Tag: war

Not Meeting Expectations on Any Front

After months of predicted success and weeks of asserted success, the media narrative is finally beginning to accept the obvious fact of a failed Ukrainian offensive:

Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces is “not meeting expectations on any front,” Western and US officials told CNN on Thursday. Ukrainian troops and armor are proving “vulnerable” to Russian minefields, missiles, and air power, they added.

“Russian lines of defense have been proving well-fortified, making it difficult for Ukrainian forces to breach them,” CNN reported, paraphrasing the anonymous officials. “In addition, Russian forces have had success bogging down Ukrainian armor with missile attacks and mines and have been deploying air power more effectively.”

According to one official, the Russian defense has proven more “competent” than expected. However, the source insisted that the US is still “optimistic” that Ukraine will turn the failing operation around, and that Washington will re-evaluate the offensive next month.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive began on June 4 with a failed attack on Russian positions near Donetsk, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Waves of attacks followed along the Donetsk and Zaporozhye sectors of the front line, all of which the entrenched Russian forces have managed to withstand, the ministry claimed.

The attacks have reportedly cost the Ukrainian military dearly. With their dwindling number of air defense systems weakened by Russian drones and missiles, Kiev’s forces have been unable to counter Russian jets and helicopters. Relying on armored thrusts through minefields, Ukraine lost over 13,000 troops and more than 800 tanks and armored vehicles between June 4 and 21, Russian Security Council chief Nikolay Patrushev stated on Thursday.

The US will be “optimistic” right down to the last Ukrainian. But, as Scott Ritter observes, it’s hard to be successful on the real battlefield if you’re going to build false assumptions into your training and simulation models.

Ukraine sent one of its best brigades into combat earlier this month as part of its long-awaited counteroffensive aimed at retaking areas controlled by Russian forces.

Leading the charge near the town of Orekhov, in Zaporozhye Region, was the 47th Mechanized Brigade, armed with NATO equipment and – most importantly – employing it using the US-led bloc’s combined arms doctrine and tactics. Prior to the operation, this brigade spent months at a base in Germany learning “Western know-how” in combined-arms warfare.

Helping them prepare for the fighting to come was KORA, the German-made NATO computer simulation system, designed to allow officers and non-commissioned officers to closely replicate battlefield conditions and, in doing so, better develop ideal courses of action against a designated enemy – in this case, Russia.

If there was ever an example of how a purpose-built Ukrainian NATO proxy force would perform against a Russian enemy, the 47th Brigade was the ideal case study. However, within days of initiating its attack, the group was close to literally decimated, with more than 10% of the over 100 US-made M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles destroyed or abandoned on the field of battle, and hundreds of the brigade’s 2,000-strong complement dead or wounded. German-made Leopard 2 tanks and mine-clearing vehicles joined the Bradleys as wrecks in the fields west of Orekhov, having failed to breach the first line of Russian defenses. The reasons for this defeat can be boiled down to the role played by KORA in creating a false sense of confidence on the part of the officers and men of the 47th Brigade. Unfortunately, as the Ukrainians and their NATO masters found out, what works in a computer simulation does not automatically equate to battlefield success….

Logic dictates that any responsible use of the KORA simulation system would have predicted the failure of the 47th Brigade’s attack. According to The Washington Post, the officers of the 47th Brigade “planned their assaults and then let the [KORA] program show them the results – how their Russian enemies might respond, where they could make a breakthrough and where they would suffer losses.” The KORA simulation allowed the Ukrainian officers to coordinate their actions “to test how they’d work together on the battlefield.” Given that the Ukrainian force structure was insufficient to accomplish the mission-critical task of suppression, there was no chance for the Ukrainian forces to accomplish the actual assault requirements of a breaching operation – the destruction of enemy forces on the opposite side of the obstacle barrier being breached. The Ukrainians, however, came away from their KORA experience confident that they had crafted a winning plan capable of overcoming the Russian defenses in and around Orekhov.

Simulation models are only useful if they actually reflect the real situation. And if there is one thing we know about globohomo, it is that its servants believe that their imagination creates reality. Speaking as a game designer, one can safely predict that no simulation created by people who believe that a man can be a woman can be even remotely accurate.

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So Much for the Wunderwaffen

Ukrainian armored troops are less than keen about taking their Leopard tanks into battle:

Ukrainian tank crews have been faking malfunctions on their tanks to justify not going into combat against Russian forces, fellow soldiers operating German Leopards have told Der Spiegel magazine. The revelation was part of a frontline report published by the news outlet.

The magazine spoke to three German-trained Ukrainian troops who were among the crew of two Leopard 2A6 tanks provided to Kiev by the Bundeswehr.

The report cites a loader nicknamed Gutsik, who claimed that some crews fake technical malfunctions to avoid being sent to the frontline. He reportedly told the magazine that dodging an engagement altogether was better than entering combat only to pull out after the first shot.

Another said he didn’t blame those who are refusing.

“If they hit the turret, you’re a heap of ashes,” a man identified as Misha told Spiegel.

Remember, this is not a Russian report. It’s a German one directly quoting Ukrainian soldiers. So it’s not propaganda. I expect that NATO pilots, of every state including the USA, are even more determined to avoid flying in the teeth of Russia’s air defenses. What are F-16s supposed to do against air defense systems designed to shoot down planes two generations newer?

It would be like flying Sopwith Camels against Yakovlev Yak-9Us.

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A General’s Prediction

The divergence between Gen. Petraeus’s predictions for the Kiev counteroffensive and the apparent results does not bode well for NATO strategists.

Gen David Petraeus has said Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “very impressive” and can succeed, adding that the Ukrainians are “determined to liberate their country”.

On the counteroffensive, he said:

I think that this counteroffensive is going to be very impressive.

My sense is that they will achieve combined arms effects in other words, they will successfully carry out combined arms operations where you have engineers that are breaching the obstacles and diffusing the minefields and so forth; armour following right on through protected by infantry against anti-tank missiles; air defence keeping the Russians aircraft off them; electronic warfare jamming their radio networks; logistics right up behind them; artillery and mortars right out in front of them.

And most important of all … is that as the lead elements inevitably culminate after 72-96 hours, physically that’s about as far as you can go, and they’ll have taken losses … you have follow-on units that will push right on through and capitalise on the progress and maintain the momentum and I think that can get the entire Russian defence in that area moving, then I think you have other opportunities that will open up on the flanks as well.

It’s been a lot more than 72-96 hours. Not only are the NATO forces nowhere near Moscow, but they’ve essentially bounced off what has been described as “a wall of steel”, losing about one-third of their forces in the process.

Simplicius has turned out to be correct again. This is a “Schroedinger’s Offensive”, which is no longer an offensive, much less a “very impressive” one, but rather, a mere test, and mere recon in force. Never mind that the “in force” in this case amounted to a substantial percentage of the total available equipment.

No wonder the neoclowns are suddenly babbling about diplomacy and the need for negotiations.

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Waving the White Flag

The neoclowns are starting to push for diplomacy and a negotiated armistice in Ukraine in a new piece in Foreign Affairs entitled “An Unwinnable War”:

An entire new U.S. military command element, the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine, has been devoted to the aid and training mission, which is led by a three-star general with a staff of 300. Yet there is not a single official in the U.S. government whose full-time job is conflict diplomacy. Biden should appoint one, perhaps a special presidential envoy who can engage beyond ministries of foreign affairs, which have been sidelined in this crisis in nearly all relevant capitals. Next, the United States should begin informal discussions with Ukraine and among allies in the G-7 and NATO about the endgame.

In parallel, the United States should consider establishing a regular channel of communication regarding the war that includes Ukraine, U.S. allies, and Russia. This channel would not initially be aimed at achieving a cease-fire. Instead, it would allow participants to interact continually, instead of in one-off encounters, akin to the contact group model used during the Balkan wars, when an informal grouping of representatives from key states and international institutions met regularly. Such discussions should begin out of the public eye, as did initial U.S. contacts with Iran on the nuclear deal, signed in 2015.

These efforts might well fail to lead to an agreement. The odds of success are slim—and even if negotiations did produce a deal, no one would leave fully satisfied. The Korean armistice was certainly not seen as a triumph of U.S. foreign policy at the time it was signed: after all, the American public had grown accustomed to absolute victories, not bloody wars without clear resolution. But in the nearly 70 years since, there has not been another outbreak of war on the peninsula. Meanwhile, South Korea emerged from the devastation of the 1950s to become an economic powerhouse and eventually a thriving democracy. A postwar Ukraine that is similarly prosperous and democratic with a strong Western commitment to its security would represent a genuine strategic victory.

An endgame premised on an armistice would leave Ukraine—at least temporarily—without all its territory. But the country would have the opportunity to recover economically, and the death and destruction would end. It would remain locked in a conflict with Russia over the areas occupied by Moscow, but that conflict would play out in the political, cultural, and economic domains, where, with Western support, Ukraine would have advantages. The successful reunification of Germany, in 1990, another country divided by terms of peace, demonstrates that focusing on nonmilitary elements of the contestation can produce results. Meanwhile, a Russian-Ukrainian armistice would also not end the West’s confrontation with Russia, but the risks of a direct military clash would decrease dramatically, and the global consequences of the war would be mitigated.

Many commentators will continue to insist that this war must be decided only on the battlefield. But that view discounts how the war’s structural realities are unlikely to change even if the frontline shifts, an outcome that itself is far from guaranteed. The United States and its allies should be capable of helping Ukraine simultaneously on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Now is the time to start.

There are a few problems here. First, the Egypt-Israel model cannot apply, because unlike in the Middle East, the US and its allies are co-belligerents in Ukraine. Therefore, they cannot expect Russia to accept them as anything but adversaries; the situation on the Korean Peninsula is a more relevant analogy. Second, the US and its allies not only permitted, but actively conspired with Ukraine in undermining the previous diplomatic efforts that resulted in the Minsk Accords.

Third, this analysis presumes material military weakness and lack of morale on the part of Russia that does not appear to be in evidence. While the inabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now being recognized, the narrative of Russian military incapacity remains largely unchanged despite having been proven to be reliably wrong for the last eighteen months. While the writer recognizes that Ukraine is incapable of winning, he still doesn’t realize that the same is not true of Russia.

Fourth, there are zero indications that Russia has any interest in a diplomatic solution and a plethora of signs that Russia has absolutely no intention of letting Clown World off the hook in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. If WWIII has, as I believe, already begun, it is not going to be averted by a belated interest in diplomacy on the part of the neoclowns.

But the article is certainly worth noting due to the way it informs us that the formerly triumphalist clowns now recognize that what they previously believed to be their inevitable victory is, at the very least, no longer imminent, and may not even be possible anymore.

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The Evacuation of Taiwan

The Biden regime is preparing for Americans to evacuate Taiwan before it unifies with the mainland.

The U.S. government is preparing evacuation plans for American citizens living in Taiwan, three sources told The Messenger.

The planning has been underway for at least six months and “it’s heated up over the past two months or so,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the planning.

The official said a “heightened level of tension” had driven the preparations. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t read in the news,” he told The Messenger. “Forces building up. China aligning with Russia on Ukraine.”

It’s probably not a coincidence that these preparations are being made now that the “largest air exercise in NATO history” has been launched just as the Ukrainian offensive has been halted and the Kiev regime is screaming for more air support.

An air deployment exercise billed as the biggest in NATO’s history and hosted by Germany got underway on Monday. The Air Defender 2023 exercise that is set to run through June 23 was long-planned but serves to showcase the alliance’s capabilities amid high tensions with Russia.

The first planes took off on Monday morning from airfields in northern Germany. Some 10,000 participants and 250 aircraft from 25 nations will respond to a simulated attack on a NATO member. The United States alone is sending 2,000 U.S. Air National Guard personnel and about 100 aircraft.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that NATO is finally going to take the war with Russia direct and hot. But it means they have the means to do so if their decision makers are bold enough to take the risk.

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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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Stormy Seas Ahead

With the NATO-Russian war heating up over Kosovo, American troops being deployed in both South America and Africa, and China beginning to prepare for worst-case scenarios, it’s probably fair to anticipate some difficult times ahead.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called on his top national security officials to think about “worst case” scenarios and prepare for “stormy seas,” as the ruling Communist Party hardens efforts to counter any perceived internal and external threats.

“The complexity and difficulty of the national security issues we now face have increased significantly,” Xi said Tuesday at a meeting of the party’s National Security Commission, state news agency Xinhua reported.

“We must adhere to bottom-line thinking and worst-case-scenario thinking, and get ready to undergo the major tests of high winds and rough waves, and even perilous, stormy seas,” he added.

The latest stern instructions from Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, comes as Beijing faces a host of challenges, from a struggling economy to what it sees as an increasingly hostile international environment.

In face of what he called a “complex and grave” situation, Xi said China must speed up the modernization of its national security system and capabilities, with a focus on making them more effective in “actual combat and practical use.”

He also called for China to push ahead with the construction of a national security risk monitoring and early warning system, enhance national security education and improve the management of data and artificial intelligence security.

Since coming to power a decade ago, Xi has made national security a key paradigm that permeates all aspects of China’s governance, experts say. He has expanded the concept of national security to cover everything from politics, economy, defense, culture and ecology to cyberspace. It extends from the deep sea and the polar regions to space, as well as big data and artificial intelligence.

Under Xi’s notion of “comprehensive national security,” China has introduced a raft of legislation to protect itself against perceived threats, including laws on counter-terrorism, counter-espionage, cybersecurity, foreign non-government organizations, national intelligence and data security.

Both Putin and Xi know very well what they’re up against in Clown World. The current iteration of The Empire That Never Ended more than a mere human enemy, it is a spiritual machine, which I suspect is why both men are being so circumspect about engaging in direct conflict any sooner than is absolutely necessary. It may be hard to understand their caution, in light of their overwhelming combined economic, demographic, and military advantages, but it’s that very caution, and the awareness that caution signifies, that appears to be panicking the leaders of Clown World.

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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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