Turning the Tide!

The long-awaited Ukrainian offensive has been launched and it is succeeding on every front, if the British media is to be believed.

The battle the world has been waiting for: As Ukraine’s counter-offensive gets underway, a breakdown of what has been achieved so far, with Russia on the backfoot and Western weapons turning the tide.

The long-awaited moment has arrived: Ukraine’s counter-attack, for which the country has been preparing since late last year, is now underway. Kyiv is saying nothing, but Ukrainian officials, Western analysts and Russian military bloggers all agree the attack began early this week with fighting ramping up across the frontline since then.

Ukrainian officials say there will be no single thrust and the offensive is designed as a series of operations that will take months to play out. What we have seen over the last week is merely the opening gambit. But things are already starting to take shape.

Ukraine is attacking on three fronts in the east, south-east, and south of the country: Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last month; Velyka Novosilka & Novodonetsk, in Donetsk oblast; and Orikhiv, in neighbouring Zaporizhzhia.

I just like to post these things for the record, so they aren’t buried in a few weeks if events don’t proceed in the way the media was first reporting them. I particularly enjoyed the self-congratulatory “Western weapons turning the tide”.

I wonder how long it will be before the British media is desperately denying that any weapons or personnel were supplied to the Ukrainian forces or involved in the offensive?

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It’s Not the Taxes

Norway’s wealthiest are fleeing the country:

A record number of super-rich Norwegians are abandoning Norway for low-tax countries after the centre-left government increased wealth taxes to 1.1%.

More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv. This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, it added. Even more super-rich individuals are expected to leave this year because of the increase in wealth tax in November, costing the government tens of millions in lost tax receipts.

Many have moved to Switzerland, where taxes are much lower. They include billionaire fisher turned industrial tycoon Kjell Inge Røkke who moved to the Italian-speaking city of Lugano, just over the border from his favoured hangout Lake Como and the fashion capital Milan.

Røkke, 64, is the fourth-richest Norwegian, with an estimated fortune of about NOK 19.6bn (£1.5bn). In an open letter, he said: “I’ve chosen Lugano as my new residence – it is neither the cheapest nor has the lowest taxes – but in return, it is a great place with a central location in Europe … For those close to the company and to me, I am just a click away.”

His relocation will cost Norway about NOK 175m in lost tax revenue a year. Last year, Røkke was the country’s highest taxed individual. Dagens Næringsliv calculated that he has paid about NOK 1.5bn in tax since 2008.

His move to Switzerland follows a relatively small increase in tax aimed at the country’s super-rich, who face wealth taxes at both the local and state level. That includes a municipal tax of 0.7% on assets in excess of NOK 1.7m for individuals, or NOK 3.4m for couples. There is also a state wealth tax rate of 0.3% on assets above NOK 1.7m. In November, the government raised the state rate to 0.4% for assets above NOK 20m for individuals, and NOK 40m couples, taking the maximum wealth tax rate to 1.1%.

Ole Gjems-Onstad, a professor emeritus at the Norwegian Business School, said he estimated that those who had left the country had a combined fortune of at least NOK 600bn.

This is a fascinating article, because for decades, the media has aggressively denied that wealthy people adjust their behavior in response to tax increases. I remember, in particular, a three-part series published by the St. Paul Pioneer Press in the late 1990s that lamented the fact that new corporations were not growing up to replace the great Minnesota companies of the 1950s through 1970s, the Honeywells, the 3Ms, and the Control Datas, but didn’t once mention the fact that Minnesota then had some of the highest income taxes in the country.

The omission was rather remarkable, given the way in which the vast majority of the members of the Minnesota corporate boards at the time were erstwhile Minnesotans who were Florida residents.

But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Especially considering that the Norwegians are disproportionately opting to move to Switzerland, where the wealth taxes are even higher. For once, I don’t think these decisions are being driven by tax rates. Instead, I strongly suspect that the wealthy Norwegians are electing to move to a country that is going to remain neutral in the Russian-NATO war, knowing that when the proxy war goes direct, Norway and its oil supplies are almost certainly going to be a target for occupation by NATO and invasion by Russia.

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Showtime

The Russians report the long-awaited Ukrainian offensive has finally begun.

Ukrainian forces have attacked the Russian troops along five sections of the frontline in Donbass during their “large-scale offensive,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in the early hours of Monday. According to the MOD, the assault began on Sunday morning. “The enemy’s goal was to breach our defenses in what they assumed was the most vulnerable section of the frontline,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the Russian media.

It will be interesting to see the shape of the Russian response. As I was discussing with William S. Lind the other day, the historical Russian response has been to launch a counteroffensive with far more forces than had been anticipated. That may not be possible anymore in the day of satellite flyovers, but it’s worth noting for the record.

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The Real War Starts in Summer

Noted military strategist and accomplished color revolutionary Victoria Nuland openly admitted that the neoclowns are responsible for the Ukrainian strategery that has thus far proven to be considerably less competent than that of the Arabs who lost all of the Arab-Israeli wars.

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told an audience in Kiev on Thursday that Washington has been helping plan the Ukrainian ‘counteroffensive’ against Russia for almost half a year.

“Even as you plan for the counteroffensive, which we have been working on with you for some 4-5 months, we are already beginning our discussions with [the] Ukrainian government and with friends in Kiev – both on the civilian side and on the military side – about Ukraine’s long-term future,” Nuland told the Kiev Security Forum via video-link from the State Department.

She added that the attack will be “likely starting and moving concurrently” with events such as the NATO summit in Lithuania, scheduled for July 11.

Now that it’s impossible to move large quantities of men and machines undetected, military offensives customarily begin under the cover of exercises. And it’s very, very unlikely that the biggest NATO air exercise in history just happens to be scheduled on month before the date that Victoria Nuland mentioned.

The largest NATO air exercise since the alliance’s founding in 1949 will be taking place this summer, and the U.S. Air National Guard (ANG) will be providing nearly half of the airpower slated to participate. As for how that show of force may be perceived by global threats like Russia as war rages on in Ukraine, senior ANG officials have said they can “take away whatever message they want.”

The expansive exercise has been dubbed Air Defender 2023 (AD23), and it’s scheduled to occur later this year between June 12-23. AD23, which has been brewing since 2018, will be led by Germany and take place primarily in that country but with additional forward operating locations in the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Latvia, according to the ANG.

Among the 10,000 personnel slated to attend and the 220 aircraft that will be employed throughout AD23, the ANG alone will be providing roughly 100 aircraft contributed by 46 wings from 35 states. At another press event held recently at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, Loh highlighted that AD23 will mark the ANG’s largest deployment across the Atlantic since the Gulf War.

Specific assets that will participate in AD23 are said to include a wide range of U.S. types, including the F-35A, F-15C, and F-16; the A-10C; the KC-135 and KC-46A tankers for refueling operations; and the C-17A and C-130J aircraft as the ANG’s primary modes of transportation. An MQ-9 Reaper drone from the Texas Air Guard’s 147th Attack Wing will be employed, as well, and Defense News noted that U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighters, NATO E-3 airborne early warning and control jets, and German A400 tankers will also be present among many other types.

I suspect the very sophisticated strategy on the part of Nuland and the neoclowns goes something like this: If the Russians are expecting a NATO air attack in July, but it actually begins in June, this will take them completely by surprise. And since, as we all know, the art of war is entirely dependent upon taking the enemy by surprise, this means we will win. Checkmate, Putin!

Anyhow, as I’ve been saying literally from the start, Ukraine is only the battleground. Sooner or later, NATO has to either surrender or engage the Russians directly, devoid of any excuses, puppets, or proxies. And that is when we will see the true strength of Clown World revealed, or as I suspect is much more likely the case, exposed.

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The Narrative Shifts Again

In a perceptive article on the shifting media narrative, Simplicius notes that Clown World’s pet mouthpieces are gradually accommodating the public to the idea that the Ukro-NATO army is losing the battle for Ukraine.

There’s been a huge rash of eye-opening and thought-provoking articles recently, which I haven’t been able to fit into other posts, and which have been building up on my tabs bar. So I figured I would wash them all through a single post dedicated to compiling these latest signals from the Western elites as to their thoughts on how the conflict is changing.

And certainly, judging by these recent issues, the tone and sentiment is shifting drastically. One can hardly find a single piece still optimistic for the Ukrainian side, apart from the disingenuous lot who continue hyper-focusing on tiny minutiae, like some irrelevant Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian building in Krasnodar, which might’ve damaged the corner of the roof’s eaves.

This is almost certainly to help prepare the American and European publics for the opening of fronts in Africa and South America, now that the initial forces have been sent to Sudan and Peru, and reinforcements have been sent to the US base in Djibouti, in a belated attempt to keep both rebellious states from breaking free from the Clown World Order.

I note, in response to a recent criticism that I read, but forgot to save the link, the New Yorker article indicates that the performance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has actually been strategically and operationally worse than the Arab armies that were defeated by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Within weeks, the [Ukrainian] battalion faced annihilation: entire platoons had been wiped out in close-contact firefights, and some seventy men had been encircled and massacred. The dwindling survivors, one officer told me, “became useless because they were so tired.” In January, what was left of the battalion retreated from the village and established defensive positions in the tree lines and open farmland a mile to the west. “Wagner kicked our asses,” the officer said. Pavlo estimated that, owing to the casualties his unit had sustained, eighty per cent of his men were new draftees. “They’re civilians with no experience,” he said. “If they give me ten, I’m lucky when three of them can fight.”

At least the Arab commanders had the sense and the ability to repeatedly preserve the greater part of their military assets when defeated; the total number of Arab soldiers lost from 1948 to 1982 is estimated at 91,105, three times the Israeli total of 23,620, whereas the UFA may have lost more than 50,000 in a single battle in a futile attempt to hold on to a strategically-unimportant city of 70,000, and done so unnecessarily.

When Russia was faced with city battles – Kyiv, Kharkiv City, and Kherson City – they chose to abandon each while establishing more defensible defensive positions elsewhere. Ukraine, on the other hand, chose to fight for their major cities. The results are telling... As far back as December, it was clear that Ukraine would not be able to keep Bakhmut. Once Russian troops advanced around the flanks of the city and took all the roads supporting the garrison under fire control, the chances of holding the city fell to almost zero. What Ukraine could and should have done is follow the Russian example at Kherson and withdraw to the next prepared defensive position in the vicinity of Kramatorsk or Slavyansk.

Strategy, Logistics, and Operations all trump Tactics. Individual bravery on the part of conscript soldiers is irrelevant. Praise from the victors about courageously their opponents died means nothing in these circumstances. It’s one thing when an overmatched force like the Sacred Band of Thebes or the 300 Spartans at Thermoplylae fight to the last man while inflicting a disproportionate number of casualties on the victorious enemy, it’s another when a numerically superior force that is fighting on the defensive in well-prepared positions not only manages to lose, but get annihilated by ground forces that largely consist of a mercenary light infantry that is at least fifty percent convicts. (Yes, I know the air support and artillery, including the tanks, are regulars.) It’s the observable military performance that matters, and the repeated failures of the UFA at Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Soledar, and Bakhmut appears to be approaching comprehensive, if not proverbial.

This Ukrainian operational incompetence is intentional, of course. Neither the Fake Ukrainians who nominally run the Kiev regime nor the US-based neoclowns who give them their orders have any interest in sparing the lives of the Ukrainians who are so bravely, and so foolishly, marching obediently into the Russian meatgrinder. The satanic clowns are never happier than when they’re able to arrange a fratricidal European war, and the retarded Ukrainians are reaping the inevitable consequences of obeying foreign rulers who hate them and are ruthlessly sacrificing them in order to preserve the illusion of their global neo-empire.

But the illusion will not be preserved, no matter how many Ukrainians are sacrificed to Russian artillery shells prior to the “surprise” attack by NATO forces in July. Sooner or later, Ukraine will fall, followed eventually by the New International Rules-Based World Order. As Simplicius notes, Russia is doing the right thing as it prepares for the battle against the real enemy.

I believe what Russia is doing is the smart thing, weakening the opponent for as long as it takes with a style of warfare that favors Russia greatly. Why be rushed into offensive actions just because bloggers on Telegram are getting jittery, and sustain losses, when you can easily destroy your opponent from long range indefinitely, then swoop in to finish him off when he’s barely able to resist.

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Wagner Summarizes Bakhmut

The Marketing Director of the Wagner mercenary company provides an informative summary of its successful operation to take the city of Bakhmut from the occupying Ukro-NATO forces.

  • We fought in Bakhmut against superior forces, destroyed about 50,000 Ukrainian Armed Forces and wounded up to 70,000
  • PMC “Wagner” had 3.2 times fewer dead than the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and about 2 times fewer wounded.
  • The PMC in Artyomovsk had 50,000 people at its best, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine – 82,000, and the ratio for the assault should be 3 to 1 for the attackers.
  • During the operation, I chose 50,000 prisoners, 20% of them died, another 20% were injured.
  • The goal of Artemovsk was not Artemovsk itself, but the Bakhmut Meat Grinder. And in Artemovsk, we destroyed everyone we were supposed to destroy, we completed the task.

From this, we can glean a few useful observations. First, the Russians aren’t even using their military to accomplish their goals. Except for the initial attempt on Kiev, it appears their regular Army hasn’t suffered any significant losses at all. To date, they’ve primarily utilized convicts, Chechens, and ex-Ukrainian militia, and that has sufficed to devastate the Ukro-NATO forces.

Second, the Ukro-NATO military has been severely degraded. There is no way an outnumbered attacker should be able to drive a first-class military from prepared defenses, let alone in an urban environment. Wagner had one-fifth the number of troops the military textbooks say it required to take the city. Since it is not credible to suggest that a mercenary company consisting of convicts is a first-class organization, this suggests that the UFA forces are operating at a level more or less comparable to the Arab armies of the 1960s. This is not surprising, as conscript armies tend to be low-performance and low-morale.

Third, the Russian focus is on the enemy forces, not on the terrain. This is consistent with what Marshal Zhukov records in his memoirs of the Russian civil war and World War II. Consider the way in which Zhukov didn’t hesitate to advocate the early abandonment of Kiev in order to preserve its defenders, whereas Zaluzhnyi, like Hitler, refused to countenance the retreat from even a small, strategically meaningless city in order to conserve tens of thousands of soldiers.

Fourth, the real war hasn’t even started yet. The battle for the Donbass is little more than the opening skirmish in a much larger war between Clown World and the sovereign nations.

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Release the Deepfakes!

The US military – which is obviously active in the war against Russia despite its ridiculous denials – is trying to figure out how to deny responsibility for its own hardware which has been blown up inside Russia

US struggling to explain images of its destroyed hardware inside Russia. The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage showing American vehicles used by Ukrainian militants in Belgorod attack

US officials have denied that equipment provided to Ukraine by its western backers was used by militants to stage an incursion into Russia that left multiple civilians injured and one dead. The denials run contrary to the multiple images across social media depicting US-made military vehicles destroyed in Belgorod Region.

Given the incompetence with which NATO has been waging this war, we can safely anticipate US officials blaming “AI” and “deepfakes” for the photographic evidence of the US military’s involvement in the failed attack on Russia, followed by the release of some very weird images of destroyed nine-wheeler sporting orange camouflage paint under a pair of purple moons and various videos of Emma Watson without her clothes on.

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Zelensky Avoids Ukraine

Given the fact that the Kiev regime’s resident comedian has travelled around the world while assiduously avoiding any return to Ukraine, it appears that regime change in Ukraine may be nigh.

Weeks ago I learned that the American intelligence community was aware that some officials in Western Europe and the Baltic states want the war between Ukraine and Russia to end. These officials have concluded that it is time for Zelensky to “come around” and seek a settlement. A knowledgeable American official told me that some in the leadership in Hungary and Poland were among those working together to get Ukraine involved in serious talks with Moscow. “Hungary is a big player in this and so are Poland and Germany, and they are working to get Zelensky to come around,” the American official said. The European leaders have made it clear that “Zelensky can keep what he’s got”—a villa in Italy and interests in offshore bank accounts—“if he works up a peace deal even if he’s got to be paid off, if it’s the only way to get a deal.”

So far, the official said, Zelensky has rejected such advice and ignored offers of large sums of money to ease his retreat to an estate he owns in Italy. There is no support in the Biden Administration for any settlement that involves Zelensky’s departure, and the leadership in France and England “are too beholden” to Biden to contemplate such a scenario. There is a reality that some elements in the American intelligence community can’t ignore, the official said, even if the White House is ignoring it: “Ukraine is running out of money and it is known that the next four or months are critical. And Eastern Europeans are talking about a deal.” The issue for them, the official told me, “is how to get the United States to stop supporting Zelensky,” The White House support goes beyond the needs of the war: “We are paying all of the retirement funds—the 401k’s—for Ukraine.”

And Zelensky wants more, the official said. “Zelensky is telling us that if you want to win the war you’ve got to give me more money and more stuff. He tells us, ‘I’ve got to pay off the generals.’ He’s telling us”—if he is forced out of office—“he’s going to the highest bidder. He’d rather go to Italy than stay and possibly get killed by his own people.”

It will be interesting to see how long Zelensky lasts once he returns to Ukraine – if he returns to Ukraine.

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The Battle for Bakhmut is Over

One year after Russian forces reclaimed Mariupol, they have expelled the forces of the Kiev regime from Bakhmut. As Simplicius notes in his most recent sitrep, the frantic retroactive denial of the city’s importance, contradicting all the previous posturing of Zelensky and his globalist backers, has begun in earnest, thereby underlining the veracity of the Russian assertions.

None of the tricks worked. All the endless distractions, diversions, deflections, and myriad attempts to pry our eyes from the inevitable, massive humiliation for NATO forces in Bakhmut—or is it Artemovsk now?—using every tool in their possession, from diversionary strikes on civilians on Russian border towns, to outright political assassination to steal headlines and steer public attention: none of it worked.

Bakhmut today has fallen on the exact one year anniversary of the fall of Mariupol on May 20th, 2022. And not surprisingly, the posture adopted by the UA supporters is the same exact energy as before: cringe, cope, excuse-making. “Bakhmut’s mission is accomplished,” they say, swallowing sobs.

It’s a long article, but the most interesting part to me is the connection he draws between the talk of the expedited delivery of F-16s to Ukraine and the anticipation of the failure, or even the nonexistence, of the Ukrainian spring offensive that is supposed to justify continued support for the Kiev regime in the West. It is very apparent that support for Kiev is faltering everywhere from Berlin to Washington, even as support for Russia is growing across Africa and Araby.

But while Clown World’s realists are looking for a negotiated exit which may or may not be possible, the neoclowns who started the whole thing are as rabidly aggressive as ever. Hence the F-16 gambit, which has been dreamed up to provide the basis for an argument in favor of Ukraine’s eventual success after the inevitable failure of the UFA “offensive” becomes undeniable in August or September.

However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note Simplicius’s observations on the incapacitation of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who was seriously wounded on May 8th during a visit to a command post by a Russian missile. The fact that the deputy Minister of Defense for the Kiev regime is now talking openly about the possibility that Russia “intends to assassinate” Zaluzhnyi strongly implies that the wound was fatal and he is already out of the picture.

While Ukraine has other generals, the fact that the UFA’s Commander-in-Chief has been taken off the board will likely factor in to the eventual decision of various countries like France and Germany to throw in the towel sooner rather than later. There was never any significant desire for war with Russia on the part of any European country outside of Poland and the UK, and what little there was is gone in the aftermath of Russia’s relentless string of victories on the military, economic, and diplomatic fronts.

Anyhow, read the whole thing for a much more realistic perspective on the current situation than you will read in any mainstream media publication.

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Time is Running Out

This is probably why the Russians never launched a winter offensive. Because there is no need for Russia to launch an offensive in order to win the war in Ukraine. All they need to do is hold their positions, methodically destroy everything that is thrown at them, and reportedly, within five months, the flow of military material to the Ukraine regime will stop and its NATO-funded military will collapse.

Ukraine has five months to demonstrate some “advances” to the US and other Western backers, to convince them of its plans for the conflict with Russia, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing several European and American officials.

Washington is entering an election cycle and has to show that the massive military support the US and its allies have been providing to Ukraine has not been in vain, the paper also said.

“It is important for America to sell this war as a successful one, as well as for domestic purposes to prove that all of those aid packages have been successful in terms of Ukrainian advances,” a European official told the FT.

The polls show that public support for Ukraine is waning in the US, and President Biden’s administration has to show that the tens of billions of dollars it spent on assistance for Kiev made a major difference on the frontlines, the media outlet said.

According to FT sources, Washington believes the next five months are critical to the outcome of the conflict. “If we get to September and Ukraine has not made significant gains, then the international pressure on [the West] to bring them to negotiations will be enormous,” another source told the FT, on condition of anonymity.

Patience is one thing the Russian military has always had, dating back to the days when Kutuzov let Napoleon take Moscow, knowing that the French Emperor couldn’t possibly hold it. It doesn’t matter if NATO sets a deadline five months from now or elects to completely exhaust themselves before giving up, the Russians are perfectly capable of waiting as long as it takes for their enemies to give up.

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