CNN Admitted That Kiev Lost Around 15% Of Its Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles In A Week
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 12, 2023
Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive is off to a rough start after losing around 15% of its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles in a week according to CNN’s latest report. The outlet cited a Dutch open-source intelligence website that’s collected visual evidence of each side’s military equipment losses since the start of Russia’s special operation. While Ukrainian supporters are celebrating the recapture of some long-contested villages along the Line of Contact, these were pyrrhic victories considering the costs.
The first line of Russia’s multilayered defenses in the Zaporozhye Region has yet to even be reached, which suggests that Kiev’s already very high losses will likely spike the closer that its forces get to there. Russia’s Ministry of Defense earlier shared footage showing some of the same Bradley vehicles that CNN later confirmed were indeed destroyed, which also included a German Leopard tank. Observers should therefore assume that there’s truth to Moscow’s claims that some of the latter were destroyed too.
Kiev’s loss of such American and German “wunderwaffen” was to be expected since it was never realistic that either piece of equipment would reshape the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that have been trending in Moscow’s favor since the start of this year. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian and Western publics were misled by their governments’ information warfare campaigns into pinning their hopes of victory on those two and others.
The deep disappointment that they’d inevitably feel after seeing footage of them being destroyed by their opponents explains why Kiev released a propaganda video last week urging everyone to remain tight-lipped about the counteroffensive and not to share any unconfirmed claims about it. This narrative context makes it all the more surprising that CNN just informed their global audience that Ukraine lost around one out of every seven Bradley vehicles before it even reached the first line of Russia’s defenses.
Kiev will obviously be displeased by this, but there isn’t anything that it can do in response. According to Semafor, the regime has already threatened, revoked, or denied the credentials of Western journalists in the country over their coverage of this conflict, including CNN’s. That outlet’s latest report, however, was derived from third-party open-source intelligence and not its own sources on the ground. In fact, CNN might even have published it as a form of protest against Kiev’s censorship of its journalists.
After all, they usually toe the Western line on this conflict, which is why their report stands out so much. CNN didn’t have to inform their global audience about the scale of Kiev’s losses thus far just one week into the counteroffensive and contrary to that side’s demand not to share any unconfirmed claims. For this reason, it can be seen not only as an act of protest against Kiev, but also against that regime’s Western patrons who support their proxy’s censorship of foreign journalists like CNN’s by their silence.
Kiev and its patrons should therefore have expected that some of these same Western outlets whose journalists’ work the regime impeded would eventually rebel and do so in a way that embarrasses them. Both would have preferred for proof of these “wunderwaffens’” destruction to be kept under wraps, but now there’s no denying this after CNN’s latest report. They can’t reflexively claim that this is “Russian propaganda” either since no Westerner believes that this outlet is under Moscow’s control.
The public’s artificially manufactured hopes that the Bradley vehicles and Leopard tanks would lead to a speedy victory for Kiev have thus been shattered, but most will likely cope with this by taking false comfort in the recapture of some long-contested villages. Those whose eyes have finally been opened by CNN’s surprising report, however, might rightly fear what could happen in the event of a direct NATO-Russian conflict since it’s clear that the West can’t rely on these “wunderwaffen” to win.
Kiev’s NATO-Backed Counteroffensive Is The West’s Most Important Military Campaign Since WWII
More Than Meets The Eye
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 11, 2023
Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive has captivated the world’s attention as everyone watches to see whether it’ll push Russia out of the territory that Ukraine claims as its own. Progress on that direction would likely lead to continued Western support, while the failure to fulfill expectations might lead to the aforesaid being curtailed and ceasefire talks commencing. Either outcome is important, but what many observers have overlooked is the historical significance of this campaign.
The Unexpected Proxy War
It’s the first time since World War II that the West has conventionally fought a military peer, albeit indirectly in this case since they’re fighting Russia via their Ukrainian proxy. The US envisaged transforming that former Soviet Republic into a platform for threatening Russia through conventional, hybrid, and unconventional means with the aim of coercing it into never-ending concessions. The goal was to strategically neutralize then Balkanize it in order to facilitate doing the same to China afterwards.
While Ukraine was cooperating with NATO to this end prior to the start of Russia’s special operation, including through the secret hosting of that bloc’s bases as well as joint biological and nuclear weapons programs, everything was supposed to accelerate after its planned reconquest of Donbass in early 2022. President Putin narrowly preempted his opponents’ first move once he concluded that the West didn’t want to resolve their problems through peaceful means after they rejected Russia’s security requests.
Mutual Surprises Lead To A Stalemate
The fast-moving events that were set into motion caught both sides by surprise. The West didn’t really expect a large-scale intervention, predicting instead that Russia would likely concentrate its forces in Donbass in the unlikely scenario that it got involved, but they still secretly dispatched plenty of anti-air and -tank missiles to Ukraine ahead of time just in case. Likewise, Russia didn’t expect such formidable resistance from Ukraine, but the West was also surprised that Russia didn’t collapse due to sanctions.
Neither side has thus far been able to defeat the other as a result of the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that Secretary-General Stoltenberg finally admitted in mid-February has been going on this whole time. His bloc continued pumping Ukraine full of increasingly higher quality arms and training more of its troops to NATO standards exactly as it planned to do had Donbass been reconquered, while Russia partially mobilized its trained reservists and ramped up its military-industrial production.
The New York Times Spills The Beans
Instead of settling for the present stalemate by seeking to freeze the Line of Contact via a Korean-like armistice, the West saw the opportunity to put its proxy war plans against Russia into action ahead of schedule. Had Donbass been reconquered by Ukraine last spring like NATO envisaged, then Kiev would have been armed to the teeth and extensively trained for years prior to provoking a crisis over Crimea, but the decision was made to test it now since it’s partially ready and the pretext already exists.
The New York Times (NYT) hinted at this motivation in their recent article titled “As Ukraine Launches Counteroffensive, Definitions of ‘Success’ Vary”, which revealed that “Essentially, the United States and its allies will be looking at the counteroffensive for evidence that their plan of remaking the Ukrainian army into a modern force that fights with NATO tactics, and that can use complex maneuvers and advanced equipment to allow a smaller force to defeat a larger one, is sound.”
The West’s Reality Check
The influx of over $165 billion worth of military support to Ukraine from NATO proved too tempting of an opportunity for the bloc’s most hawkish decisionmakers to pass up in terms of finally testing their arms and strategies against a peer competitor. Considering the likelihood of Russia entrenching itself even deeper into those territories that Ukraine claims as its own and recalling the neck-and-neck NATO-Russian “race of logistics”, the decision was made to test it now instead of face greater difficulties later.
The NYT reported that expectations are tempered as a result of this newfound context: “Privately, U.S. and European officials concede that pushing all of Russia’s forces out of occupied Ukrainian land is highly unlikely. Still, two themes emerge as clear ideas of ‘success’: that the Ukrainian army retake and hold on to key swaths of territory previously occupied by the Russians, and that Kyiv deal the Russian military a debilitating blow that forces the Kremlin to question the future of its military options in Ukraine.
The outlet then proceeded to indicate some tangible benchmarks for “success” such as “retaking some parts of the Donbas or pushing Russia out of agricultural and mining areas in southeastern Ukraine”, “Seizing the nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia”, and/or “cut[ting] off, or at least squeez[ing], the so-called land bridge.” These moderate goals are a far cry from the maximalist one that’s officially being pursued by NATO and Ukraine, which shows what a reality check the past 15 months of fighting have been.
NATO’s Utter Humiliation By Russia
Even worse for them is that Russia didn’t just destroy a sizeable amount of their so-called “wunderwaffen” over the past few days, but even released videos proving its accomplishments, thus utterly humiliating NATO. The bloc’s most hawkish decisionmakers were so eager to receive large-scale battlefield data from their Ukrainian proxies’ fielding of NATO equipment against the West’s Russian peer competitor that they arrogantly overlooked all the signs that this risked tremendously backfiring.
It was wrongly thought after Russia’s pullbacks in Kharkov and Kherson Regions late last year that the entire front would collapse if it was pushed strongly enough by NATO-trained Ukrainians fielding some of that bloc’s most famous equipment during the planned counteroffensive over half a year later. This assessment ignored the particularities of those two situations and assumed that Russia was incapable of learning from its prior shortcomings, which directly led to the West’s disaster over the past few days.
That’s not to say that Ukraine’s counteroffensive might not achieve some success despite the enormous physical costs that this would certainly entail, but just that global perceptions about Western power have just been shattered after Russia shared videos of it destroying their “wunderwaffen”. If more sober-minded decisionmakers had the final say in whether the counteroffensive should go ahead, they might have calculated that it’s better to preserve the illusion of dominance than risk having it dispelled.
Great Power Competition
It might have been inevitable in hindsight that the greenlight would be given to Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive, however, when remembering that the US has been planning to test its new proxy war model against a peer competitor since at least December 2017. The National Security Strategy that was released at the time declared that “great power competition has returned”, specifically identifying China and Russia as the two that the US must actively contain.
Despite Trump continuing to arm Ukraine and impose sanctions against Russia during his tenure, he appears to have sincerely wanted to strike a deal with the Kremlin in order to then focus entirely on containing China, but he was thwarted by his permanent bureaucracy. Upon Biden coming to power, the Democrats’ plot to have Kiev reconquer Donbass as part of their grand strategic plan to contain Russia before China was once again back in play, which would have happened earlier had Hillary won in 2016.
The Biden Administration’s Gamble
The West didn’t expect Russia to stop them, let alone intervene far beyond Donbass in the unlikely scenario that it got involved, and then they wrongly predicted that it would soon collapse under sanctions. They were wrong on all three counts, which led to them being pulled by rapidly accelerating mission creep into waging a proxy war against Russia a lot earlier than they planned. Instead of being satisfied with their test data and freezing the conflict, they want even more at a much larger scale.
The most hawkish decisionmakers downplayed Russia’s proven military improvements since its pullback from Kherson last November and authorized the counteroffensive for this purpose since they were convinced that Ukraine’s NATO-trained and -armed forces would smash through the entire front. They couldn’t resist the chance to finally test their arms and strategies against a peer competitor at this scale after NATO poured over $165 billion worth of military aid into their proxy these past 15 months.
Concluding Thoughts
Awareness of these real motivations explains why the counteroffensive is the West’s most important military campaign since World War II, which was the last time that they conventionally fought a military peer. Even though they’re only doing so by proxy right now, they’re still receiving the large-scale data that they require in order to fine-tune their plans ahead of possibly waging a direct war against one. What the West has learned over the past few days, however, is that they shouldn’t take victory over Russia for granted.
Ukrainian Counteroffensive Runs Into Defensive Wall
By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 10.06.2023
Over the course of the past few days, Ukraine has thrown two of its best-trained, best-equipped mechanized brigades into offensive operations against entrenched Russian defenders in the Zaporozhye sector of the front lines.
These two brigades had been hand-picked for this job, having been equipped with modern Western tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, supported by Western-supplied artillery, and using NATO-specific tactics shaped by NATO-provided intelligence and NATO operational planning. In short, these two brigades represented a top-level NATO-level capability, the epitome of the nexus between Ukraine and the Collective West in their ongoing war to destroy Russia.
They failed.
As the world comes to grips with the imagery of destroyed US-manufactured M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and German-made Leopard 2A6 tanks abandoned and burning on the Ukrainian steppe, the harsh truth regarding the futility of its larger designs—the strategic defeat of Russia—is starting to sink in.
The reality, however, is that Ukraine was never going to achieve its stated objective of punching through the Russian defenses to sever the land bridge connecting Crimea with Russia proper. This was pie-in-the-sky thinking promulgated by Ukraine’s Western supporters to motivate the Ukrainians into committing the equivalent of mass suicide to inflict similarly prohibitive casualties among the Russian defenders.
The Western hope was that Russia would become demoralized by these casualties and accept a negotiated end to the conflict on terms acceptable to both Ukraine and its Western allies.
So far, Ukraine and its Western allies have failed.
The genesis of this failure can be traced to two things. First, the low-opinion Ukraine and their NATO allies had regarding the combat capabilities of the Russian army, and in particular those forces deployed in the Zaporozhye region, and second, the unrealistic expectations assigned to NATO training and equipment that had been provided to the Ukrainian forces assigned the task of breaking through the Russian defenses.
The area selected by Ukraine and its NATO partners as the focus of effort for the counteroffensive was held by the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division, part of the 58th Combined Arms Army. The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank with close ties to US and NATO, claimed that the troops of the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division “are predominantly comprised of mobilized recruits and volunteers and are therefore likely to face some problems with poor training and discipline.”
Moreover, it accused at least one of the subordinate regiments—the 70th motorized rifle regiment—of performing poorly during the initial phases of the Special Military Operation in 2022.
It is therefore reasonable to believe that NATO and Ukrainian military planners, using intelligence assessments that highlighted perceived command and control weaknesses and poor morale among the Russian forces which, when combined with poor past performance, believed that the Russian defenses in the Zaporozhye sector manned by the 42nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division would collapse under the weight of a NATO-style assault, allowing Ukrainian forces to penetrate deep into the Russian defenses.
While the fighting in Zaporozhye is not yet finished, the initial results on the battlefield show that, contrary to the expectations of Ukraine and its NATO partners, the men of the 42ndGuards Rifle Division performed their tasks in a professional manner, decisively defeating the Ukrainian assault forces. The 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment has been singled out as performing very well under difficult circumstances. The same can be said of the 291st Motorized Rifle Regiment and the 71st Motorized Rifles Regiment, along with special forces soldiers from the 22nd Spetsnaz Brigade. Analysts from ISW, in assessing the initial successes of the Russian defenders, noted that “Russian forces appear to have executed their formal tactical defensive doctrine in response to the Ukrainian attacks.”
This, of course, should have taken no one by surprise, since the individual in command of Russian forces in the Zaporozhye area is Colonel General Alexander Romanchuk, the man who is responsible for conceiving modern Russian defensive doctrine. In April 2023 Romanchuk, who at that time was serving as the Rector of the Combined Arms Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (the equivalent of the United States Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth), co-authored an article titled “Prospects for Improving the Efficiency of Army Defensive Operations.”
In the article, Romanchuk noted that the main mission of a defending force “is to neutralize the initiative of the advancing enemy, i.e., to bring him to the state of impossibility to continue advancing with deployed forces. Ultimately, this allows you to reduce his activity and seize the initiative by going over to a decisive counter-offensive to defeat the enemy with shock groups.”
This represents a restatement of Soviet-era doctrine. Indeed, Romanchuk draws upon the defeat of German offensive operations in the vicinity of Lake Balaton in March 1945 as representing an ideal implementation of this doctrine, underscoring “a bold maneuver of the reserves… especially artillery, the skillful use of anti-tank reserves, vigilant detachments of obstacles and the arrangement of fire ambushes” by the Russian forces in defeating the German attack.
Romanchuk, however, did not simply reiterate old doctrine in his paper. Instead, he emphasizes the concept of “dispersed forces” in building a defensive scheme capable of prevailing on the modern battlefield. “A dispersed defensive operation should become a logical response to a superior enemy,” Romanchuk writes.
Such an operation “is based on the retention of important areas, objects and transport hubs in separate most important directions,” and is “characterized by an even distribution of forces and resources in areas, and decentralized use of formations and military units of the armed forces and special forces.”
Romanchuk then went on to describe the ideal deployment scheme for these “dispersed forces” — one which focuses on three separate “zones of defense responsibility” separated by distances of between 8 and 12 kilometers. These gaps are covered by Russian artillery. The first “zone” is the “cover” zone, whose task is to define the main axes of the enemy’s advance. The next “zone” is the “main line of defense”, which is designed to halt enemy attacks using obstacle belts and fire power (artillery and air strikes). The last “zone” is the “reserve”, which is responsible for mounting counterattacks designed to push the attacking forces back to their original positions.
Romanchuk’s doctrine was the blueprint for the Russian defensive scheme employed in Zaporozhye. Indeed, Romanchuk was pulled from his teaching position at the Combined Arms Academy and put in command of the Zaporozhye sector. In other words, the place chosen by NATO and Ukrainian intelligence as the “weak spot” in the Russian defensive scheme was designed by Russia’s top specialist in defensive combat and placed under his direct command.
NATO and Ukraine gambled that Russia lacked the military capacity to successfully implement its own military doctrine, believing that Russian command staffs lacked the communications necessary to coordinate the complex operations necessary to implement this doctrine, and that the Russian forces—especially those who were recently mobilized—lacked both the training and morale needed to perform well under stressful combat conditions.
They were wrong on both counts.
NATO and Ukraine’s poor assessment of Russian military capability mirrored their own exaggerated assessments of Ukrainian units tasked with attacking the Russian defenses in Zaporozhye, namely the 33rd and 47th Mechanized Brigades. Both units were the recipients of modern NATO equipment, including Leopard tanks (the 33rd) and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (the 47th). The officers and men of both units had been provided with the best training NATO could provide regarding modern combined-arms operations, including weeks of specialized training in Germany which focused on platoon, company, and battalion tactics and operations integrating firepower and maneuver while undertaking offensive operations.
The Ukrainian troops, working side by side with their NATO instructors, started by using computer simulations to introduce them to the complexities of the modern battlefield, before moving to the field for realistic hands-on training using the very NATO-provided equipment they would use against the Russians.
US “experts” like Mark Hertling, a retired US Army general believed that the combination of advanced western military equipment and superior NATO-style tactics “will allow Ukraine’s emerging combined-arms teams to conduct high-tempo maneuver” capable of overwhelming the Russian defenders in Ukraine.
He was wrong.
Hertling and his active-duty NATO brethren would have done well to listen to the words of General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, when speaking before a Swedish defense conference this past January.
“The scale of this war [i.e., the Russian-Ukraine conflict] is out of proportion with all of our recent thinking,” Cavoli noted.
The takeaway from this revelation is that NATO is neither trained nor equipped to fight the kind of fight they are demanding Ukraine execute against Russia.
The sad truth of the matter is that there are no NATO forces capable of successfully executing the offensive tasks that have been assigned to Ukraine. No one doubts the courage and commitment of the Ukrainian forces which have been thrown against Colonel General Romanchuk’s defensive barrier. But courage and commitment cannot overcome the reality that NATO lacks the ability, both in terms of equipment and doctrine, to successfully defeat Russia in a force-on-force confrontation, especially one which has Russia playing to its doctrinal strength (defensive operations) while NATO seeks to do something (an assault against prepared defenses) that it has no experience in doing.
Moreover, NATO and the Ukrainian high command threw the Ukrainian brigades into the teeth of the Russian defensive buzzsaw without adequate fire support, meaning that the Russians were free to maximize their superiority in artillery and air power to neutralize and destroy the Ukrainian attacking forces before they could generate the momentum expected from “high-tempo maneuver.”
The end result: Russian reality trumped NATO theory on the battlefield, and it is Ukraine’s military that once again paid the heaviest price. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that this situation will change anytime soon, if ever, a fact that bodes poorly for the future of Ukraine and NATO going forward.
US & NATO’s Ultimate Goal is to ‘Take Over Ukrainian Land, People and Resources’
By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 10.06.2023
Shortly after the fabled Ukrainian counteroffensive finally started, it became increasingly apparent that NATO military equipment and training won’t be enough for the Kiev regime forces to penetrate Russian defensive lines.
With the Ukrainian offensive now underway, Kiev so far has virtually nothing to show in the way of gains, whereas images of wrecked Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles used by Ukrainian troops have already started circulating on social media.
Even though the United States and its allies have been generously supplying Ukraine with armaments and military vehicles during the ongoing conflict, it appears that Ukrainian forces are “institutionally and operationally unable to successfully absorb the wide and inconsistent variety of equipment and weaponry” while “under fire and duress,” said US Ret.Lt.Col Karen Kwiatkowski.
“This is the fault of the US and NATO which seeks to ride the back of Ukrainian patriotism in order to both confront and harass Russia, with an aim to take over Ukraine’s land, people and resources once there is little Ukraine left – in a kind of mini-Marshall Plan, this time completely and wholly managed and conducted by US and international crony capitalists, like Black Rock,” Kwiatkowsky, a former US Department of Defense analyst, told Sputnik.
She suggested that the United States and Britain were likely the ones who actually needed Kiev to launch this counteroffensive and that it would seem “as if Western governments see Ukraine little more than a snuff film, for their entertainment and profit.”
“Clearly, what Ukraine needs is to find a way to get out from under the US political cycle and NATO’s organizational expansion obsession, and make peace,” Kwiatkowsky mused, postulating that such a deal would likely entail the separation of the “Russian side of the former Ukraine” from the “Ukrainian side.”
She did point out, however, that so far the US and the UK politicians have been quick to suppress any attempts by the Ukrainian side to “make peaceful signs or noises.”
Meanwhile, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and former CIA station chief Phillip Giraldi has observed that some Western media outlets have been trying to make it look like the Ukrainian counteroffensive is succeeding and that Kiev regime forces are “overrunning the Russian positions.”
Commenting on this development, Giraldi suggested that politicians in the US, the UK and Germany “need to be able to speak positively about what is occurring” in Ukraine, since the public in their respective countries is starting to turn against the conflict “as it grinds on and on consuming hundreds of billions dollars worth of equipment.”
He further suggested that people in the United States, Britain and Germany are none too thrilled about their governments directly backing the regime in Kiev, which he described as “a regime that nearly everyone concedes is hopelessly corrupt.”
“There is talk here in Washington that the Ukrainian generals might depose Zelensky and enter into negotiations with Moscow,” Giraldi added.
The Kakhovka dam has been destroyed and the Dnieper River is flooded: How will this affect the military conflict?
By Vladislav Ugolny | RT | June 8, 2023
On Tuesday night, the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP), now part of southern-western Russia and formerly on Ukrainian territory, was partially damaged and 11 of its 28 spans were destroyed. Torrents of water from the reservoir rushed downstream through the broken dam and into the Dnieper River. This has led to a humanitarian disaster affecting residents of both banks of the river, significantly impacted the environment, and altered the deployment of military forces in the region.
Who benefits most from the catastrophe and how will it impact on the ongoing conflict?
Prerequisites for disaster
The Kakhovka HPP has been under the control of Russian troops since day one of the offensive, in February 2022. Along with the Antonov automobile and railway bridges, it was one of the key points used for their advance and positioning in the then southern part of Ukraine. Later, the bridge over the dam was used for supplying troops in Kherson and Nikolaev regions.
After receiving long-range weapons from NATO, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) attacked the routes to prevent Russian use of them. On the night of August 12, 2022, the AFU fired at the hydroelectric dam using rocket artillery. The bombing of the dam was confirmed at the time by Vladislav Nazarov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Operational Command South. It was applauded by Western experts and the Ukrainian media.
While the former were busy assessing whether the shelling guaranteed the Russian Army’s isolation, the latter tried to outdo each other with “humor.” One of Ukraine’s main propaganda outlets, the “Trukha” Telegram channel (with over 2.7M subscribers) joked about “inflatable ducks.” However, after the destruction of the dam, their narrative changed and the post was deleted.
On December 29, The Washington Post, citing Ukrainian General Andrey Kovalchuk, reported that the Ukrainian army had conducted test strikes on the floodgates of the HPP with HIMARS launchers – apparently, to see whether this would cause a rise in water levels downstream. The plan was to flush Russian crossings with a torrent of water from the damaged dam.
This is in fact what exactly happened on June 6. However, the Russians had departed from the right bank by that time. In November of last year, Moscow retreated from the area due to the AFU’s constant strikes and the risk of the collapse of the Kakhovka HPP.
The constant shelling didn’t just damage the structure of the hydroelectric power plant. It also made maintenance increasingly difficult, and this played a part in the catastrophe. Since Ukraine became independent in 1991, the Dnieper reservoir cascade (a series of HPPs along the Dnieper River) has not been sufficiently funded, which led to multiple negative assessments of the HPP’s condition, in particular by the US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE).
The final contributing factor was the water level in the Kakhovka reservoir. It rose from 14 meters in February to 17.5 meters in early June due to Ukraine opening the floodgates of the Dnieper HPP, located upriver in Zaporozhye. Previously the reservoir water level rarely exceeded 16.5 meters. Moreover, Ukrainian shelling prevented staff of the Kakhovka HPP from undertaking repairs and regulating water discharge.
The current situation
Novaya Kakhovka and the surrounding villages under Russian control were the first to suffer from the destruction of the hydroelectric power plant. After assessing the situation, the local authorities implemented a flood emergency evacuation plan. However, many residents refused to evacuate and stayed in their flooded homes. By the morning of June 7, the water level in Novaya Kakhovka began to subside.
In the coastal villages located downstream, the situation was more severe. The village of Korsunka is completely flooded, and Dneprani, Krynki, and Kazachiyi Lageri are partially submerged. Floodwaters also reached Alyoshka, an important city for the Russian army. A state of emergency has been declared in the part of Kherson region controlled by Moscow. Currently, seven people have been reported missing.
The flood has also affected territories controlled by Ukraine. The city of Kherson was partially flooded, and over a thousand people have been evacuated. According to the Ukrainian authorities, the floodwaters began subsiding on Wednesday morning
The Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant is currently completely submerged. This poses a further threat to the HPP, especially as Ukrainians continue discharging water into the Kakhovka reservoir. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has claimed that Kiev is responsible for the catastrophe, and that the Kakhovka HPP shows signs of deliberate sabotage by Ukraine, undertaken due to the failure of its much-hyped counteroffensive.
Putin himself has decried the “barbaric act of destroying the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant in Kherson region,” which, according to the Russian President, has led to a “massive ecological and humanitarian catastrophe” downstream.
Ukraine blamed Russia for the disaster, accusing it of terrorism and a cynical attitude towards people in territory it controls in the Kherson region.
The humanitarian aspect
For the past six months, active battles have been raging in the territories affected by the current flood. As a result, both Russia and Ukraine regularly carried out civilian evacuations. Many internally displaced persons and refugees moved to other Russian regions from the flood plain. However, it represents yet another calamity for the local population and has made moving very relevant for the few people who have remained in their homes.
Consequently, the emergency response measures have been rather limited. After more than a year of battles, both sides have become accustomed to accommodating refugees and this new challenge hasn’t taken them by surprise.
Eventually, the water will recede and destroyed homes will again be accessible. However, returning will be difficult, even for those who are willing to risk living under constant shelling. To support refugees and motivate them to leave the war zone, Russia is issuing housing certificates and providing a one-time payment of 100,000 rubles for evacuees (about $1,200 at the current exchange rate).
Major damage has been done to the region’s water supply in the territories both under Ukrainian and Russian control. The authorities have already imposed restrictions in Krivoy Rog, a large Kiev-controlled city that receives its water from the Kakhovka reservoir.
Crop irrigation is also endangered across a large area, but the full extent of the damage from this disaster is yet to be expertly assessed.
Threat to the ZNPP
Another danger is the imminent drop in the water level of the Kakhovka reservoir, should the HPP collapse completely. Some believe that this could disrupt the cooling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) reactors – a process that relies on water from Kakhovka.
However, Russian experts do not believe that the ZNPP is endangered since the cooling pond is isolated from the reservoir from which it collects water. There is enough water to cool the two operating reactors. If additional volumes of water are needed and the water levels in the reservoir drop (which has not been observed yet), the pipes can be extended.
Officials assess the situation in a similar way. “The Zaporozhye NPP has not been impacted in any way as a result of this undoubtedly unfortunate event. The cooling system is not endangered,” said Renat Karchaa, adviser to the head of Rosenergoatom. He noted that specialists use “other technical means” to compensate for the decrease in the water levels of the Kakhovka reservoir.
The failed battle for the Dnieper river islands
After the withdrawal of the Russian Army from Kherson and the establishment of the front along the Dnieper River, both sides engaged in artillery duels. Ukraine’s army was in a more favorable position because of its location on the higher bank. However, the Russian side had the advantage of superior firepower and air forces.
Moreover, sabotage and reconnaissance groups became active at this section of the front. Small groups from both sides crossed the river on combat missions, and this led to collisions on the islands formed by the Dnieper delta.
The Russian side did not initially bother to establish full control over the islands, which was a difficult task due to the swampy terrain and high water levels. As a result, the AFU got the upper hand and gradually advanced. This worried the Russian units positioned in the area and several military correspondents.
All these efforts by both armies came to a halt on June 6. The islands in the Dnieper delta were flooded, and both sides hastened to evacuate their troops. At the same time, artillery units attempted to impede the evacuation of the enemy. This confusion might suggest that neither Moscow or Kiev really planned to destroy the dam and create a deluge.
The potential landing operation and the ‘Priazovsk Battle’
In addition to the local battles for the islands, which mostly resembled minor tactical operations, this section of the front was considered one of the main potential directions for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. According to some pundits, the AFU planned to carry out several landing operations across the river to constrain Russia’s “Dnieper” unit.
This strategy could have been used by the Ukrainians to pressure Russian troops positioned next to the “Vostok” unit, which controls the section of the front from the Kakhovka reservoir to Ugledar in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The main attack of the Ukrainian counteroffensive was projected to be inflicted on the “Vostok” to draw it into the so-called “Priazovsk Battle,” aimed at cutting off the land corridor to Crimea and Russia’s access to the Sea of Azov.
If Ukraine chose to attempt to cut through the defense of the “Vostok” unit and attack Melitopol or Berdyansk, a flanking strike by the “Dnieper” unit from Crimea and Kherson regions would pose significant danger. In order to avoid this and delay Russian reserves, the Ukrainians likely planned on conducting several landing operations.
The Ukrainian army, however, has no successful experience of conducting large-scale landing operations. The attempts to seize the Kakhovka reservoir in the summer of 2022 ended badly for them. Additionally, Ukrainian engineering units have no track record in implementing pontoon crossings in combat conditions, and small maritime vessels cannot be used to supply a large number of troops.
All this makes it highly unlikely that the Armed Forces of Ukraine could carry out a landing operation that could force the Russian Armed Forces to retreat from the coastal line. However, such a maneuver could assist the advance in the Zaporozhye region.
In present conditions, a landing operation is even less likely to take place until the water recedes. The problem isn’t just that the Dnieper has become wider, but that a large strip of the coast has essentially become a swamp, with the water level less than a meter deep.
In addition, mines earlier placed by both sides to halt the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups are now floating about in the waters. Washed away into the river, they may end up in unexpected places downstream.
In military terms, this is a great loss for Russia as many of the defensive positions, including the first line of defense, were flooded and the Russian army will have to hastily restore them after the situation returns to normal.
Who is to blame?
There’s currently no logical argument that the destruction of the Kakhovka HPP was directly beneficial for either side. The actions of the militaries on the Dnieper Delta islands and officials in coastal settlements indicate that the events took both Ukraine and Russia by surprise. These factors, along with the lack of any video footage depicting the explosions alleged to have destroyed the hydroelectric power plant on June 6, indirectly confirm the version that the disaster was the long-term consequence of Ukraine’s HIMARS strikes on the dam. This is supported by satellite images taken from May 31 to June 4, showing part of the dam having been damaged by water pressure.
The only mystery remains as to why the Ukrainians raised the water level in the Kakhovka reservoir to a record high, thereby increasing pressure on the HPP, while maintenance personnel couldn’t do their jobs properly due to strikes from Kiev’s forces. One of the versions is that the entire Dnieper reservoir cascade has become worn out and the Ukrainians were attempting to save their hydroelectric power plants, since their destruction could lead to serious consequences for Kiev.
Meanwhile, further destruction of the Kakhovka HPP is probable due to increasing water pressure and regular shelling which prevents access for repair crews. If this activity continues, the consequences are likely to become even more serious.
Vladislav Ugolny is a a Russian journalist born in Donetsk.
RFK Jr. Reveals Terrible Truth About Ukraine Pentagon ‘Concealed From Americans’
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 08.06.2023
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has characterized the Russia-US proxy war in Ukraine as an “abattoir” that has killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian troops for a geopolitical goal which has “nothing to do with Ukraine.”
“What we’re doing in Ukraine now is just a massive assault on Ukrainians. We have trapped Ukraine in a proxy war against [Russia] and they are being devoured by the geopolitical machinations of neocons in the White House who have this comic book depiction that a lot of Americans have swallowed about what is happening,” RFK Jr. said, speaking to Canadian psychologist and media commentator Jordan Peterson.
Explaining what separates his position on Ukraine from that of the incumbent, Joe Biden, RFK Jr. said that although he understood many ordinary Americans’ support for Ukraine out of “compassion” and as a “humanitarian mission,” in reality, “every step we have taken, every decision we have made appears to have been intended to prolong the war and to increase the bloodshed.”
RFK Jr. recalled Joe Biden’s slip of the tongue that the US’s real goal in Ukraine was to cause regime change in Moscow – an aspiration which he recalled neoconservative advisors in Washington have been pushing for “decades” now.
“Zbigniew Brzezinski… their doyen and philosopher said that US strategy should be to suck Russia into a series of wars in little countries where we can then exhaust them. Lloyd Austin, who is president Biden’s defense secretary, in April 2022 said our purpose in being in Ukraine is to degrade the Russian army, to exhaust it and degrade its capacity to fight anywhere in the world. Well that is the opposite of a humanitarian mission. That is a war of attrition, and that’s what it’s turned out to be. We have now turned Ukraine into an abattoir that has devoured 350,000 young Ukrainians. They are lying about how many people have died, they’re concealing it from us – the Pentagon’s concealing it from the American people. Ukraine is concealing it from their people… We have turned that poor little nation into a killing field for these idealistic young kids in order to advance a geopolitical agenda that has nothing to do with Ukraine,” RFK Jr. said.
The candidate also characterized the conflict as a “money-laundering scheme” for the US military-industrial complex.
Asked what he would do as president to bring the Ukrainian crisis to a close as president, RFK Jr. said the solution was “obvious,” and that he would work to achieve it on “day one.”
“The Russians have wanted to settle this from the beginning and they’ve been very clear about what they want. They want NATO to make a pledge to not come into Ukraine, which we should have done. We shouldn’t have put NATO into fourteen countries [in Eastern Europe, ed.]. We told the Russians when they dismantled the Soviet Union in 1991 and they moved 400,000 troops out of East Germany, and they allowed NATO to reunify Germany under NATO – and they said ‘our condition for doing that for this tremendous conciliation that we’re making is that you never move NATO to the East’. And George Bush told them ‘we will not move NATO one inch to the East’. And in 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski laid out the plan which is that we moved it not one inch but a thousand miles to the East, 14 nations and then we put AEGIS missile systems in Poland and Romania which are nuclear capable. So they’re a few minutes from Russia – they can decapitate the entire Russian leadership if we wanted to start a preemptive war. That is inexcusable,” RFK Jr. said.
The candidate pointed out that Washington wouldn’t let a foreign power do anything similar in the Western Hemisphere, recalling that his uncle, John F. Kennedy “didn’t live with that” during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the USSR and the USA were brought to the brink of war over Soviet missiles in Cuba, and US missiles in Turkiye.
RFK Jr also briefly delved into the roots of the Ukrainian crisis, recalling that Washington “overthrew the democratically government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014,” and “spent $5 billion – CIA, through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, to violently overthrow that government – which was democratically elected. So we destroyed this democracy and put in our own government which we now know the neocons in the White House – Victoria Nuland selected two months before in a telephone [call]. We handpicked the new government before the coup. We put a new government in that immediately makes a civil war against the Russian population of Donbass, killing 14,000 of them, that bans the Russian language and then starts training with NATO.”
RFK Jr. is running as peace candidate in the 2024 race for the Democratic nomination for president. This week, his campaign’s press team told Sputnik that in addition to working to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, the politician would seek to sign new arms control treaties with Moscow if elected.
Kennedy’s stance on foreign policy, plus his attacks against White House Medical advisor Anthony Fauci and fierce criticism of mandatory coronavirus vaccinations, have led to mainstream media censorship and smear campaigns against his campaign. The Biden campaign has indicated that it will not hold primary debates against Kennedy and Marianne Williamson, the other Democrat who has thrown her hat into the 2024 race so far. Kennedy has characterized this no debate policy as a grave mistake on Biden’s part, saying it’s not only undemocratic, but would leave the incumbent vulnerable against his prospective Republican rivals, particularly former president Donald Trump.
France Is Reportedly Making A Principled Stand Against NATO’s Expansion To Asia
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 6, 2023
The Financial Times cited eight unnamed sources who revealed that France is reportedly preventing the planned opening of NATO’s liaison office in Japan. According to them, Macron believes that this move violates the alliance’s charter, which limits its geographic reach to the North Atlantic. He’s also supposedly against anything that can contribute to NATO-Chinese tensions. The spanner that the French leader unexpectedly threw into the bloc’s Asian expansion plans comes after his trip to China in early April.
He visited the People’s Republic along with European Commissioner Von Der Leyen around two weeks after President Xi traveled to Moscow. Upon returning home, Macron revived his prior rhetoric about Europe’s strategic autonomy in the New Cold War, specifically saying that the continent should resist American pressure to take its side over Taiwan. Later that month, China’s Ambassador to the EU said that his country’s cooperation with the continent is as unlimited as its cooperation with Russia.
This sequence of events suggests that Macron’s rhetoric was sincere despite many in the Alt-Media Community suspecting that he was just trying to strategically disarm Russia with his words. About that alleged end goal, Kremlin spokesman Peskov confirmed in early June that Moscow doesn’t regard Paris as a suitable mediator in the NATO-Russian proxy war due to its direct involvement in it. Nevertheless, there’s also no denying that France’s reported stand against NATO’s Asian expansion is commendable.
That said, Macron’s position isn’t driven by the desire to do any favors for President Xi, but is predicated on his assessment of France’s national interests. In his mind, the bloc’s growing involvement on the other side of Eurasia needlessly provokes the People’s Republic, which is the EU’s top trade partner. Moreover, it could also make it more difficult for NATO to contain Russia in Europe if its members end up dividing their focus between that front and the Asia-Pacific.
Simply put, France has yet to fully abandon the notion of national interests like most of its liberal–globalist European peers have already done, which explains Macron’s reported resistance to NATO’s plans. His country’s different approach to International Relations is likely attributable to its neo-colonial empire in Africa, which is crumbling as a result of Russia’s “Democratic Security” inroads there over the past few years but still exists in some form.
No other NATO member has anything comparable, which is why the majority of them are predisposed to complying with the demands of this bloc’s US leader even at the expense of their own interests in pursuit of what Washington claims is the “greater good”. France might ultimately be pressured by the US and its vassals to such an extent that it’s forced to relent on its reported opposition to the bloc’s Asian expansion plans, but for now Macron is holding his ground in defense of his country’s national interests.
This observation proves that NATO’s internecine rifts are naturally occurring, just like the ones that the bloc has with Hungary and Turkiye, and not the result of foreign meddling like the Mainstream Media misleading implies is the case. While it’s true that the US exploited its proxy war with Russia to successfully reassert its unipolar hegemony over Europe, it failed to do so completely, and that’s why France still has a modicum of sovereignty left to resist NATO’s Asian expansion plans (at least for now).
Zelensky will not attend the NATO summit unless his ultimatum is met – FT
By Ahmed Adel | June 2, 2023
The Financial Times reported that Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky has made it clear to NATO leaders that he will not attend the July summit in Lithuania unless a roadmap is proposed for Kiev’s entry into the alliance. According to FT, in addition to the plan for joining the alliance, Zelensky also wants alliance-specific guarantees.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba stated that Ukraine would not be satisfied with any other decision of the July summit other than the invitation to join NATO. Previously, the Ukrainian president stated that the country would not join the alliance until the end of the conflict but would like the support of partners and a membership invitation. In September 2022, Zelensky announced Ukraine’s candidacy to join NATO on an expedited basis.
The secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, acknowledged the bloc’s position on the right of each country to determine its path and stressed that the “open door” policy remains, emphasising that the alliance would spare no effort in helping Kiev to defend itself.
“Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO. And over time, our support will help you make it possible,” Stoltenberg declared during his visit to Kiev in April 2023.
If NATO were to grant Ukraine membership, it would automatically drag the entire alliance into a direct war with Russia — a nuclear power that has regularly warned it would use its nuclear weapons if it were under existential threat. For this reason, NATO leaders have clarified that Ukraine’s membership prospects are untenable if the war continues; thus, Zelensky’s ultimatum demonstrates his entitled attitude even more.
Sources told DW that NATO countries have been unable to find a consensus on what this means for Ukraine’s membership prospects in the short- to medium-term. Several former Soviet bloc NATO members are seeking formal commitments to Ukraine — pledges such as a pathway or a timetable that could be given to Kiev at a summit of NATO leaders in July in Vilnius.
Zelensky, despite his ultimatum, is still expected to attend the meeting and make the plea for Ukraine’s need for a concrete roadmap to becoming a NATO member and for more weapons. However, even Washington, a huge backer of the Ukrainian military, does not seem inclined to make formal accession promises to Kiev, even if the administration of US President Joe Biden says it remains steadfast in its commitment to NATO’s “open door” policy.
“We will look for ways to support Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” Dereck Hogan, the top US diplomat for European and Eurasian Affairs, told reporters in Washington. “But right now, the immediate needs in Ukraine are practical, and so we should be focused on building Ukraine’s defence and deterrence capabilities.”
NATO’s major members now no longer openly map a roadmap for Ukraine’s membership, as they once did. The US and France are restraining support for Ukraine due to upcoming elections, and Germany has repeatedly said it wants to prevent a total isolation of Russia in the post-war European security architecture.
It is recalled that those member states adopted a completely different language at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 when they agreed that Ukraine and Georgia are prospective members of the alliance but stopped short of extending a formal invitation. However, given the success of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War and the current demilitarisation operation in Ukraine in blocking Tbilisi’s and Kiev’s NATO accession, alliance members are fully aware that Russia will take devastating action if they directly intervene.
Although it is impossible for Ukraine to become a NATO member at this current junction, NATO leaders seek to send a positive signal to Kiev without making substantial decisions on the principles or the timing of possible membership. One such proposal is to upgrade Ukraine’s political relationship with NATO, but this is mostly bureaucratic. There is, of course, the potential for increased and deeper joint military exercises, but again, this is very far from what Ukraine wants, the highly-coveted collective defence pact – Article 5, which states that an armed attack against one member of the alliance is an attack on all members.
At the same time, Western countries are putting increasing pressure on Turkey to admit Sweden to NATO, with the country’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, writing in the Financial Times that a new anti-terror law which entered into force on June 1 delivered “on the last part” of an agreement to secure Ankara’s support for entry into the military alliance.
A senior Swedish official said: “This terror law is our big hope for unlocking the situation. Then it’s up to Turkey to decide.”
However, this should not give encouragement to Ukraine because Turkey’s impasse with Sweden is over the Scandinavian country’s hosting of Kurdish and political dissidents. Stockholm can overcome this relatively minor issue if it submits to Ankara’s demands. Going to war with Russia for the sake of a new member like Ukraine is an entirely different prospect, in any case. No number of ultimatums and entitled behaviour by Zelensky will change the position of NATO member states.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Kiev Faces Seven Key Challenges Ahead Of Its Counteroffensive
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 1, 2023
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed that Kiev’s upcoming NATO-backed counteroffensive will commence sometime this summer, which makes it timely to discuss the key challenges that it’ll face. First and foremost among these is the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared in mid-February. Considering that Kiev is entirely dependent on foreign support, the state of those two’s competition is the most crucial variable.
The second one is connected with the preceding one and concerns the fact that Kiev’s NATO-trained forces haven’t yet been tested in battle. For all the hype about the upcoming counteroffensive, it remains to be seen whether they’ll perform as expected since they lack the experience carrying out large-scale operations. Russia learned from its shortcomings that were responsible for Ukraine’s reconquest of Kharkhov and half of Kherson Region, thus reducing the chances of this happening again.
On that topic, the third key challenge facing the counteroffensive is that Russia has fortified its defenses along the Line of Contact (LOC). Kiev will therefore struggle to achieve a breakthrough absent some black swan event, which of course can’t be ruled out but nevertheless appears unlikely. Moreover, the Battle of Artyomovsk imbued Russian forces with invaluable urban warfare experience that they can put to use defending major cities under their control, which could create more meat grinders for Kiev.
This leads into the fourth point, which is that Ukraine has already exhausted a large amount of its equipment and personnel over the past 15 months. The Washington Post drew attention to this in their detailed report in mid-March, which the Polish Chief of Army Staff extended credence to in his similar assessment that he shared in late April. These objective observations from pro-Kiev sources cast serious doubt on the success of the upcoming counteroffensive.
It’s precisely because of these worries that Ukraine is pinning its hopes on so-called “wunderwaffen” like the F-16s, but even US Air Force chief Frank Kendell said in late May that such systems aren’t going to be a “dramatic game-changer…for their total military capabilities.” Furthermore, Russia has already proven that it’s able to adapt to Kiev’s fielding of prior such “wunderwaffen” like Turkiye’s Bayraktar drones, which government-funded US and UK experts recently admitted that Moscow successfully neutralized.
Building upon the abovementioned fifth key challenge, the sixth one involves the West’s growing fatigue with indefinitely funding the NATO-Russian proxy war, which has already cost their taxpayers over $160 billion. Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul cautioned in early May that the counteroffensive’s potential failure to meet the public’s expectations could lead to a reduction in future support, which exposes other Western officials’ pledges of unconditional support as lies.
And finally, the last factor working against Kiev’s favor ahead of its counteroffensive is to meet the Western public’s unrealistically high expectations that McCaul spoke about despite the tremendous odds. Unnamed Biden Administration officials told Politico in late April that they’re very worried that this won’t happen, which places Ukraine’s spree of terrorist attacks since then into their appropriate context by revealing them to be nothing but infowar copium to satiate the bloodthirsty Western masses.
These seven key challenges will be very difficult for Kiev to overcome, thus making it likely that the outcome of its much-hyped counteroffensive will simply be some limited changes along the LOC. Seeing as how that would almost certainly provoke deep disappointment among the Western public, it could very well be that this predictably lackluster result directly leads to the resumption of peace talks by year’s end, which might freeze the conflict with a ceasefire if not end it outright with some sort of compromise.
The Union State Expects That The NATO-Russian Proxy War Will Expand
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 1, 2023
The 52nd session of the CIS Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services took place in Minsk on Thursday, during which time representatives from the Union State expressed concern that the NATO-Russian proxy war will expand. FSB chief Bortnikov from the Russian side shared his assessment that this bloc is responsible for sabotage in their two countries. He also warned that “The West actively encourages Moldova to get involved in the Ukrainian conflict by cleansing Transdniestria and Gagauzia.”
As for the Belarusian side of the Union State, it was most importantly represented by President Lukashenko, who raised awareness of the West’s impending coup plot against him. According to him, “this is no longer 2020, when girls went to rallies wearing short white skirts and holding flowers. People are ready to come here with weapons.” He said that this is because the West now demands that those “opposition” figures who they’re hosting commit terrorist attacks in order to continue receiving funding.
Bortnikov and Lukashenko shared their views on the same day as the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had beaten back Ukrainian terrorists earlier that morning who tried infiltrating Belgorod Region in a repeat of last week’s incident. These three developments suggest that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will possibly attempt to expand the geographic scope of this proxy war to include Belarus, Moldova, and/or Russia’s pre-2014 territory, perhaps even all at once.
The strategic reason for going all out like that would be to compensate for the seven key challenges that place Ukraine in a position of weakness vis-à-vis Russia even in spite of the over $165 billion in aid that it’s received from NATO since the start of the special operation. Aware that the counteroffensive will likely fail to meet the Western public’s expectations exactly as unnamed US officials told Politico in late April, Kiev seems to be preparing a set of spectacular provocations to spin as a success instead.
The potential plan appears to be for Kiev to lash out in those three directions in the hope of achieving a breakthrough across at least one of those fronts, not to mention the Line of Contact (LOC) between its forces and Russia’s in the territory that Ukraine claims as its own. The West wanted Georgia to play a role in this scheme too in order to maximally divide Moscow’s attention, but its Color Revolution agents couldn’t get Tbilisi to go along with this despite trying their best to pressure it to do so in March.
In the event that Kiev gains and holds ground in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and/or Ukraine’s former regions, none of which can be taken for granted of course, then the West can claim that the counteroffensive was worth it. NATO doesn’t think that the last-mentioned front along the LOC will see much progress, if any at all, which is why it appears to be preparing Kiev for a multifront attack that stands a better chance of meeting the public’s expectations of success.
The scenario of a direct NATO military intervention in Moldova and/or up to the LOC also can’t be ruled out either. The second one would of course spike the risks of nuclear brinksmanship, but since “Biden’s Re-Election Hinges On The Success Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive”, the US’ ruling liberal–globalist elite might gamble with the apocalypse out of desperation if Kiev fails to achieve any success at all. The possibility of Russia reversing the dynamics to achieve its own breakthrough could also prompt that dark scenario too.
The West is in a dilemma since NATO’s “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia that Secretary-General Stoltenberg declared in mid-February is gradually trending in Moscow’s favor as proven by its victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk. Such an astronomical sum has already been invested in this counteroffensive, which has also been hyped up to an absurd level, that it has to go forward no matter what despite the Washington Post warning in mid-March about how poorly Kiev’s forces are really faring.
It’s therefore politically impossible to do the pragmatic thing by agreeing to a ceasefire that freezes the LOC before Kiev loses even more territory, hence why the West seems to be seriously contemplating the previously unthinkable scenario of escalating along four separate fronts at once. This is being done from a position of weakness out of desperation for something tangible to be achieved that can then be spun as a success in order to partially meet the Western public’s expectations.
The counteroffensive’s full failure would reflect terribly on the ruling Western elite and possibly pose a major electoral challenge to their figureheads the next time that voters go to the polls, which is why they’re ready to do whatever is required to prevent that perception among their people. There’s of course the slim chance that cooler heads will prevail, but the latest developments suggest that Kiev is being pressured by NATO to go all out, which could lead to the proxy war expanding in four directions at once.
Insisting on “demilitarized zone” in Russia, Kiev shows no interest in diplomatic solutions
By Lucas Leiroz | June 1, 2023
The Kiev regime shows that it is really not willing to negotiate and achieve peace diplomatically. In a recent publication on social media, Mikhail Podoliak, the main adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, stated that it would be necessary to create a “demilitarized zone” inside Russian territory. The measure sounds absolutely absurd and does not correspond to the terms of peace demanded by the Russians, making it impossible for there to be talks seeking mutual interests.
Podoliak published his plan in his Twitter account on May 29. The adviser stated that the creation of a demilitarized zone of 100-120 km (62-76 miles) deep into Russian territory bordering Ukraine would “prevent a recurrence of aggression in the future”, and “ensure real security” for Ukrainian citizens in Kharkov, Chernigov, and Sumy regions. According to him, Zaporozhye, Lugansk and Donetsk regions (which Kiev considers its own, but which were already reintegrated into Russia last year) would also benefit from the absence of Russian troops in the area.
In the scheme exposed by him, there should be no units of the Russian armed forces in the cities of Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk and Rostov. Curiously, Podoliak referred to these Russian oblasts as “republics”, quietly suggesting that they should become more autonomous regions or independent states. With this, Podoliak also makes it clear that he echoes the already known intentions of the Ukrainian and Western authorities to divide the Russian Federation in order to neutralize it through the loss of territorial control.
The adviser believes that the plan to create the demilitarized zone should be implemented in stages, with the possibility of initially allocating an international security contingent in the region to gain territorial control and guarantee the absence of Russian forces. Then, the area could finally be completely demilitarized, making the peace project successful.
The official even classified these measures as a “key issue” to discuss the possibility of lasting peace between the two countries. For him, “if [the Russians] are not going to attack and don’t decide they want revenge in a couple of years, this shouldn’t be an issue”. Obviously, the aide ignores all the problems involved in this dispute, such as the self-determination of ethnic Russians who want to join the Federation and Russia’s need for solid security guarantees.
In fact, the Ukrainian attitude of ignoring Russian demands for peace is already well known, being the main reason why all attempts at talks so far have failed. However, there is something significantly more serious about the current case, as Kiev openly plans to violate Russia’s undisputed territory under the excuse of “avoiding aggression”. In practice, Ukraine makes it clear that its condition for peace is not only to take back the territories it considers its own (the newly integrated oblasts and Crimea), but also to fragment the Federation and prevent Moscow from exercising its sovereignty even in areas not claimed by Kiev.
In other words, Podoliak makes it clear that the neo-Nazi regime has no other intention in this conflict than to attack Russia and violate its sovereign space. Although the western narrative describes Russia as an “invader” and an “aggressor”, the real situation is the exact opposite, with Kiev and NATO being the threatening sides, who openly want to harm Russia and its people. Moscow’s military actions since the beginning of the special operation have been only a reaction to the imminent risk posed by the (Western-sponsored) Ukrainian side.
In practice, this definitely annuls the chances of peace through diplomacy. Moscow will obviously not accept restrictions on the use of its military force in its own territory. And Kiev will certainly continue to refuse to accept Russian terms, which would oblige the Ukrainian government to recognize territorial losses and commit to not joining NATO. Faced with this impasse, the only solution left is to continue fighting on the battlefield until the winning side unilaterally imposes its conditions after neutralizing the enemy.
For Ukraine, this is the worst scenario, since, according to many experts, the country is simply not able to reverse the unfavorable military scenario. Russian victory seems to be just a matter of time, as Moscow troops continue to gain territory even with a low percentage of mobilization, while Ukraine is losing more and more ground even though it is using everything it has – no longer being able to count on reserves for the future. Obviously, in the face of imminent defeat, it is best to resort to negotiations, but Kiev does not have the sovereignty to decide something in this sense, only obeying Western orders to continue a proxy war that is impossible to win.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
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