Tag: Russia

Why the Narrative Changed

Three days ago, I noticed that the globalist media narrative had suddenly changed. Reports of Russian complete military failures and Putin’s inevitable fall didn’t vanish entirely, but were severely reduced as the focus shifted to other news. Some test balloons were even floated about the possibility that the anti-Russian narrative might be incorrect, and perhaps this unconfirmed report of the results of the recent missile strike on the base near Yavoriv is why.

$400 million worth of Western supplied weaponry destroyed in a single russian strike on the military base near Lvov — radio intercepted comms suggest that 267 foreign mercenaries have been killed in the strike. 50 year old Peter from Austria who fought alongside the “international legion of Ukraine” said that 800 to 1000 foreign mercenaries were present during the strike. Around 400 mercenaries were evacuated to Poland, many of whom have suffered severe burns & torn limbs from the Kalibr strike. There’s a high number of missing individuals still under the rubble which includes a high number of Americans, Poles and Romanians. Former NATO officers are Amongst the dead.

The number of fatalities sounds absurdly high, to be honest, but even if the number of casualties is closer to the “at least 169 dead and wounded” reported by the Ukrainians, the possibility that NATO officers have already died in Ukraine will likely have installed a new sense of caution in the media’s paymasters. Especially since the airstrikes continue to target military bases in western Ukraine.

Russia again today used hypersonic Kinzhal missiles on ‘military targets’ in Ukraine, according to the defence ministry in Moscow. ‘A Kinzhal attack on a fuel and lubricants base from which fuel for Ukrainian armoured vehicles was supplied was launched from the airspace over Crimea,’ said a statement. High-precision airborne missiles also struck a training centre for ‘foreign mercenaries’ near the village of Ovruch, in Zhytomyr Region, claimed the Russians. The type of missile strike was not specified. ‘More than 100 servicemen of [Ukraine’s] special operations forces and foreign mercenaries were killed.’

And if Russia can strike so effectively past NATO’s air defenses at will without even using its hypersonic missiles, there is nowhere in Europe where the globalist warmongers can consider themselves safe from targeted missile strikes. And now that the attempts to split China from Russia have obviously, and publicly, failed, it is safe to conclude that more countries will be openly taking sides against the globalist imperialists.

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Tough Talk

You don’t want to mess with Joltin’ Joe Biden. He’s a hardcase. He’s from Scranton, PA. You just ask Cornpop, he’ll tell you Joe isn’t a man you want to cross when he tells you off:

Biden warns Xi of the ‘consequences’ if China supports Putin during his ‘brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians’ and told him to stay away from Taiwan in two-hour phone call.

President Joe Biden warned on Friday Chinese President Xi Jinping of the ‘consequences’ Beijing would face if it provides support to Russia during its invasion of the Ukraine.

In the nearly two-hour video call between the two leaders, Biden ‘described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians,’ the White House said in a readout of the conversation.

But the White House declined to say what those consequences would be and refused to say whether or not Biden made any specifics asks of China, which has a close diplomatic relationship with Russia.

I have no doubt that Xi Jinping is every bit as impressed with the Fake President’s posturing as I am. In response to the tough talk, China declared that it would continue doing whatever it deemed to be in the interests of the Chinese people without any interference from the United States or anyone else.

China and Russia are both independent great powers. Besides, China has maintained a consistent position over the Ukraine issue, emphasizing all sides’ security concerns and interests should be respected and upheld. Its position is out of its own interests and the interests of the region. It will never dance to the tune of the US or sacrifice relations with Russia to satisfy US demands.

For a long time, the West has misinterpreted the China-Russia relationship, believing it’s based on expediency and could be easily torn apart. The truth is, the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination has withstood the test of the time and is rock solid. It’s China’s most important and stable diplomatic strategic asset that cannot be damaged.

Global Times, 18 March 2022

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The Significance

A lot of the misinformation – as opposed to intentional disinformation – being broadcast across the West can be more correctly interpreted and understood if you consider some of the implications of the statements being released by the Russian Defence Ministry.

▫️ The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.

▫️ The grouping of troops of the Lugansk People’s Republic with the fire support of the Russian Armed Forces liberated more than 90 percent of the territory of the republic.

▫️ Currently, the units of the Lugansk People’s Republic are eliminating scattered groups of nationalists on the southern outskirts of Rubezhnoye liberated settlement.

▫️ In the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue their successful offensive in the northern direction. During the day, they took control of Zolotaya Niva, Novodonetsky, Novomayorskoye and Prechistovka. The advance was 16 kilometers.

Ignore the rhetoric and the various factual claims, which may or may not be true. What do you notice about the specific military elements that are being discussed?

The significant element worth noting here, in my opinion, is that the main offensives are being conducted by the Republican militias. The Russians aren’t even utilizing their second-line infantry against the best Ukrainian brigades in the east, except apparently in Mariupol where the formidable Azov Special Operations Detachment has been surrounded by Russian regulars.

The Russian military is offering artillery, air, and sea support to the militias, as well as air defense, but they are not engaging their armor and infantry forces on every front. This reliance upon the militias for the ground offensive may account for what Western observers consider to be suboptimal tactics and higher-than-expected casualty rates, as well as the observation that it is mostly older, outdated tanks and APCs being destroyed.

The fact that using one’s least-experienced and least-valued forces first has been a common method of warmaking since Xerxes sent the Medes against the Spartans before sending in his Immortals at the Battle of Thermopylae appears to have escaped the media’s military experts. Apparently their grasp of military history and theory doesn’t even rise to the level of Arkhaven comics.

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An Alternative Application

Didact’s Mind explains how the failure to translate and understand Clausewitz makes it difficult for US strategists and analysts to make sense of Russia’s approach to making war:

The fundamental difference between the American and Russian ways of fighting probably comes down to understanding one of the greatest mistranslations in history.

That one quotation from the legendary Prussian general, Carl von Clausewitz, that you probably remember from school – assuming you were misedjoomuhcayted in an American public indoctrination camp school, that is – likely goes something like this:

“War is politics by another means”.

It is an elegant aphorism. And it is wrong.

The true quote is this:

“Der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel“.

In Ye Olde Queene’s Englishe, which of course Americans don’t speak, this literally translates as:

“War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with the interference of other means”.

Pay close attention to the difference between “BY another means”, and “WITH (the interference of) other means”. In this slight difference in wording lies a vast, yawning gap of understanding.

The Western way of war dates back to the Greek hoplite phalanx formations, and essentially consists of two armies smashing against each other until one or the other is dust, at which point, the victor dictates terms to the vanquished. In that way of thinking, war is almost an all-or-nothing exercise in achieving a very specific end.

The Russian way of war involves using military force in combination with negotiation. They take the Clausewitzian doctrine literally to mean, “use war and violence to force the other guy to the negotiating table and get him to agree to your terms – and if he doesn’t, ratchet up the pressure on him until he does”.

Put simply, the West seeks to decapitate and destabilise. The Russians seek to strangle and supplant.

Or for those who are stronger in military history than military theory, simply compare the maps of Russian offensives in WWII to the maps of the current Ukrainian situation. Note, in particular, the amount of time that separates each offensive. Doing so should dispel any notion that the special military operation isn’t proceeding more or less as the Russians intended.

This also explains why one so often sees the word “cauldron” utilized in translations from Russian sources instead of the Western “envelopment” or “pocket”. It is a fundamental element of their theory, as opposed to a strategical maneuver to be utilized when the opportunity presents itself.

And then, think about what a geostrategic cauldron might look like in terms of global unrestricted warfare.

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The Coming False Flag

We haven’t seen the false flag we were all expecting at the start of the Russian special military operation, but Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean resident in Ukraine, appears to believe that one is imminent and that it will likely involve chemical weapons.

The Americans are planning a false flag operation in Ukraine. the word is that they plan to use
chemical weapons in Ukraine, probably Kharkov where I’m located right now and the word is that they want to use chemical weapons because NATO and the United States have said that chemical weapons are a red line and if anybody uses chemical weapons they will invade.

Now the reason that they’re saying this is because the mainstream media in the United States is claiming that the Ukrainians are winning this war against Russia and that the Russians are just outmatched and out of desperation, the Russians are going to use chemical weapons and that’s why we have to stop them, we have to go in there and be the cavalry. You know, the white hats riding in on our white horses and show those evil Ruskies that chemical weapons are a no-no.

Well, this is a big lie. Right now the Russians are winning this war and winning it decisively. The fact is that the Ukrainian army’s command-and-control system is completely broken. The Ukrainian forces do not have an overall defensive strategy, for all intents and purposes, each unit is on its own. The Russians have successfully surrounded Kiev and Kharkov, the major cities. They’ve also surrounded and are in the process of pacifying Mariupol, so in the end, the Russians are winning. And most important of all, the Russians seem to have completely surrounded, and are currently, in all likelihood, annihilating the 60,000-strong army of the Ukraines which is currently in eastern Ukraine.

Not many people are talking about it but you should pay attention to that, that’s really important, because those 60,000 men represent the cream of the crop of the Ukrainian armed forces and they are
surrounded. Not only are they surrounded, there is no possibility of them being refueled or resupplied so it’s only a matter of time to either overwhelm them, overrun them, or annihilate them. It’s as simple as that….

So if you’re American, you should understand that the media is lying to you. The russians are winning, clearly winning, and I don’t need anybody to report and and tell me that the Russians are winning, I can tell all on my own. You know how? Because every day, I hear the shelling of the Russians and it’s getting closer every day. I’m in the center of Kharkov and I’m telling you every day the Russians are getting closer, so I know that they’re winning….

Those thugs of the Zelensky regime, they want NATO intervention. They’ve been calling for it from day one and if they figure that doing a chemical attack false flag will get NATO in, they will not hesitate, not for a second. So understand what’s going on. I am here to tell you what is going on. The Zelensky regime and different factions in the United States mean to start a false flag so that they can get involved in this war.

A lot of predictions are being made. Most of them will prove to be incorrect. But this one is at least consistent with recent NATO troop movements in Poland and the large military exercise, Operation Cold Response, that began yesterday in Norway.

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10 to 14 Days

And then it will be all over because the Russian military is exhausted. That’s the current globalist media narrative, anyway.

‘Ukraine has Russia on the run’

Russian forces may only be able to sustain full fighting capacity for another ‘ten to 14’ days, senior UK defence sources indicated last night. By that time they may struggle to make any significant progress – while finding it difficult to hold ground, according to the latest intelligence.

Despite another day in which bombs rained down on Ukrainian cities including Kyiv and Kharkiv, resistance to the onslaught has seen the invasion fall behind schedule, allies of Vladimir Putin admitted for the first time on Monday. And American officials said the ground advance, now in its third week, had largely stalled.

A senior UK source said last night: ‘Ukraine has Russia on the run. It is running out of manpower and running out of energy. As long as we keep pressing they’ve got ten to 14 days before reaching their culminating point. That’s when the strength of Ukraine’s resistance should become greater than Russia’s attacking force.’

Time will tell. I am extremely dubious, so I’m mostly posting this here for the record. We’ll revisit this professional military analysis on March 24 to see how it looks then. I’m anticipating it will look rather similar to the old “14 days to flatten the curve” approach.

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You’re the Insurgent Now

Former service members volunteering to fight the Russians in Ukraine are discovering that war isn’t quite as fun when the other side has air supremacy for a change. This is from a series of Reddit posts purporting to be from a volunteer military veteran in Ukraine:

Yes, I was here today and blown off the top bunk of my bunk bed in the barracks by the first missile. This is where all the foreign legion troops are, the 35 killed were all Ukrainian mostly due to a direct hit on their barracks next to mine. The base is destroyed, the weapons depot destroyed, possibly the end of the legion. About 60 people with their heads on straight including myself left after the attack. They’re sending untrained guys to the front with little ammo and shit AKs and they’re getting killed. The guys who stayed got bombed again in the afternoon and casualties aren’t clear. If you still want to to join them I’m not sure what the process will be since literally all the infrastructure supporting the training/assignments of volunteers is all destroyed. The guys who are there now will all be going to Kyiv and many will die, the legion is totally outgunned and has a few crazy Ukrainian leaders. After the attack one officer wanted to march everyone to Kyiv and fight. Absolute insanity. Stay home.

I didn’t go to Ukraine for the clout. I asked the right questions, deleted my posts, actually bought a plane ticket and brought my ass over. I said in another comment that yes it was 35 Ukrainians killed because their barracks got directly hit. The 180 bullshit is real Russian propaganda. If you think I’m a Russian agent you’re just in denial that the situation is absolutely fucked. Go ahead and join the legion, by all means, but be very aware of how bad Kyiv is going to get and be aware that Russians have warplanes and you will have next to nothing. Be very acceptant of the possibility of death. Those of us who left, including SF operators from multiple countries, are simply risk mitigating. No one wants to die in an unfair fight, and after getting absolutely fucking pummeled by massive cruise missiles today – yeah I kind of want people to think twice before turning their life upside down to go and volunteer.

Like a lot of dudes there have experience and really wanted to shape the battlefield and impact their advance, but ultimately they’re manning frontline positions that are going to get hammered with artillery and airstrikes, buried under rubble and your family never gets your body. That’s when a lot of guys say yeah this isn’t our fight, not like this.

Such are the perils of believing the globalist propaganda factory. These Western volunteers thought they were going to be going on patrols and hunting Russians in the same way they hunted jihadis in Afghanistan and Iraq. A dangerous sport, to be sure, but an activity that is more sport than war nonetheless. But, as they quickly discovered not long after their arrival, they’re not up against an ill-equipped, irregular 4GW insurgency, they’re up against one of the three most formidable professional militaries in the world.

Russia deliberately blew up foreign fighters and arms shipments at a Ukrainian base close to the Polish border on Sunday and has vowed to carry out more strikes in a direct warning to the West. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia’s ministry of defence, said the base at Yavoriv – 12 miles from NATO territory – was struck by ‘long-range, high-precision’ weapons because it was hosting ‘foreign mercenaries and a large shipment of foreign weapons’. He added: ‘The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.’

Putin deliberately targeted Ukraine’s ‘foreign legion’ with strike 12 miles from NATO border, Daily Mail, 14 March 2022

The effectiveness of the Russians can be seen in the way they have effectively destroyed the entire Ukrainian foreign legion with a single missile strike without it ever even having the chance to enter the battle space.

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Foreign Fighters in Ukraine

It’s increasingly clear that the Ukrainians were planning an invasion of the Donbass that was prevented by the Russian special military operation in light of the fact that foreign military contractors were already present, armed, and organized into units in Ukraine weeks before the operation began.

ONE of the first British fighters in Ukraine told yesterday of his ferocious battle with Russian troops at the Battle of Antonov.

Jason, who served two tours of Iraq, told The Sun: “The Ukrainians fought like lions and I’m proud I was alongside them. What Putin is doing is terrorism. He’s bombing kids and families for nothing. He’s a war criminal.”

He flew to Ukraine at the start of last month. He recalled: “When I told my mates they were like, ‘What, are you mad?’. I’m a qualified combat medic and have done seven years working as a private military contractor. I wanted to go and do some good.”

He set up home in Kyiv and linked up with foreign fighters ahead of the invasion. Jason was sleeping when a pal woke him on the morning Putin’s troops and tanks invaded.

He told The Sun: “The world just blew up. You could hear rockets coming over the buildings. In the distance there were bright lights flashing all over the city from the Russian bombardment. It was completely surreal.”

Jason dashed out of his city centre flat in full body armour and carrying an AK-47. His unit quickly joined a detachment of Ukrainian troops heading to defend Hostomel Airport.

The fact that Jason subsequently ran away and is already back in the UK giving interviews to the British media should suffice to indicate how well the war is going for Ukraine. The March 13 report from the Russian Ministry of Defense tends to generally accord with the foreign fighter’s decision to go home.

During the special operation, the Russian armed forces disabled 3,687 military infrastructure facilities of Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday. According to him, 99 aircraft, 128 unmanned aerial vehicles, 1,194 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 121 multiple rocket launchers, 443 field artillery pieces and mortars, 991 units of special military vehicles were destroyed.

Once the dust has settled, it will be interesting to compare the Russian reports with historical US reports and determine which were more accurate at the time of the report. All armies – indeed all soldiers – tend to overreport enemy capabilities and casualties.

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The End of Putin

Francis Fukuyama, the only predictor whose track record is worse than Scott “I did NOT see that coming” Adams, is convinced that history is still in the process of ending, it just didn’t end when he said it did.

I’ll stick my neck out and make several prognostications:

  • Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine. Russian planning was incompetent, based on a flawed assumption that Ukrainians were favorable to Russia and that their military would collapse immediately following an invasion. Russian soldiers were evidently carrying dress uniforms for their victory parade in Kyiv rather than extra ammo and rations. Putin at this point has committed the bulk of his entire military to this operation—there are no vast reserves of forces he can call up to add to the battle. Russian troops are stuck outside various Ukrainian cities where they face huge supply problems and constant Ukrainian attacks.
  • The collapse of their position could be sudden and catastrophic, rather than happening slowly through a war of attrition. The army in the field will reach a point where it can neither be supplied nor withdrawn, and morale will vaporize. This is at least true in the north; the Russians are doing better in the south, but those positions would be hard to maintain if the north collapses.
  • There is no diplomatic solution to the war possible prior to this happening. There is no conceivable compromise that would be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine given the losses they have taken at this point.
  • The United Nations Security Council has proven once again to be useless. The only helpful thing was the General Assembly vote, which helps to identify the world’s bad or prevaricating actors.
  • The Biden administration’s decisions not to declare a no-fly zone or help transfer Polish MiGs were both good ones; they’ve kept their heads during a very emotional time. It is much better to have the Ukrainians defeat the Russians on their own, depriving Moscow of the excuse that NATO attacked them, as well as avoiding all the obvious escalatory possibilities. The Polish MiGs in particular would not add much to Ukrainian capabilities. Much more important is a continuing supply of Javelins, Stingers, TB2s, medical supplies, comms equipment, and intel sharing. I assume that Ukrainian forces are already being vectored by NATO intelligence operating from outside Ukraine.
  • The cost that Ukraine is paying is enormous, of course. But the greatest damage is being done by rockets and artillery, which neither MiGs nor a no-fly zone can do much about. The only thing that will stop the slaughter is defeat of the Russian army on the ground.
  • Putin will not survive the defeat of his army. He gets support because he is perceived to be a strongman; what does he have to offer once he demonstrates incompetence and is stripped of his coercive power?
  • The invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world, who prior to the attack uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin. That includes Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and of course Donald Trump. The politics of the war has exposed their openly authoritarian leanings.
  • The war to this point has been a good lesson for China. Like Russia, China has built up seemingly high-tech military forces in the past decade, but they have no combat experience. The miserable performance of the Russian air force would likely be replicated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, which similarly has no experience managing complex air operations. We may hope that the Chinese leadership will not delude itself as to its own capabilities the way the Russians did when contemplating a future move against Taiwan.
  • Hopefully Taiwan itself will wake up as to the need to prepare to fight as the Ukrainians have done, and restore conscription. Let’s not be prematurely defeatist.
  • Turkish drones will become bestsellers.
  • A Russian defeat will make possible a “new birth of freedom,” and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.

Let’s just say that Fukuyama’s track record is so hapless that one would might quite reasonably start shorting Turkish drone manufacturers on the basis of these prognostications.

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Zelensky’s Challenge

The president of the neocon puppet regime sounds like a leader who cares deeply about “his” people, doesn’t he:

Volodymyr Zelensky has slammed the West for its inaction, saying today he ‘doesn’t see any bravery from NATO’ as he pleaded for more involvement from allies in peace negotiations and offered to pay for more anti-missile systems. In response, the US made lukewarm promises of taking ‘diplomatic steps’ to help the Ukrainian government.

Zelensky, who claimed 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed so far and 500 Russians surrendered yesterday, also said Putin’s forces can only take Kyiv if they ‘raze the city to the ground’, with Kremlin troops inching closer to the capital and conflict raging nearby today, endangering attempted evacuations.

Ironically, Russian President Vladimir Putin observably cares more about the Ukrainian people than their so-called “President” does.

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