Tag: war

Not Without Odessa

The Russian Army has sent a strong signal how it believes the war is going to end.

A routine and seemingly innocent news release photo from the Russian Ministry of Defense, is rapidly becoming quite controversial.  General Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation,  giving a briefing about the ongoing Russian “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.   But . . . . . . .  on the wall behind the man seated to the left of Gerasimov, is a map.

I’ve believed from the beginning of the war in 2022 that while Russia had no interest in taking the entirety of Ukraine, the Russians wouldn’t stop it without reacquiring Odessa. Not only is it strategically important, but the trade union massacre there on 2 May 2014 remains an important symbol of the inability of the Kiev regime to govern the Russian people justly.

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Perhaps the 8th Try’s the Charm

The IDF was just forced to retreat from a supposedly nonexistent battalion:

There is an ironic article in Haaretz today — ironic because of breaking news as I write this at 10 pm eastern time — with the title, Inside Gaza City’s Zeitoun, IDF Insists Its Seventh Incursion Will Finally Defeat Hamas. Here are a few salient points from the article:

Throughout the Gaza war, the IDF said the Zeitoun battalion was defeated, but now admits it may have spoken too soon. The mission: erase the neighborhood above and below ground. ‘I assume we’ll meet again,’ said a commander, ‘maybe for the eighth time in Zeitoun.’. . .

But what could the Israel Defense Forces achieve this time that it didn’t manage to achieve the previous six times, in which the 36th, 99th, 252nd, 126th and 98th divisions fought here? Indeed, it seems every unit serving in Gaza over the past two years has taken part in “defeating” Hamas’ Zeitoun Battalion. . . .

Throughout the war, senior defense and government officials have told journalists that the Zeitoun Battalion had been defeated and had ceased to function as a military unit. But now, they say they could have been too quick to make that assertion. Currently, the army says, the battalion is in combat-ready and has around 400 fighters, but it is displaying “exaggerated self-confidence” about the upcoming fight with the IDF.

Well, guess what? According to the Middle East Spectator, the IOF today (Friday) received an ass-whipping at the hands of the Zeitoun Battalion:

The IDF is withdrawing from Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, after the rescue forces were ambushed by Hamas fighters, leading to 1 death and 11 wounded.

BREAKING: No contact has been made with the four missing Israeli soldiers in Ayn Al-Zaytoun in the Gaza Strip — there is now increasing speculation that all of them may have been captured by Hamas.

Hebrew media now reporting that the IDF search and rescue has ‘given up’ on the 4 missing soldiers, and the Israeli government is preparing a major press release.

Martin van Creveld wept.

The Israeli government and the IDF have been completely ignoring the strategic advice of their greatest military historian. It should not come as a surprise that their results have not only turned pretty much the entire world that isn’t owned by AIPAC against them, but have also failed to pacify the Palestinian resistance.

It’s also obviously counterproductive to slaughter tens of thousands of civilians using the nominal excuse of “rescuing the hostages” in a manner that literally creates more hostages. And I wonder how longer it will be before at least one other military comes to the defense of the Palestinians and starts doing to Israel what the IDF has been doing to Gaza.

It’s perfectly understandable that Netanyahu wants to establish as much of Greater Israel as he can before the neocons lose all power in the USA and the US military loses its ability to project force into the Middle East. The Syrian operation was brilliant in this regard, the attacks on Lebanon rather less so. But staging the October 7th green flag and then using it to justify the genocide of the Gazacaust is the sort of thing that will not only live on in historical infamy, but isn’t likely to work.

UPDATE: Turkey’s recent action may be a harbinger of Israel’s increasing isolation. Or it may just be a sign of the inevitable hostilities growing now that the two countries essentially share a border inside what used to be Syria.

Türkiye has severed all commercial and economic ties with Israel, as well as closing its airspace to some Israeli flights, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has announced. The two countries have been at odds for months over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, with Türkiye accusing the country of committing genocide.

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Diversity Enriches Switzerland

Not even the uber-civilized Magic Dirt of Switzerland is enough to maintain order once a sufficient quantity of societally incompatible non-Europeans have been imported.

Dramatic riots have erupted in a Swiss city after a migrant teen was killed in a scooter crash while fleeing the police. Riot cops clashed with protesters who hurled Molotov cocktails in Lausanne as officials desperately tried to put a lid on escalating violence. The unrest comes with the Olympic capital’s police in the spotlight after four officers were suspended Monday following the unearthing of racist, sexist and discriminatory messages in private WhatsApp groups.

Marvin M, a 17-year-old Swiss resident of Lausanne, was fleeing police on a stolen scooter, hit a wall and died early Sunday, despite resuscitation attempts by emergency services. It was the third death in less than three months in Lausanne during a police intervention. There have been seven such deaths in the city and the wider Vaud region since 2016. Five involved men of African origin.

On Sunday night, ‘around 100 young people, wearing balaclavas’ set fire to several containers and damaged a bus, police said. The following night, 150-200 people set up roadblocks using trash containers, setting them on fire, police said. Some 140 cops clashed with the rioters, who torched buses and pelted them with stones.

Lausanne authorities sought Tuesday to head off a third night of violence in the Swiss city.

The problem is that the solution is a counterintuitive one for the social justice bureaucrats, whose entire philosophy and system of values render them unable to even begin to address the problem, let alone solve it.

Ironically, Lausanne’s best bet is to promote the four suspended officers and put them in charge of establishing and maintaining order, as they are the only authorities who clearly understand the nature of the challenge that has been created by incompatible immigration.

It’s been really fascinating to observe, over the course of two decades, how Europeans have gone from self-righteously preening about “America’s gun problem” to belatedly realizing that America never had a gun problem, America has an African problem that the Europeans have now brought upon themselves.

To quote the great historian Martin van Creveld, “Immigration is war”.

UPDATE: The vibrant youth also attacked a politician from Switzerland’s largest political party.

During that night, a Swiss People’s Party (SVP) politician, Thibault Schaller, was targeted in a lynching attack, which was caught on video. He wrote on X that he approached the unrest because he was curious what was going on. Upon getting closer, some individuals, whom he said he believed to be Antifa, recognized and confronted him.

“They ordered me to leave. I refused and asked what was happening. One pushed me, I pushed him back then stepped back. Someone shouted something, and 10, 15 people came running at me from everywhere. I ran away, took hits. They blocked my path, I fell, protected myself. I got up, ran, got surrounded again against a wall, then took blows. Then, I managed to get away by running. I’m fine, but we really need to take back this city,” Schaller wrote.

As I have previously pointed out, regardless of how one feels about immigrants, refugees, or fuzzy bunnies, there are two, and only two possible options for every Western country that foolishly opened its borders to the world, and soon, apparently, Japan. One is the repatriation of all non-European peoples. Two is mass violence. And everyone who opposes the former is implicitly choosing the latter.

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The Virginian Began to Hate

The eminent John C. Wright feels a stir of righteous militance in his breast:

British police have ARRESTED a 14-year-old girl for fending off a migrant Paynim child molester?
… a 14-year-old girl ??!!
Enough is enough.
Invade England.
Free the people. Expel the invaders. Hang the ringleaders.

In fairness, the USA has invaded countries for less. I’m just kind of curious how the Clown Worlders think this is all supposed to work out for them. I mean, it’s obvious that war, and a particularly nasty form of war, is going to take place across the West. What I can’t quite figure out is how they think they’re somehow going to be immune from its consequences.

Unless they’re just suicidal agents of evil. In that case, it makes sense. Or, I suppose, stupid servants of evil without any sense of self-preservation. That would work too. In either case, Great Britain is now observably Gulag Britain.

“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

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The Defense Catches Up

As is always the case with technological development, the offense has the initial advantage. But the defense always catches up in time, as we’re seeing with regards to drone and missile warfare:

India has successfully tested a new integrated air defense system consisting of a variety of weapons that shot down three targets at different altitudes and ranges off the coast of India’s eastern state of Odisha, Indian media reported on Monday citing the country’s defense ministry.

A Chinese expert said on Monday that while the inclusion of a laser weapon is a notable feature in this short-range system, its operational effectiveness remains to be proved, as a test conducted under preset scenario cannot fully demonstrate performance in real combat conditions.

The maiden test of the integrated air defense weapon system (IADWS), which is expected to be a part of the bigger national security shield, was conducted by India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on Saturday, the Hindustan Times reported on Monday, noting that the development comes days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the creation of a formidable military capability to defend India’s military and civilian installations against aerial attacks and set a 10-year deadline for developing an indigenous air defense shield integrated with offensive weapons.

According to Indian media, the IADWS is a multi-layered air defense system consisting of quick reaction surface-to-air missiles (QRSAM), very short range air defense system (VSHORADS) and a laser-based directed energy weapon.

During the flight-tests, three different targets including two high-speed fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicle targets and a multi-copter drone were simultaneously engaged and destroyed completely by the QRSAM, VSHORADS and the high-energy laser weapon system at different ranges and altitudes, the Hindustan Times reported, citing the Indian defense ministry.

The point is not that India is at the cutting edge of anti-drone and anti-missile technologies, but rather, that even India, a third-rate power, has understood the obvious and is focusing its military investment in areas that are likely to be relevant in the future rather than on tactically and strategically outdated technologies like planes, littoral warships, and aircraft carriers.

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Ukraine Must Surrender

We knew it was bad, we knew it was very bad, but we didn’t know it was this bad. The true wickedness and inhumanity of the UK and the European Union can be seen in their determination to force the Ukrainian Armed Forces to continue resisting the Russian victory that was already known to be inevitable back in February 2022.

Ukraine has lost 1.7 million servicemen during the special military operation, these are killed and missing in action. The information comes from the database of the Ukrainian General Staff, which was hacked by killnet.

Over three years of the special military operation, the Ukrainian army lost 1,721,000 people killed and missing in action.

118.5 thousand in 2022
405.4 thousand in 2023
595 thousand in 2024
621 thousand in 2025

A total of 1.7 million files — with full names, descriptions of circumstances and places of death/disappearance, personal data, contacts of closest relatives, and photos.

If the war isn’t ended by an unconditional surrender that provides Russia with whatever it wants, the total KIA and MIA in 2025 alone will approach one million. This has been one of the bloodiest wars in European history; the infamous 30 Years War that is cited as one of the great evils of religion only accounted for 450,000 combat deaths in 30 years.

To put this into historical perspective, by the end of the year, Ukraine will have lost as many men as Japan did in WWII. It has already lost FOUR TIMES more men than the USA lost in WWII.

It is absolutely unconscionable for President Trump to permit even one more dollar to go toward such a lost, lethal, and pointless cause. And now that the degree of losses are known, I can’t imagine that the Ukrainian people are going to suffer the Kiev regime much longer.

The reported figures far exceed official estimates. In February, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky told CBS News that 46,000 of his soldiers had been killed since 2022, alongside about 380,000 wounded – numbers questioned in Western media. Moscow has also claimed higher Ukrainian losses, putting the toll at more than 1 million killed or wounded as of early this year.

UPDATE: By contrast, total Russian losses are independently estimated to be around 165,000. This should suffice to explain why Russia has been content to take as much time as it takes to execute the Special Military Operation, as the 10-1 kill-ratio is astonishing, particularly considering that Russia has been on the offensive without much of a numerical advantage until recently.

If these numbers prove to be more or less correct, then the SMO has essentially been the Battle of Cannea writ large and is one of the greatest strategic accomplishments in military history.

Ukraine and NATO have not only lost this war, they appear to have lost it as comprehensively as any defeated military force in human history.

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The Fake Peace Plan

Reuters reports that this is the agreement to which the Russians have concurred and which President Trump will be selling to Zelensky and the Europeans today:

Reuters publishes Putin’s proposals on Ukraine, presented to Trump at the summit:

  • No ceasefire is planned before signing a full agreement.
  • The Armed Forces of Ukraine will withdraw from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
  • Russia will freeze the front lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
  • Return control of areas in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions to Ukraine.
  • Formal recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea.
  • Cancellation of at least part of the sanctions against Russia.
  • Ukraine will be prohibited from joining NATO.
  • Putin seems to have been open to Ukraine receiving certain security guarantees.
  • Official status of the Russian language in some parts of Ukraine or throughout Ukraine, as well as the rights of the Russian Orthodox Church to operate freely.

But Simplicius is, in my opinion, correct to be very skeptical that this is an accurate report.

This, if true, would obviously be a huge departure from Russia’s earlier demands. It is difficult to believe, however, because Putin already signed both Zaporozhye and Kherson at their administrative borders into the Russian constitution, and thus there is no real mechanism of abandoning those uncaptured portions.

There are a variety of angles to this. Firstly, recall that media ‘reports’ about claimed Russian concessions have been proven fake every previous time. We went through it repeatedly: a media claim is made that Putin is ready to ‘concede’, and soon after a high ranking Russian official states that all previous ‘Istanbul plus’ demands are still in place…

The only logical explanation is the above: that Russia knows no agreement can ever be reached anyway, and is thus playing for time by pretending at concessions to affect the peacemaker and transfer responsibility on Ukraine and Europe. Why can’t it be reached? Zelensky himself again just stated no uncaptured land can be ceded, as it is enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution. Previously, he’s stated many times that demilitarization is definitely out, also. Now, European “partners” have again reiterated their intent to immediately station troops on Ukraine’s territory upon the cessation of hostilities.

Personally, I believe that the focus of both the USA and Russia is extricating the former from its obligations to assist Ukraine. Once the US is out of the picture, Russia can easily handle the EU-Ukraine alliance by launching new offensives and forcing the surrender on whatever terms it requires. But in order to get the USA out of the picture, there needs to be an agreement on the table to which the US can agree and to which Ukraine will not.

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Peter Turchin Kept the Receipts

One of my favorite analysts, Peter Turchin, is one of the few people who loves data even more than I do. He quite usefully chose a pair of opposite predictions concerning the Ukraine war back in 2022, one from Paul Krugman and one from Scott Ritter, and constructed models on the bases of those predictions in order to track the way the war unfolded.

Now, I could have told him that Paul Krugman’s model would be wrong, because Paul Krugman is always wrong. But that’s some high-level UHIQ pattern recognition in action; warning: do not try this at home! In the statistical world, one has to at least pretend to take his predictions seriously and give them a fair shake, even though one has a very high level of confidence that they’ll comprehensively fail.

One of the topics that I wrote about in End Times was Ukraine. After I turned the final version of the text to the publisher in late 2022, I continued monitoring the news about the course of the conflict there, because I was curious to see how well my assessment of the Ukrainian state (a plutocracy) and the war there (a proxy conflict between NATO and Russia) would fare as history unfolded. It was, thus, interesting to see that in the early 2023 the views on this conflict, and predictions about its future course, could be so diametrically opposed, depending on who was writing and what ideological background they came from. The tone in the MSM (main-stream media reflecting the official American position) was quite triumphant. But many American analysts, former military and intelligence professionals, held a very different view.

It occurred to me at that time that this difference in predictions is actually amenable to an empirical test. As long-time readers of my blog (now here on Substack, previous posts archived on my web site) know, I view ability to empirically test predictions from rival theories as key in doing Science (with a capital S). Just search my blog archive using the keyword “prediction” and you will see multiple posts on this subject. So I decided to conduct a formal test.

For concreteness sake, I selected two predictions, both based on an explicitly quantitative argument, but coming from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. One was from Paul Krugman, channeling the official American position. The other was from another American, who is, however, considered as a “rogue actor” and a “Putin’s stooge”, Scott Ritter. You can read the actual quotes from both in the Introduction of the SocArxiv article, in which I “pre-registered” predictions of my model.

I won’t repeat the details here, because you can read them in the series of blogs I published two years ago, followed by the SocArxiv article that put it all together in a systematic manner and provided R scripts that allow others to replicate all my results.

They’re all well worth reading, although by the middle assessment, it’s already perfectly clear which of the two models, which Turchin labels the Economic Power model (Krugman) and the Casualties Rates model (Ritter), works better, although he combined elements of both into what he describes as an Attrition Warfare Model that appears to outperform both. This makes since, because what really matters most is Industrial Capacity and Male Population Demographics, both of which are presumably incorporated in Turchin’s AWM.

And he explains exactly what his AWM suggests at the moment.

As you can see (the dashed red line “We are here”), we’ve already entered the region where Ukrainian army can collapse at any moment, although this “moment,” according to the model can happen at any point between now and February 2027 (corresponding to 60 months after the start of the conflict). As I explained in my posts and the article, the final outcome is not much in doubt, but the rupture point is extremely difficult to predict. The situation is akin to seismology. For example, the recent Kamchatka earthquake of exceptional power was predicted 30 years ago, except nobody could know when it would actually strike. The Attrition Warfare Model is actually more precise than that. From its point of view, it would be a surprising outcome if Ukraine is still fighting beyond February 2027.

Note that I said, “from its [the model’s] point of view.” I emphasize that the future is unknowable in precise terms. In any case, the goal of this article was not to predict the future, but to use the method of scientific prediction to empirically test between two, or more theories.

The Attrition Warfare Model (AWM) encodes both alternative theories, (1) the Economic Power hypothesis, which predicts a win for Ukraine (Krugman) and (2) the Casualties Rates hypothesis, which predicts a win for Russia (Ritter). It is clear that the first theory will be rejected, no matter when the war ends.

Turchin’s work can be a little wonkish for the average individual to follow, but it’s not as complicated as it might look at first. He keeps things simple enough, and his writing style is clear enough, that with just a little concentration, that it’s both insightful and educational for anyone with the intelligence to be paying attention to these small matters of war, revolution, and societal survival.

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The US Defeat in Ukraine

There is no way to avoid the conclusion that 2023’s disastrous counteroffensive was a test of the USA’s ability to go toe-to-toe with Russia’s generals. Or that it was a test that they failed badly.

● Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan. But Washington miscalculated the extent to which Ukraine’s forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period — especially without giving Kyiv air power integral to modern militaries.
● U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing. The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and training.
● U.S. military officials were confident that a mechanized frontal attack on Russian lines was feasible with the troops and weapons that Ukraine had. The simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov and cut off Russian troops in the south in 60 to 90 days.
● The United States advocated a focused assault along that southern axis, but Ukraine’s leadership believed its forces had to attack at three distinct points along the 600-mile front, southward toward both Melitopol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov and east toward the embattled city of Bakhmut.
● The U.S. intelligence community had a more downbeat view than the U.S. military, assessing that the offensive had only a 50-50 chance of success given the stout, multilayered defenses Russia had built up over the winter and spring.

The massive distance between the wargamed results and the real-world results demonstrate how absolutely inept the current state of US military wargaming is. Keep this in mind when contemplating what the military wargames predict about the inevitable conflict in the South China Sea and in the Middle East.

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The Military War is Over

At least, that’s what Col. Macgregor thinks.

What I’m trying to say is that you have this picture on the one side of Ukrainian forces that are literally bled white, that are falling apart—not for lack of courage or any of that sort of thing. That’s nonsense. It’s simply impossible for them to mount an effective resistance against the onrushing Russians.

And then on the Russian side, you have this 21st century force, extraordinarily well-equipped, technologically savvy, essentially knocking drones out of the air with either electronic warfare or other means and moving not at high speed, but fast enough that the opposing force has no chance of recovering.

And right now they keep talking about the so-called Azov formations. I guess there’s something like four, five, six, seven, eight brigades left. I don’t know what their strength is. There’s probably not much. But these are the sort of diehard Nazis. They seem to be nowhere in the path of the Russians. I think they’ve beat a path elsewhere. So I’m not sure there’s really much in front of the advancing Russian forces.

So from a purely military standpoint, I would say this is the end of the war.

“Is it fair to say that Russia is close to achieving its military objectives in the war if those objectives are the acquisition of the four oblasts?”

“Oh, well that’s being achieved. But remember, the key thing for them has always been not so much capturing territory, but annihilating the Ukrainian forces on the ground. That’s the problem. So they’re very force-oriented in what they do. Now, we may see finally a buildup of forces in various places of 100,000 or more that are large enough and well-supplied enough that they can move deeper.

I think you’re going to see that in the direction of Zaporizhzhia. The bridges over the Dnipro are intact. Zaporizhzhia has real strategic value. If they decide to cross the river, they can go north or south from there—attacking north to Kyiv or south to Odessa. I think those are the decisions that they’re going to make now in the next couple of weeks. And we’re going to see more and more movement.

But the point is the Ukrainian force is almost annihilated. There are still some people left, and they’re not going to stop. As long as there’s anyone from these Azov units around, I would expect the Russians to plow forward. But securing the Russian areas, the Russian-speaking areas, yes—but then the next question is, what are you going to do to secure the outcome of the war? They’re going to be victorious militarily. That’s not enough. In other words, how do you come to an arrangement with somebody who is confident in the west that brings you the measure of security that you want?

All of this has been about protecting Russia. This was never about conquering territory and marching west into Poland or Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. That’s all nonsense. And I think that’s in the back of people’s minds right now in Moscow.

The problem, of course, is that there is a very good chance that President Trump and his advisors don’t understand that the time for playing word games with Russia is over. If the USA can’t be a reliable security partner capable of keeping the Ukrainians and the Europeans under control, and there are a lot of reasons to believe it cannot, then Russia will do whatever it has to do in order to establish a sufficiently secure situation.

While I hope something useful will come of Friday’s meeting between the presidents, I am not very optimistic that anything substantive will do so. Although if the rumor of a shipment of an Israeli adrenochrome seized by Russians are factually based, one hopes that Putin will bring it to Trump’s attention.

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