tehran and “every Iranian family”, Zelenskyy also asked “why do you want to be accomplices in Russian terror? . . . Why does Iran need such cynical murders, committed by Russia’s hands, yet with your weapons?”

The US last year released satellite imagery and intelligence that it said indicated Iran sold hundreds of attack drones to Moscow. Last month, the White House warned Russia was looking to buy more attack drones from Iran after using up most of the 400 drones it had purchased from Tehran. Russia has received hundreds of one-way attack drones and drone production-related equipment from Iran as of May, Kirby said on Friday.

President Joe Biden’s administration has also warned Iran is considering selling hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia but such a deal has not come to pass.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, last month said Russia and Iran had “adapted to US pressure extremely well” and would “continue to build a relationship based on mutual benefit and respect, taking each other’s interests and concerns into account”.

He said Russia “never had illusions” that the US would stop pressing countries that “seek genuinely mutually beneficial co-operation”.

Iran has denied taking sides in the Ukraine war or selling drones to Russia for use on the battlefield. But Iranian military commanders have expressed interest in boosting military ties with Moscow, particularly buying Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets to reinvigorate its air force.

https://www.ft.com/content/170bc451-...a-43c0a6e19fc8

Salaam

Share some perspectives from those who are skeptical of the offensive ability to gain tangible results and of course those who are pro Russians.

Increasingly Mainstream western publications are questioning the efficacy of the offensive.

‘Obstacle Belts From Hell:’ Retired General on Ukraine’s Slow Counteroffensive | WSJ

The recent turmoil in Russia in the wake of Wagner Group's mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin could provide opportunity for Ukraine's battlefield troops in their counteroffensive, particularly near Bakhmut, Zaporizhzhia and Vuhledar, where the bulk of the fighting is happening.

But why has there been little progress for Ukrainian soldiers breaking through the front lines?

WSJ spoke to retired Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmitt, who breaks down what’s happened so far with the Ukrainian counteroffensive.



The rope and dope strategy employed by the Russians isn't new, as history has shown.

Embedded Tweet

Another example

German army says Ukraine is wasting western training

The counteroffensive against Russia is being hampered by the entrenched ways of Ukraine’s senior military, a leaked report says

Germany’s armed forces have criticised the tactics adopted by the Ukrainian army in its counteroffensive against Russian positions and said that battle-hardened troops and officers were ignoring methods taught in western training, according to a leaked Bundeswehr paper.

The Bild newspaper reported that it had obtained a confidential German army assessment of the Ukrainian assault that Kyiv has admitted is making slower progress than hoped.

The Ukrainian forces were splitting their western-trained brigades into small units of just ten to 30 soldiers in some cases to attack an enemy position, which meant they weren’t putting their western training, superior weapons or large troop numbers to use, the report said.

It said this was negating the advantages that Ukrainian troops had over Russian troops in terms of western training and firepower.

Contacted by The Times, the German defence ministry said that it was preparing a statement on the Bild article that it would release later in the day.

The leaked assessment said: “Some of the troop units are divided up in so many small sections that each troop unit does something, but a joint combat leadership is not recognisable.” That increased the risk of friendly fire and undermined Ukraine’s ability to “build up one’s own momentum or establish fire superiority”.

The paper blamed a Ukrainian “operational doctrine” that it said was particularly entrenched in troops with combat experience and in officers, who weren’t internalising western tactics. The report said that in many cases soldiers with less military experience responded better to western training. “Combat experience” did not mean “that the soldier is a good leader in combat”.

The Ukrainian soldiers trained in Germany, especially the young cadets, had understood “the operational principles of fire and movement” well. However, as soon as they returned to Ukraine they were being commanded by officers who did not operate according to Western procedures.

The report said that Ukrainian commanders sometimes showed considerable deficiencies in leading and in the application of command processes, “which sometimes leads to wrong and dangerous decisions”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/g...2023-t65stnldx

More reasons given.

Embedded Tweet

Seems Zelenskys 'friends' are tiring of his lack of success.

US and UK call for more gratitude from Kyiv after Zelenskiy’s Nato complaint

Comments come after Ukrainian leader complained his country had not been given firm timetable for joining alliance

Britain’s defence secretary and the US national security adviser have suggested Ukraine ought to show more gratitude for the help it has received from the west, in response to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s complaints that his country has not been issued a firm timetable or set of conditions for joining Nato.

Their unscripted remarks – at two different events on the margins of the second day of the Nato summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius – appeared to prompt a change of tack from the Ukrainian leader on Wednesday, who later said he was “grateful to all leaders of Nato countries” for their support and help.

Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, said that “whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude”, when asked about Zelenskiy’s frustration at not being presented with a formal invitation to join Nato, and he advised Ukraine that it might help if it took a different approach.

Presenting his remarks as helpful advice, Wallace said Ukraine had a habit of treating allies, including the UK, as if they were an Amazon warehouse with lists of demands for weapons – and was not always careful to try to win over more sceptical politicians in the US Congress and elsewhere.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-say-thank-you

Embedded Tweet

“No One Is Discussing The Level Of Ukrainian Casualties” | Is The Counter Offensive Going Wrong?

Is the Ukrainian counter offensive against the bedded in Russian defences failing? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted it is not going as well as he'd expected and while the fight stalls, the cemeteries on both sides are filling up.

Peter Hitchens sits down with former military intelligence officer Philip Ingram to decipher how much progress the Ukrainians are making and whether the body count is encouraging either side to the negotiating table.






The Last Stage of the Current Phase

Russian President Vladimir Putin provides an update on the coming end to the Special Military Operation:

Moscow ready for ‘any scenario’ with NATO

Aside from the conflict with Ukraine, this month saw several non-fatal incidents in Syrian skies involving Russian aircraft and US drones, with both sides blaming each other for reckless behavior. Russia would like to avoid a direct armed confrontation with the West, but keeps the worst possible scenarios in mind, Putin said. “If someone wants it – and that’s not us – then we’re ready,” he stressed.

Putin does not directly command operation in Ukraine

According to the Russian leader, as commander-in-chief, he has been receiving regular reports about the situation of the front line and speaks with his top generals several times a day. Putin added that he can reach out to “special units” when needed. However, it would be “wrong” for the president to interfere with the military and start directly commanding the troops, he said.

Kiev running out of conscripts

The Ukrainian army is not only suffering heavy losses on the battlefield, but is struggling with manpower, Putin argued. He said that, while taking prisoners, Russian authorities discovered that Ukraine had “formed military units” made up of aircraft technicians. “What does it tell us? That their mobilization resources are depleting,” the Russian leader said. He previously noted that Kiev’s forces had lost dozens of pieces of Western armor, including German-made Leopard 2 tanks and US-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

Putin is clarifying what we’ve already been observing from multiple sources: the Kiev regime is done without direct intervention from NATO. No amount of additional equipment, armor, aircraft, ammunition, or mercenaries is going to change anything for the regime’s operational or strategic position; a meaningless shift of a few kilometers here or there on the tactical front is the most that can potentially be accomplished. Russia has won the war of attrition.

So, NATO now faces a choice. Direct and open war with a Russian military that has completed its initial stage of mobilization and is prepared to engage its forces, the greater part of which are not even present on the European continent right now, or back down, admit that it has lost its proxy war, and attempt to negotiate a surrender to the Russians. Despite his bold words about ending Clown World, Putin has sent clear signals that he will accept the latter. So, the Special Military Operation will soon come to an end, but whether that end will be war or peace is yet to be learned.

Interestingly enough, the most rabid hawks among the neoclowns are pushing for negotiation and peace with Russia. See: Edward Luttwalk. This is because they are anticipating direct war with China, and they do not want to find themselves committed to a two-front war that cannot be won. While this is superficially the correct position, it’s an excessively optimistic one because Russia and China are not going to be divided by factional funding and clever word games; both Xi and Putin are well aware of how the neoclowns have successfully divided and conquered one enemy after another since the end of World War II.

The dumber sort of neoclowns, the sort who believe their own wordspells, are pushing for Poland to enter the war, because they know that Americans won’t support direct war with Russia but they aren’t prepared to give up when Russia is so close to running out of ammunition and Putin is about to be overthrown by a) rebel mercenaries, b) Russian democrats, or c) neurologically-enhanced cyberotters. The disastrous history of Polish democracy suggests this is possible, but given the way Putin has already stated that he’s open to giving Western Ukraine to Poland, I think it’s unlikely unless something gets sparked by Wagner in Belarus on the Polish border. There is a negotiated scenario where Poland, Belarus, and Russia all win, at the expensive of Kiev, and since the only NATO opinion that matters is that of the US neoclowns, I see the “divide-up-Western-Ukraine” as being a more likely outcome than a second NATO war by proxy with Poland playing the role of Ukraine.

However, war, unlike the tango, doesn’t take two. No matter what the immediate outcome of the Special Military Operation turns out to be, any negotiated settlement is even less likely to hold for the intermediate term than the Treaty of Versailles. Once the US-China war begins, Russia is almost certainly going to set itself to completing the task of de-NATOing Europe and excising the neoclown influence from the continent.

So, ironically, it might be better for Americans – though much worse for Europeans – if the neoclowns were to choose war with Russia and be comprehensively defeated even before the anticipated war with China, than opting for a short-term peace that will guarantee war on two fronts with two better-prepared and strategically-superior opponents.

https://voxday.net/2023/07/30/the-la...current-phase/

Salaam

format_quote Originally Posted by space

he came into power in 1999 and he gave the order to mercilessly bomb my city and it was in the autumn and the war extended around the entire state, I still remember as it was yesterday

/offtopic

Not offtopic brother VERY relevant.

Chechnya? I was young but I remember vividly the first conflict, it was on the news a lot (in the UK) at that time.



The second war and its sad outcome. (docu is a little biased but decent enough).