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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Death of a Patriot

Simplicius analyzes Russia’s recent destruction of at least one Patriot missile battery:

Here’s what is known so far: Russia was said to have conducted a layered, multi-vectored attack which came from various sides including north, east, and south, which included both Geran drones as screening cover, Kalibr missiles, Kh-101s, and finally the Kinzhals. The attack also likely included other cheaper types of drones as decoys to saturate the air defense, and in fact Kiev does attest to that, as in their official ‘shoot down’ graphic they include several drones they comically ID’d as Orlan ‘Supercum’ which was later changed to ‘Supercam’.

First, let’s break down how such an attack happens. Most logically, the cheaper decoy drones are sent in first to see if they can bait out any of the air defense into opening up on them. Kiev would try to use only its less important SHORAD (Short Range AD) systems against them, such as German Gepards and any Tunguskas/Shilkas and such that they might have.

Next would come the cruise missiles in order to bait out the true high value AD that may have held back with the first wave, and which Ukraine’s SHORAD systems may be useless against. Once the Patriot/SAMP-T/Iris-T/NASAMs/Crotale, etc., start opening up on the cruise missiles, Russia will be watching as closely as possible, with a variety of methods, in order to try to identify the air defense positions. I’ll get to those methods a little later.

It should be stated that there are certain positions Russia already knows are likely, and are prefigured into their search matrices. For instance, Mim-104 Patriot system is an extremely complex and large system, you can’t just set it up anywhere, like in the middle of an apartment building courtyard or something like that. These systems not only require a lot of room but also, since they are much less mobile than drivable units like Gepards and such, they are preferably situated somewhere that doesn’t have a lot of civilian ‘eyes’ in the area, so that no one films or rats them out, whether accidentally or not.

This leaves only a few real, solid choices where you can put such a system. And they are almost always put in airports, as an example. It comes as no surprise then that during the attacks on 5/16, word now has it that two of the Patriots were located at Zhuliany airport in Kiev and one at or near the Zoo.

Coordinates: 50.452699, 30.459805

As for the airfield “Zhulyany”, footage from the surveillance camera got into the Network. In the video, you can clearly see the launches of 32 missiles (a total of 16 for each launcher), as well as the work of barreled anti-aircraft artillery – apparently, the Patriots were covered by the Gepard.

After the ammunition load was used up, an explosion was heard: the Russian “Kinzal” managed to hit the positional area, despite “Patriots” and one “Gepard”. One was destroyed, the second was seriously damaged, but survived. The third launcher escaped damage.

Anatomy of MIM-104 Patriot Destruction, Simplicius, 18 May 2023

If it hasn’t become clear by now, the reason Russia and China are refusing to take the offensive is because the NATO forces, which chiefly consist of the US military and its resources, are being rapidly and irreparably drained in the current environment. There is, therefore, no reason to take an aggressive stance so long as the NATO forces are throwing themselves into the vortex of assured destrucution.

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Clown World Incoherence

A longtime opinion-leading clown performs a 180 on Ukraine’s membership in NATO:

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger has signalled a U-turn in his views on Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership. The veteran politician told The Economist that he now believes peace in Europe cannot be achieved without Ukraine joining the US-led military bloc.

Last fall, Kissinger insisted that “it was not a wise American policy to attempt to include Ukraine into NATO.” He said the bloc’s eastward expansion since the fall of Soviet Union in 1991 had essentially removed Russia’s historic “safety belt,” but insisted that was no justification for Russia’s “surprise attack” on Ukraine.

However, in his interview on Wednesday with the British outlet, the politician, who turns 100 on May 27, suggested that “for the safety of Europe, it is better to have Ukraine in NATO.” He acknowledged that he currently finds himself “in the weird position that people say, ‘Look at him, he’s changed his mind. Now he’s for membership of Ukraine in NATO.’”

The reason for such shift is “twofold,” Kissinger said. “One, Russia is no longer the conventional threat it used to be. And, secondly, we have now armed Ukraine to a point where it will be the best-armed, most modern country and with the least experienced leadership in Europe,” he explained.

Translation: Kissinger has gotten the message that Clown World has gone all-in on Ukraine. They believe their Clown World Order will fall anyhow if Russia defeats Ukraine, so they might as well take the risk of direct conflict and an open Russia-NATO war. Because NATO is no longer anything more than Globohomo’s Rainbou Army.

Clown intellectuals like Kissinger, Kagan, and Kristol never “change their minds” in response to changing circumstances. Notice that none of the negative points upon which Kissinger based his previous opinion have changed. What they do is their masters’ tea leaves and adjust their public narrative accordingly.

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The Treason Interview

The Washington Post omitted significant sections of its recent interview with Vladimir Zelensky. From Russia Today:

The Washington Post has deleted a large tract of an interview with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in which he lashed out at alleged “traitors” in his ranks. RT is publishing the entire section that the US newspaper would rather keep hidden.

The following section appeared in an interview with the Ukrainian president published on Saturday. By Sunday it had been removed with no explanation. After discussing a trove of recently leaked Pentagon documents, which revealed – among other things – that the US monitors Zelensky’s communications, the newspaper presented him with a fresh allegation that has not yet been reported in the US media.

Note that Evgeny Prigozhin is the founder and head of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company currently fighting in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

WaPo: The documents indicate that GUR, your intelligence directorate, has back-channel contact with Evgeny Prigozhin that you were aware of, including meeting with Evgeny Prigozhin and GUR officers. Is that true?

Zelensky: This is a matter of [military] intelligence. Do you want me to be convicted of state treason? And so, it’s very interesting, if someone is saying that you have documents, or if someone from our government is speaking about the activities of our intelligence, I would also like to ask you a question: With which sources from Ukraine do you have contact? Who is talking about the activities of our intelligence? Because this is the most severe felony in our country. Which Ukrainians are you talking to?

WaPo: I talked to officials in government, but these documents are not from Ukraine, they are from…

Zelensky: It doesn’t matter where the documents are from. The question is with which Ukrainian official did you talk? Because if they say something about our intelligence, that’s treason. If they say something about a specific offensive plan of one general or another, this is also treason. That’s why I asked you, which Ukrainians are you talking to?

WaPo: About these specific documents? You are the first person I am talking to about them.

Zelensky: Okay.

WaPo: And I can read you what information exactly there is about Prigozhin and the GUR. On February 13, Kirill Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, informed you about a Russian plan to destabilize Moldova with two former Wagner associates. Budanov informed you that he viewed the Russian scheme as a way to incriminate Prigozhin because “we have dealings” with him. You instructed Budanov to inform Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and Budanov told you that the GUR had informed Prigozhin that he would be labeled a traitor who has been working with Ukraine. The document also says that Budanov expected the Russians to use details of Prigozhin’s secret talks with the GUR and meetings with GUR officers in Africa…

Zelensky: Listen, to be honest, well, you just read something, you say something. I just don’t understand where you get it, whom you talk to and so on. You talk about how I met with Budanov. This suggests that you – how do you put it? It looks like you have people who have some records or you have some evidence or you have something, because that’s what it looks like.

Here are the Zelensky ‘treason’ quotes the Washington Post deleted, Russia Today, 14 May 2023

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Zelensky knows the days of the Kiev regime are numbered. Both the USA and the UK are taking bigger and bolder risks with their anti-Russian activity while the media clowns are cranking their narrative machine up to eight or nine in the hopes that they can somehow alter the situation through their word spells.

And, in the meantime, both China and Russia are saying less and less, even as the Russian Air Force begins to strike more heavily at targets in western Ukraine. It feels as if something has to break soon, but what and when cannot be known with any degree of confidence.

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The Russians Call Out NASA

For decades, Boomers who believe in the Moon landing narrative more firmly than they believe in God, Family, or Country have argued that the landings couldn’t have been faked or the Russians would have called out NASA. But now the former head of the Russian space agency is doing precisely that.

The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof.

In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth “about ten years ago” when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast.

Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time. All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon.

The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” he claimed. The former Roscosmos chief also said he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who supposedly accused him of complicating international relations.

Rogozin concluded by saying he still cannot believe that the US was able to pull off the feat, but is now unable to, despite the incredible progress in technology since the late 1960s. What he claims to have found out, however, was that Washington has “its people in [the Russian] establishment.”

Translation: NASA faked major elements of the space program and everyone in a place to know better kept quiet for fear of being targeted by Clown World. But now it is becoming increasingly obvious and the official Moon landing narrative is rapidly crumbling.

I very much doubt this will be the only historical hoax to be exposed by the Russians over the next decade.

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