Tag: war

Signs of a Winter Offensive

Col. Douglas Macgregor observes an ongoing buildup of Russian forces that suggests a winter offensive is planned.

The stupefying air of self-righteousness the Biden administration assumes when it attacks erstwhile strategic partners such as Saudi Arabia or delivers moralizing lectures to Beijing’s leadership, or when its media surrogates express contempt for the Russian state, is downright dangerous. Political figures in Washington are ready to indulge any transgression if it is committed in the name of destroying Russia. They do not view U.S. foreign policy in the context of a larger strategy, nor do they comprehend Russia’s capacity to hurt the United States, a bizarre judgment of Russia’s actual military and economic potential.

The ongoing buildup of 700,000 Russian forces with modern equipment in Western Russia, Eastern Ukraine and Belorussia is a direct consequence of Moscow’s decision to adopt an elastic, strategic defense of the territories it seized in the opening months of the war. It was a wise, though politically unpopular choice in Russia. Yet, the strategy has succeeded. Ukrainian losses have been catastrophic and by November, Russian Forces will be in a position to strike a knockout blow.

Today, there are rumors in the media that Kiev may be under pressure to launch more counterattacks against Russian defenses in Kherson (Southern Ukraine) before the midterm elections in November. At this point, expending what little remains of Ukraine’s life blood to expel Russian forces from Ukraine is hardly synonymous with the preservation of the Ukrainian state. It’s also doubtful that further sacrifices by Ukrainians will assist the Biden administration in the midterm elections.

The truth is Moscow’s redline concerning Ukrainian entry into NATO was always real. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea were always predominantly Russian in language, culture, history, and political orientation. Europe’s descent into economic oblivion this winter is also real, as is support for Russia’s cause in China and India and Moscow’s rising military strength.

Remember, the globalist media operates in terms of a) daily and b) weekly news cycles. As such, they are completely incapable of correctly analyzing events that take months to unfold. While its “Ukraine is Winning” Narrative is obviously false and openly mocked, the full extent to which it is untrue will not be understood until the winter offensive is well underway.

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How We Got Here

Don’t blame it on the goose, blame it on Big Ben Bernanke.

As the Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006-2014, he decided in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis that the banking system had to be saved, by any means necessary. To finance the massive losses – which were over $10 trillion in the U.S. alone – the world’s central banks began printing money and buying government bonds to finance massive bailouts.

Like squirrels watching a bank robbery, the members of the Nobel Committee – which recently awarded Bernanke the prize in economics – saw everything that happened and knew nothing about what it meant.

Printing money doesn’t cure economic problems: it simply skews who pays for them.

Printing trillions to paper over the financial system’s losses moved the egregious errors of Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, General Electric, General Motors and others from their balance sheets, onto the balance sheet of the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

Morally these actions are repugnant – much like requiring that taxpayers finance hundreds of billions’ worth of second-rate college educations for 10 million lazy, underachieving students – but on a vastly bigger scale.

The real problem isn’t financial. Printing money changes societies by giving the government virtually unlimited amounts of power. That warps the ambitions of politicians and gives socialists unlimited budgets. People soon believe every problem can be solved by the government and the printing press. Trade-offs are no longer required. Costs are no longer relevant. In this kind of environment, no problem is too big to solve through politics and the central bank. And if there isn’t a crisis, then one will soon be invented.

And, sure enough, as soon as the U.S. central bank began to sell assets and return to “normal” policies in 2018 and 2019, a new, even bigger crisis was “found.”

A novel coronavirus. Never mind that coronaviruses appear all the time and that most people will get and survive the flu a half dozen times in their lives… this time the world went completely nuts.

Everything was shut down for two years – except politics. Trillions were spent on vaccines – vaccines that don’t prevent you from getting Covid or from transmitting Covid. It was definitely a government vaccine: it cost trillions, everyone was forced to use it, and it didn’t work.

Nothing else worked during the Covid lockdown either. Kids don’t learn at home. Employees don’t work at home. Flimsy surgical masks don’t prevent you from contracting or spreading Covid – they don’t work, but they were required too. Fauci wore two masks, everywhere. He received four different shots of the “vaccine.” Guess who got Covid anyway?

Worst of all, the government spent unlimited sums of money on things like the ridiculous “paycheck protection program,” which might as well have been called “Fraud on a Federal Scale For You.”

The lie that we could print over the mortgage losses led directly to the lie that wearing a paper mask can stop a virus. Or that a vaccine created in a few weeks and tested only on a handful of people could stop a coronavirus that constantly mutates. With a printing press, there’s no problem that appears too big for the government to handle.

But, much like the “vaccine” and the paper masks, the printing press is just a lie too.

Altogether, the world’s central banks have printed over $25 trillion over the last 12 years.

In the United States, the printing was equal to more than 30% of our GDP. In the Eurozone, the printing was twice as large – over 60% of GDP. In Japan, the printing has been equal to over 100% of GDP.

You can think of these figures as being the size of the mirage we’ve been living in.

Reality looms.

This is why the Sino-Russian alliance is going to win WWIII. They not only have the advantages of population, territory, social stability, and manufacturing capacity, but they also have the advantage of not being hamstrung by completely screwed-up economic systems.

Capitalism has completely and utterly failed, as what presently passes for capitalism is nothing more than a massive credit-fueled Ponzi scheme.

One of the most important historical lessons of warfare: he who can pay his troops wins.

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Bypassing NATO

Retired general and former CIA Director David Petraeus suggests a Coalition of the Suicidally Stupid could attack Russia to get around NATO’s limitations. In winter, no less.

On Saturday in an interview with L’Express from France, David Petraeus stated a “multinational force” led by the US may intervene in Ukraine.

“We are talking about the intervention of the North Atlantic Alliance in the event of an attack on one of the NATO members. But it is necessary to consider the option of using not NATO forces in Ukraine, but multinational forces that have nothing to do with NATO,” Petraeus said. “This is a different situation. There is no need to draw red lines in terms of an attack on any NATO country in order to talk about the operation of the 5th article of the charter. You can also respond to challenges as a multinational force led by the United States,” he added.

David Petraeus was the former general of the American army, commander of the International Assistance and Security Force in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2011 and director of the CIA from 2011 to 2012.

Translation: The European countries in NATO know better than to get into a shooting war with Russia that will almost certainly result in their eventual occupation by Russian forces. So the neocons are casting about for other ways to make use of the US military in their revenge war against Russia while they still have the necessary influence over it.

Furthermore, given all of the trial balloons being floated about Russia’s evil intentions, it’s pretty obvious that a false flag, most likely one involving a crude form of nuclear technology like a so-called “dirty bomb”, is going to be executed in the near future in order to try to whip up public support for a war against Russia in the USA.

It’s probably too much to hope that Americans won’t fall for it this time, especially in light of their reaction to the mass vaccination campaign.

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Chinese Flee Ukraine

It would appear the Special Military Operation in Ukraine is about to transform into actual war between Russia and NATO:

Some Chinese nationals still in Ukraine have signed up for evacuation from the country, with most registering for organized evacuations, while others are preparing to leave Ukraine on their own, the Global Times learned on Sunday, after the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Chinese citizens to leave Ukraine, citing the grave security situation.

The move, following the large-scale evacuation in March that safely returned some 6,000 Chinese nationals in Ukraine back to their motherland, represents the Chinese government’s greatest efforts to protect its citizens, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict further escalated, experts noted.

In a notice issued on Saturday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that given the grave security situation in Ukraine, it calls upon Chinese nationals still in the country to strengthen security precautions and evacuate the country. The Chinese embassy will assist the organization of evacuation for those in need, the notice said, while urging them to register their personal information to the embassy as soon as possible.

Chinese nationals in Ukraine sign up for evacuation after call from FM, Global Times, 16 October 2022

One has to assume that the Russian leadership is keeping its Chinese allies well-informed. And Russia’s warning shots have been uniformly ignored. The only real question at this point is if the Russian forces will limit their attacks to Ukrainian territory or if they will be targeting the NATO forces with whom they are actually at war outside of Ukraine.

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What Comes Next

Pepe Escobar observes that the British Intelligence service IM6 appears to have some idea what is being decided in Moscow:

The Brits had warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the General Staff that the Russians would be launching a “warning strike” this Monday.

What happened was no “warning strike,” but a massive offensive of over 100 cruise missiles launched “from the air, sea and land,” as Putin noted, against Ukrainian “energy, military command and communications facilities.”

MI6 also noted “the next step” will be the complete destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. That’s not a “next step:” it’s already happening. Power supply is completely gone in five regions, including Lviv and Kharkov, and there are serious interruptions in other five, including Kiev.

Over 60 percent of Ukrainian power grids are already knocked out. Over 75 percent of internet traffic is gone. Elon Musk’s Starlink netcentric warfare has been “disconnected” by the Ministry of Defense.

Shock’n Awe will likely progress in three stages.

First: Overload of the Ukrainian air defense system (already on).

Second: Plunging Ukraine into the Dark Ages (already in progress).

Third: Destruction of all major military installations (the next wave).

We shall wait and see how events proceed before placing any confidence in the predictions. But they were certainly correct about the “warning strike” on Monday. And we now know that the air defenses in Ukraine are completely unable to offer a significant defense against Russian air strikes, even when warned they are coming.

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What Winning Looks Like

It’s intriguing to observe the constant whiplash between the Kiev regime crowing about its totally conclusive victories over Russia and crying about how Ukraine is about to be wiped off the map.

Multiple missile strikes targeted Ukrainian cities all across the country on Monday morning, according to local officials and media, which attributed the attacks to Russia. This comes two days after a bomb damaged the strategic Crimean Bridge – which Moscow called a Ukrainian terrorist attack.

President Vladimir Zelensky confirmed the attacks throughout the country in a video address, saying numerous parts of Ukraine had come under fire, and claimed that Russia was targeting the energy infrastructure. “They want panic and chaos,” he said.

Local officials in Lviv, Kharkov, and Odessa also reported that their cities came under fire.

“As of 11:00 a.m., 11 important infrastructure facilities in eight regions and Kyiv were damaged in Ukraine. Now some areas are de-energized. We need to be prepared for temporary interruptions in electricity, water supply, and communications.”

  • Denys Shmygal, Prime Minister of Ukraine

“By its actions, the Kiev regime has actually put itself on par with international terrorist formations, with the most odious groups. It is simply impossible to leave crimes of this kind unanswered. This morning, at the suggestion of the Ministry of Defense and according to the plan of the Russian General Staff, a massive strike was carried out with high-precision long-range air, sea and land-based weapons on energy, military administration and communications facilities of Ukraine. If attempts to carry out terrorist attacks on our territory continue, Russia’s responses will be tough and will correspond in scale to the level of threats posed to the Russian Federation.”

  • Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

The missile strike on the LAMEL cosmetics warehouse was particularly informative, being an object lesson in the price of virtue signaling one’s decision to take sides. Western leaders from America to Switzerland would be well-advised to contemplate the significance of that particular strike.

So, it appears we’re entering the “fuck around and find out” phase of the situation in the aftermath of the attacks on the pipelines and the Crimean bridge. However, the soonest a winter offensive would likely begin is November, so unless the Russians have decided it’s not worth waiting for colder weather to get things rolling, this is probably just a prelude of considerably more serious air campaigns to come.

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A Forward and Fragile Defense

The Germany Army has been effectively disarmed:

The German Army has enough ammunition for only one or two days of warfare, the German edition of news website Business Insider (BI) reported on Saturday, citing defense industry and parliamentary sources. According to BI, Berlin is significantly lagging behind the NATO requirement of maintaining stocks for at least 30 days of fighting. It was said that the problem “has been known for years,” as military drills have suffered from insufficient stores.

Stockpiles were further depleted after Germany, together with many other Western countries, began sending weapons and ammunition to Ukraine after Russia launched its military operation in the neighboring state in February. The deliveries included 53,000 rounds for self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, 21.8 million rounds for firearms, and 50 bunker-buster missiles, according to the German government.

The situation with the shortage “will not improve if ammunition is removed from the Bundeswehr stocks, while corresponding orders are not placed on the defense industry at the same time,” Hans Christoph Atzpodien, CEO of the German Security and Defense Industry Association (BDSV), told BI. The outlet’s sources, meanwhile, were quoted as saying that there have been “no significant orders” for defense companies to produce more armaments.

It appears Russia can roll over not only Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but Western Europe as well, if it happens to see fit once the inevitable winter offensive starts.

Duolingo has a Russian option, right?

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They Really Think You’re Stupid

After 24 hours of celebrating the US attack on the Crimean bridge, the shameless propagandists of the Occupied West are belatedly attempting to claim Russia bombed their own bridge:

A leading Ukrainian presidential aide claimed this morning the Kerch Strait crossing carnage may have been ordered by one of Vladimir Putin’s warring commanders. Mykhailo Podolyak alleged that Russia’s FSB secret service and the defence ministry are at loggerheads in a bitter dogfight over the botched war and are trying to undermine one another’s credibility. ‘Isn’t it obvious who made [the] explosion? Truck arrived from RF [Russian Federation],’ he said.

Meanwhile, a Western diplomatic source said the bridge attack could have been commissioned from inside the Russian establishment to fatally weaken Putin and trigger his toppling. ‘It might be the SBU [Ukrainian secret service] but it also could be the first major sign of a bid from within Russia to incapacitate the Kremlin tsar,’ the source said.

Sure. Just like the Russians shelled what is now their own nuclear plant, ineptly blew up three out of four of their own pipelines, and launched their own counteroffensive against themselves. Given the level of inversion and projection being demonstrated here, we can only assume the neocons are behind all of these attacks on Russia.

More importantly, the Russians know it. It will be interesting to see if their inevitable responses are limited to the territory of Ukraine or not.

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Russia Blows Up Bridge to Crimea

Just like they blew up their own pipeline to Germany, shelled the nuclear reactor under their control, and assassinated the daughter of Alexandre Dugin. Which is to say, the Russians didn’t do it.

A crucial bridge linking Russia and Ukraine has exploded in a suspected attack by Ukrainian saboteurs this morning, just hours after Vladimir Putin’s birthday.

Videos show the explosion rocking the Kerch Bridge linking the peninsula with the Russian mainland. The attack could cut supplies to Putin’s forces as Ukraine makes more advances in the south towards Kherson.

A section of the bridge has collapsed into the sea and a train caught fire in the blast. Long fuel lines are already forming in Crimea, despite Russian claims to have enough supplies to last two weeks.

Although Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack, one Ukrainian official boasted that ‘Putin should be happy. Not everyone gets such an expensive birthday present’ – a reference to the Russian president’s 70th birthday yesterday.

It is unclear if a suicide bombing caused the blast, but there have been no reports of incoming missiles. Some witnesses claimed there were two explosions .

Regardless of who blew up the bridge and how – and I would guess it was more likely underwater sabotage by a second US Navy SEAL team than the assumed suicide truck bomber – Russia has been doing an awful lot of not-responding of late. The Russian people are starting to get angry about all the not-responding. This makes me conclude that whatever the Russians are planning, it’s probably going to be something even bigger than the February surprise of the special military operation, because this was a direct attack on Russia.

UPDATE: Footage of the explosion which destroyed the only bridge between Russia and Crimea shows a mysterious ‘wave’ just before the blast – leading to speculation a drone packed with explosives or a boat could have been the cause.

Quelle surprise…

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A Belated Peace

Japan wants to end its long-standing war with Russia. But it doesn’t appear that Russia is interested now.

ITEM: Tokyo, 3 October. The Japanese government will continue to adhere to the course aimed at concluding a peace treaty with Russia, despite the deterioration of bilateral relations, said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in a keynote address at the opening of the extraordinary parliamentary session. Relationships between Russia and Japan has been overshadowed by the absence of a peace treaty for many years, which countries have not signed after World War II.

ITEM: Moscow, 3 October. Dmitry Peskov, Press Secretary for President Putin, ruled out the possibility of negotiations on a peace treaty with Japan. “Of course, in such conditions, negotiating a peace treaty is not possible,” Peskov told reporters. He added that Japan took a place among other Western countries and itself turned into an unfriendly country for Russia, which does not allow for negotiations.

So it doesn’t appear that Russia is going to be inclined to overlook the behavior of all of the unfriendly countries who stood with Ukraine in the future. But that’s not the interesting question here. That is: why Japan is so concerned about belatedly making peace with Russia at this particular moment in time?

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