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‘Wonder weapon’ myth is military-industrial complex PR scheme to profit from death

By Bradley Blankenship | Global Times | September 11, 2023

As the Russia-Ukraine war drags on, the Western public has been told that this or that wonder weapon system will turn the tide of the conflict. This has included Javelins, HIMARS, Leopards, Storm Shadow, Bradleys, F-16s, and now depleted uranium munitions, none of which has fundamentally changed the tide of the conflict.

After the slow progress of Kiev’s counteroffensive this summer, it is immediately apparent that high-tech equipment is not ruling the day but logistics and supply chains. It is not about who has the shiniest toys but who has the most troops, tanks and artillery and can deploy them quickly. On that front, Russia clearly dwarfs Ukraine, which is a much smaller country. Due to the fact that the West is evidently not going to join in this conflict directly, and there is growing resentment from the Western public against military aid to Kiev, people are wondering if the two sides will reach a peaceful settlement.

We are constantly told, however, that the latter possibility is somehow wrong or immoral because it will fundamentally grant Russia a victory. Well, morals aside, the reality clearly shows that Moscow is achieving its military objectives. Winning on the battlefield naturally translates to a more favorable negotiating position, and believing otherwise is to live in a realm of make-believe.

Some people idealistically (or opportunistically) believe that the West should support Ukraine’s futile fight against a far superior military power, even though that support will not challenge the eventual outcome and will lead to more death and destruction. Others believe death and destruction are undesirable outcomes; thus, Western leaders should pivot to a negotiations-first approach. The former view dominates the news media while the latter has gained a huge following on social media.

What’s also interesting about the difference between these two views and how they’ve fielded an audience is also about who’s backing them. People who hold the latter view are constantly accused – without evidence – of being funded by the Russian government or, as some US intelligence reports suggest, unwitting assets. Meanwhile, a recent analysis by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that think tanks funded by defense [?] industry contractors are cited 85 percent of the time in Ukraine-related content – and media outlets rarely cite these conflicts of interest.

So, which of these viewpoints is compromised? I believe it’s safe to say the latter. And that’s important because we need to understand the dynamic here: The media is quite literally operating as a paid advertiser for defense contractors. Not only do some outlets consistently peddle that some particular line of products will turn the tide of battle (they will not), but they also cite compromised experts that push a line conducive to selling more defense products. Rinse and repeat.

This is what is so sinister about modern conflict. When you look at the decades that the West was entrenched in Afghanistan, the current Ukraine quagmire or a potential situation in Taiwan island, it’s not about any serious geopolitical strategy or values. It’s just about making a handful of companies richer. Worse still is that this is public, taxpayer money going to this cabal – and, to be sure, primarily working-class funds when taken in conjunction with the historic Reagan, Bush and Trump tax cuts, which cut taxes for the wealthy.

It would be extraordinarily naive to believe that defense contractors and the people they fund have incentives that supersede the profit motive. Instead, these companies profit from death and human suffering, and they’re enabled by information laundering operations known as think tanks, which are cited without any scrutiny from journalists who are either lazy or also compromised.

The author is a Prague-based American journalist, columnist and political commentator. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

MEPs call for change of EU policy on Ukraine

RT | October 12, 2023

Ukrainian lives are being sacrificed by the “totally corrupt” elite in Kiev to which the EU recklessly sends billions of euros, several members of the European Parliament said at an event on Wednesday hosted by the think-tank Voice of Europe.

“We must stop this tragicomedy for Europe, for Ukraine and for Russia. We must try to find a path to prosperity again, and the first step is peace,” MEP Thierry Mariani of the French National Rally (RN) party argued at the roundtable, held in the central hall of the European Parliament in Brussels.

“Ukraine must remain a bridge” between Russia and Europe, Mariani added. He also pointed out that the current conflict has roots in 2013, when the EU tried to push Kiev to renounce a free trade deal with Russia and sign the Association Agreement with Brussels. This led to the Maidan demonstrations and the February 2014 coup.

Maximilian Kra of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) said he had traveled around Ukraine, describing it as “a beautiful country with very decent people.”

“I’m afraid that these decent people of Ukraine are now being sacrificed for the interests of the Kiev elite,” who own millions in real estate in southern France, Kra said. He also voiced fears that the US may ask the EU to foot the bill for the Ukraine conflict, now that Washington’s attention has been preoccupied by Israel.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. And I can tell you that this is already happening. Because Germany has already promised $1 billion to Ukraine, while the US will allocate only $200 million,” he said.

Marcel de Graaff of the Dutch Forum for Democracy (FvD) argued that Ukraine needs to make peace with Russia as soon as possible.

“I speak very directly because they have already lost. They are now sacrificing people up to 70 years old at the front. They no longer have reserves. They are losing right now,” said de Graaf.

He also described Ukraine as “the most corrupt country in the world,” now being given “tens of billions of euros” by the West. “I heard that [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s mother-in-law bought a villa in Egypt for several million dollars, and we are still wondering where our money is going. This is a totally corrupt civilization,” de Graaf added.

One major problem, according to the Dutch MEP, is that all trust has been lost between Russia and the West after the revelations by former German and French leaders that the Minsk Agreements were a ploy to buy Kiev time to prepare for war.

Kra brought up that Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk had presented the German Bundestag a “smart” peace plan based on Minsk II, a proposal that would have seen the rebel republics of Donetsk and Lugansk rejoin Ukraine with broad autonomy.

“At the time, no one knew that Minsk II was a fake, as Merkel later stated,” Kra added, referring to former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s December 2022 admission.

Henri Malos, president of Voice of Europe and host of the roundtable, also lamented the demise of the Minsk Agreements, which he said offered security and sovereignty for both Russia and Ukraine.

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Putin’s Valdai Speech, What You Need to Know

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | October 12, 2023

On October 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club near Sochi, Russia. The session was attended by scholars and diplomats from forty-two countries. Putin spoke for half an hour and then answered questions for about three hours. Several interesting things were said.

In western discourse it is always said that Russia started an unprovoked war in Ukraine. There has been much discussion—though not in the mainstream media nor in statements issued by western governments—about whether the war was unprovoked. But there has been little discussion about whether Russia started it.

Putin claimed that Russia’s “special military operation” did not start the war in Ukraine but, rather, was designed to stop it. “I have said many times that it was not us who started the so-called ‘war in Ukraine,’” Putin said. “On the contrary, we are trying to end it.”

The war started, according to Putin, when the United States “orchestrated a coup in Kiev in 2014.” Putin said that the U.S. “provoked the Ukraine crisis by supporting the coup in Ukraine in 2014. They could not fail to understand that this was a red line, we have said this a thousand times. They never listened.”

After the coup, the new government in Kiev “intimidate[d]” the ethnic Russian populations of Crimea and the Donbas, prohibited them from speaking “their native language,” and threatened them “with ethnic cleansing.” It was Kiev, and not Russia, “who tried to force Donbass to obey by shelling and bombing.” The new government in Kiev bombed the region “for nine years, shooting and using tanks. That was a war, a real war unleashed against Donbass.”

The war started, not a year and a half ago, according to Putin’s chronology. Instead, “This war, the one that the regime sitting in Kiev started with the vigorous and direct support from the West, has been going on for more than nine years, and Russia’s special military operation is aimed at stopping it.”

With the end of the Cold War, there was a window of opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the previous destructive era. There was an opportunity to move from “military and ideological” blocs to collective solutions. First Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, and then Russia, sought a new international order that transcended blocs. Putin even recalled “a moment when I simply suggested: perhaps we should also join NATO?”

But Putin says that Russia’s “interest in constructive interaction was misunderstood, was seen as obedience, as an agreement that the new world order would be created by those who declared themselves the winners in the Cold War. It was seen as an admission that Russia was ready to follow in others’ wake and not to be guided by our own national interests but by somebody else’s interests.”

American “arrogance” attempted to establish a global “hegemony” over a world “too complicated and diverse to be subjected to one system.” This arrogance led to two things. The first was “endless expansion” by the political West. “NATO expansion has been pursued for decades.”

Putin reminded his audience that Russia was “promised verbally” about NATO “non-expansion to the east.” He then complained, “Yes, we were promised everything verbally, and our American partners do not deny this, and then they ask: where is this documented? There is no document. And that was it, goodbye. Did we promise? It looks like we did, but it was worth nothing.”

Eventually, this broken promise led to NATO expansion creeping up to Ukraine and right up against Russia’s borders. “Among the ways the crisis in Ukraine was provoked,” Putin said, “was the irrepressible desire of Western countries, especially the United States, to expand NATO to the borders of the Russian Federation.”

“After all,” Putin pointed out, NATO “is not only a political bloc, it is a military and political bloc, and the approach of its infrastructure is fraught with a grave threat to us.” He then added, “NATO’s expansion right up to our borders is threatening our security. This is a massive challenge to the Russian Federation’s security.”

To attain its hegemonic goal, it was necessary for the United States to “to replace international law with a “rules-based order.” But unlike the international law of the charter international system that is based on the United Nations, “It is not clear what rules these are and who invented them.” In the service of Americna hegemony, the U.S. “arbitrarily set[s] these rules.”

In a recent essay, professor of international law John Dugard has said that it is neither clear what the rules of the rules-based order are nor “the method for their creation,” and has offered as a possible explanation of the rules based order that it is “international law as interpreted by the United States to accord with its national interests,” meaning whatever the U.S. needs it to mean in any given situation. He suggests that the United States tries “to impose the concept of a rules-based world order on the international community. They use this banner to promote, without any hesitation, a unipolar model of the world order where there are ‘exceptional’ countries and everyone else who must obey the ‘club of the chosen.’”

In this world order, the United States not only tells other nations how they “should behave overall” in a “colonial mentality,” but there exists “an international system where arbitrariness reigns, where all decision-making is up to those who think they are exceptional, sinless and right [and] any country can be attacked simply because it is disliked by a hegemon.”

Putin says that Russia sees a future multipolar world order in which “no one can unilaterally force or compel others to live or behave as a hegemon pleases even when it contradicts the sovereignty, genuine interests, traditions, or customs of peoples and countries.” Russia sees “civilization [as] a multifaceted concept subject to various interpretations.” The world has evolved from the “colonial interpretation whereby there was a ‘civilized world’ serving as a model for the rest, and everyone was supposed to conform to those standards. Those who disagreed were to be coerced into this ‘civilization’ by the truncheon of the ‘enlightened’ master. These times, as I said, are now in the past, and our understanding of civilisation is quite different.”

Putin argued, as he has consistently, for the principle of the indivisibility of security, the idea that security cannot be divided so that the policies that increase the security of one country decrease the security of another. Indivisibility of security assures that the security of one state should not be bought at the expense of the security of another.

The American insistence on the right of states to unrestrained free will in their choice of security alignments and the accompanying NATO open door policy to Ukraine ignores the indivisibility of security. Putin said, “The main thing is to free international relations from the bloc approach and the legacy of the colonial era and the Cold War. We have been saying for decades that security is indivisible, and that it is impossible to ensure the security of some at the expense of the security of others.”

Putin said he thinks that suggestions of “a new security system in Europe, which would include Russia, and the United States, and Canada; but not NATO, but together with everyone else: for Eastern and Central Europe… would solve many of today’s problems.”

It is often said in the West that Putin seeks to reestablish a Russian empire and reacquire vast territories, starting with Ukraine. Putin, though, says in contradiction to those claims, “The Ukraine crisis is not a territorial conflict, and I want to make that clear… [W]e have no interest in conquering additional territory.” He insisted, “This is not a territorial conflict and not an attempt to establish regional geopolitical balance. The issue is much broader and more fundamental and is about the principles underlying the new international order.”

Those principles are a balanced multipolar world, indivisibility of security, an end to blocs and to NATO encroachment and protection of ethnic Russians in the Donbass and Crimea.

During the question and answer period, political scientist Sergei Karaganov suggested that the current Russian nuclear doctrine is no longer taken seriously by the West as a deterrent. He asked whether it was not time to modify the nuclear doctrine and lower the threshold.

Often portrayed in the West as a nuclear weapons sabre rattler, Putin tamped down the question, answering, “I do not see the need to change our conceptual approaches. The potential adversary knows everything and is aware of what we are capable of.”

Putin explained Russia’s existing nuclear doctrine. He said there are two situations that could trigger a “possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia.” The first is that “the use of nuclear weapons against us… would entail a so-called retaliatory strike.” The second situation is “an existential threat to the Russian state—even if conventional weapons are used against Russia, but the very existence of Russia as a state is threatened.”

Putin insisted that Russia does not need to change its stance. In the case of the first scenario, “this response will be absolutely unacceptable for any potential aggressor, because seconds after we detect the launch of missiles… the counter strike in response will involve hundreds—hundreds of our missiles in the air, so that no enemy will have a chance to survive.” As for the second, important as an insight into how Putin evaluates the situation in Ukraine, “There is no situation imaginable today where something would threaten Russian statehood and the existence of the Russian state.”

However, Putin said that nuclear testing is “a whole different matter.” He says that, after signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the United States never ratified it. Russia, on the other hand, both signed it and ratified it. He told his audience that the development of new strategic weapons—including the nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile with “basically unlimited range” and the super heavy Sarmat missile—is “nearing completion.” He then said that Russia can “act just as the United States does” and “offer a tit-for-tat response,” suggesting that Russia could repeal the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and begin testing new weapons.

In response to the question of whether Russia objected to Ukraine joining the European Union, Putin responded that Russia had “never objected or expressed a negative attitude to Ukraine’s plans to join the European economic community—never.” He said that Russia opposes Ukraine joining NATO because NATO is a “military bloc” and a “tool of U.S. foreign policy.” But “the EU is not a military bloc,” and, as for “economic cooperation, or economic unions, we do not see any military threat.”

October 12, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Support not ‘indefinite’, White House tells Ukraine

RT | October 12, 2023

The US is running out of money for Ukraine unless Congress approves additional funding, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

“In the near term, we’ve got appropriations and authorities for both Ukraine and for Israel,” Kirby said during the daily press briefing. “But you don’t want to be trying to bake in long-term support when you’re at the end of the rope.”

“And in Ukraine, on the Ukraine funding, we’re coming near to the end of the rope,” he added. “Today we announced $200 million, and we’ll keep that aid going as long as we can, but it’s not going to be indefinite.”

Asked to define “near term,” Kirby said he could not point to a specific date, because that depended on how quickly Ukraine and Israel expended their equipment and ammunition “or what the need is and what our ability to do it is.”

On Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesperson assured reporters that the US had the ability to “continue our support both to Ukraine, Israel, and maintain our own global readiness.”

Kirby, however, admitted that the money previously appropriated for Ukraine by Congress is “not going to last forever” and that the lawmakers needed to approve more and soon.

“The sooner there’s a speaker of the House, obviously, the more comfortable we’ll all be in terms of being able to support Israel and Ukraine,” he said.

The House of Representatives has not had a speaker since last Tuesday, when Kevin McCarthy  became the first-ever speaker to be ousted in a House vote, over an alleged secret deal with the White House to approve more Ukraine funding. Several Republicans led the charge against their California colleague, backed by all of the minority Democrats. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the Republican nominee to succeed McCarthy, has been supportive of funding Ukraine in the past.

Since February 2022, when the conflict with Russia escalated, the US has channeled almost $44 billion worth of military aid to Ukraine, as well as billions more in cash, humanitarian and economic assistance.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu wants US involved in war – ex-Pentagon official

RT | October 11, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like Washington directly involved in the conflict with Hamas because he hopes to expand the war to Lebanon and Iran, former senior security policy analyst at the US Department of Defense, Michael Maloof, told RT on Wednesday.

On Monday, the US ordered the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and five guided missile destroyers to the Eastern Mediterranean. According to Maloof, this “meets Netanyahu’s wildest dreams.”

“He wanted the US involved in this conflict,” the former Pentagon official told RT.

Netanyahu “wants to open up the war with Lebanon, by attacking Hezbollah” in pursuit of his ultimate objective, “to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities,” Maloof added. For that to happen, “he has to have a Gulf of Tonkin moment, if you will.”

Maloof recalled how US President Lyndon Johnson essentially started the Vietnam War by sending ships to the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. An alleged North Vietnamese attack on two US destroyers was then used as a pretext for direct involvement.

The US has also pledged to help Israel with deliveries of weapons and ammunition, with the Pentagon insisting it has enough to do so and continue supplying Ukraine. Maloof is skeptical of that assertion, however.

He also told RT it was “not surprising” that some of the weapons Washington had sent Kiev ended up in the hands of Hamas.

That accusation was first made by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Ukraine’s military intelligence, the GUR, responded on Monday by accusing Russia of sending captured Western weapons to Hamas militants in a “false flag” operation designed to make Kiev look bad to its backers.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the weapons claim, but rejected the Ukrainian insinuations of Russian involvement in the Hamas attack as “complete nonsense.”

October 11, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Members of 13 European PMCs Fighting Against Russia in Ukraine – FSB Head

Sputnik – 11.10.2023

Members of 13 private military companies (PMCs) from Europe and members of nine foreign paramilitary proxy formations are participating in military operations against Russia in Ukraine, Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Alexander Bortnikov said on Wednesday.

“We record the participation of employees of 13 European PMCs and members of nine foreign paramilitary proxy forces in hostilities,” Bortnikov said at a meeting of the CIS Council of the Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services.

Additionally, the identities of 794 mercenaries from 35 countries fighting against Russia in Ukraine have been established, the official said.

There are 17 training camps in EU countries under the auspices of NATO special services, where militants from members of international terrorist organizations and mercenaries are trained for Ukraine, Alexander Bortnikov said.

Ukraine, thanks to the efforts of Washington and its NATO allies, has become a source of military and terrorist threats on the border of Russia and Belarus, Bortnikov added.

The priority of the international terrorist organizations, actively directed by the American and British special services, is to seize power primarily in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and incorporate them into the so-called “world caliphate,” Alexander Bortnikov said.

The undermining of the power lines of the Smolensk and Kursk nuclear power plants by the Ukrainian saboteurs was aimed at disrupting the technological process of the nuclear power plants’ operation; as a result of their actions, the No. 2 unit of the Kursk nuclear power plant was stopped in an emergency, Bortnikov said.

In August this year, the FSB detained members of the Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group, which was trained by the British Army Special Forces and whose task included sabotage of the Smolensk and Kursk nuclear power plants, Bortnikov stressed.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Kiev regime’s hunger for weapons exacerbated by latest Israel-Gaza conflict

By Drago Bosnic | October 11, 2023

The latest clashes between Israel and Hamas took the world by surprise. Despite the heavy presence of IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) troops in the southwestern part of Israel and around the Gaza Strip, Hamas fighters launched a massive surprise attack with devastating results for both the Israeli military assets there and civilians in settlements along the border. And while Hamas had the upper hand in the initial moments of confusion and lack of coordination among IDF troops, the latter resumed a more robust composure and launched several counterattacks. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) was the first to launch direct attacks on targets in Gaza, with airstrikes destroying command posts and munitions storage areas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the IDF will soon launch a massive land operation in Gaza. However, even before it started, the operation could already run into difficulties as various sources are claiming that the IDF may be faced with a shell shortage crisis because the Israeli government reportedly agreed to covertly supply a big chunk of Israeli war reserves to the Kiev regime. And while Israeli officials have been careful not to antagonize Russia and keep denying any involvement with the Neo-Nazi junta, various reports by the mainstream media claim that Israel has agreed to transfer at least some American weapons and munitions (particularly 155 mm artillery shells) stored in Israel.

As a result, the Pentagon will now be forced to make a tough strategic decision. Either support the Kiev regime forces or the IDF. The former is much more dependent on the artillery component of its armed forces, while the latter relies primarily on air superiority. However, this is the first time since 2006 that Israel is launching a major land operation and it will need its artillery component more than ever before. Launching airstrikes on every single position held by Hamas is simply not viable, as it dispersed most of its troops all across the Gaza Strip. This is where artillery comes into play. The IDF will surely try to complete the operation as soon as possible, but it’s difficult to determine how long it could last.

If the fighting ends up becoming a stalemate, Israel will need a constant supply of artillery munitions, which isn’t a very good prospect for the Neo-Nazi junta forces. As the much-touted counteroffensive failed, the Kiev regime will soon need to go on the defense. If the Russian military decides to launch a counteroffensive of its own, the need for US-made artillery shells will be exponentially amplified, as the Neo-Nazi junta forces simply have no other way to hold their lines. Artillery duels against the Russian military became the staple of the confrontation when the frontlines stabilized in most areas of Ukraine. Moscow already had a major advantage even with this US/NATO support.

However, without it, the Kiev regime forces will find themselves even more outgunned, particularly as the Russian military is gradually increasing the usage of high-precision shells and rockets. Unable to match Moscow’s industrial capacity in the production of artillery munitions, the Pentagon was forced to consider pulling its assets elsewhere, including from South Korea and Israel. Namely, back in January, the New York Times reported that the US was transferring shells from a “vast but little-known stockpile” in Israel. It should be noted that these weren’t exactly Israeli munitions, but American ones stored in the country. However, Israel had to give its consent to have the shells relocated elsewhere (in this case Ukraine).

According to Business Insider, the Pentagon transferred more than two million 155 mm shells from its own stockpiles, but this was still only a fraction of what the Russian military was able to muster. However, even this was from old stockpiles and the production facilities were unable to match the Neo-Nazi junta’s needs. In September, the US claimed that it would produce 100,000 155 mm shells per month by 2025. For comparison, it produced 14,000 in early 2023, a far cry from what the Kiev regime needs, as it spends up to 6,000 shells per day. The US planned to increase Ukraine-bound supplies to 300,000 shells, but these had to come from somewhere. Israeli officials denied any direct involvement.

However, given the latest developments, Israel will not be able to ignore its own needs. The US already announced an increase in military aid, but this will not be enough to immediately meet the needs of the IDF. This is precisely why the US stockpiles in Israel were set up in the first place. Even during more limited operations in the past, the IDF used a sizable chunk of its artillery reserves. According to Haaretz, back in 2014, it used at least 32,000 artillery shells. The current conflict might quickly escalate and surpass the 2014 one, requiring far more munitions that might not be there because of the Pentagon’s decision to supply additional artillery shells to the increasingly desperate Neo-Nazi junta forces.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

October 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

A Cold Dose of Reality in Ukraine: Straight from the Freezer Revisited

BY M.L.R. SMITH AND NIALL MCCRAE | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 10, 2023

In April 2022, we wrote an extended analysis for the Daily Sceptic, entitled ‘Straight from the Freezer: The Cold War in Ukraine’. It was widely read and generated over 300 (mostly positive) comments from the site’s discerning readers. The popularity of the piece, we surmise, was because – true to the intent of the Daily Sceptic’s premise – the article presented a sober, fact-based, analysis in contrast to the feverish speculations contained in much media reportage.

Drawing upon our long engagement with strategic affairs going back to the Cold War, we advanced provisional conclusions based on what was observable, commonly agreed or understood to be known. Again, contrary to much of the agenda-ridden narratives of the mainstream media, the principal contention of our analysis was that it was wise to proceed with caution, acknowledge that facts on the ground were rare, and refute idle speculation or wishful thinking, particularly any which saw every move as a Russian military failure and a Ukrainian success. Understandable sentiments perhaps, but not ones necessarily based on reality.

Our analysis pointed to the historically complex background leading up to Russia’s invasion. For anyone interested in a serious engagement with the origins of the war, this defies easy notions of right versus wrong, especially considering extensive Western complicity in provoking Russia through its policy of NATO expansion eastwards. From the end of the Cold War onwards Russian politicians (as well as Western diplomats) of all persuasions implored Western leaders not to enlarge NATO up to its borders. But they did it anyway. Promises were broken and red lines were repeatedly crossed: a process that included Western meddling in Ukraine’s internal politics in ways guaranteed to disturb Russia’s geopolitical sensibilities.

Whether – through imprudence or hubris – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a mess of the West’s creation or whether it is, as some allege, the intentional engineering of a proxy war with Russia on the part of neo-conservative ideologues in Washington to weaken and destroy Russia, it was interesting to note how little media commentary acknowledged this complicated history. To the extent that it did, it was often to scold those ‘realist’ scholars of international relations who had long foreseen these events. This ‘shoot-the-messenger’ attitude expressed by media commentators was itself telling: a degree of denial for sure, but also an implicit admission that the warnings of these analysts should not have gone unheeded.

Our article concluded that the direction of the war was likely to remain confused and uncertain, especially given how little we knew of Russian objectives or her concept of operations. We suggested the likelihood was that the war would for the foreseeable future be substantially immobile and would assume the contours of frozen conflict: a war of attrition, with little movement on either side.

Eighteen months later, it is opportune to review this assessment and discern what we broadly got right and what we might have missed. While the historical rights and wrongs can still be debated, it is how things have been working out militarily on the ground, and the wider implications of the prolongation of the war, that will be the key factors that will shape the future direction of this conflict. This will be the central focus of our re-evaluation.

Same media, same old story

The early part of our original article examined Western media portrayals, which overwhelmingly told a story of Russian military folly and incompetence. Putin’s imminent collapse and overthrow were routinely predicted. Apparent setbacks for Russian forces around Kiev and various territorial withdrawals from some of the lands it had occupied in the east fuelled much of this heady sense of Ukrainian military success, backed by Western training and technology.

Eighteen months later and many of these suppositions have been disproved through the war’s prolongation. Interestingly, though, little appears to have changed in the media landscape. A vast swathe of commentary over the past year has continued to present a litany of Russian disunity and miscalculation, with every piece of information interpreted as a sign of Vladimir Putin’s vulnerability and internal weakness, the likelihood of his overthrow, and the relentless failures of Russian military performance. Meanwhile, Ukrainian breakthroughs and military advances have been extolled. Typical of the genre was an article in early October by Ben Wallace, former U.K. Defence Secretary, who proclaimed: “Whisper it if you need. Dare to think it. But champion it you must. Ukraine’s counteroffensive is succeeding. Slowly but surely, the Ukrainian armed forces are breaking through the Russian lines. Sometimes yard by yard, sometimes village by village, Ukraine has the momentum and is pressing forward.”

Rousing though such exhortations are, these kinds of claims do not match reality. Russian defences have not been seriously dented. Putin’s hold on power is not imperilled and support for his regime is not evidentially slipping. To the extent that Putin’s rule has been internally questioned, it has been from voices that wish him to prosecute the war more forcefully. Likewise, Ukraine’s much heralded counteroffensive has by all accounts not been impressive. Some forward villages have been taken, but these miniscule territorial gains have been offset by Russian land seizures elsewhere.

The global media panorama is, of course, vast. In the acres of news coverage of the war, it would be unfair to characterise all reportage as deficient or unsophisticated. Nevertheless, the continued preponderance of agenda-ridden commentary at the expense of fact-based analysis suggests that a great deal of the mainstream media is still not engaged in a consistently honest endeavour to report the war objectively. It is, for example, regrettable that outlets of high repute for coverage of geopolitical and military affairs, such as the Daily Telegraph, issue an endless stream of over-optimism regarding Ukraine’s prospects of winning.

Whether such distortions derive from the editorial offices, a susceptibility to Government lobbying or a belief that it is a message that people wish to hear, dispassionate analysis it is not. It is fundamentally unserious commentary that plays its part in reinforcing growing public mistrust of legacy media. The result is that for dependably thoughtful and penetrating assessments of the war, its military dynamics and geopolitical implications, no one looking for any temperate analysis would turn to established newspapers, television outlets or even think-tanks, but to independent content providers such as the Duran, Perun, and the Caspian Report.

The Military State of Play

Turning to the military dynamics, our previous article noted a multiplicity of problems that routinely afflicted Russian and formerly Soviet forces but was careful not to write them off. The piece observed that Russia’s military had shown in several theatres, including the Second Chechen War and in Syria, that it was capable of adaptation. Russian intent in Ukraine is not 100% clear. Given that all war is a sphere of uncertainty, this is to some extent expected. What we can deduce from Russia’s actions thus far, however, indicates that its ‘special military operation’ was always focused on capturing the eastern and south-eastern oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. To that end, the withdrawals from the partial encirclement of Kiev and Kharkiv (Kharkov) were not full-blown retreats as presented by Western Governments and media but likely strategic moves to divert Ukrainian forces from the Azov coast and east.

Having secured the capture of these regions, Russia moved to adopt a defensive posture with an emphasis on artillery and fortified positions. The pattern of the war has consequently fallen into one of a slow, grinding attrition, as we predicted. Attrition suggests a stalemate like the First World War. However, this mode of war and its prolongation and lack of mobility on the frontlines does not of itself speak to any lack of strategic intent.

Manoeuvre versus attrition

Operational planning in wars involving the clash of orthodox armed forces in battle is often based around balancing the concepts of manoeuvre and attrition. The smaller, professionalised, high technology orientation of most Western armed forces tend to emphasise manoeuvre-based approaches, that is, striking and gaining decisions quickly via wars of rapid movement involving combined arms, especially airpower and precision guided munitions. ‘Shock and awe’ tactics, as evidenced in the first Gulf War of 1990/91 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, are designed to have political effects to psychologically overwhelm an opponent, forcing a decision through the speed of advance and the seizure or destruction of command-and-control centres.

Through its counteroffensive, Western trained Ukrainian forces have been intent on seeking a manoeuvreist approach to secure breakthroughs and to reclaim Russian occupied territory. The strategic intent appears that even if the re-capture of all lost ground is not possible, the momentum of a Ukrainian advance can put sufficient pressure on the Russian position to force negotiations on favourable terms. The problem is that manouevrist approaches tend to work only in specific circumstances, for example against relatively unsophisticated opponents (such as the Iraqi army in 1991 and 2003) that lack hardened defensive capabilities; or they succeed for a limited time, only until the other side has had a chance to stabilise and get back on its feet, as the Soviet Union did after the initial setbacks suffered at the hands of the German following Operation Barbarossa in 1941.

Running up against more organised opposition always risks a war of attrition, which is what we see happening in Ukraine. In other words, to regain military momentum requires one to go through a process of attrition, to grind down the other side to a point where movement on the battlefield can be re-gained. This may be the intention of Western-backed Ukrainian forces: to waste Russian military assets, weaken its defensive front line and secure a breakthrough, which can then be exploited. A protracted war might undermine Putin’s popularity at home, making him vulnerable to a coup by more moderate politicians amenable to compromise and withdrawal from conquered lands (a set of suppositions which we have suggested lacks any understanding of Russian historical sensibilities). Conversely, the Russian side is likely pursuing a double-pronged attrition strategy: 1) establishing defensive fortifications that seek to wear down Ukrainian forces on the offensive, 2) eroding the will of Western powers to continue financing and supplying Ukraine over the long term.

Who benefits from attrition-based war?

The central question arising from any military analysis is which side does an attrition strategy favour? The evidence thus far would suggest it redounds to the Russian advantage for the following reasons. First, it is simply that Russia is by far the largest combatant, capable of mobilising greater quantities of troops and resources vis-à-vis Ukraine.

Secondly, it is doubtful that the supply of superior weaponry such as the Storm Shadow missile or ageing Leopard and Challenger tanks or F-16 jets to Ukraine is going to change the balance of forces. Western forces simply do not possess sufficient weapons stocks, still less the capacity to help Ukraine deploy such forces quickly or effectively in the field in ways that are likely to have any long-term impact. There are already signs that Western arsenals are being depleted.

Thirdly, anticipating Ukraine’s counteroffensive (signalled for months on end by the ramping up of Western military supplies and media reports) allowed the Russians to prepare their defences and draw the Ukrainians into cauldrons of artillery fire and landmines, eradicating what is reported to be tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops and weaponry, while the defenders’ losses have been relatively small. The Ukrainian counteroffensive therefore has not amounted to anything in terms of territorial gains beyond the capture of parcels of land that are ultimately unlikely to worry Russian military planners if their goal is to force the opposition to waste itself on fruitless forward assaults.

Accurate casualty figures are hard to verify, though reports have suggested that hundreds of thousands have perished, including 400,000 on the Ukrainian side. Other statistics claim the casualty figures to be much less. Yet the fact that Ukraine is talking increasingly of a general mobilisation indicates that it is feeling the pressure on this front. The inference is that Russian forces have adapted sufficiently to attrition warfare to place Ukraine in a military bind in that it is not strong enough to make major breakthroughs in Russia’s frontlines or to prosecute the war without Western help.

Who benefits from the prolongation of the war?

The other important question that follows is which side is likely to benefit from the prolongation of the war the most? Is Russia likely to be sufficiently weakened economically and politically? This seems to be the thinking of U.S. policymakers, namely that supporting the Ukrainians in fighting the Russians over a protracted period is a strategic instrument to weaken Russia. Backing Ukraine against Russia is therefore a “direct investment“, to quote Senator Mitch McConnell, because it does not involve the use of U.S. ground troops in any direct confrontation. The problem is that if this is the strategic rationale it undermines the moral case that the conflict is about preserving Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy. Instead, this rationale suggests that the collective West is using Ukrainian forces to do the fighting and dying in a proxy war against Russia.

The key strategic issue, then, is about who can outlast whom in a battle of attrition between Russia and its backers and Western nations? Our initial article referenced an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph by Sherelle Jacobs who argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a defining moment that was galvanising the West into re-discovering a sense of collective purpose.

We expressed scepticism and suggested that only time would tell if a newly found Western unity was the outcome. Subsequent events have validated such wariness. Western solidarity is being sorely tested as the war drags on. The failure of financial sanctions against Russia has emphasised Western economic weakness and dealt a significant blow to the West’s strategic position. The war has merely underlined the fact that Russia, as a primary producer of key resources like oil and gas, and China an industrial power, have in some respects emerged strengthened.

The revelation of European energy dependence on Russian oil and gas exports was a particularly salutary reminder of the economic complexities engendered by the war. The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has been one of notable curiosities in this respect. The idea that it was Russia that blew up its own infrastructure (when it could have simply turned a stopcock) has been yet one more reason to doubt Western governmental and media narratives. One must be obtuse not to detect some level of U.S. complicity in or knowledge of the destruction of Nord Stream 2, the outcome of which has been to render the German economy dependent on American energy supplies.

Having forsaken energy independence and de-industrialised their economies, Western countries fired their one and only financial weapon, only to see it go off half-cock. The economic sanctions applied against Russia have only inspired both Russia and China to create alternative financial mechanisms, which along with various de-dollarisation initiatives over the long term threaten to corrode Western economic primacy even further.

Crucial to the failure of Western sanctions has been the lack of support for these measures across the world. Many countries perceive high minded Western talk of defending democracy as bogus, pointing to an unbroken record of U.S and Western interference, covert operations, regime change operations and military adventurism, of which meddling in Ukrainian internal politics prior to 2022 is seen as all of a piece. Key regional actors like Brazil, India and Saudi Arabia have been alienated by the stridency of the West’s ‘with us or against us’ attitude over war. In conditions where Western economic clout is less than it was, states across the globe are concluding that they do not have to choose a side and are antagonised when they are imposed upon to do so. In the words of Indian External Affairs Minister, Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems.”

What is happening in the West?

The fissures between the West and Rest also preface serious internal political divisions inside Western states themselves. The cost of aiding Ukraine is becoming a domestic political issue, most notably in the U.S. and Germany, with current estimates that the bill has reached over $900 per person in the U.S. and is already becoming an electoral fault-line in American politics. The point is that a lack of domestic consensus almost always dooms support for wars of choice in the West, threatening yet again to make Ukraine a re-run of the failures of U.S. and Western policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

Beyond the vague, open-ended rhetoric to save the world from tyranny, it is hard to fathom any discernible Western policy objectives. What is the strategic purpose behind the war? Is it to ‘liberate’ Ukraine? Is it to ‘defend democracy’? Is it to overthrow Putin? Collapse and divide Russia? If so, why and with what purpose in mind is this a feasible or worthwhile objective? Does Russia, itself, pose a vital threat to U.S. and Western interests?

Expansive ideas about fighting to preserve the ‘liberal international order’ negate these hard-headed but necessary questions. Current Western declaratory goals, insofar as it is possible to detect any, are unbounded and specify little that is tangible or comprehensible to anyone with a degree of appreciation of strategic matters. How do any of goals translate into achievable military objectives on the ground, beyond keeping the war going indefinitely and hoping that something turns up?

Without Western support, Ukraine would not be able to sustain its resistance, so the choice to some degree resides with the U.S. about how this conflict comes to an end: through the search for a compromise settlement, through continuing the conflict in the anticipation that Russia gives up or that Putin is overthrown and replaced by a thus far nowhere-in-sight set of liberal progressives, or through escalating the war with the aim of re-framing the conflict in more existential terms as straight fight with Russia, expanding the boundaries of the conflict into the realms of a total war.

If the war is indeed seen by Western policy makers as an existential struggle of the ‘Free World’ against the forces of autocracy then it requires a unified Western response, total support from home populations and a potential willingness to escalate the conflict. But escalate to what? Western troops in Ukraine, directly confronting Russian forces? Escalation to the nuclear level? In what reality is any of this prudent or wise? Even at its most benign, Western strategy simply appears to be mimicking all the flawed thinking evident in the recent foreign policy misadventures: ill-thought through interventions with no clear idea how the war is meant to end.

Conclusion: the Western enigma

The lack of any obvious answers to such crucial questions points up, perhaps, that in as much as the Russia-Ukraine war is a manifestation of geopolitical rivalries, it is also a mirror to our fractured societies at home: a war waged by policy elites in the name of ‘cosmopolitan’ values that are not really all that cosmopolitan in that they are not shared by a majority of countries or even by a broad consensus at home. Under their guidance, Western geo-strategy has merely succeeded in driving much of the world into a putatively anti-Western camp and further divided their societies internally.

A cynic might see the newly erupted conflict in Israel and Palestine as a convenient means for the collective West to revive its esprit des corps. Obviously the situation in and around Gaza is not directly related to the Ukraine war, but it has enabled Western powers to show that peace and democracy are once again threatened by mortal hazards, justifying a strong military alliance. Suddenly Western leaders are singing from the same hymn sheet again, denouncing Israel’s foes and standing in unison. But for how long, we wonder?

Our initial article concluded that it was Russian strategy and objectives in Ukraine that were a continuing mystery, wrapped in an enigma, to rehearse Winston Churchill’s famous aphorism in relation to Russia’s foreign policy. Eighteen months later and we confess we missed something important. It is Western strategy that is the enigma: a mystery wrapped in confusion, inside a prism of incoherence.

October 10, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

More Proof of a False-Flag Massacre at Village Funeral by Kiev Regime

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 10, 2023

A massacre in a Ukrainian village last week that was roundly blamed on the Russian military in Western media reports has taken a new twist that further shows the incident was actually a false-flag provocation by the Kiev regime.

Western media last week reported that 52 people were killed when a cafe was allegedly hit by a Russian precision missile on Thursday, October 5. All Western media reports cited Ukrainian officials as their source for attributing blame on the Russian military firing an Iskander missile.

The cafe was crowded with families who had attended a funeral for a Ukrainian soldier.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who was on the same day attending a summit in Granada, Spain, with European leaders, denounced the atrocity as “genocidal aggression” by Russia.

After widely reporting the slaughter in the village of Hroza in eastern Ukraine amid a torrent of condemnations of Russia, as usual, Western media have quickly shifted their focus onto other world events, primarily the eruption in violence between Israelis and Palestinians over the weekend.

However, a follow-up report by AP on the horror at Hroza inadvertently sheds more light on who actually fired the missile. There is good reason to suspect that the Kiev regime orchestrated the air strike as a false-flag propaganda stunt. In other words, the regime deliberately killed civilians in its own territory in a cynical effort to smear Russia.

The new twist is that the families of the victims are reportedly at a loss as to how Russian forces knew of the gathering of people for the dead soldier’s funeral. The village has no military bases or tactical value. It is situated nearly 30 kilometers from the frontline between Ukrainian and Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.

The follow-up AP report claims that local people suspect that an informer in the village might have given the coordinates of the funeral to the Russian military. But rather than making that deduction, a more plausible explanation for the deadly attack can be found in the acutely felt political needs of the Kiev regime.

The timing of the massacre on the same day that Zelensky was making a big pitch for more military aid from European NATO members strongly suggests that Kiev regime forces carried out the strike on Hroza village to give its president more emotive power in his set-piece appeal to European leaders.

There is precedent for such a vile act. As noted earlier, when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kiev last month on September 6 to deliver $1 billion in American weaponry, on the same day a missile strike killed 17 people in the town of Konstantinovka in eastern Ukraine. The town is under the control of the Ukrainian military. That atrocity was immediately blamed on Russia which Zelensky and Blinken vociferously condemned at the time. It turned out later, though, that the Armed Forces of Ukraine carried out the air strike in a seeming error, according to the New York Times.

It is argued by this author that the strike on Konstantinovka was not an error, but rather a deliberate act of killing Ukrainian civilians to smear Russia and to garner support for more American military aid.

The same modus operandi is believed to explain the massacre at the village of Hroza last week.

Bear in mind that the summit in Granada addressed by Zelensky where he cited the carnage at Hroza and suitably accused Russia of depraved terrorism was held at a crucial political moment concerning American and European financial support for the Kiev regime. The U.S. Congress has temporarily suspended billions of dollars for Ukraine and the pressure is on Europe to maintain the flow of money.

The highly emotive appeal by Zelensky in Granada appeared to bolster European military support with reports that same day of Spain pledging to supply more air-defense systems to Ukraine.

Returning to the latest AP report, it was said: “Locals say it [Hroza village] is strictly a civilian area. There has never been any military base, whether Russian or Ukrainian. They said only civilians or family came to the funeral and wake, and residents were the only people who would have known where and when it was taking place.”

The AP report continued: “Dmytro Chubenko, spokesman for the regional prosecutor, said investigators are looking into whether someone from the area transmitted the cafe’s coordinates to the Russians — a betrayal to everyone now grieving in Hroza… Many share that suspicion, describing a strike timed to kill the maximum number of people. The date of the funeral was set a few weeks ago, and the time was shared throughout the village late last week.”

This version of events stretches credulity. Would a local village inhabitant go out of their way to tell the Russian military about a family funeral gathering? Would the Russian military go to the trouble of firing an Iskander precision missile at a civilian gathering 30 kms from its front line and also knowing that Western media would predictably vilify Russia for “barbarity”?

That explanation of an alleged informer and Russian depravity does not add up.

What does add up, rather, is the Kiev regime authorities knew that a funeral for one of their own soldiers was taking place on the same day that their president was making a big appeal for more weapons at a summit in Spain.

Zelensky needed a propaganda punch for his appeal and Western media obliged as usual to paint Russia as evil barbarians.

October 10, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

‘Austria has paid enough!’ – Austria’s anti-sanctions FPÖ party tables motion to stop funding Ukraine

By Denes Albert | Remix News | October 09, 2023

The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which is currently the most popular party in Austria according to the latest polling, has tabled a motion demanding Austria withdraw funding of Ukraine given what it says are the billions of euros already gifted from Brussels.

The motion was rejected by all parties except the FPÖ.

“The EU must finally stop throwing billions of member states’ money out the window,” said MP Petra Steger, FPÖ spokesperson for its European policy, while speaking to the Austrian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

“We say: Enough is enough. Austria has paid enough! Our job is to represent the interests of Austrian taxpayers. So, we are campaigning to put an end to this irresponsible policy at the expense of net contributor states and to suspend contributions until we are assured that our money is being used in a contractual and responsible manner and this huge waste is stopped,” Steger said after the meeting. The MP said that the EU institutions have lost all common sense when it comes to budgetary policy, with one budgetary excess following another in a totally irresponsible manner.

The conservative party has long argued against the EU’s sanctions regime against Russia, saying it has not hurt the Russian war effort and led to severe economic hardship for both Austria and Europe at large.

Austria will pay €3.6 billion in membership fees to Brussels this year, which includes contributions to the European Peace Facility to buy arms for Ukraine, as well as money for the Turkey Refugee Facility.

“As a result, Austrian citizens have been sending billions of euros to the EU institutions for years, and the EU institutions have been rewarding them with climate madness and the highest inflation since 1952. From the ban on internal combustion engines to absurd vaccine contracts and billions of euros in gifts to the Zelensky regime, the EU institutions are not acting in the interests of the Austrians. They are distributing the money they collect according to their ‘moral’ compass, instead of addressing the real concerns of Europeans,” said Steger.

FPÖ MEP Harald Vilimsky also said that Ukraine cannot join the European Union, and the Austrian government should stand by this position tooth and nail, as the consequences of Ukraine’s accession would be very serious. He stated that Ukraine’s accession to the EU, which Brussels is now pushing through wittingly or unwittingly, should be rejected for a number of reasons, one of which is the dramatic impact it would have on the EU budget.

“According to press reports, the EU commission is now modeling the consequences on the example of the current financial framework 2021-2027. According to this, Ukraine alone would receive €186 billion. If the six Western Balkan states plus Georgia and Moldova are included as additional accession countries, they would receive a total of €257 billion. Put simply, this means that Ukraine alone would need around 15 percent of the total EU budget,” Vilimsky said.

He added that in the area of agricultural subsidies, too, the Ukrainians could claim almost a third of the budget. In addition, Ukraine should receive €61 billion from the EU’s cohesion fund, as its GDP per capita is on a par with Algeria or Sri Lanka — about a tenth of the EU average.

October 9, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine: Why defeat is inevitable, Part 1

TCW Defending Freedom | October 9, 2023

Earlier this year, advertisements for memorial services appeared in Ukrainian towns. People were implored to ‘remember the 400,000’ men who would never return from the battlefields in the east. This statistic, believed to have been leaked mistakenly from a Ukrainian state database, was never meant to be released into the public domain. Indeed, Ukraine’s casualty toll is a guarded secret of Zelensky’s government, withheld from his citizenry and Western allies alike. The posters were removed immediately by local officials, who denied the startling claim.

Many Western experts argue that the figure is accurate. It is corroborated by forensic analyses of cemeteries, as well as knowledge of widespread losses among Ukrainian units and the recruitment of vast reserves. Moreover, evidence from satellite imagery is increasingly being used to reveal the extent of battlefield devastation. Prior to Kiev’s utterly catastrophic offensive of early June, it was assessed that between 300,000 and 350,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died. The offensive, in its turn, is assessed to have incurred more than 1,000 Ukrainian casualties per day for significant periods of the four-month campaign, many of whom have been killed. This, very quickly, has amounted to a staggering human toll, the true extent of which has been elided by mainstream Western reportage.

The offensive has focused the minds of Western policy-makers. It has failed, not partially, but totally. Its purpose was to punch through the immense Russian defensive line and drive wedges deep into the territory seized by Moscow last year. As I argued in July,  it was militarily and logically absurd to presume that such an outcome could be achieved. So it has proved: to date its defining achievement has been a temporary breach of a single layer of the Russian defensive system in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. The Russian defensive line itself, built over months while the Ukrainian army was sucked into a pointless, life-sapping defeat in the town of Bakhmut, has not once been penetrated.

This should not surprise the Western officials who planned and financed this campaign. Zelensky cautioned in May, only three weeks before the offensive was launched, that his forces needed more time, weaponry, ammunition and manpower before an attack could succeed against a Russian line of such strength. His warnings have been borne out in a summer of blood. The combat brigades of the Ukrainian army, many of which began the offensive with depleted stocks of men and equipment, have been disintegrated and engulfed by the manifold overmatches of the Russian military. Even the most prized Ukrainian brigades, equipped with modern Nato tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery, and frequently accompanied by foreign advisers, have been stopped dead long before the main Russian line.

There are five core reasons for this terrible defeat:

1.    Russia possesses overwhelming superiority in numbers. There are close to 800,000 men in and behind the main defensive line. Furthermore, Putin holds 300,000 troops in immediate reserve. By contrast, due to death and wounding, and vast emigration from a population less than a third the size of Russia’s, Ukraine ran out of men to recruit months ago. Kiev would be incapable of building a defensive position of this length and depth, let alone manning and defending it. As the historian Niall Ferguson observed recently: ‘Wars of attrition do not favour the smaller combatant. It is hard to see how many more offensives Ukraine is capable of mounting between now and 2032 – or indeed between now and this time next year.’ Ferguson is understating the case: we will simply not see a Ukrainian offensive of this scale again. Kiev’s human resources are all but exhausted.

2.    Russia possesses roughly eight times the artillery capacity of Ukraine. Following the initial battlefield failings of early 2022, the Kremlin reorganised its artillery into entire brigades, allowing immense firepower to be concentrated against Ukrainian forces. The West, meanwhile, has been unable from the start to provide Kiev with enough artillery pieces or ammunition. Estonian officials complained recently that Russia produces seven times as much ammunition as Western arms manufacturers. Importantly, Moscow’s military-industrial base is held beyond the Ural Mountains, out of Ukrainian missile range. Consequently, Kiev’s troops have been launched into formidable Russian defences without adequate support and have been repelled by terrible barrages.

3.    Russian aerial and satellite assets enable the constant surveillance of almost all Ukrainian troops. Moscow has launched a series of further satellites this year, deepening its targeting capabilities. Once found, men and vehicles fall prey to precision missiles, artillery strikes and armed drones. Major combat groupings advance to battle in full view of Moscow’s forces, resulting in untenable attrition from the air before troops even reach the enemy’s lines.

4.    The 25km-deep ‘security zone’ in front of the Russian line is a vast labyrinth of minefields and complex booby-trapped trench systems. This terrible quagmire has proved impassable to Western-provided vehicles, forcing soldiers to dismount and pick a path through the carnage on foot with almost no protection. Critically, Western senior officers and advisers who have helped Ukraine to plan this campaign have themselves no experience in attacking defences of this magnitude and sophistication. The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, grim as they were, have not prepared senior officers for the scale or the intractable complexity of modern conventional warfare. The Cold War era, in which vast conventional operations were routinely planned and exercised, is a distant memory for the modern Western military. Indeed, this obvious void in knowledge and experience has been a ratcheting source of tension between Ukrainian and Western officials.

5.    Crucially, Russia has air superiority. This is the decisive factor in modern warfare. Moscow possesses 4,200 aircraft, while Kiev can employ only 310. Although fixed-wing aircraft have been used cautiously due to the threat from Western-provided air-defence systems, the Russian drone capability has surged over recent months. The skies above advancing Ukrainian troops are aswarm with predatory air assets. Footage shows Russian attack helicopters and the new lethal ZALA Lancet drones destroying US Bradley fighting vehicles and German Leopard tanks that have become lodged in minefields. By contrast, Russian electronic warfare assets are jamming and disabling 10,000 Ukrainian drones per month, many of which are merely small Chinese commercial craft that have been retrofitted for pseudo-military use. Not only does Moscow have overwhelming superiority of numbers in the air – it has a widespread technological advantage over Kiev’s forces too.

The point is not that the Russian military is invincible: it has its well-documented weaknesses and discontents. Yet the irrefutable, implacable fact is that, by every military metric, Russia is tremendously more powerful than Ukraine in this war. That is not a moral opinion: it is demonstrably and objectively true.

In fact history tells us that we ought to have expected this. Moscow’s juggernaut-like resurgence in Ukraine is but the latest iteration of a centuries-old pattern in Russian warfare. One invader after another, from King Charles XII of Sweden in 1707 to Napoleon in 1812 to Hitler in 1941, has discovered that, whilst the Russian nation appears initially to disintegrate against the aggressor, it eventually springs forth in a terrible torrent of attritional power and resolve.

In his brilliant essay Have We Forgotten the Russian Way of War? the eminent American classicist Victor Davis Hanson explains that the Russian army undergoes this same transformation when it is on the offensive outside its own borders. The Finnish-Russian ‘Winter War’ of 1939-40 is usually referenced as an example of Finnish heroism against Moscow’s numerically superior, clumsy and badly led force. Yet the outcome was a grinding Russian victory in spite of 400,000 casualties.

We are seeing this quintessentially Russian way of war again in eastern Ukraine. The initial weeks of incompetence and blunder so evident in the early spring of 2022 are long gone. There is now a massive and resolute force entrenched along a vast frontage, bolstered with immense support in materiel and modern weaponry.

The critical first step in ending this war, and alleviating the inconceivable human suffering it has wreaked, lies in our honest acknowledgement that Ukraine and its Western backers are losing terribly.

Indeed, as will be explored in the next essay of this series, even the neoconservative ultra-hawks who have willed this war on from the very start are now admitting that a Ukrainian – and thus Western – defeat is well within view. The true extent and meaning of that defeat will be felt not just in Kiev, but in the great capitals of the West.

You can read more of the writer’s work on his substack. 

October 9, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

War as an “Investment”

The Bizarre Business-Speak of Mass Killing

By Bill Astore | Bracing Views | October 3, 2023

Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great “investment” for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don’t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives new meaning to the expression “making a killing” on the “market.”

To Gordon Gekko’s infamous “greed is good” speech we must now add “war is good.” That war is “right.” That it “works”—at least for America, allegedly.

War as an “investment” truly symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of conventional discourse in the U.S. political mainstream. Instead of war being a calamity, a catastrophe, a realm of death and destruction, dare I say even a mortal sin of grievous evil, we’re told that instead it’s an investment that’s paying dividends, especially in that growth stock known as Ukraine.

We can’t let MAGA Republicans stop the Ukraine “investment,” can we? Not when it’s paying such great dividends

Even body counts and truck counts from the Vietnam War era are being brought back to show what a great “investment” the Ukraine War has been for the U.S. In her latest, Caitlin Johnstone cites war-lover Max Boot for his advocacy of the Russia-Ukraine War as a continuing investment opportunity for the U.S., including the use of body and truck counts as a measure of progress:

“Russia has lost an estimated 120,000 soldiers and 170,000 to 180,000 have been injured,” [Max] Boot writes [in a Washington Post op-ed]. “Russia has also lost an estimated 2,329 tanks, 2,817 infantry fighting vehicles, 2,868 trucks and jeeps, 354 armored personnel carriers, 538 self-propelled artillery vehicles, 310 towed artillery pieces, 92 fixed-wing aircraft and 106 helicopters.”

“The Russian armed forces have been devastated, thereby reducing the risk to front-line NATO states such as Poland and the Baltic republics that the United States is treaty-bound to protect,” Boot continues. “And all of that has been accomplished without having to put a single U.S. soldier at risk on the front lines.”

“That’s an incredible investment,” gloats Boot.

At no time in his masturbatory gushing about how many Russians this war has helped kill does Boot make any mention of the immense toll this deliberately provoked and completely unnecessary war has taken on Ukrainian lives. Their deaths and dismemberments and displacement are the largest price being paid into this “investment” by far, but Boot doesn’t deem them worthy of even a footnote.

We’ve been seeing this “investment” line being promoted with increasing frequency by US empire managers and their apologists. In an article published in the Connecticut Post last month, Senator Richard Blumenthal assured Americans that “we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment.” A few days prior to that Senator Mitt Romney had described the proxy war as “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done,” because “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money… a weakened Russia is a good thing.” In December Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that funding the proxy war is “a direct investment in reducing Vladimir Putin’s future capabilities to menace America, threaten our allies and contest our core interests.” Last November the imperial war machine-funded think tank Center for European Policy Analysis published a report arguing that “US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment.”

Imagine the vacuity, the bankruptcy, the venality, the sinfulness of writing about war and killing as “an absolutely incredible investment.” And what is our ROI, our return on investment? A lot of dead and wounded Russians and Ukrainians, a devastated and poisoned landscape, millions of war refugees, and an increasing likelihood of a wider war that could possibly go nuclear. ROI, indeed.

War is many things, but it is not an “investment.” People who talk and write like this have no moral center. They are soulless. They are automatons of war.

October 8, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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