Vuhledar… what happened there the last week, ‘or so’ is nothing but a shame.
As first, the GenStab-U might have intended to-, but didn’t rotate out what’s left of the 72nd Mech. It left the remnants of a completely exhausted unit at its own, partially still inside the ruined town. The way things are looking right now (i.e. on basis of currently available information), the CO 72nd Mech then started organising a phased withdrawal. The GenStab-U didn’t take care to help the unit through securing flanks, but – in the light of troops inside Vuhledar posting complaints and requests for withdrawal from the ruined town – dismissed the CO 72nd Mech – and then left the Russians massacre troops still inside the town by dropping FAB-3000 and similar, free-fall bombs from their Su-24 and/or Tu-22M-3 bombers on the ruins of the town, plus massacre troops that attempted to withdraw over open fields north of it, so the town wouldn’t fall while Zelensky was (still) in the USA…
If that is truth, and it looks like it is, then…. well, I’m not pro capital punishments, and my standpoint is that one shouldn’t waste a single life. Therefore, my recommendation would be both Zelensky and Yermak, and the Commander-in-Chief of the ZSU, plus everybody in the GenStab-U who knew about all of this, but refused to quit on his own, belong being re-organised into a de-mining company and sent either to Kherson or to eastern Kharkiv.
Following appropriate training, of course.
There’s simply no other way any of them to ever make good what they did here – while there is a lots of work waiting for their eyes, hands and legs there.
….and that would be a very suitable warning for whoever would replace them, so their successors might learn not to play with lives of thousands of other people.
One way or the other, and what’s worse, based on experiences from the last two years, the net result of this entire affair is going to be that the 72nd – the unit that held out at Moshchun, the unit that held out in Vuhledar for two years, and the unit that was shamefully left down by the political leadership in Kyiv, and by the entire top of the ZSU – is going to join the growing list of Ukrainian brigades that are ‘spent’ for illusions and fantasies, and then left to vegetate while ‘cannibalised’ for whatever officers and other ranks are ‘loyal’ to their superiors, so the GenStab-U can create two other new brigades, consisting of insufficiently trained mobiks.
Atop of that, the ZSU thus lost the best defence position in this part of Ukraine (it comes not out of nothing the 72nd held out in Vuhledar for two years, with no help from the GenStab-U and the rest of the ZSU, plus the PSU). It’s not only that Bohoyavlenka and Novoukrainka are now exposed to further Russian advances. The Russians can expect to advance all the way to the line Velyka Novosilka – Pokrovsk by the end of this year.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-4-october-2024-illusions
Comment: The defense and eventual loss of Vuhledar points out much of what is good and bad in the Ukrainian army. This unit, the 72nd Mech Brigade has been in combat since the first days of Russia’s invasion. They defended Kyiv at the Battle of Moshchun and were heavily engaged at Bakhmut. They suffered a lot of casualties there and were reinforced, for the first and last time with conscripts. After that, they took up the defense of Vuhledar in January 2023. From that point to now, the 72nd received no help from the General Staff in Kyiv, no individual replacements, no reinforcing units and no time to rest and refit. That they held on against repeated assaults this long and dealt the Russians some truly devastating losses is a testament to their courage and skill. That they received no replacements, reinforcements or time for rest and refit is a failure of Ukrainian leadership… and Western training.
It’s actually a call back to Soviet military thinking. A call back to sending in the next echelon rather than resting and refitting units, as an initial unit is worn out and destroyed, a second and third echelon takes its place. The higher levels of Ukrainian leadership grew up with that thinking and are still wed to it. Rather than creating a program to flow a steady stream of individual replacements to existing units, the Ukrainian General Staff is creating new brigades manned with conscripts. Ukraine is going to have a tough time trying to defeat Russia with this system.
Eight years of Western training, primarily US training, failed to divorce senior Ukrainian leadership from that thinking. Perhaps that’s too much to expect, teaching old dogs new tricks, but training at lower levels worked quite well. Much of that training is conducted by Special Forces teams working with individual training and small unit training. That also explains the success of Ukrainian special operations and resistance forces. Once the war started, training in European bases never went beyond company level. As far as I’ve read, there was no formal Command and General Staff or War College level training. Sure a few Ukrainian officers attended such training in the states from time to time, but that’s not many.
What is needed is a concerted effort to provide that training to a wide group of field grade and even general officer level leaders in the Ukrainian army. I believe it’s too much to ask SF to fulfill this task. Senior SF officers now spend their whole careers in the special operations community. They don’t have the experience and training to train others in high level command and logistics at that level. Even the new Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFAB) are not set up to do this. Either the SFABs have to be refocused and organized to do this or, preferably in my opinion, the command and general staff schools and war colleges should create training teams to bring their knowledge to the Ukrainian armed forces… before it’s too late.
TTG
Nina Krushcheva argues that a close study of Putin and Russian leadership and culture over historical time periods indicates that Putin may at some time in the future – SNAP.
Her reasoning differs considerably from my pet theory about the uncanny similarities of the childhoods of Hitler, Stalin and Putin. But she is a Russian with deep connections to the elite of the USSR and RF, so she needs to be listened to. Article may possibly be free without registration if you’re a first time visitor. Otherwise registration is free and entitles you to a reasonably large number.of free views.
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The Sources of Russian Conduct
Sep 30, 2024
NINA L. KHRUSHCHEVA
Russian President Vladimir Putin has always followed a clear escalation formula: he withstands growing pressure for a while, but eventually he snaps. This record suggests that his decision not to respond forcefully to Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region should not be viewed as proof that his “red lines” are mere bluffs.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-rising-risk-of-nuclear-escalation-or-confrontation-with-nato-by-nina-l-khrushcheva-2024-09
Excerpt:
This reaction might seem excessive, but it is quintessentially Russian. As Radchenko argues, Putin – like all Soviet leaders – shares a fundamental fear with Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic Crime and Punishment: one who does not respond forcefully to life’s humiliations is a “trembling creature,” without rights or interests anyone will protect. Accepting other powers’ neglect, let alone hostility, is simply not an option.
Excerpt;
Western observers seem largely convinced that Russia would not actually deploy nuclear weapons, because there is no “winning” a nuclear war. But that pesky Dostoyevskyan logic suggests that, for Putin, exposing Russia to nuclear retaliation may well be the price of standing up to those who would seek to subjugate it. Russians writhing in pain from burns and radiation poisoning can at least feel proud that they didn’t back down. Europeans, also burned and poisoned, can calm themselves with thoughts that they didn’t blink.
The West’s willingness to dismiss Putin’s threats as mere bluster runs counter not only to historical experience, but also to its own admonitions that Putin is intent on attacking NATO countries. For example, US President Joe Biden warned in August that Russia will not stop at Ukraine. Even here, however, the West is fundamentally misunderstanding Putin: he would prefer not to engage directly with NATO. The risk is that he will decide that the West has forced his hand.
Main comment to this news in this Telegraph channel today seems to be “Another Ukraine is on the way.” Only my 2 cents but this seems more, rather than less, likely to make VVP “Snap” as Nina Krushcheva puts it above. The crashing of the RF economy, estimated to kick in seriously next year, won’t help either.
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https://t.me/SergeyKolyasnikov/63426
Overhead photo at link.
⚡️The Government of Kazakhstan will lease to the United States for a period of 49 years a land plot in Almaty (in the very center) with an area of more than 70,000 square meters for the construction of a new American consulate.
In 2005, the world’s second largest US consulate was opened in Armenia on a 90,000 square meter site. What happened to Armenia as a result – we can see online.
Any prediction based on the psychology of a politician (in this case Putin) can be thrown in the bin. It’s blah, blah, blah without substance. Even more so if the author tries to explain it by drawing a parallel with a character in a novel.
As for the rest of the text, her crystal ball is no better than mine, and that’s not a big deal. She should try used coffee grounds or hire a shaman from a forgotten tribe deep in Siberia.
Thanks anyway, it’s always good to know what an idiot thinks.
Dear TTG, I think you re correct regarding the need for a Corps of Field Grade officers but it can’t happen for one good reason – there are no sound intellectual foundation on which to build what has to be a crowning edifice to Ukrainian society.
A general Staff Corps, by definition, hs to be built on the foundations of national self image and values. Unless you know where you came from and what you value, how can you know what you are trying to protect? Pat Lang always was very clear on his foundations; honor, duty and the Republic. In other words and for better and for worse, there is La Gloire, The Crown,The Flag, Bushido and The Motherland as the rock on which you construct your story and ultimately your strategies, for if you don’t know what you are fighting for, how can you know what is worth defending?
Unfortunately for Ukraine, it is a bastard state conceived in 1920 and made up of the remains of two very different provinces of the old Austro – Hungarian Empire and no pseudo historical BS is going to change that. It has no great theological, moral or societal foundation and nothing the academics or Victoria Nuland can do can give it one.
Do I need to spell out for anyone what happens when you try to build an institution or a business without solid foundations? It can’t be done. Eventually you come to the great question ‘what am I prepared to fight and die for? The glory of NATO? Microsoft?, Archer Midland Daniels? Exxon?.
Ukraine is not alone in this; Israel is fighting for an ancient scriptural base. Australia, a former penal colony, thinks it fights for The Crown. Italy? It had nothing to fight for in WWII and it showed.
walrus,
You are woefully uninformed about the history of Ukraine and the region. You know nothing of Kyiv, the Kyivan Rus (who Russia claims as their own), Volodomyr I and Yaroslav the Wise. Ukraine then fell under Lithuania and the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth before she regained some independence under the Cossack Hetmanate. After that Ukraine fell under the Muscovites and the Tsardom of Russia. Then began a long history of Russification with a short period of independence beginning in 1917 and their final independence in 1991. Ukraine has a rich, though often tragic, history.
he’s also uninformed (or selectively informed, to be charitable) on; Israel (fighting for the lives of Jewish people in light of the Holocaust, somehow overlooked by everyone on the planet during Nazism), Australia (establishing itself as a regional power, distinct from Brit condenscention), & Italy (nostalgia for the Roman Imperial past, inventors of fascism, pursuit of a modern African colonial empire).
I don’t think you have the right Walrus. None of your allegations about me are true.
I was not alleging anything personal, just responding to statements about the cases referenced. I think aspects germane to “what makes a nation-state?” were overlooked.
we may be witnesses to the establishment of that solid foundation – oft fought for & now again. history may not have halted in our own time.
interesting review of the idea of nationalism;
https://aeon.co/essays/the-myth-of-civic-vs-ethnic-nationhood-in-europe-east-and-west
TTG,
“The territory of what is the modern country of Ukraine has been controlled politically by a number of state entities. Much of the territory was controlled by Rus’ principalities in the Middle Ages. Rus’ dominion faded during the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland conquered portions of modern-day Ukraine in the 14th century. The establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569 led to large portions of Ukraine being subsumed under the Commonwealth’s control. A Cossack state, commonly known as the Cossack Hetmanate or Zaporizhian Host, under Russian protection was established in 1648 and persisted until 1764. The Partitions of Poland led territories of modern Ukraine to fall under the control of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian Empire. Conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire led to the incorporation of Crimea into Russia under the rule of Catherine the Great (1762-1796).”
From:
https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/ukraine/pre1914
Yes TTG – the borders have moved back and forth for the last 1000 years and you want what Lithuania controlled at its peak to be handed back to you. But neither Lithuania nor Poland ever controlled land east of the Dneiper, not even briefly and not even at the peak of your incursions into the borders of modern day Ukraine.
The Ukrainians just want to have good relations with everyone. I know this because I have been there and I talked to the people. Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.
James,
Yes, the borders change but the people remained even in the face of centuries of Russian expulsions and Russification policies.
TTG,
The people remained but the people changed. The people who today live in Wrocław are different than the people who lived in that city in 1913.
I lived in Warsaw for a year in 1997 and taught English at Warsaw University to support myself. One day we were discussing feminism and the female students told me “our Polish boys think they are Cossacks and they have no use for feminism”. I was confused because I associated Cossacks with Ukraine and Russia – and one thing that I knew at that point was that the Poles *really* hated the Russians.
Now that I know a bit more about the history of Ukraine it makes a bit more sense to me. Borders change, culture in particular regions change, but the lines are fuzzy and peoples have rich heritages.
James,
Jak Góral!
That’s the comment I often got while speaking Polish. My first teacher was from the Zakopane area. The accent stuck. Those Polish girls were likely talking about the boys from the southern mountains.
” before it’s too late.”
You can remove ‘before’.
The play is being performed. The old lady has finished singing.
As far as the intellectual training of senior officers is concerned, I think Walrus has hit the nail on the head (as usual, thank you Walrus).
It is said that an army can be built in a few years, but a navy takes a generation. That’s not true, a staff army takes at least 40 years to build if the national conditions are right.
TTG, are you aware that your arguments on Ukraine are exactly the same as those of Walrus? This is the curse of Central Europe: ever-changing borders and shifting and often ill-defined allegiances.
Nothing is ever final in these matters. But it takes time. And that’s what we don’t have. Unless something new happens, like the involvement of NATO, i.e. the US, because don’t count on Europe too much.
Translation from Telegram. Pic at 1st link. This has been all over the net since early this morning. My first reaction was that it was Israeli propaganda purposed to ramp up the sense of urgency for a massive hit on Iran. Now there’s this stuff about a geophysical station in Armenia. Are the exploding-pager terrorists beneath stooping to hack into an earthquake observatory? Have the Norks or Shoigu delivered? Has Pakistan? There was a huge explosion in Karachi which has been attributed to be an exploding fuel depository of some kind.
———————————
https://t.me/infantmilitario/138270
https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-823427
Mysterious earthquake in Iran could be nuclear weapons test. Omani professor Hamoud Al-Nufli writes on X tonight, saying of the earthquake: “Iran may soon announce that it has nuclear weapons, which would be a very big shock to the West, Israel and those under its protection.”
An earthquake measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale has struck the province of Semnan. Iranian media reported the incident. However, a geological station in neighboring Armenia claims to have registered no aftershocks, indicating a powerful explosion.
That explains why the US government appears desperate to at least tone down the war on Sunday night. According to Israeli television, Washington offered Netanyahu some kind of “compensation” if Israel refrained from attacking certain targets in Iran.
The Jerusalem Post also reported on this “compensation offer”
F&L,
The compensation ought to be the continuation of intelligence, logistics and defense support IF Israel doesn’t attack what we say is off limits. If Israel wants to go its own way, they can do it without any of that support.
Update:
http://pk.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zbgx/202410/t20241007_11503085.htm
Text below copied & pasted from a geopolitical futures morning email.
——————————–
Attack in Pakistan. A convoy of vehicles carrying Chinese workers for the Port Qasim Electric Power Co. was the target of an attack near the international airport in Karachi, Pakistan. According to the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, which described the incident as a terrorist attack, two Chinese citizens were killed. A separatist group called the Balochistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the blast
Yes TTG, I am familiar with the history of Ukraine. You make my point for me; which of those many periods, Lithuanian, Lithuanian/Polish, Russian, Cossack or Kyivan Rus, is the bedrock of Ukrainian self image? The answer is none of it and all of it. There is no defining event that forms “year one” in the Ukrainian consciousness. There is no foundation.
Walrus,
It’s the same for countries throughout the region, including Russia.
Walrus – someone, whose identity presently escapes my increasingly sieve-like memory, omitted to include the massive “Babi – Yar” atrocity as one of many other benevolences occuring during Ukraine’s noble and increasingly illustrious history.
It took Putin two years to take Vuhledar, a town of 14,000 people. Plus he lost 20,000 Russian troops and 1000 armored vehicles at Vuhledar. Back a year and a half ago in April 2023 Colonel-General Muradov was relieved of command because of his inability to capture Vuhledar. It was a hard nut to crack.
Bravo Zulu to the troops of the 72nd Mech Bde. The straw that finally broke their back was the UMPK glide kits attached to those Soviet-made FAB-3000 bombs. That allows Russian SU-34s to stand off and release those bombs 35 to 50 kilometers behind the front lines minimizing the threat from Ukrainian air defenses. One of the top priorities in Ukraine right now should be to defeat those stand-off glide kits. Either electronically by spoofing UMPK guidance packages, or kinetically with longer range air to air missiles to take out the bombers before they release their ordnance.
Rasputitsa is nigh, so I’m not sure I agree with Cooper’s prediction that the Russians will advance to the Velyka Novosilka – Pokrovsk line by the end of this year. Time will tell.
“he lost 20,000 Russian troops and 1000 armored vehicles at Vuhledar.”
Ukrainian propaganda is more and more ridiculous.
And FYI, there is most of the time no Rasputitsa in the south.
aleksandar,
There most certainly is a mud season in southern Ukraine, probably not in Crimea, but definitely in the Donetsk and Zaporizhia Oblasts.
Maybe it’s just logistics, TTG. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians can fight well in difficult ground conditions. Bringing up supplies or replenishing/rotating troops is a different matter. The Russians want to be on the hard roads and deny the Ukrainians use of them in any case. Or that’s how it seems after casting an inexpert look at the maps and road and rail systems.
In the early days I read somewhere it took the Federalists a trainload of ammunition to supply a few days fighting. That was when it was just one battle at a time, more or less. Here, with quite significant engagements simultaneously along a line of several hundred miles the logistics must determine what operations can be undertaken – and what operations need to be undertaken. WWI was sometimes termed the Railway War from the massive logistical back-up needed and in this war, though on a different scale, the Russians look to be working under the same constraints.
They must be: they soften up positions with huge artillery barrages before they mop up the position with ground troops and the job of bringing up enough for that must keep the Staff busy day and night. I bet they’re grateful for all the hard roads from the railhead they can grab, rasputitsa or not.
This loss is symptomatic of broader problems in Ukrainian military and I don’t think these have to do with Soviet system, but with the people running the Ukrainian government. I’ve spoken about issues with Ukrainian military before and I think we are reaching a point where what we are seeing cannot be attributed to incompetence anymore. I fully believe that the small elite at the top of the Ukrainian society is fully willing to sacrifice lives of their countrymen for their own enrichment and they couldn’t care less if the war is lost as long as they can skim as much money as possible. Ukraine was deeply corrupt before the war and I think that 30+ years of living in corruption and misery has taught people leading Ukraine to grab what they can and screw everyone else.
It hard to otherwise explain sheer callousness with which the Ukrainian command treats its own troops, with the fate of the 72nd brigade being just the latest example. At every step Ukrainian government has made the wrong move, one which just happened to be favoured by their cronies. Pissing off their neighbors with illegal grain dumping, pushing Nazi propaganda that caused a rift with Poland, diplomatic misstep after misstep by publicly berating other countries for perceived slights, even when these countries are sending large amounts of aid.
Militarily, there is no proper command structure 2.5 years into the war. Would’ve a divisional or corps command been able to help the 72nd? We’ve seen military operations conducted for purely political reasons, leading to unnecessary casualties. Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Vuhledar and I won’t even get into the shitshow that was the summer counteroffensive or the Kursk offensive. Now, after removing their one capable commander in Zaluzhny, they are moving to sack Budanov as well. I am not a fan of Budanov because I think he is full of himself, but I’ll give him credit for capably managing the intelligence and sabotage side of the war.
So we are at the point where we have gone beyond incompetence into malice by Zelensky and his crew. Without a change in leadership the war will be lost and lost soon. Which is a shame, because I truly believe that Ukraine could have not only won the war but effected real change in Russia.
voislav,
You forget what Moscow did to the 40th and 155 Marine Brigades before Vuhledar. They got creamed time after time at the hands of the 72nd Mech in fruitless frontal assaults for quite a while without sufficient artillery support. Moscow has repeated this treatment of her forces across the front.
Maybe, but it could just be an example of the Massive Russian Casualties story which proved to be false last year.
You just don’t go from “Massive Russian Casulties” to “Relentless Russian Onslaught For The Next Year And This Ongoing”. Something doesn’t add up.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-10524-post-ugledar-landscape
Quote
” It’s the Ukrainian side openly admitting to unfathomable losses, as in the case of the 72nd where entire battalions were reduced to a dozen men. In Russia’s case, recall how they said untold thousands were lost in the first Ugledar assaults in February 2023. Yet I have shown before that MediaZona’s own numbers debunk this. The site allows you to search specifically for Marines, which was the attacking force back then, and further filter the losses by month. Just to be generous, I put October 2022 to March 2023, though the infamous attacks where “major losses” of Russia’s Marine columns were seen occurred in February. But for that entire period of nearly six months, they only count 215 casualties: “
Poul,
The Mediazona/BBC casualty count relied only on social media posts by family members, local news reports, and official announcements from regional authorities. It does not include those Russian soldiers left to rot on the battlefield or those kept on the books by corrupt commanders in order to continue collecting their pay. Too bad I can’t find the account written in a captured officer’s notebook where he detailed daily losses in the early days of Vuhledar. A hundred or so soldiers would be sent on an assault and only a very few would return. That story was repeated over and over week.
Ukrainian losses were unfathomable. One battalion started the war with 350 men and left Vuhledar with 35. They lost 90% in two years of war.
And what do your analysis rely on? You were badly burned about your assumptions that the Russian Army would be exhausted in September 2023.
They launched a massive counterattack which is still ongoing. That tells all we need to know about Russian casualty levels.
To paraphrase – Once burned, twice shy.
Poul,
The high estimates of Russian casualties is based on visual counts of dead on the battlefield, IMINT, SIGINT and interrogations of Russian POWs. Russia is relying on emptying out the prisons, a hidden mass mobilization and seeking foreign fighters to fuel their military meat grinder.
The grinding Russian counterattack has not pushed the front lines very far. The casualty rate, though terrible on both sides, is still very much in favor of the Ukrainians. The problem is that Russia still dwarfs Ukraine in potential manpower.
But why were the sources not able to see the massive Russian counter-offensive starting in 2023?
Look at your own observations based on the same sources from last year.
You were right about us seeing the finale result of the Ukrainian offensive come start September and that the Ukrainians would be exhausted.
But your assumption that the Russians also would need a break had nothing to do with the real world.
Russia has been on the offensive since end-september 2023 and they have only increased it in size and scope.
Time for the West to drop the wishful thinking.
Poul,
The Russian offensive has made slow and fitful progress at a tremendously high price. Ukraine gained control over more territory in a few days in Kursk than the Russian offensive gained in a year. And now the Russian rear areas are also being hit. It’s not long just the Ukrainian rear areas being hit by Russian missiles and drones.
But shouldn’t Ukraine do better than Russia? I thought that was the point, Ukraine is supposed care about the lives of its own people, whereas Putin doesn’t. Otherwise why are we supporting them if they are just Russia with a fig leaf of democracy.
On Russian losses, frankly Ukrainian math doesn’t add up. We know Russia started the war with ~300K combat troops (excluding conscripts), they mobilized some 300K in fall of 2022 and have been recruiting 20-30K volunteers a month for the last couple of years (so let’s round it up to 700K). That is a total of around 1.3 million troops. Ukraine latest estimates place 620-700K of those in Ukraine and there is likely 200K more left in Russia. That would put total Russian losses at 400-500K or so, including people who served out their contract and left. This is much less that the latest Ukrainian estimates of Russian dead, currently at ~650K.
Reality is that Ukrainian army is in decline, it’s unable to replace the losses in manpower and equipment, whereas Russians are slowly increasing the size of their force. Even if Ukraine decides to expand conscription to 18-25’s there is no equipment for these soldiers. 2025 is looking bleak, there are virtually no commitments of mechanized equipment (tanks, APCs, etc.) because European storage is bare and US is unwilling to send theirs. There are no indications that munitions production will be meaningfully expanded, while Russia has secured millions of shells from North Korea in addition to expanding domestic production.
Honestly, the irrational optimism of large portions of pro-Ukrainian commentators has me at a loss. Situation is bad and it should be treated as such. This is largely Zelensky’s fault, he wants to pretend that there is a route for Ukraine to win, like his idiotic “victory plan” rather than focusing on preserving the statehood and as much of a territory as he can. His idiocy will be the end of Ukrainian independence.
You are absolutely correct, except that the Ukrainian AF are under the command of US/UK/NATO officers, who have run the war on NATO lines, based on the experience of WWII and the US invasion of Iraq, and as such are completely out of date or massively irrelevant. These people reflect the arrogant ignorance of their own politicians – i.e. all are clueless and ignorant.
The Russians are really starting to have success with the creation of “pockets”.
My impression is that the UA are no longer able to counterattack in large parts of the front. I just don’t see how Ukraine is going to rebuilt their army’s capabilities while suffering combat losses. Good officers takes years to train and as for good infantry you will need some different age groups than what is conscripted right now plus time.
In Kharkiv province the Ukrainians are soon going to have a “Kherson” moment.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1V8NzjQkzMOhpuLhkktbiKgodOQ27X6IV&ll=49.62666096236307%2C37.75088086466184&z=11
BTW is it not time to pull out the troops from Kursk? The idea of pulling Russian troops from other places failed and now it’s just a drain of ressources.
if winter hits in a timely manner & UA holds its gains, it will be a season of costly discontent in Moscow.
And discontent in Ukraine?
It’s bound to be rather cold this winter with limited power avaiable.
You are IMO overstating discountent as a political factor in wartime. That goes for Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Lebanon and Iran etc.
I should’ve been more specific. the discontent I am referring to is that of the ruling elites. how long must one depend upon upper floors w/ open windows to find their sweet spot in the hierarchy?
Why would they be discontent?
Russia is winning and everyone loves a winner. That is not just an American phenomenon.
Also where would they turn to? The West will steal their money so you might as well be patriotic.
Poul,
Russians are dying in droves in a foreign adventure, or SMO as it’s still officially called. The economy is taking massive hits because of that war, especially outside the major cities.
Poul, they’d turn to everywhere there’s a safe buck, euro, or yen to be made. since the Russia’s Reset, they’ve done well in NYC, Miami, London & parts beyond. they’ve shown serious talent at stealing near & far. I vaguely recall some kinda discontent seemingly coming outta nowhere ’bout 107 yrs back… this month.
That they received no replacements, reinforcements or time for rest and refit
That has been an issue in reports from Ukraine for quite some time. Some soldiers seem to have been on the front since the war began. Wasn’t it an issue in legislation? …
LeaNder,
The Verkhovna Rada was loath to extend mobilization to the young. That’s why Ukrainian soldiers were so old on the average.
Nonsense. The reason they are so old on average is because all the previous young soldiers are dead, and only the old or younger below current recruitment age are left
I just read a Swedish report that had economists looking at the Russian economy and there are several big problems. Those problems are now largely felt in the rural areas, but expected to start affecting the urban areas fairly soon. They are now estimated to spend about 30% of GNP on the military and that is diverting resources from a lot of other areas that will deteriorate the situation. Inflation is probably twice as high as the government is reporting and that is also very corroding. Those who study economics know that trends do not move in smooth lines and when sloping downward, the surprises frequently come on the dips. I am convinced that there is a tipping point out there and when reached I expect Putin to get in real trouble. I have also read that there is a serious labor shortage in the weapons industry. As long as Ukraine can hang on and still inflict the serious casualties that they have so far, their path will get better. A lot of resources are still flowing into the country. China is also getting to the point of whether they will support Russia or quit doing business in Europe and they will not be able to afford the former. I realize this will make the Putin Pals sad, but this is the way it is.
Russian economy will collapse year 2022
Shit, wasn’t true !
But Russian economy will collapse year 2023.
Shit, wasn’t true !
But Russian economy will collapse year 2024.
Shit, wasn’t true ! ( German economy collapsed instead )
But Russian economy will collapse year 2025.
To be continued…………
That’s right, supplies of washing machine chips are running out too. Keep up with the cope-ium – it’s all you have left, really. Or you could start to believe in fairies again, or Santa Claus, or maybe friendly aliens will intervene . . .
Wow! Look at how a cyber security firm involving many of the top echelon in national security flopped in business:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/10/04/collapse-of-cyber-firm-founded-former-nsa-chief-leaves-bitter-wake.html
“IronNet’s founder and former CEO [and DIRNSA] Keith Alexander
…
IronNet’s board has included Mike McConnell, a former director of both the NSA and national intelligence; Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and Army vice chief of staff, and Mike Rogers, the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee”
Keith Harbaugh,
Doesn’t surprise me at all. Its value was based on a pack of smooth talking, high-end muckety-mucks who could talk a good story, but probably couldn’t administer a network to save their lives. Knowing all the latest buzz words is not how cybersecurity works.
Thanks Keith. It’s shocking in the extreme to me. The former head of the NSA? I wonder if some Machievellian trickery by the far more clever GCHQ was involved in discrediting these honchos? Or maybe, well, another unit.
On a related note- translation below dashed line.
————————————–
https://t.me/bazabazon/31908
Online broadcasting of Russia 1 and other VGTRK channels has been suspended, presumably due to a hacker attack.
Early in the morning of October 7, users complained about the unavailability of channels and radio stations of the VGTRK holding – “Russia 1”, “Russia 24”, “Culture”, “Vesti FM”, radio “Mayak” and a number of others.
“Baza” has verified that the broadcast is not working on the websites, while VGTRK’s digital broadcasting is available: all channels are working normally on the TV. Presumably, the cause of the failure is a hacker attack on the holding’s services.
So what does this prove?
That you can spend your entire life mastering the wheels within government, and not know beans about business and finance.
The US formula has been very simple for close to a century. Find the region closest to your enemy with the most intoxicating hatred for your enemy and throw em’ at em’.
From there, lacquer it with layers of “for freedom” and “for democracy”. The American public eats it up.
I have to hand it to the old architects of this formula. It was very effective, almost too perfect to the point it has made the new class of architects complacent and lazy. They put heavy heavy coats of lacquer on this Ukraine war early on without letting the layers cure properly. When it started to fail they said $%^& it and started white washing it with cheap propaganda. When that failed it went straight to censorship.
The public is no longer eating it up. Ukraine is a mess, the US is a mess, NATO along with all of western Europe also a big nasty mess.
Unfortunately nobody is willing to do what must be done which is strip this disaster and start over with brand new architects and brand new logic based formula.
you ignored “for Jesus”.
always been part of the outsiders pitch to the faithful; mgmt, rubes & cultists, anti-Enlightenment reactionaries, bitter losers, faux patriots, racists, ranters-on-radio… all of ’em want a piece of the action & (obviously) not hard to “convince”.
In honor of Bibi’s opening of the gates of hell a year ago and, why not, RF President VV Putin’s 72nd birthday, an article that may make several people here understandably incandescent with rage, for which I hope you accept my deepest sympathies in advance.
[The number 72 has all kinds of important mathematical (and mystical) significances. Perhaps most notably in the angles of the regular Pentagon and its diagonals, which in olden days was hysterically associated with the devil because the formal ruler and compass construction of a regular Pentagon required far more expertise than the ones for 3 and 4 sided regular polygons.]
What Really Happed to the Shah of Iran.
By Ernst Schroeder
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=7883
(Excerpt – see link for more)
In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group’s George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council’s Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead ‘case officers’ in the new CIA-led coup against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier.
Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert, Dr. Bernard Lewis, then on assignment at Princeton University in the United States. Lewis’s scheme, which was unveiled at the May 1979 Bilderberg meeting in Austria, endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. Lewis argued that the West should encourage autonomous groups such as the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Ethiopian Copts, Azerbaijani Turks, and so forth. The chaos would spread in what he termed an ‘Arc of Crisis,’ which would spill over into Muslim regions of the Soviet Union.
Update:
Holy Horseradish-Elixir Batman, is this even true? The author is an extremely anti-Semitic commenter on Markov’s blog but he is not without insight at times. And of course almost the entire planet is intensely anti-Semitic now so who’s throwing stones? (Other than “the usual suspects.”)
https://t.me/logikamarkova/14226?comment=4593029
Politico noted that neither Xi Jinping, nor North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, nor Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly congratulated Pippa on his birthday. Worrying.
Extraordinary that the NYT is claiming the Russians are being “attrited”. This in the face of appalling Ukrainian casualties and a disintegrating Ukrainian defence.
The reasons for this denial of reality have been clear for some time. The current US administration cannot go into the election under the reproach of having failed twice. Once with the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and now this botched venture in Ukraine. Therefore the American public must have the wool pulled over its eyes until the election is done. Tough on the Ukrainians but that’s politics for you.
……………………………
Back to reality. Newsweek interviewing Lavrov. It’ll be the first time most Americans have seen in print the Russian conditions for ending this war as stated by the Russians themselves:-
“Newsweek: As the Ukraine conflict continues, how different is Russia’s position than in 2022 and how are the costs of conflict being weighed against the progress made toward strategic objectives?”
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-russias-lavrov-warns-dangerous-consequences-us-ukraine-1964468
Lavrov puts forward the demands we’ve long been used to. Istanbul plus. Apart from one item, not a lot of plus about it. These were in essence the objectives the Russians set out at the beginning of the SMO with a couple of oblasts added:-
“On 14 June, President Vladimir Putin listed prerequisites for the settlement as follows: complete AFU withdrawal from the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic], LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic], Zaporozhye and Kherson Oblasts; recognition of territorial realities as enshrined in the Russian Constitution; neutral, non-bloc, non-nuclear status for Ukraine; its demilitarization and denazification; securing the rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens ; and removal of all sanctions against Russia.”
And that does follow what Putin said that 14th June:-
“I repeat our firm stance: Ukraine should adopt a neutral, non-aligned status, be nuclear-free, and undergo demilitarisation and denazification. These parameters were broadly agreed upon during the Istanbul negotiations in 2022, including specific details on demilitarisation such as the agreed numbers of tanks and other military equipment. We reached consensus on all points.
“Certainly, the rights, freedoms, and interests of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine must be fully protected. The new territorial realities, including the status of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions as parts of the Russian Federation, should be acknowledged. These foundational principles need to be formalised through fundamental international agreements in the future. Naturally, this entails the removal of all Western sanctions against Russia as well.”
https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1957107/
It’s that throwaway line at the end that brings one up short. “Naturally, this entails the removal of all Western sanctions against Russia as well.”
“Naturally” my foot. That’s the one thing out of the power of Ukraine itself. It would need nothing less than the consent of the US. That makes the US a party to an agreement that would recognise its own defeat.
After the failure of Istanbul it was clear that the only terms that would be agreed would be the terms of the Ukrainian capitulation. But the condition that the sanctions be removed would in effect be a demand for US capitulation. Not going to happen. These Russian conditions look like the conditions for a peace that is never going to be agreed.
Maybe how the Russians want it. These seemingly reasonable terms that Lavrov rehearses in the Newsweek interview puts them in the right with their Brics partners – “See, we tried for peace but the West wouldn’t accept it”. It would leave open the possibility of recovering Odessa and other parts of Ukraine that would prefer to be Russian. It would leave open the question of whether to renew the supply contracts with Europe that are coming up for renewal. Given that we’re inevitably heading for Cold War II this for the Russians would be preferable to a mere Istanbul plus.
EO,
There’s nothing reasonable about Putin and Lavrov’s demands and how they’re trying to force their demands on Kyiv through an illegal invasion. It’s about as reasonable as Hitler’s demands for the Sudetenland and further Lebensraum. The Kremlin could have gotten away with keeping Crimea and the existing DNR/LNR. Ukraine couldn’t stop it. No one else did anything to stop them and no one was willing to start a war to take that territory back. But the Kremlin got too greedy. Now Ukraine wants all their territory back and the West is standing with them… sort of. Russia will not get what they demand simply because they want it to be so. They may get something through their war, but they will not be happy with the situation.
Ukraine has already decided to end the gas transit contract when it ends in December. And there are many, many Russian speaking Ukrainians who are fighting and dying to prevent becoming part of Russia.
TTG – we agree in practice on most of this stuff. Always have. But the position you and of course Colonel Lang adopted on the Ukrainian war is a unique position. In practice it’s Minsk 2. No other expert I’ve read or come across adopts that position now. All others are more absolutist than that, one way or the other. No “Lang/TTG compromise” is acceptable. For most, one side or the other is going to have to win and win big.
Kamala Harris just now. Haven’t had time to go to a reliable source but the BBC’ll do in this case:-
“On Ukraine, Harris said she would not sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin unless Ukraine was also at the table.
“She slammed Trump’s position, saying: “He talks about, oh, he can end it on day one. You know what that is? It’s about surrender,” she said.
“If Trump was still president, she said, “Putin would be in Kyiv right now”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8j7x8lv7jgo
Were any agreement reached with the Russians that left Crimea and the Donbass part of Russia permanently, that would be for us in the West a Western “surrender”. Were all sanctions to be lifted and relations normalised, as the Russians demand, that would be regarded as a humiliating Western surrender. Not going to happen, as said above, under either Trump or Harris.
The Russians are still methodically attriting all the West can throw at them. When they’ve done that they’ll impose the terms of Ukrainian surrender. That’s been clear since Istanbul, in my own view well before.
What the West is hoping for is something quite different. It’s slowly getting through to the politicians that militarily the Russians are in the driving seat. We’ve not got enough armaments and those we have inferior. We’ve not got enough soldiers and when we run out of Ukrainians we’re not prepared to put our own soldiers on the ground in force.
And we could not put our own soldiers on the ground even if we tried: the “boutique armies” of the West don’t have the manpower to fight the sort of war we’re seeing in Ukraine. My view, having seen what the Milley/Cavoli/Radakin trio got up to when they were in the driving seat, we don’t have the basic military expertise either – if they’d done with our troops what they did with Ukrainian troops they’d have been cashiered. Lacking troops and competent generals both we’re on a loser.
So we’re hoping for a time out. That is, let the Russians keep the Donbass for the time being. Keep remnant Ukraine as a Western bastion. Get our second wind on armaments supply and when we’ve reinforced remnant Ukraine sufficiently, have another go at some indefinite time in the future.
That’s why we’re seeing all the foolish talk – floods of it from all over the West! – coming out at the moment. A “Korean style” ceasefire, a “two Germanies” solution. Stoltenberg even calls in aid the post-war settlement in Japan. Anything to freeze the front as it is and prevent complete defeat.
As if the Russians can’t see what we’re after! Why should the side that is decisively winning say to the other side, “We’ll stop now, and let you resupply and build up your forces so you can have another go later.”
And were Putin to try to settle on those terms he’d be out of a job tomorrow. The Russian military is far more hawkish than he is. The bulk of the Russian people too, after the casualties they’ve taken and after they’ve been hearing the war talk coming out of the West. I doubt Putin now has the negotiating room even to allow Washington to save face. He’s not, for sure, going to throw away the victory now in plain view.
For all the posturing, the American establishment knows that.
What it has to do is keep the illusion of Western victory going until your next election. It would be disastrous were the American people to find out the extent of the disaster before. Hence all the happy talk flooding the Western press about how the Ukrainians are still in with a chance.
The Ukrainians themselves don’t have much of a say in all this. Zelensky, or any successor Ukrainian administration, is under pressures it is unable to resist even if it wanted to. The Azov and similar ultra-nationalist groups still have the ability to threaten or kill any Ukrainian politicians seeking a settlement. That’s been apparent since before Zolote. The Western powers still have the say in Kiev. And there is still a good living to be made for innumerable officials siphoning off Western aid.
So Zelensky or his successor will play out the last days in the bunker (been saying that for two years now but surely it has to come to an end some time!) and more Ukrainian PBI will be slung into the back of the van and fed into the killing fields. And whilst I recognise the US electoral imperatives that render this inevitable, I cannot but deplore the result.
Maybe Trump, wayward as he is, will be able to shorten this Calvary of the Ukrainian people if he wins the election. I’m not holding my breath. But the solution you and I would find the most sensible and have always seen as the most sensible, Minsk 2, is now far out of reach.
EO,
There never was an agreement to cede Crimea and the Donbas to Russia. It was never recognized as legitimate, but it was accepted as a fait accompli not worth starting a war over. It was similar to the Soviet rule over the Baltics. That was also never recognized as legitimate, but we didn’t go to war with the Soviet union over it.
Harris is right. Ukraine has a say in how this war ends or in any negotiations as to how this war ends. To think Washington and Moscow should decide the fate of Ukraine and all Ukrainians is a notion from the age of empires. Ukraine will continue to resist whether Harris or trump is president next year. The resistance may eventually morph into what the Baltics did for 45 years before they won their freedom, but the resistance will continue.
“To think Washington and Moscow should decide the fate of Ukraine and all Ukrainians is a notion from the age of empires.”
If Ukraine wants to resist Russia, let it.
But there is absolutely no need for the U.S. to get involved in that resistance.
The present U.S. involvement is having two effects:
1. It is diverting much-needed funds from the U.S. to benefit Ukraine.
You can read multiple stories about how various U.S. needs are not being met, while hundreds of billions are spent on Ukraine.
Why should Ukraine be prioritized over Americans?
2. It is driving up the risk of a nuclear catastrophy.
I read that the IC says Putin is bluffing.
But the IC has been wrong in the past (think Pearl Harbor and Iraq and WMD), and could very well be wrong now.
Why make the future of America dependent on the IC being right on this?
Keith Harbaugh,
Most of the US support to Ukraine consists of obsolete equipment and ammo nearing the end of its life and a rebuilding of the US munitions industry. The US needs to do that and the Russian invasion of Ukraine forced the issue. It would cost more to decommission that obsolete equipment and old ammo than ship it to Ukraine.
The risk of a nuclear catastrophe is real, even though all of Putin’s red line threats have proven to be bluffs. At some point, Putin may just decide nuclear war is preferable to not winning in Ukraine. That why the US has stuck to the policy of escalation management.
We’re still living in the age of empire, TTG. The Empire of the West, still flailing around attempting to hold on to dominance.
I don’t believe the Ukrainians themselves have much of a say at all in their future. As said before, else they’d have got peace when they voted for it in 2019.
They didn’t get peace then, nor later. Instead they got pushed into an entirely unnecessary war by us and forced to continue that war when they need not have.
Now, sandwiched between their secret police and their ultra-nationalists on the one hand, and the insistence of the Western politicians that they keep fighting on the other, the people of Ukraine will be kept on the rack at least until the US election is done and probably for longer.
We do this all the time. Take some faction or other in a split country, give that faction our support, then use that faction to destabilise the country. We usually do it under the pretext of R2P, that pretext that the Colonel hated so much.
I think there is no politician, in the Bundestag or the House of Commons or Congress, who regards the trail of corpses and broken lives we leave behind us as anything more than incidental. Inevitable and disregarded collateral damage in the great game we still play on our geopolitical Grand Chessboard.
Syria was worse in terms of lives lost and shattered communities, but this one’s pretty bad. Time to let the Ukrainians off the hook.
EO,
You forget that we wanted Zelenskiy and his government to leave Kyiv as the Russians approached. Zelenskiy ignored us and vowed to stay and fight. We threatened Russia with sanctions in a vain effort to convince them to not invade. Putin ignored us and invaded Ukraine. Neither country is doing our bidding.
Kamala Harris states her position on Ukraine explicitly here:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/07/politics/takeaways-kamala-harris-60-minutes/index.html
EO –
Putin was trying to blow smoke up your arse again. There was NO consensus on all points at Istanbul, there were on most but NOT on all.
The so called “peace deal” included two major sticking points.
* Ukraine to drastically reduce their army size.
* Russia to have veto rights over security guarantees.
That would have meant total capitulation. No way Kyiv was going to surrender sovereignty.
Hang on, Leith! I’ve been saying since Istanbul that the only way this was ever going to end was “total capitulation” or nuclear. That’s not something I’ve just dreamed up. It was obvious way back.
And Ukraine was done for as a sovereign nation as soon as Mrs Merkel got her hooks into it, at the latest as soon as Mrs Nuland got wielding her cookies in Kiev. What were we doing, fooling around in someone else’s country like that?
And what of the Donbass? Would you have let the Aidar loose in it? Putin was painfully slow in stopping that but he did in the end and a good thing too!
EO,
It was Kyiv that either disbanded the right wing militias or incorporated them into the Ukrainian army subject to army regulations and discipline.
Well, I’m seeing a sharp distinction between the nationalist units and the Ukrainian regular army units, TTG. Particularly in evidence in the Mariupol fighting where the Marines and Azov were almost different species, but also evident since.
And in between those two groups a mass of men not particularly interested in the rights and wrongs of it all but just doing what you or I would do when their country was at war. Just joining up and fighting – that’s if you hadn’t been in the military anyway of course!
What a mess. At present I’m paying a little more attention to Doctorow than I used to. I think he’s on the money with rejecting Mearsheimer on some points; but maybe not for the same reasons that lead me to reject that courageous but quirky figure.
Also looks at a question that’s been around for years on SST and not just when considering the US/Israel relationship (Where I think Mearsheimer’s wrong too, by the way.) When it comes to the relationship between the US and its allies, or between the US and its proxies, is the tail wagging the dog or the dog wagging the tail?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l6yhN3Uq8Q&ab_channel=DialogueWorks
Seems to be a dispute about that in academic circles that Doctorow touches upon in that video (that I haven’t finished yet and won’t because it’s impossibly late over here already.)
But these blasted academics! I find none who consider that question when it’s at its most important. When it comes to the Ukrainian war, is it the US that’s using the EU, as almost all seem to take for granted, or is it the EU hoping to use the US?
As usual, I find myself in a minority of one on that point. I’m more and more thinking the latter.
……………….
I hope your commenters who live down there are OK in the coming storm. Nothing as fierce in England, or very rarely, but worth noting that in very high winds one has to be careful opening doors. The sudden and pronounced alteration in air pressure inside the house in conjunction with the Bernoulli effect on the exterior of the roof can and sometimes does rip the roof off. But I expect everyone knows that. Best of luck to all in the area.
EO,
Those ultra-nationalist militias like the Azov and Aidar battalions were also some of the best soldiers fighting for Kyiv. Still, the Aidar Battalion was quickly disbanded and the Azov Regiment was professionalized before it sacrificed itself at Mariupol. The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade is the heir to the Azov Battalion, formed from veterans of that militia battalion, definitely still contains nationalistic elements, but is probably the most effective and competently led brigade in the Ukrainian army. It is a far cry from that neo-nazi militia from 2014 and 2015.
I don’t think you are a minority of one concerning whether it’s the US or the EU driving the train. The defense of Ukraine is certainly more important to Europe, especially Eastern Europe than it is to the US. The US just happens to have the most resources to support Ukraine. But as a percentage of GDP, Europe and Eastern European countries in particular far exceed the support offered by the US.
EO –
Putin was not slow in going into the Donbas. Putin sent Russian agents and provocateurs into the Donbas years prior to the Euromaidan. And he started sending arms and men long before the Aidar’s formation and recruitment. Aidar was formally disbanded on 2 March 2015. That’s a few weeks after Minsk II, it’s one year before a UN report in 2016 said that people that lived in separatist-controlled areas of the Donbas were experiencing “complete absence of rule of law, reports of arbitrary detention, torture and incommunicado detention, and no access to real redress mechanisms”, and it’s seven years before Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Putin destroyed the Donbas by invading it. He has bombed its cities into rubble. He tortured Donbas citizens who spoke Ukrainian and kidnapped their children. He stood by while his surrogates in the Donbas illegally detained, abducted and intimidated election officials. He has press ganged Donbas citizens into the Russian Army where they were fed into meat assaults as cannon fodder and died by the thousands in unmarked graves.
There is no good thing you can point to in that. Or maybe you consider the reach and deviousness of his propaganda machine to be a good thing. It does put Goebbels to shame.
Trouble is, Leith, we see this from different angles. Your politicians see the war as a means of killing Russians at little cost in lives. American lives that is. Your politicians say as much. Often.
Ukrainian lives? Fuggedaboutit. Someone’s got to be cannon fodder and it’s not going to be us.
And they often add that it’s good for the US economy, making arms to replace the old stuff we give to the Ukrainians.
Sometimes they talk of Freedom and Democracy as well, your politicians. Delivered to Gaza in 2000 lb doses and to the Ukrainians via our pet neo-Nazis.
Don’t say that last in Germany by the way. Ever. They’ll clobber you. Free speech is so precious in the Heimat that Barbarossa Scholz keeps it all to himself.
My politicians? If we are to go by what they say on some of your blogs over in the States, my politicians are the movers and shakers of the West. They tell the mugs in Washington and the lesser breeds on the Continent what to do.
So respect, please, to us: the Leaders of the West! Damn, got that wrong. The Leaders of the World!
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-munich-security-conference
That bullshit aside, forget about them too. My politicians make up whatever comes into their heads on the rare occasions something does.
………………………..
The background sorted, I suppose we’d better get down to business. Though I have covered these points before, Leith. Not being reproachful or anything.
Unless a whole lot of people are lying in concert, Leith, there’s no doubt that the neo-Nazi atrocities in the Donbass occurred. Don’t forget that Brayard video I submitted a link to – any amount of material like that.
More will come out when the survivors feel it safe to talk. At the moment they’re camera shy for the same reason you and I would be. They have relatives across the lines and they don’t want those relatives got at. This, taken from a brief TTG summary I saw on the Colonel’s site a while back, sets out what the people of the Donbass were coping with from 2014 on and what the LDNR forces are still fighting like wildcats to stop now:-
“The Maidan Revolution occurred under conditions of anarchy and continued corruption. Under the cover of that anarchy, the right wing elements, the neo-nazis, white supremacists, anti-semitics and ultra nationalists gained ascendancy. They formed the right wing militias that threatened the lives of those in the east.
“The rebels had no choice but to fight for their lives. And they did. And it got ugly.”
Very ugly, and you’re right saying the Donbass, or parts of it, was a hellhole during that time. Soldiers of fortune, looters, smugglers, fanatical idealists of all stripes who saw the opportunity to bring their fantasies about, Chechens (both sides and given to appalling atrocity) and of course the Oligarchs making their fortunes, or securing them, throughout.
A hellhole. In the middle of it all the bulk of the people just clinging on to survival and hoping it would just all go away. The whole mess delivered to them courtesy of the EU and US and please don’t forget that.
The “good thing I can point out” is that the Russians didn’t do too badly sorting the mess out. Here’s not the place to set out the history but looking at it overall they did OK. Though never expect sorting out a problem like that to be tidy! We ourselves, when we had to go in and sort out the mess in Northern Ireland – and that’s nothing like comparable in scale – made some terrible mistakes and still do.
Putin. Was he a wimp scared to confront the West? Was he in hock to his own and the Ukrainian Oligarchs? Why did he let the neo-Nazis shell his fellow Russians in the Donbass, day after day, year after year, without stopping it dead with that huge army of his? Was he really fooled by Merkel and Hollande and Obama on Minsk 2?
These are questions passionately debated in Russia and amongst those few in the West who know the facts. But all these criticisms of Putin are swept aside as irrelevant when we consider what the Russians were up against.
They knew full well that one false move before they were ready and the West had devastating sanctions waiting for them. The Russians were still heaving themselves out of the dereliction of the ’90’s. I think those sanctions would have done for them had they come in in force earlier, to sort out that mess in the Donbass. We must admit, though, that they left it quite late enough!
………………………
We need to examine the other points your raise.
Evacuating children from a war zone is not “kidnapping”. It’s evacuating children from a war zone. When they’re not using the children as human shields the Ukrainian authorities do it too. So they should. You don’t want children around when bullets are flying.
If you know how to shift enemy soldiers from fortified buildings without damage both the Ukrainians and the Russians would be very pleased to hear from you.
Please don’t fall for the “human wave” nonsense. Neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian Staff try that and if they did their soldiers would refuse. I read the same Western propaganda that you do and neither of us should be taken in by it.
Though sending soldiers into traps that the enemy has pre-registered his guns on, as we saw the Ukrainians do so often, delivers much the same number of casualties as a human wave attack.
I’d say the worst military problem the Russians face in this war is that, Prigozhin out of the way, the Russians are as sparing as possible with the lives of their soldiers – but they’re fighting an army that cares as little for the lives of Ukrainian soldiers as we do.
We must never forget, Leith, as we cheer our cannon fodder into the killing fields, that they’re people too. Neo-Nazis, regulars, the poor devils slung in the back of the van to be forwarded to death, all of them are people who value their lives just as much as you and I value ours. They’re not just figures writhing on the video screen for our entertainment. Something the Milley/Cavoli/Radakin trio took no account of as they played amateur night general in Ukraine, and even less Zelensky.
EO,
Our politicians see the war as a means of guaranteeing Ukraine’s continuing independence. It’s some think tank types that may only see this as a means of killing Russians. It is true that US aid to Ukraine is revitalizing our munitions industry and forcing a rethink of our tactics, force structure and strategy.
As for the Donbas, conditions only got worse once the majority of the shooting stopped. Corruption and lawlessness thrived in the LNR/DNR and Russia did nothing to stop it. The LNR/DNR descended into the hell hole that Leith so aptly described. Meanwhile, Kyiv got control of the right wing militias and the Ukrainian people voted out the majority of the right wing parties. The one thing Ukraine kept from those right wingers so prominent in the Maidan Revolution was their crusade to eradicate the rampant corruption in government and the judiciary. That’s a work in progress.
It’s true those continuing Russian meat assaults are not of the linked arms human wave variety that sometimes occurred in WWII. But the assaults are resulting in increasing Russian casualties. They consist of platoon and company level assaults often mounted on modified turtle tanks, bukhankas or motorcycles to try to quickly seize ground. These assaults are met by drone, artillery and ATGM fire. The recent “advance” in these assaults is that they are repeated quickly to exhaust and overwhelm the Ukrainian defensive fires. The result is slow advances at a great price. There is no evidence of Russia trying to preserve the lives of her front line soldiers.
Trouble is EO, you still don’t get it. Or maybe you do but just like to throw scheiss at the wall to see if it will stick.
Putin did not sort it out. He destroyed the Donbas and tortured and murdered the residents there. He continues to kill Ukrainian civilians. In the sky over Odesa Russian drone operators are hunting down civilians and terrorizing the population. In cities throughout Ukraine Putin is committing genocide attacking residential areas with drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic missiles.
New Commanding Officer of the 72nd Mech is Col. Oleksandr Okhrimenko:
https://x.com/JohnH105/status/1840827500806737941
Okhrimenko previously led 14th Mech, which was awarded the honorary title “For Courage and Bravery”. He was in command of the 14th during the Kharkiv offensive.
“President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recognized the 14th Mechanized Brigade for its contribution to the Kharkiv offensive, which resulted in the capture of Kupiansk and the cities of Velykyi Burluk and Vovchansk near the Ukrainian-Russian border. The brigade was involved in a pincer attack that led to the capture of Hnylytsia and Artemivka along the Donets.”
Colonel Vinnik, the previous commander, was reassigned to pass on his experience and lessons learned at Vuhledar. Unclear if that will be at a training command, or to General Syrskyi’s staff, or to the General Staff??? Or all of the above?
There are rumors that a battalion of a territorial defense unit that was supposed to relieve or reinforce the 72nd at Vuhledar refused to deploy there. The battalion commander reportedly committed suicide.
TTG
There are many problems with the Ukrainian war effort, general shortage of available men being one of the most important. They make it worse by building new units of barely trained men instead of replenishing the exhausted ones. There are many factions and divisions within its political, military and intelligence systems. The corruption is everywhere and is getting worse. It’s a lost cause.
Btw, that’s not Vuhledar in the photo, but Vovchansk.
James –
Vovchansk, another beautiful Ukrainian city, “liberated” by Putin. So that he could come galloping to the rescue of Russian speakers there who want nothing to do with the Kremlin’s mafia state.
Here is a photo showing results of Russian artillery attack on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Holy Myrrh-Bearers in Vovchansk:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=842298594604698&set=pcb.842298774604680
leith
Every fiercely contested locality is likely to be completely demolished. If you think we are any better, take another look at the photos of Hiroshima or Dresden. Or Gaza. We supplied much of the ordinance used in the obliteration of Gaza and now the bombings of Beirut. Let’s not be hypocrites.
James –
Don’t say we. I was just two years old when Hiroshima and Dresden happened. Sounds to me like you are using what-about-ism that makes it OK for Russia to do it because of what happened 79 years ago. Why stop at 1945, why not go back to Genghis or Attila for justification?
The US ordnance used by Nutsandyahoo on Gaza was intended for Israel’s defense, not for obliterating Gaza. The US stopped shipping those bombs because of their use on Gaza, at least until Hezbollah started rocket attacks on Tel Aviv. Nutsandyahoo tried the same what-about-ism that you use when he said it’s OK because of US/Brit carpet bombing and the US atom bomb in WW2. Unfortunately the institutions that were set up after World War Two to see that it would never happen again were ignored by both Putin and Bibi.
leith
I’m not trying to justify anything but simply stating the facts. War is an extremely nasty affair and you are being a hypocrite by calling out the Russians for doing something we would do and have done many times in similar circumstances.
And please, don’t hide behind whataboutism. In a legal practice, what you call whataboutism is called a precedent. By our actions, as the principal superpower, we are establishing certain rules. People like you call a foul (whataboutism) when others, we don’t like, start playing by the same rules. That’s just plain hypocrisy. Whatever makes you feel better and one of the good guys.
James –
I’m glad to hear that you are not justifying Putin’s complete devastation of Vovchansk and other Ukrainian cities. Thank you for that.
Whataboutism in this case was not any kind of legal precedent. It was a red herring response to an accusation with counter-accusations instead of an agreement with or a defense against the original accusation. It distracted from the horror of what happened in Vovchansk and its churches, plus other cities and towns and churches and hospitals that Putin has smashed into smithereens.
I would never do, and never condone doing, something similar to what Putin is doing in Ukraine. Neither would any currently serving general or admiral in the US, Canada, or the UK. Let’s hope the world will never normalize that regardless of what may have happened in the past. It’s time for the planet to stop the tantrums and grow up.
James – All now ratting on the Ukrainians. Biden and then Blinken dodging the next Ramstein so they’ve cancelled it. “Postponed” is the word they use.
Every damn politician in the West running for cover as the debacle unfolds. Blame game in full swing. We Brits blame the Americans, by the way. They don’t have the “will” to stick by Ukraine. Nonsense. They don’t have the kit or the men but that’s forgotten.
We might also be blaming the EU. They should issue Eurobonds to pay for the war. More nonsense. Even were they to do that, they can’t suddenly magic weapons and men out of thin air either.
So the blame game in full swing. Plus the imperative to keep the disaster decently concealed from public gaze until after the US election. That’ll cost thousands more men their lives but hell, it’s only proxies so who’s counting.
EO,
Neither Biden nor Harris can leave the country right now with Hurricane Milton hitting Florida tonight. All the other members of the Ukraine Contact Group could have met without Biden, but they all decided to wait until Biden is available to chair the conference. What we’ve given to Ukraine ($60 billion) since the invasion started is only a small percentage of our yearly defense budget ($841 billion) for this year alone. And we haven’t invested any of our front line equipment or manpower.
“What we’ve given to Ukraine ($60 billion)”
Compare
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine
“Since the war began, the U.S. Congress has voted through five bills that have provided Ukraine with ongoing aid, doing so most recently in April 2024. The total budget authority under these bills—the “headline” figure often cited by news media—is $175 billion.”
Yes, some of that $175 billion was spent in the U.S.
But it was spent to meet Ukrainian needs.
“is only a small percentage of our yearly defense budget ($841 billion) for this year alone.”
You choose to compare spending on Ukraine to the defense budget.
I would prefer to compare it to the U.S. needs that could be met with that $175 billion.
Keith Harbaugh,
The full $175 billion was authorized by Congress, but not yet spent by the Biden administration. I chalk that up to the policy of escalation management.
As to the “it’s just old equipment we’re sending Ukraine”,
it seems quite effective at punishing Russia.
I haven’t read of any failures of it.
Keith Harbaugh,
That old equipment is damned good. What I’ve seen is that old, proven designs that have given years of upgrades work better than ground up new designs. The very old M-113s with armor upgrades are surprisingly survivable. I didn’t expect that. The Bradley IFVs have proven to be the best American kit in theater. I remember the earliest versions of those were being tested on Fort Moore (formerly Benning) when I was in IOBC back in 1976. It was the MICV back then.
The same goes for the Patriot system. It’s old by now, but constant upgrades have made it into something far more effective that the old Desert Storm version. It takes out the much newer and much ballyhooed Kinzhal.
I’m a bit fiercer than you on this issue TTG because I’m on the other side of the Atlantic. I get the full blast of what HMG is up to. And its cohort of journalists and other information warriors.
I’ve never actually seen rats scuttling around in a sewer but honestly, watching the journalists from Galeotti down doing their damage limitation act – this debacle is everyone’s fault but ours, you understand – must be much the same.
It’s a shame David Habakkuk is no longer here. He knew the English media scene backwards and could have answered the question that always springs to mind when one watches the sewer rats in action. Do they invent today’s lie spontaneously, from herd instinct as it were? Or do they get some sort of central direction?
Me, I reckon it’s the former. They sense the way today’s wind is blowing and take it from there. Not a pretty sight, however it happens. One gets the message anyway. HMG, which was one of the prime actors in the Ukrainian disaster from well before 2014 (We were in the EU at the time and pushing hard for expansion) comes out of it blameless. It’s Washington and the Euros who didn’t pull their weight.
……………………………………….
I take it they report on the hurricane accurately. Our hearts are with those caught up in it.
EO, you mention European media.
Here is a shocking, to me, look at how war-mongering American media is exhibiting group think in pushing for escalation:
“Media Urge Expansion of Ukraine War—
Nuclear Risk Be Damned”
https://fair.org/home/media-urge-expansion-of-ukraine-war-nuclear-risk-be-damned/
Biden won’t go nuclear, Mr Harbaugh. And Putin has no need to. That’s just myth, myth put about to cover for the fact that we can’t hack it with conventional.
The Russians would certainly use tactical nuclear if pushed to it, as Trukhan says, but NATO has nothing much to push them with.
Except that I formed the opinion even eight or nine years back that the Ukrainians were very tough soldiers indeed. Resourceful too. Those were the best soldiers NATO had and the only ones NATO had in usable quantity. What I’m seeing right now, even as the Ukrainian army falls back, confirms that in full measure. Give those Ukrainian soldiers decent kit and decent Generals and there’s no saying what they couldn’t do.
Instead we gave them our cast-offs and worse, we gave them our Generals. On the kit we landed them with enough’s been said, but one of the misconceptions we westerners have about this war is that it was run on the Ukrainian side by the Ukrainian General Staff.
Rubbish. It was run under our direction. Often micro-managed by us. On strategy, we put them up to that disastrous “counter-offensive” when the Ukrainians themselves would have preferred to defend further up north. We put them up to the Kursk offensive when the Ukrainians themselves knew it was a damn silly idea.
Martyanov was right. Unless they’re shooting up goat herders our Generals – OK, spiffing wheeze Radakin’s an Admiral but the principle still holds – couldn’t handle a platoon if that when it comes to running a serious war and it shows.
Not that it matters, except to the families of the men the Milley/Cavoli/Radakin trio squandered all over the place. As has been blindingly obvious since February 2022 there was never a military war here to be won. Our respective politicians put their money on the sanctions war, as all have now forgotten. That lost, the subsequent military evolutions were nothing more than loser Generals fumbling around trying to save face for the politicians.
I wrote in above to TTG’s site to submit a comment on the terms of surrender confirmed by Lavrov. The Russians have moved a long way from the modest terms they would have accepted with Minsk II. They now have the bit between their teeth and are dead set on ensuring that remnant Ukraine, whatever that turns out to be, will no longer be used by NATO as a means of causing them more trouble.
No NATO missile bases sited in remnant Ukraine. No more “look no hands” missile or drone attacks. No NATO bases to run sabotage and assassination missions into Russia from. No NATO backed neo-Nazis to oppress those who do not subscribe to their ideology. No more neo-Nazi monuments all over the country. No more Zolotes. No more petal mines strewn around civilian areas for the children to pick up. No more shelling of nuclear power stations.
No more of any of that, the Russians are saying. That’s what the terms set out in that Lavrov Newsweek interview mean. No more. Finis.
And they will now accept nothing less. We would not, were we in their place. I can’t speak for the Europeans because they’re mostly soft as butter, but I’m dead sure no American would put up with any of that either. Why would the Russians?
None of those terms set out by Lavrov will please Scholz or UvdL or Biden, or their successors, but the loss of the sanctions war, the military inadequacy of NATO itself, and the fact that the best soldiers NATO had, the Ukrainians, have now mostly been thrown away, no longer leaves them any choice in the matter.
So we need not fear nuclear, unless accidental. We’re merely waiting to see how many more lives are going to be thrown away before our politicians work out how to extricate themselves from the disaster without losing face. They’ll probably screw up on that too, as they screw up on just about everything else they set their hands to.
EO,
“As has been blindingly obvious since February 2022 there was never a military war here to be won. Our respective politicians put their money on the sanctions war, as all have now forgotten”
Agreed.
The sanction war was fought brilliantly by Valdimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Floating the rubles, pegging the rubles to oil and gold, and China loaning their USD to Russia (i.e. Russia can paying debt denominated in USD and never was in default).
All and all, it seems Russia and China were a few steps ahead of the West.
TonyL – I didn’t know about the Chinese loans.
Was always horrified by the sanctions war anyway. Never thought it would work. And it was odd back then, even now I suppose, watching an entire continent wrecking itself. Death wish Europe.
.
A Russian gives a perceptive and I believe accurate view on the American government/political/media/cultural scene:
“Russia Ambassador Exits US With Warning of ‘Nuclear Catastrophe’ ”
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ambassador-warns-nuclear-catastrophe-anatoly-antonov-1967309
“Russia’s top envoy to the United States has ended his term, leaving behind an ominous forecast about the risk of deteriorating bilateral ties escalating into a nuclear-armed clash over the ongoing war in Ukraine
…
“Washington is continuing a dangerous discussion about the possibility of giving Ukrainians a permission to strike deep into Russian territory with Western long-range missiles.” “
Keith Harbaugh,
He’s right about one thing. Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine is upping the ante on nuclear war. I’m surprised they didn’t scream for nuclear war when Ukraine actually invaded Russian territory at Kursk. The same with the now daily Ukrainian drone strikes deep into Russian territory.