To add to my off used military saying of ‘slow is smooth and smooth is fast’ I just picked up on this old Russian army saying that goes ‘never send a soldier somewhere that an artillery shell can go first’. Yet that is essentially what Putin’s fascist army has been doing for these first 3 murderous weeks.
But there’s always the particular for us to consider. In this case the peculiar envelope this internationally isolated second rate mostly old fashioned and joylessly unmotivated steam roller of an army has had to work in.
The working envelope in the pre-launch marshalling period, was the displayable limit of Russian resources in both men and ‘shells’. Yet even though it did not suck me in, it has to be said that Russian deception mostly worked. Further, I think it has also worked for the first-month requirement to hide what the fascists were and are up to for their next move.
It’s been very common (after week 1 or 2) to hear how Putin can’t win! But we all recall how little time Assad had left as the Syrian tyrant back in September 2015! That short time will be seven years this September! Perhaps it may be best to cast away all these soft headed illusions and prepare for the hard reality of struggle.
Putin’s fascists have had to do this massive invasion while they remain in plain sight under US spy satellites. Yet despite the size of the aggressive warfare they’re tasked with they have in these three short opening weeks achieved a lot. All of the Russian generals know that they are fighting a long war and also that it’s only ultimately directed against the spread of democracy into Belarus and Russia. Their job is to deal with the Ukraine issues and let Putin deal with the ‘ultimately’ bit down the track. Not that that will work mind!
So basically they have been pushing forward into the positions they actually require just in order to get started on their current main job! That job is a process. The drawn-out process is well known from Syria where as a result of the closure of the Bosphorus supply route I suppose Egypt might now be expected to step up to the HIRISE ‘leadership’ role. (HIRISE is my own acronym for the loose coalition that is involved in stopping the spread of democracy in Syria, it consists of Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Iraqi Shia militia, Assad’s own Syrian ‘Government’ forces and a token commitment from a regional giant Egypt)
Apparently ‘There’s a Russian word maskirovka which means military deception.’ Perhaps the first case of maskirovka was in the logistic train that was absent. ‘It must be a bluff’, most of the experts shouted in unison, because ‘they haven’t got the logistics in place to do it’. But the question was what was it? The ‘it’, turned out to be no more than deal with stage 1 and then set up the new logistics that are required for stage 2. These are very different logistical issues than were the so-called ‘disaster’ of stage 1. I’ve been informed that 60% of the Ukrainian masses were of the view that Putin would not launch this war and if that is true and I have no reason to doubt it, then the first maskirovka was remarkably successful.
At stage 1 the job appears to have been to funnel the troops forward despite the costs and ‘quickly’ get the artillery into position to pour fire on the cities where there is a strategic purpose for the war. The infantry is only now deployed to protectively screen the artillery and the -so far substantially held back air power- can now both screen the infantry and be the main general terror bombing instrument beyond!
Airpower does not win wars but terror bombing is a big part of what Russia has shown in Syria over the last decade. The cheapest method to drive the civilians out and into the democracies is the Assad barrel bombing process. All this is just one form or another of artillery.
Now we know from Napoleon that artillery conquers but only if infantry can and does occupy; otherwise, it simply drives off the people from the territory that’s been for the time being laid waste. Without infantry occupation, it leaves those that manage to somehow remain living in the zone in abject poverty but still randomly in the fight. In these enclaves, the defenders are subject to constant threat and intermittent terror attacks. These zones become too dangerous to report from and regions for the plausible denial of the various Putinesqe atrocities such as chemical weapons use; even extermination drives become ‘expected’. The Putin method is to establish what is then recognized as nothing less than a free-fire zone! The fascists then kill who they want when they want or can.
We have seen this process play out over many years in Syria. Vast tracts of territory were cleared by the barrel bombing of everything that sustains civilian life. Medical facilities, breadlines all are vulnerable and systematically attacked, until finally, the troops kill at close quarters as they occupy the territory.
The woke world looked on and after a time it was all normalized especially so after some well respected public intellect would point to the US ‘crime’ of illegally liberating the Iraqi people from Baathism! Then every good liberal can tut tut in unison and note that ‘they all do it’ and are ‘all as bad as each other’; so we see a modern fifth column is in this way working just as effectively as if they were paid to disrupt a useful enquiry into how any legitimate struggle for democracy is ever to be fought and won.
I don’t know the exact numbers but about half the Syrian population has in the course of a decade been displaced. At least half of those were driven out of the country altogether and if it were not for the intervention of a massive Turkish ground force the ‘Putin plan’ would have continued. Turkey the NATO no2 giant did the required job and the ½ theorists can’t even talk about it! Anyway I still do. But I digress.
The strategic purpose of this stage of the Putin plan is to terroristically level all the cities that are part of the currently unknown plan; they will be leveled over time to whatever extent is required to take control of them. The shelling required for that task has now started. So supply lines war is the answer and the Turkish and Israeli drones a big part of the effort. The putin plan is for murder in the countryside and mass refugee flows from the selected cities. Ukraine is going to be brutally ‘forced to sue for peace’.
Putin has real form and he does not play. It turns out he doesn’t really bluff either! The shelling will go on for as long as it takes to get the map looking like and also populated as the tzar of all the russians desires it. Make no mistake, as the fascist supply lines get disrupted and Putin’s demoralized troops get bogged down against a growing resistance to these occupation forces, the use of chemical weapons will come up. At some point we can be sure that he will escalate; he is that predictable! Just look at his form and how people got him wrong again and again!
The first 3 weeks of the resumption of this war was about positioning for the next 30 weeks. By about next September I wonder how Biden’s dementia will have progressed. That’s worth thinking about given who is ‘the leader’ and who’s the alternative leader of the free world! My giddy aunt, just how bad does this get?!
But for now the fascist army of Vlad Putin the Audacious is positioned to start driving the mass of unwanted Ukranians out of the territory that IS according to him in play. The rate they have achieved up to this point is 1,000,000 per week for a grand total of 3million. That rate is far in excess of what can be achieved for the next 10,000,000 that Putin wants to be rid of but he has shown what he has the stomach for and we can all recall the time spans that this takes. Syria has already resulted in more than that number of refugees! The fascists must be extraordinarily pleased with the rate of refugee generation at over 1 million per week when less than a month ago 2 out of 3 Ukrainians didn’t know this war was restarting in a big way!
The western world is now in a similar delusionary drift. I doubt that is true in the front line states of Poland, the Baltic 3 and so forth. The Turks under Erdogan will not be so delusionary! They know why they have all those millions of Syrians that the Europeans never wanted and did fuck all to stop being generated. Thank you mother Merkel for all your failed policies! Anyway we ought to know now that the fight is only starting in Ukraine but because it’s ultimately directed at preventing the spread of democracy it won’t stay there. So western democrats out of nothing more than long term self interest are in this fight and in it to the finish.
Comfortingly for me a majority of western generals I’m now hearing in my wide media wanderings are catching on to what’s at stake in this war and more often as not also beginning to express some measure of confidence in the West’s capacity to eventually prevail. Even the Americans! Consequently in the lower ‘ranks’ of the comentariate the will to fight spirit will soon begin to step over the pile of surrender monkeys of the realist right, pseudoleft and the hopelessly woke that have for virtually the entire 21stC dominated in western mainstream media.
The first problem was the phony pacifism snark complaining that the Western world would fight to the last Ukrainian often followed by the demand for a declaration of war against the Russians and declaring a no fly zone is declaring war! The notion that not only can the west help the unfortunate Ukrainian victims to resist until they eventually have to surrender, is however giving way to the view that the west can more slowly enter the fight and we can and will prevail provided we take the path of protracted war! There is no short term solution and there is nothing other than a military solution. It’s the Russians that want to talk while they terror bomb and drive out refugees. The sheer horror in the notion of surrender to what the MSM are now calling the ‘autocracy’ that is attacking them is what has stopped the rot. The ‘autocrat’ is demanding new maps and setting disarmament conditions while his people are not even in support of his adventure. That’s what it is, adventurism writ loud. He’s got more than enough rope now so I hope I live long enough to see him hang with it.
The west is not yet fit for the fight but at least we know we are in one on both sides of the world and we are capable of winning both!
Just heard that Assad has been received in the UAE! This is the first time he has visited another Arab country since the start of the Syrian war apparently. I wonder where he will visit from there!
I also wonder how the Biden disaster in bailing out of Afghanistan ought to be ranked as any kind of effort in the human evolutionary process? What are the regional implications that internationalists ought to take note of?
How, given the gross US failures in Israel/Palestine and Syria, ought the ‘draining the swamp’ strategy be rebooted?
How ought the West get more deeply involved in the long fight to defeat Putin and with him the tinpot dictators like Assad and Lukashenko etc? Is it a ‘go in fast and openly’ stand or get in slow and with plausible deniability aproach? Either way I wonder if anyone has seen a more dangerous international climate yet?
Just heard about the cruise missile attacks launched from the Black sea to Lviv. 6 sent 2 of them shot down seems like a good start given the poor pre-war defence preparation efforts from NATO.
Like I’m sure many others in the democratic movement, I hope that this attack will just bring more external protection assets further forward and the specialist troops to run them. By forward I mean well forward and deep into Ukraine territory and those troops protected by high-quality troops as well. Tit for tat democratic Martians from who knows where are well overdue. After events from 2014.
And it looks like a credible if still mostly underground peace movement is stirring as Putin is forced to put on a joke of a pro-war stadium event! Go Olga Smirnova! Now I wonder what the Navalny supporters will manage as the first of the anti-war code words!
Looks like Mariupol will fall soon and that could never be prevented. There is now 6mil internally displaced refugees and 3million external being reported and that is approaching a 1/4 of the Ukraine population on the move after just the first month!
Very interesting Vid! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOlkW9WvNYA
That Russia would struggle with logistics came as no surprise to me, in fact it was the reason I thought they would not invade because they didn’t have the trucks or superior number of troops to win. What has surprised me is the tactical failures of the Russian infantry, and it is seen in the vid that you linked.
Basic tactics for any group coming under fire should be 1 identify attacker i.e. shout contact left or contact right, then troops move towards the attacker seek cover and set up covering fire. This is so basic that even I know it.
In the vid we see Russian troops ambling away from the attacker with no one seeming to take charge and virtually no one laying down covering fire. Its human nature to move away from danger, but this is exactly what basic training is supposed to counter.
I forgot to check on what I posted and I lost my main points.
So to reconstruct…after about the 7minute point in the vid the over 2 yr old predictive commentary was what I was pointing out. As a commenter said
‘Holy crap, Oleksiy Arestovych predicted almost this entire conflict and the time it would happen, with the exception of Belarus not immediately joining the conflict, which no one really expected. Kinda scary and also impressive at the same time.’
But more than that, he is calmly accepting the price of freedom that Ukraine must pay to break free from Putin’s gangster Russian grasp.
Also as discussed in the comments, spring is on the way and that will not be good news for the Russians. Despite the extensive human and infrastructure costs involved to the Ukrainian side this will be an important fightback period.
This is a good channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXW9oUSOwt7mcTT5d_5hQcA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2CkYLbexTw Some good points and the usual liberal view of history.
Where are Merkel’s and Obama’s policies now? Thank goodness they are all dumped! BUT it is not yet clear to everyone that the anti-fossil fuel climate crap is the walking dead. That is despite the coming death throws of the woke as they come to even greater power in places like Australia.
Biden stopped the very big and productive oil pipe extension on day 1 of his senile collapse/presidency! What’s it to be Steve? Drill baby drill or buy the oil from Putin and suposedly save the planet until…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKyzeA3xAxw This is a good set of observations.
In the long run, Putin is in real trouble! People ought to note how the US, French and Germans are all sending 155mm artillery that outranges the Russians who are a bit ‘stuck to the roads’ because of the season. This artillery is devastating given the Drone and satellite intelligence and the quality of it and the munitions that go with it. This together with the direct drone warfare and the NLAW Javelin anti-armour warfare.
The Russians are in deep shit so that ought to cause the Chinese to pause for thought; let’s hope so!
The Ukrainian masses are defending all human progress and the Western military effort to arm them is crucial to their war. All the ‘peace crowd are now silent or ignored!
I ask myself; can Putin get away with a negotiated end to his war of conquest? Or; can he be permitted territorial gains? What about the disarmament of Ukraine as his conditions of peace? Can Putin force a stop to voluntary NATO expansion? These questions are now on-the-table.
What in outline at least, ought a reasonable left plan for war in Ukraine look like now? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3-1mXpYM00
‘If in any process there are a number of contradictions, one of them must be the principal contradiction playing the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to finding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved.’ “On Contradiction” (August 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 332.
Stephen Owens February 22, 2022 at 8:30 am
Good news out of Russia this morning. Putin’s official recognition of the 2 break away republics pretty well confirms my view that he will not be invading Ukraine any time soon. If at all if ever.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-21/putin-recognises-ukraine-rebel-regions-independence/100849764
Using the process of analysis I was able to demonstrate that the exact opposite was in reality being ‘announced’ by Putin who I explained was a fascist who was choosing what he thought was his best of 3 options. The exact same material when correctly analysed was actually very BAD news as Steve came to know.
After what has now unfolded I think that Steve would at least concede that I’m not unreasonable in asserting that Putin is a fascist. He is running a fascist military that is now producing the usual war crimes that such degenerate armies produce as their usual terror tactics. In short I’m unable to and not interested in attempting to detect how Musolini is in any way worse or even different to Putin. The question of is Putin a fascist is a long settled question for me.
Stephen Owens January 18, 2022 at 4:54 pm
“If fascism means war (and it does) Putin will inevitably make yet more war on Ukraine; it’s only a matter of when.” Really?
You might not like Putin but is he a fascist? Not in my book he’s just a Russian nationalist strong man which awful though it might be is well short of fascism. Putin grabbed the parts of Ukraine where he is popular but why would he grab the parts where he’s hated. Makes no sense. Is he short of wheat?
George Orwell stated some 70 years ago that the term fascist was redundant due to its overuse according to him Fascist now means someone you disagree with. I think Orwell was right.’
The comment ‘where he is popular’ is an assertion not an observation but was the working assumption that Steve applied in 2014 and so Steve never genuinely supported the Ukrainian national resistance to the 8 years of Putin aggression that followed. The Ukrainian struggle for independence was never of genuine interest to any Trot. Not just Crimea but the Donbas region were seen as ethnically Russian dominated breakaway areas not really of any interest to Steve. Only now Steve realises that these regions are not breakaway regions of legitimate separatists. Only now he realises that the ethnically Russian were not just to be counted into the Putin supporting number. So for Steve there was no call for NATO to assist the development of the Ukrainian armed forces that was fortunately happening despite Merkel and Obama who had little interest either. The training and equipping of the Ukrainian armed forces as they continued the low level war against the Russian aggression was happening against the advice of the likes of Mearsheimer! The magnificent fighting resistance that they wage today is only possible because of these 8 years of intensive effort to be capable of this fighting. Now we see that much more effort ought to have been made when the usual suspects were calling this effort NATO provocation!
Now everyone (except Mearsheimer of course) is scrambling to get weapons to the Ukrainians. But IMV that is not anywhere near enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VViQlz79xAU Where are the NATO troops? 100,000 background little green men NATO troops ought to be protecting the skies and the logistical lines required to secure the Ukraine victory that the west requires.
Putin will not back down and Putin can’t be allowed to win so the war needs trained troops to not just talk logistics but to ensure the logistics are real all the way from western production centres to the front line fighting. In protecting those supply lines ever further into Ukraine the no fly zone comes into being and the civilians are also protected. Martians work just as well for NATO.
The West has a big problem but is far better off now than it was 70 days ago when the Russians were 10 feet tall. Now the Western Generals are planning how to win a war! Ukrainians have dragged the West to fighting.
Victory Day has passed and Putin had nothing to announce and that is a great relief. Putin is still searching for some plausible way forward and his Generals keep saying to all the proposed ‘solutions’ then what? ‘NATO is still going to be making war on us and this is an endless Vietnamese style meat grinder!’ So Putin has nothing going for him now and he has large numbers in his own armed forces that under their breath want rid of him! His armed forces are not up to the job and can’t become so given what they are up against. So time is not on theirs or his side. Putin’s resumed war of choice is failing on a systemic level. NATO will win this supply lines war!
Russian parents will get sick of sending their sons to die when there is zero military solution to what was for ordinary people a non-problem in the first instance! Clearly after the second start of this resumed war it’s now directed at goals that most western liberal minded people thought would be what would be fought for in the first place! But thankfully the fascists went for a massive overreach in the first instance instead and because of the years of work by the US, Brit and other western military trainers and the effort of the Ukrainian planners and heroic fighters, they failed comprehensively. Now the less dramatic goals are being tried BUT without the capacity that could have been used in the first instance! So this will fail as well. Just perhaps not as quickly as stage 1. So the war has really only gone from bad to worse for Putin who is bereft of a new approach to announce because the generals have no feasible solution for him.
One way or another his Generals have to be telling him that they have awakened a sleeping giant in NATO and it’s growing in both breadth and depth. Germany’s new military budget is just 1 of the big losses to record. Sweden and Finland joining NATO yet another. High quality weapons are coming in from all over the world. The strength of the NATO supply effort over such a vast distance is beyond the Russian capacity to disrupt or match. Ukraine’s ability to prevent a significant further forward Russian advance is given all the circumstances real.
It is for example now clear that Odessa as a target of occupation has effectively been abandoned. How much like the rubblestans of Grozny and Aleppo it can be reduced to is the only question. NATO has a vital interest in getting very good at shooting down Russian aeroplanes and long-ish range missiles so gradually the destruction of Odessa will also fall beyond Russian capacity. When this war is done Transnistria will be returned to Moldova and that little country will turn west as well.
Comprehensive failure from a tyrant is not going to end well for the tyrant. So Putin personally is in big trouble. Not in any immediate sense but say 1-2 years, at this rate; because his army is making far too expensive ‘progress’ that can only be unstable and self defeating progress so he is strategically being defeated in this second modified stage of his resumed war to map make in Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ami89OmwvcQ Mariupol is -after an incredibly brave resistance- soon going to fall to Putin’s armed forces but Odessa is NOT. Putin’s fascist troops will have to stand off and smash Odessa as best they can. But this rotten city and ultimately country smashing activity will not win this war for the fascists!
But what is more important the Western world’s political leaders now understand that Putin must be defeated. So ‘how is this war going to end’ in victory is now being discussed by a rapidly adjusting western military leadership. What will leftists contribute?
Clearly the big war has gone badly for the Russians up to this point and all the gains that are being made are very ‘expensive’ and not just directly in men and material. What has happened to the trading prospects of Russia? But how many years will ‘they’ hold on to their gains? Their armaments sales will also suffer in proportion to the defeat. I think like many others that this war will drag on for years but at the same time it is a lost undertaking and so Putin as the sole dictator must escalate on his way to catastrophe. I agree with some others that are now speaking up across the globe that, essentially, Putin is now fighting for his life. When this war is over Putin will not be in power. He will be either dead or captured and so thereafter held accountable and he will be executed if he stays in Russia. The only way he could survive is by fleeing to a sanctuary or a court date in the Western world. Russia putting up with his leadership after this war will not be an option.
But how that most probably protracted fight plays out is through the western world being dragged into ever more war fighting. Putin understands he is now at war with the West and the West better get with the program. It may as well be called WW3 whatever it actually looks like as it unfolds on a daily basis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbMq-pXk7_4 Bout right!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SevEcH0AXIc mostly twaddle!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bmDXNry9Qo
It has been confirmed that North Korea has sent over 10,000 soldiers to Russia and Western intelligence believes they will begin participating in combat operations in Ukraine by Nov 1st. By allowing these North Korean men to leave the Hermit Kingdom, Kim Jong Un has sentenced them all to death and none of them will ever be allowed to return to their home country.
Jake Broe
Interesting in pointing out how this is about 10 days of human meat supplies! It is all about the US elections time table and more Putin bluff and bluster!