Truth is the First Casualty

Ukraine reports Russia’s losses, but not its own.

12,000 Russian troops have now died fighting in Ukraine, while 300 tanks have been destroyed along with more than 1,000 armoured vehicles, 48 planes, 80 helicopters and three boats.

That’s after 12 days of combat. Let’s compare the enemy-reported losses to the self-reported losses from some famous historical battles:

  • Normandy: 87 days. 20,668 US KIA. 2,000 tanks destroyed.
  • Tarawa: 3 days. 1,009 US KIA.
  • Iwo Jima: 35 days. 6,862 US KIA. 137 tanks destroyed.
  • Battle of the Bulge: 40 days. 19,246 US KIA. 733 tanks destroyed.

So, if the Ukrainians are to be believed, they are killing 3.45x more Russian soldiers per day, in an invasion that is advancing faster than Desert Storm, the Six-Days War, or Operation Barbarossa, than the US military lost in four of its bloodiest battles of World War II.

My estimate of Russian losses after 12 days is 2,850 KIA, 9,250 wounded, and 220 tanks lost.

This is considerably higher than the 1,100 KIA I would have estimated due to the Russians utilizing their second-line troops and refraining from making efficient use of their artillery and air power. But the Russian generals are clearly saving their first-line troops and equipment for a potential future engagement with NATO forces, while taking advantage of the situation to blood and level-up the second-line soldiers. And, to Vladimir Putin’s credit, he has decided to accept a higher rate of Russian military casualties in order to reduce the number of Ukrainian civilian casualties by at least an order of magnitude.

You may wish to note that my first estimate was 250 to 500 KIA at a time when the Ukranians were reporting 9,000 KIA. The Russians subsequently reported 498 KIA for that period. The reason I set the range too low was because at the time I calculated the estimate, I did not know that the Russians were relying upon second-line troops or that they would eschew artillery and air support for the first five days of the operation.

The lesson, as always, is this: the past is prelude.

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Neocons Threaten China

Unless they really do seek to fight and lose a two-front World War III – and I do not dismiss the possibility – the neocons are demonstrating that they are even more geostrategically retarded than we thought they were:

The US has hinted at retaliation against China should it avoid following sanctions imposed on Russia after its attack on Ukraine late last month. Beijing, meanwhile, consistently argued that economic restrictions only exacerbate conflicts.

During Monday’s press briefing, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki was asked if sanctions will push Moscow into deeper ties with Beijing.

“They can’t backfill the impact of these sanctions from China. It’s just not possible,” Psaki argued. “Now, we’ve also seen China abide by the sanctions that have been put in place.”

At the same time, Psaki noted that Beijing abstained when the UN General Assembly voted to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine last week. “If they don’t abide by the sanctions, we always have – you know, we clearly have means to take steps, but that’s what we’ve seen to date,” the White House spokesperson said.

China has backed a diplomatic solution to the conflict and has consistently spoken out against economic restrictions. “We are deeply concerned with the ever-increasing unilateral sanctions, which are not a fundamental and effective way to solve the problem,” Zhang Jun, China’s envoy to the UN, said on Monday. “They will have serious humanitarian consequences and spillover effects that will hurt other countries.”

Speaking to reporters the same day, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Moscow his country’s “most important strategic partner.” The friendship between the two is “ironclad,” he said.

China is not going to abide by the imperial sanctions. China does not kowtow to the Empire That Never Ended, having rejected its blandishments and temptations more than six years ago. To the contrary, it increasingly appears that China is going to choose its side and make its opening move as soon as either a) NATO attacks Russia or b) NATO successfully provokes Russia into providing it with a casus belli.

As if to drive home the point that it will not stand by idly while the US conspires against it, China announced on Friday it was conducting a week-long military exercise in the South China Sea, near the territorial waters of Vietnam. While the scope and scale of the exercise is limited—encompassing a six nautical mile radius—its messaging was clear: China is prepared to use force, if necessary, to defend its disputed territorial claims in the region.

China pushes back against the US in the Pacific, Russia Today, 7 March 2022

Forget Taiwan island. It will reunite with the mainland; that is already a done deal. The question is what happens with a) Australia and New Zealand, b) the Philippines, and c) Japan. I note that we’ve heard virtually nothing about the Philippines since the conflict began and they do not appear on the Russian list of hostile countries. It would not surprise me if the Dutarte government has already chosen to ally with China, which would be a major blow to both the USA and Japan in the Pacific.

Note that Russia is already justified in attacking both Poland and Romania in order to shut down the pipeline of weapons being supplied to Ukraine. That it has not yet done so demonstrates its continued restraint in the face of great and increasing provocations.

Don’t be confused by the relentless globalist propaganda being pushed by the media. There is absolutely no question that in this specific historical situation, it is the NATO forces being utilized as a weapon by the Empire that are the bad guys. It’s not the 1950s, or even the 1980s, anymore.

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Hostile Countries

Russia lists its confirmed enemies. This probably wasn’t a good time for the Swiss to decide to abandon their neutrality. They know it too, because the government is frantically babbling nonsense about how economically sanctioning a country isn’t not neutral. The thing about neutrality is, though, that you don’t get to define it. Like a nickname, it’s something that is only meaningful when others honor it of their own accord.

All EU member States,
The USA
Australia
Albania
Andorra
Czech Republic
Great Britain (including Jersey, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands and Gibraltar)
Iceland
Canada
Liechtenstein
Micronesia
Monaco
New Zealand
Norway
Republic of Korea
San Marino
North Macedonia
Singapore
Taiwan
Ukraine
Montenegro
Switzerland
Japan

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Russia Defeated, Glory to Ukraine

Apparently it’s all over now except for Vladimir Putin’s inevitable fall from power and trial at the Hague, if the globalist media is to be believed.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to have ground to a halt with no significant territory captured despite a weekend of heavy fighting, with Kyiv’s men claiming to have taken out dozens of helicopters and recaptured a city this morning – sparking hopes that the unlikeliest of victories may be on the cards.

Putin’s men renewed their bombardments on Mariupol, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv this morning as his forces also tried to surround Kyiv in preparation for an assault, but have not significantly advanced their frontline since the city of Kherson and nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia were captured last week.

Meanwhile the Ukrainian armed forces claimed to have destroyed up to 30 Russian helicopters that had been moved to Chornobaivka airport, near Kherson, overnight and to have retaken the city of Chuhuiv, near Kharkiv, killing two Russian commanders – Lt. Col. Dmitry Safronov, and Lt Col. Denis Glebov – in the process.

Video also emerged which appeared to show Ukrainian defence forces based in Odessa, the country’s largest port, exchanging fire with ships overnight – one of which suffers a hit. Ukraine’s ministry of defence has since claimed the vessel was destroyed.

Ukraine’s military now estimates that 11,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in fighting along with the loss of 1,000 armoured vehicles, 290 tanks, 68 helicopters, 46 planes and dozens of other piece of hardware.

That’s an astonishing number of troops killed in just 11 days; in the 87 days from June 5 to August 31, 1944, the US armed forces lost 20,668 KIA in the Normandy campaign. If the globalist media is to be taken seriously, the Russians are losing soldiers in Ukraine at a rate 4.2x greater than the USA did while storming the beaches at Normandy. The Ukrainians must have some amazingly effective fortifications in place! But there is no reason to doubt these reports, since the top British military officials agree that Russia has already failed and is doomed to defeat.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, former leader of the Royal Navy and now Chief of the Defence Staff, added: ‘I think we’ve seen a Russian invasion that is not going well. ‘I think we’re also seeing remarkable resistance by Ukraine… Russia is suffering, Russia is an isolated power. It is less powerful than it was ten days ago. Some of the lead elements of Russian forces have been decimated by the Ukrainian response. The operation is considered at least a month behind schedule.’

If Russia is already more than a month behind schedule after only 11 days, President Putin clearly has no chance of succeeding in his objectives. He might as well surrender to the brave, sexy victor who is as independent as he is Ukrainian. Z really does stand for victory.

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Australia’s New Base

Australia announces it is building a base for nuclear submarines:

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is set to announce the construction of a new AU$10 billion nuclear submarine base, while warning Australians that Russia’s conflict with Ukraine will “inevitably stretch to the Indo-Pacific.”

Morrison is scheduled to unveil Australia’s nuclear submarine base plans during a speech to the neoliberal Lowy Institute in Sydney on Monday, according to his speech notes cited by local media. Morrison will warn that Russia’s conflict with Ukraine will “inevitably stretch to the Indo-Pacific” and that Australia “faces its most difficult and dangerous security environment in 80 years.”

Translation: China is going to come into this sooner or later.

Notice the rhetorical shift from sanctions to military preparations. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Russian activity in the Indo-Pacific.

Refusing to rule out Australia potentially arming Taiwan in a conflict against China, Dutton said that the country’s current priority was to “deter any acts of aggression whether it’s from China or from Russia or anybody else.”

It’s a little late to attempt to deter Chinese aggression. Australia lost the war to China 56 years ago when it abandoned its White Australia policy in 1966. Now more than 10 percent of the population is Chinese.

UPDATE: China’s refusal to join the Two Minute Hate against Russia is observably making the Australian government – as well as the rest of the neo-liberal world order – very, very nervous.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called on China to end its “chilling silence” over Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, stating that “no country in the world will have a bigger impact” on bringing the conflict to an end.

It’s fascinating to see how even just not giving lip service to the Promethean rhetoric frightens them.

The USA Wants War

It just doesn’t want to take responsibility for starting it. The idiot neocons in the State Department just keep piling on the provocations:

US Secretary of State Tony Blinken told CBS News on Sunday that Washington has given a “green light” to NATO members to supply Ukraine with fighter jets, and that the US would work to replace any jets sent to Kiev. Blinken spoke after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged US lawmakers to intervene in the ongoing conflict with Russia.

Asked whether NATO members could begin sending planes to Ukraine, Blinken said “that gets a green light.” The US’ top diplomat then said that Washington was already working with Polish officials to “backfill” any aircraft they send to Ukraine – meaning the US would replace every Polish aircraft given to Kiev with an American one.

Supplying a belligerent with military material makes the supplier a co-belligerent. This is so brazen it doesn’t even qualify as a false flag; it’s similar to how the US got itself into WWI by loading up the Lusitania with arms, then decrying the sinking of the “passenger liner” by the Germans.

But let the record show that if there is war between Russia and NATO, it was with the full knowledge and connivance of the Fake Biden administration.

And soon everyone may be able to find out why the Russians haven’t been demonstrating the capabilities of their air force or their air defense systems.

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Zelensky is No Hero

To the contrary, he’s a puppet who represents part of the problem in Ukraine, as US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor explains to Fox News:

The Russians are causing exceedingly little damage, much less damage than we inflicted when we went into Iraq, in 1991 or again in 2003. Now I think they’re just surrounding the Ukrainian forces and they’re annihilating them. And this is inevitable. Mr. Zelensky is postponing the inevitable in the hopes that we are going to rescue him, and we are not coming. President Biden has made that very clear.

You think the end is in sight?

The end of this phase is still a few days away. The first five days, I think the Russian forces, frankly, were too gentle. They’ve now corrected that. So I would say that in another ten days this should be completely over. But the question is, what is it that Zelensky is going to do? The Russians have made it very clear that what they want is a neutral Ukraine. This could have ended days ago if he accepted that and then they could have adjusted the borders. The eastern part of Ukraine is firmly in Russian hands, but again, the Russians are not just seizing territory, they’re destroying Ukrainian forces, that’s their focus.

Colonel, it sounds like you don’t approve of Zelensky’s stand.

I think Zelensky is a puppet. He’s putting huge numbers of his own population at unnecessary risk, and quite frankly, most of what comes out of Ukraine is debunked as lies within 24-48 hours. The notion of taking and retaking airfields, all of this is nonsense. It hasn’t happened.

You don’t think he’s a hero?

No. No, I do not. I don’t see anything heroic about the man. And I think the most heroic thing he can do right now is come to terms with reality and neutralize Ukraine. This is not a bad thing. A neutral Ukraine would be good for us as well as good for Russia. It would create the buffer that both sides want. But I think he’s being told to hang on and try to drag this out, which is tragic for the people that have to live through this.

Unfortunately for the Ukrainian people, an end to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is not in the interest of The Empire That Never Ended to which Zelensky answers. So, the war will continue another 10-14 days, until Ukraine’s combat capabilities are completely destroyed. I did find it interesting that the colonel’s estimate of how much longer the active operations would last was so close to my own from last night’s Darkstream.

In related news, Russia warned NATO and other neighboring countries that offering airfields to Ukraine would be a good way to ensure getting bombed and invaded.

Any country offering its air fields to Ukraine for attacks on Russia may be considered as having entered the conflict, a Russia defence ministry spokesman has said. “The use of the airfield networks of these countries to base Ukrainian military aircraft and their subsequent use against the Russian armed forces may be regarded as the involvement of these states in an armed conflict,” Interfax news agency quoted spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying.

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