Daily losses of the Ukrainian army in Artyomovsk have increased tenfold over the past week: instead of dozen dead and wounded a day, the number of KIA and WIA has reached 100 or more.

There is data that since November 20, due to bad weather and problems with medical evacuation, the brigade artillery group and two mechanized battalions of the 30th Ukrainian Separate Mechanized Brigade defending positions near Kleshcheevka (9.5 km south of Artemivsk), as well as the OUN-UPA special purpose company—Immitis of the 71st AFU “Ranger” brigade, which the Wagner PMC is knocking out from the northern outskirts of the city—have sustained the largest losses.

Total personnel losses in these units are approaching 500. From the radio intercepts of the AFU it became known that the Wagner PMC troops maintain the pace of the offensive and continue to destroy the AFU units despite the muddy terrain and bad weather.

High losses of heavy armored vehicles in Artyomovsk have force the AFU to use ambulances as improvised armored personnel carriers, ammunition transport vehicles, and assault vehicles.

Conventional ambulances cannot reach the wounded, and their use in an active combat zone is very risky.

The MT-LB C specialized medical APCs and British AT105 Saxon armored vehicles are used by the AFU to transport mortars and shells, which has raised the problem of transporting the wounded to a critical level. The shortage of quick help has already led to multiple purulent-septic pathologies. AFU soldiers, without waiting for evacuation, are dying of painful shock and sepsis right in the trenches.

Wounded AFU soldiers are forced to wait hours for evacuation in flooded and muddy trenches. The time for qualified medical aid varies from several hours to a day, and the opportunities of the so-called golden hour, when the wounded can be given the most effective help, are not used.

As a result, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are facing massive blood poisoning and hundreds of cases of deadly inflammation in wounded soldiers, even with minor wounds.

The number of corpses increases every day, and local morgues can no longer cope with the workload.

Because of the influx of bodies, since November 25, dead Ukrainian soldiers have been sent 30 kilometers from Artyomovsk to morgues in the neighboring town of Konstantinovka.

In the coming weeks, the Ukrainian Armed Forces expect the situation with the wounded to worsen: heavy precipitation (wet snow and rain) and above-freezing temperatures are predicted in the Artyomovsk district until mid-December.

Instead of rescuing the wounded soldiers at the front, the Kievan regime is preoccupied with securing Western air defenses to protect the government quarter…

Source: @polk105

• U.S. and NATO Scramble to Arm Ukraine and Refill Their Own Arsenals – New York Times

Last summer in the Donbas region, the Ukrainians were firing 6,000 to 7,000 artillery rounds each day, a senior NATO official said. The Russians were firing 40,000 to 50,000 rounds per day. By comparison, the United States produces only 15,000 rounds each month.
…
The shortage in 155-mm artillery shells “is probably the big one that has the planners most concerned,” Mr. Cancian said.

“If you want to increase production capability of 155 shells,” he said, “it’s going to be probably four to five years before you start seeing them come out the other end.”

With respect, the idea that the western elites are somehow not “adults” or are living in a “reality Dysfunction,” while I certainly understand how someone can make that conclusion, is simply not true. The western elites are vicious and amoral but they are very very smart. Sure, their proxies often appear senile, but so what? Soros, Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, the heads of the Wall Street and London banks, etc., are very sharp.

You’ve cherry-picked the literal handful of senior leaders that are smart and know what they are doing. Let me add Kissinger on top of that, though he is essentially retired. All of these were self-made, intelligent men, who clawed their way to the top through ruthless will, lack of moral scruples, and deep, old-money connections.

But the vast majority of the West’s leaders, including the banksters, are of a different ilk. They are scions of billionaire parents (Sunak, Trudeau, Soros Jr., etc.) or of the masonic old guard of ’68; born to effortless privilege, and raised in total isolation from the plebs and their sordid problems; and recruited into the power circle by Klaus Schwab and his YGL cadre organization. Schwab wanted to raise a cadre of obedient stooges, and put them, via deep-state connections, in positions of power. So he selected his “leaders” by the criteria of being weak-willed, unprincipled, self-centered, and ignorant—because such people are easier to manipulate to whatever ends their “handlers” direct them.

And these are exactly the qualities the vast majority of Western “leaders” display now. So, Schwab has been spectacularly successful, right? Unfortunately, when a crisis comes, such people turn out to be utterly worthless, even to their disappointed handlers. The course of world events has deviated far from what they were instructed to expect, and these incompetents are totally at a loss; they have to be micromanaged, instructed at each new development what to do and what to say, and even so they step from blunder to failure. That’s why the West is falling apart so dismally.

*

It takes a soldier in war to lose his feelings in about 2 months. How long did it take the Russian populace to lose theirs, { without propaganda programs like the West has } and tell their government – enough is enough – take out these Ukie Nazis ? Less than a year, once the SMO started. And they have the only real reasons, in order to destroy Ukraine.

Then look at some of the Americans who want total war in order to protect some country they’ve never seen, and know nothing about. And then we have the Trolls.

*

Note – the Ukrainian Civil War is but a sideshow in what is now a Global War between NATOland and 87% of the world.

The critical variable of the Global War to watch is pace of de-dollarization

*

*

The Ukraine is a region of the Russian Empire meaning “borderlands”………towns like Lugansk and Donetsk were build by a Scotsman and a Welshman respectively when Catherine The Great was around and the region is known as “Novorossiya”.

Ukraine was encouraged as a puppet state by the German Occupiers in 1914-18 war just as it was 1941-44 – it was a German puppet state much like Warthegau.

As for the current setup – in 1991 Ukrainian SSR broke away from USSR and created the post of “President” but never bothered to agree national borders with its neighbours or register them at UN

Lenin created a coastline for Ukrainian SSR by allocating Industrial Workers in Novorossiya to the Peasants in the farmlands of Polish-landlord estates to create a Paradise of Workers & Peasants. – ie Hammer and Sickle.

Lenin was dead by 1924. Poland was created by Woodrow Wilson 1918 like much of Central Europe before USA disengaged and let Europe starve which is why Herbert Hoover ran relief programmes in Poland and Central Europe

Poland was used by London especially Churchill as a centre for spy activity against USSR and Boris Savinkov was based in Warsaw until Dzerzhinsky lured him back to USSR through “The Trust”

It is just the same old game………..

*

I have an alternative theory about this”war”. Perhaps Ukraine is being depopulated so that a new Kazaria can be created. They’ve never forgivin the Russians for taking it in the first place. For them it is a sweet deal, good farmland, no more baking desert, and no longer surrounded by millions of arabs. I think this is a plausible reason for this “war”. Plus the added benefit of taking the covid obscenity off the front pages this year. Its a win win game. Get your land back, thumb your nose at the Russians, and bleed the American treasury dry. It was probably already worked out in game theory, everything else is just noise to confuse everyone as to the real objective. What do you think? Possible?

And how do the tens of thousands of new Jewish arrivals emigrating out of Israel and into Ukraine play out and into Putin’s plans? Is this one big gift to Israeli’s Jews? I often wonder has this been the plan all along. And I wonder what the American 101st airborne is doing in Romania and so very close to the Ukraine areas where thousands of Israeli jews are arriving. I wish there was more news about this and if any of the above is really happening at all.

*

Maybe it is personal, because Ukrainians killed my great-grandfather after WWII was over, just put a bullet in his head because he was Polish, but I would be happy if Russian erased Ukraine from the map. To me it is not a Ukrainian war. It is international Jews against Russia. Just read about “heavenly Jerusalem ” preparation before war started. Jews wanted to move Israel to Ukrainian territory . They already built lots of housing for them. That is why “celebrity” Jewish actors go to support Zelensky who wants to “fight to the last Ukrainian” which would be ideal for Jews. They don’t want to deal with these savages who collaborated with Hitler in the extermination of Jews.

*

Let´s see … Ze[lenski] is becoming visibly unhinged (nose twitching, paranoid delusions);
Surovikin has already spoken of unconditional surrender (not a figure of speech);
“Western” “elites” are getting hysterical as We the People start bucking against
the nose-ring (blaming the “far right” won’t work forever).

Long I don’t know what, but mos def short Ze.

via Moon of Alabama

Yesterday the Pentagon announced another transfer of weapons to the Ukrainian military:

According to the Pentagon, the package includes:Additional munitions for NASMAS
150 heavy machine guns with thermal imagery sights to counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)
Additional ammunition for HIMARS
200 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds
10,000 120mm mortar rounds
High-speed Anti-radiation missiles (HARMs)
150 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs)
Over 100 light tactical vehicles
Over 20,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition
Over 200 generators
Spare parts for 105mm Howitzers and other equipment

The $400 million is being sent to Ukraine through the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which allows President Biden to send arms straight from US military stockpiles.

The Pentagon is clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Additional munitions for NASMAS

NASMAS is an air defense systems that uses re-purposed air to air missiles (active radar homing AIM-120 AMRAAM) in a ground to air mode.

Yesterday one of those missiles was used in Kiev but missed its target. It hit an apartment block and killed several people:

The missile that hit an apartment block in Kiev today was a US-made AIM-120C launched from one of the newly arrived NASMAS air defense systems, donated to Ukraine in the last months. Local people shared on social media photos of the wreckage of the missile. Even though Ukraine blamed Russia for the strike, it turns out the missile was not Russian but American and was fired by Ukrainian troops.The fragment shown in the photo has the word LIFT as the American AIM-120C. This is an anti-aircraft missile for the NASAMS systems which were recently donated to Ukraine. By analyzing the photos which Ukrainian citizens published themselves the missile which hit their residential building can be easily identified as American.

Heavy machine guns with thermal image sights against drones.

This is a really bad sign. I have tried to find recent photos of machine guns used in air defense mode. There were only antique ones plus this model picture.

bigger

Several decades ago we trained to shoot down helicopters and planes with the machine guns attached to the top of our battle tanks. Despite firing from a stable platform and spending lots of ammunition our hit rates were really lousy. That’s why no army I know of is still using this method. Most of the UAV’s used in Ukraine for reconnaissance are electrical. They are unlikely to show up in a thermal sight. The propeller driven Iranian drones, probably made in Russia, are hot and make a lot of noise. They can be targeted but are reasonably fast and one has to act equally fast to get them. The Lancet kamikaze drones used by the Russian military in Ukraine fly low and fast. A machine gun team will have little chances when such a drones flies towards it.

Those machine guns Ukraine will get, minus those to be sold on the black market, can not be effective as air defense. They will likely end up to be used in a ground mode to defend this or that frontline ditch. They are good for that until some artillery round or infantry fighting vehicle comes along and takes them out.

Additional ammunition for HIMARS

HIMARS is the wonder weapon that wasn’t. The reach of some 70 kilometers is reasonable but one also needs very good targeting data to put them to use. The Russians have learned from the early HIMARS successes and have become much better now with camouflaging their positions.

200 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds

Nice to have – but again only if you have reliable targeting data. What is shocking is that there is no other 155 mm ammunition in this delivery. What are those M-777 guns that still exist in Ukraine supposed to fire?

10,000 120mm mortar rounds

That’s not a lot either. Previously the U.S. had given Ukraine 20 120 mm mortar with 135,000 120mm mortar rounds. The 10,000 new rounds will likely be spend in less than a week.

High-speed Anti-radiation missiles (HARMs)

These are air to ground missiles used to target enemy radar. They have been jury rigged to fit on the few SU-27 fighter jets the Ukraine has received from some east European country. There have been reports that Russian air defenses usually hit these missiles before they reach their target.

Today the New York Times reported that one such missile, fired back in September, had hit an apartment building in Kramatorsk:

New York Times journalists were able to gather and identify distinct metal fragments left behind at the site of an earlier strike, in September in eastern Ukraine, providing a window into where the billions of dollars of United States’ military aid sent to Ukraine can sometimes land.“Three people got wounded, they say. No dead. It hit the apartment where no one lives, and in the next one, people got hurt,” said Olga Vasylivna, a resident who lived adjacent to where the missile hit.

The trucks Ukraine will get may be useful but will there be enough diesel to fuel them?

20,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition is again practically nothing. The typical combat load for one infantry soldier is 240 rounds. Machine gun teams carry some 6,000 rounds. The frontline in Ukraine is 1,000 kilometer long. When one does the math one finds that these 20,000,000 rounds are practically nothing.

There is currently a roaring black market for generators in Ukraine. Those 200 new ones will be very welcome. They will most likely end up in Lviv or Kiev.

Spare parts for 105mm Howitzers and other equipment

The story of the U.S. weapon support for Ukraine is one of diminishing quantity and quality. First the U.S. gave 143 M-777 155 mm systems to Ukraine. These proved to have a high breakage rate and were also easily targeted. Then the U.S. had run out of 155 mm ammunition it could give away. It next offered 36 105 mm howitzers and 180,000 105mm rounds. Same story. After that came the 120 mm mortar.

Artillery is usually fought against with counter artillery. When battle radar pics up a flying artillery round one can calculate where its has been fired from. Then a dedicated counter artillery battery, usually with longer range, will be tasked to fire at that position. In a good organized unit that takes less than one or two minutes.

The M-777 guns have a firing range of about 20 kilometers. That is somewhat equal to 152 mm guns the Russians are using. The 105 mm guns came next. Their range is about 11 kilometer. The 120 mm mortar can reach about 7 kilometer.

Aside from HIMARS Ukraine’s front artillery has become smaller with less reach than those systems used on the other side. That will make it easier to counter it. Ukraine also has an acute lack of ammunition for those few weapons that still exist. It has long lost the artillery war.

The war in Ukraine is waged on an industrial level. But the ‘west’ and its Ukrainian proxy are not prepared for industrial warfare. In a longer piece – It’s War, Josep, But Not As We Know It – Aurelian explains why that is the case:

First, much of the policy impetus on Ukraine comes from Anglo-Saxon countries, whose history of warfare, and thinking about warfare, is essentially expeditionary and limited.
…
The type of military operations that Europeans have actually conducted since 1945, and especially since 1989, have tended to follow this model.
…
The second factor is simply that in general the West’s wars have been limited liability ones, where there have been few casualties at home.
…
For the Russians, geography mandated a different set of criteria. Always a massive country with a relatively large population and long borders, the nation has suffered foreign military invasions repeatedly in its history. It is used to being obliged to fight on its own territory, and in World War II alone, suffered nearly thirty million dead, a large proportion of them civilians. Thus, national defence is literally a life and death issue, and thinking about, and planning for, war, takes place at a massively higher and more complex strategic level.
…
This Russian experience inevitably produces a way of looking at conflict which is radically different from western one, with the proviso that the West itself has had to painfully learn similar lessons during two World Wars, only to promptly forget them each time.
…
The Soviet and Russian militaries have a long tradition of studying the terrible past wars of their country, and there are a number obvious conclusions from any such analysis. One is the importance of sheer numbers, of personnel, of equipment and ammunition. In a long war, which the Russians, unlike the West, have always expected to fight, these things matter a great deal.

Up to 2012 there was a Ukrainian company near Kiev which still produced artillery rounds for Russia. I no longer find the link to that story but the numbers produced for Russia was some 2,000,000 million per year. There is no way the ‘west’ can match the Russian stockpiles.

Russia expert Gordon M. Hahn looks at the upcoming Russian Winter Offensive. Only with a ceasefire can Ukraine and its sponsors avert the upcoming catastrophe. This for three reasons:

First, the Russian hammer is about to fall on Ukraine. The gloves are coming off; electric energy stations, bridges, and even ‘decision centers’ such as central Kiev’s government buildings are being targeted. … What will the sociopolitical situation be like when these critical infrastructures are in complete collapse and temperatures are 20 degrees colder? Russia will be moving closer to the strategy of ‘shock and awe’, fully destroying all infrastructure – military or otherwise – as the US did in Serbia and Iraq and will likely take less care now to avoid civilian casualties.After the infrastructures are completely destroyed or incapacitated, Russia’s reinforcements of 380,000 regular and newly mobilized troops will have been fully added into Russia’s forces across southeastern Ukraine. … A winter offensive by some half a million troops will make substantial gains on those three fronts and multiply Ukrainian losses in personnel and materiel`, which are already high. This could lead easily to a collapse of Ukrainian forces on one or more front. On the backs of such a success Russian President Putin might also make another attempt to threaten Kiev …

Second, the West is suffering from Ukraine fatigue. NATO countries’ arms supplies have been depleted beyond what is tolerable, and social cohesion is collapsing in the face of double-digit inflation and economic recession. All this makes Russia the winner on the strategic level and is forcing Washington and Brussels to seek at least a breathing spell by way of a ceasefire.
…
Third, Ukraine’s greatest political asset – Zelenskiy himself – just got devalued, putting at even greater risk Ukraine’s political stability. … For now, in order to keep the West on board, Zelenskiy is rumored to be pushing Ukrainian armed forces commander Viktor Zalyuzhniy to start a last pre-winter offensive in northern Donetsk (Svatovo and Severodonetsk) or Zaporozhe in order to put a stop to the West’s ceasefire murmurs and reboost support. At the same time there is talk of continuing Zelenskiy-Zalyuzhniy tensions over the latter’s good press and star status in the West. … On the background of the deteriorating battlefield and international strategic situation, such civil-military tensions are fraught with the potential for a coup. …
…
We may be reaching the watershed moment in the Ukrainian war. No electricity, no army, no society.
…
All of the above and the approaching presidential elections scheduled in Moscow, Kiev and Washington the year after next make this winter pivotal for all the war’s main parties.

Reading the two pieces quoted above I come to the conclusion war has been lost – by Ukraine as well as by its supporters.

NATO, already deeply involved, could still want to change that by fully joining the war. But I do not think that the U.S. military, nor its European NATO allies, will have the stomach for that.