If the Ukraine conflict continues on its current trajectory, it will end in a total disaster for humanity

Dmitry Trenin is a research professor at the Higher School of Economics and a lead research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He is also a member of the Russian International Affairs Council.

Professor Sergey Karaganov’s “Tough-but-necessary decision” article – which claims that by using its nuclear weapons, Russia could save humanity from a global catastrophe – has provoked plenty of reaction both at home and abroad. Partly because of the author’s status – he has been an advisor to both President Boris Yeltsin and President Vladimir Putin – and also due to the belief that his opinion may possibly be shared by some people in positions of power.

Dmitry Trenin, an extremely respected Russian expert who served in the Soviet military gives his response.

***

Professor Sergey Karaganov’s recent article brought into public focus the thorny issue of the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict. Many reactions to the piece boil down to the well-known reasoning that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and thus it cannot be fought.

Against this background, President Vladimir Putin, responding to a question at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, said that nuclear weapons are a deterrent and the conditions for their use is defined in a published doctrine. He explained that the theoretical possibility of using these weapons exists, but there is no need to use them now.

In principle, nuclear weapons have been “on the table” for Russia from the very beginning of the Ukrainian conflict precisely as a means of deterring the US and its allies from becoming directly involved. Nevertheless, repeated public reminders from Putin and other officials about Russia’s nuclear status have so far not prevented a growing escalation of NATO’s participation. As a result, it has become clear that nuclear deterrence, on which many in Moscow have relied as a credible means of securing the country’s vital interests, has proven to be a much more limited tool than they expected.

In fact, the US has now set itself the task – unthinkable during the Cold War – of trying to defeat another nuclear superpower in a strategically important region, without resorting to atomic weapons, but instead by arming and controlling a third country. The Americans are proceeding cautiously, testing Moscow’s responses and consistently pushing the boundaries of what is possible in terms of arms supplied to Kiev, as well as the choice of targets for them. From starting with anti-tank ‘Javelins,’ to eventually cajoling allies to send actual tanks, the US is now apparently pondering transferring F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles.

It is likely that this US strategy is based on the belief that the Russian leadership would not dare use nuclear weapons in the current conflict, and that its references to the nuclear arsenal at its disposal are nothing more than a bluff. The Americans have even been calm – at least outwardly about the deployment of Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus. Such “fearlessness” is a direct result of the geopolitical changes of the last three decades and the change of generations in power in the US and the West in general.

The fear of the atomic bomb, present in the second half of the twentieth century, has disappeared. Nuclear weapons have been taken out of the equation. The practical conclusion is clear: there is no need to be afraid of such a Russian response.

This is an extremely dangerous misconception. The trajectory of the Ukrainian war points to an escalation of the conflict both horizontally (by expanding the theater of military action) and vertically (by increasing the power of the weapons used and the intensity of their use). It must be soberly acknowledged that this momentum is heading towards a direct armed confrontation between Russia and NATO. If the accumulated inertia is not stopped, such a clash will take place, and in this case the war, having spread to Western Europe, will almost inevitably become nuclear. And after some time, a nuclear war in Europe will most likely lead to an exchange of blows between Russia and the US.

The Americans and their allies are truly playing Russian roulette. Yes, so far the Russian response to the bombing of Nord Stream, the drone attack on the strategic Engels airbase, the entry of Western-armed saboteurs into the Belgorod region and many other actions by the Washington-backed and controlled side has been relatively restrained.

As Putin recently made clear, there are good reasons for this restraint. Russia, the president said, is capable of destroying any building in Kiev, but will not stoop to the methods of terror used by the enemy. But Putin added that Russia was considering various options for destroying Western warplanes if they are based in NATO countries and directly take part in the war in Ukraine.

It could well be that the calculation just described would ultimately be correct. But it is unlikely.

Yes, a US nuclear strike on Russia would probably not follow immediately. It is unlikely that the Americans would sacrifice Boston for Poznan, just as they were not going to sacrifice Chicago for Hamburg during the Cold War. But there will probably be some sort of response from Washington. Perhaps of the non-atomic type, which, without speculating too wildly, could be sensitive and painful for us. It is likely that with it, Washington would try to pursue a goal similar to ours: paralyzing the Russian leadership’s will to continue the war and creating panic in our society.

Moscow’s leadership is unlikely to capitulate after such a blow, since, at this stage, Russia’s very existence would be at stake. It is more likely that a retaliatory strike would follow, and this time, one can assume, against the main adversary rather than its satellites.

Let us pause before this point of no return and summarize our analysis tentatively.

Should the nuclear bullet be demonstrably inserted into the cylinder of the revolver that the US leadership is recklessly playing with today? To paraphrase a late American statesman: Why do we need nuclear weapons if we refuse to use them in the face of an existential threat?

On the other hand, there is no need to scare others with words. Instead, we have to prepare practically for any possible turn of events by carefully considering the options and their consequences.

The war in Ukraine has become protracted. As far as we can tell from the actions of the Russian leadership, it expects to achieve strategic success by relying on Russian resources, which are many times greater than those in Ukraine. It also relies on the fact that Moscow has much more at stake in this war than the West. This calculation is probably correct, but it should be taken into account that the opponent assesses Russia’s chances differently than we do and may take steps which could lead to a direct armed clash between Russia and the US/NATO.

We must be prepared for such a development. To avoid a general catastrophe, it is necessary to put fear of armageddon back into politics and the public consciousness.

In the nuclear age, it is the only guarantee of preserving humanity.

This post was originally published by Russia in Global Affairs

Strengthening the armed forces is one of Russia’s top priorities, President Vladimir Putin told a meeting with military academy graduates in Moscow on Wednesday. The nation’s military will evolve on the basis of the “priceless experience” provided by the ongoing military operation in Ukraine, as well as the modern challenges Russia is facing, he added.

Russia’s nuclear triad will continue to be a focus, Putin confirmed, adding that it remains “a key guarantee of Russia’s military security and global stability.”Around half of Russia’s strategic land-based missile units have already been equipped with state-of-the-art Yars missiles – some of Russia’s most modern nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, Putin revealed.

The troops also continue to receive the hypersonic Avangard gliders, the president said. Such systems are fitted on silo-based ICBMs. The military will also be further supplied with hypersonic anti-ship Zircon missiles, to be used by the Navy, as well as air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. New Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles are also about to enter combat duty, Putin added.

The modernization will not be limited to nuclear weapons only, the president explained. Heavy armor, air defense systems, and the production of drones will all be upgraded, he said. “We have yet to do much for a quality upgrade of all parts of our Armed Forces,” Putin said, adding that Russia “is delivering on those plans to the fullest.”

The Russian defense industries in particular are expected to “boost mass production” of drones and “robotized strike systems” that have “demonstrated good results in combat,” the president said. According to Putin, every Russian military unit down to a platoon should be equipped with such systems.

His words came a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow is potentially ready for a conflict with NATO if the military bloc decides to attack Russia. “Well, let them fight, we are ready for this,” he said.

Putin has described the conflict in Ukraine as a hybrid war between Russia and “the entire Western military machine.”

The statements came amid the continued Ukrainian offensive, which was launched earlier in June. The operation had been touted by Ukrainian and Western officials for several months but has so far failed to yield any major results. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev’s troops have suffered heavy casualties in their attacks on Russian positions. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg also described the Russian defense as “well prepared.”

via RT

Map by the American military analysts of the defensive lines of the Russian army.

AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) took 4 villages and can take 2 more villages this night. At the cost of huge losses.

Apparently, the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to break through the first line of Russian defense, they entered Neskuchnoye, then Blagodatnoye, then Makarovka. The troops of the Russian army retreated to the second line of defense. There are three lines of defense in total.

Zelensky is said to want and promised Biden to take Melitopol in time for the NATO summit in Vilnius in early July. In this case, Biden promised Zelensky positive decisions for Zelensky not only from the United States, but from the entire NATO.
By order of Zelensky, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now literally filling up the positions of the Russian army with the corpses of Ukrainian soldiers. The generals of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, all with US and British passports, are fighting absolutely ruthlessly against the soldiers of the Ukrainian army.

The AFU attack style is essentially a war crime against the people of Ukraine.

Protracted battles are beneficial for Russia, so that the Armed Forces of Ukraine attack for several weeks and achieve nothing except a dozen villages while undermining their strength. Then the offensive of the Russian army can begin. But now the Russian must prevent the Armed Forces of Ukraine from breaking through the defense lines.

Starting from June 5, Zelensky burns from a thousand to two thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine every day. These are Russian people, they are turned into zombies, they are fighting for their American masters.

The wounded of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not taken from the battlefield. And the wounded of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are screaming there, in the fields, lying and screaming and dying, on the orders of Zelensky.

And when they lie wounded and screaming in pain, they turn from zombies back into ordinary Russian people.

The front line is stable. The Ukrainians are being repulsed. The assault wave tactics used by the AFU are noteworthy, including:

• artillery preparation,

• advance of multiple armored groups (7-8 vehicles plus infantry),

• attempts to approach Russian positions and clear trenches to exploitation, to prepare ground for approach of main forces which are meant to advance deep into Russian defenses

In practice, Russian artillery destroys enemy armored objects as soon as they fall within range. If the assault group manages to reach Russian strongholds, the uncompromising Russian infantry enters the battle. Otherwise, the remaining intact armor of the Ukrainians withdraws, replenishes ammunition, refuels and returns into battle.

These assault waves last from thirty minutes to several hours. The offensive has been ongoing for six days, and the front line is stable.

The Ukrainians advance in columns and repetitively along the same routes, because in addition to ruthless Russian artillery and aviation strikes, all approaches are heavily protected by minefields, which the Ukrainians are rightly afraid of.

Also noteworthy is the absolute disregard of Ukrainian commanders for human losses in their assault detachments.

The Russian defense, with its complete system of fires and kill zones built by Russian commanders, does not give the enemy a chance.

Add to that the patience of the Russian soldier. The ability to endure and stand at their positions to the end. He who does not fear for his own life, takes that of others.

#Source (Russian)

by Brad Dress via The Hill

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin once again amplified his public rift with Russian leadership this week, saying the war in Ukraine had backfired and the Kremlin risked facing a revolution.

In an interview that lasted more than an hour with a prominent pro-Kremlin blogger, Prigozhin offered an astounding — and perhaps somewhat honest — assessment of the war in Ukraine.

Prigozhin estimated heavy losses for his private military company in taking the city of Bakhmut this month, considered more of a symbolic than strategic victory. He also said Russia’s goal to demilitarize Ukraine had completely backfired and suggested Russia should “change the top leadership.”

“In the beginning of the special military operation, let’s say they had 500 tanks. Now they have 5,000 tanks,” he said. “It turned out to be the opposite. We militarized it to the nth degree.”

The private military head also praised the Ukrainian army as one of the “strongest” in the world and suggested Kyiv could retake territory across eastern Ukraine and possibly even the Crimean Peninsula in the upcoming counteroffensive. He argued the invasion, first ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin about 15 months ago to “denazify” Ukraine, has so far failed to produce meaningful results.

“Nothing is working out for us,” Prigozhin said. “The denazification of Ukraine we were talking about has turned Ukraine into a nation that is known everywhere all over the world.”

Prigozhin has repeatedly sounded off against the generals leading the war in recent months and has paid no apparent political price for his frequent criticisms.

But the pro-Russian blogger, Konstantin Dolgov, was fired the day after the interview with Prigozhin, according to Radio Free Europe.

Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Prigozhin’s wider goal is not to make Russia look bad but to criticize the conduct of the war through what the Wagner chief believes is a “clearer description of what’s going on.”

“He believes that a greater effort ought to be put into prosecuting this war,” Graham said. “If anything, he would like to be more aggressive.”

Graham compared Prigozhin to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has also deployed fighters in Ukraine and has been sometimes critical of how the war has been carried out.

Both Kadyrov and Prigozhin are unlikely to face much consequences for public comments given their positions overseeing military units — so long as they contain their criticisms and don’t attack Putin or the war itself, according to analysts.

Wagner Group, which has fought for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine since October, paid a heavy price for taking the city and delivering Russia its first significant victory since the summer.

In the months-long battle, Prigozhin says he lost around 20,000 troops, about half of whom were his employees and half were convicts recruited from prisons. Many of the prisoner soldiers were thrown at Ukrainian lines to make incremental advances.

Prigozhin became known for fiery rants during the battle for Bakhmut, many of them ripping into Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the commander overseeing the war in Ukraine, for not providing enough ammunition, and for cowardice among conventional Russian troops.

The Wagner chief was the first to announce victory in Bakhmut last weekend, which was followed by a quick statement from Russia’s Ministry of Defense and then Putin himself, who named the mercenary company along with his army for their role in taking the city.

Prigozhin appears to have grown much bolder since taking Bakhmut. In the interview, Prigozhin called his army the toughest in the world, putting himself above the Russian military, which he refers to as the second-strongest.

Later in the interview, he called out Shoigu by name and other Russian elites, accusing them this time of protecting their children from war and having “fat, carefree lives” while others are suffering.

George Beebe, the director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Prigozhin has lofty political ambitions in Russia and is setting himself up as a populist leader.

“I think his goal is to portray himself as a contrast and alternative to what he’s portraying as corrupt Russian military leadership,” Beebe said. “They’re exploiting Russia’s tax dollars for their own benefit and for the benefit of their children.”

“Wagner, on the other hand, we’re real men. We’re out there fighting, we’re dying, we’re the ones that are spending blood for the sake of the motherland,” he continued, assessing Prigozhin’s thinking. “I think that’s what his broader message is about.”

The remarks from Prigozhin this week came as pro-Ukrainian militia groups marched into Belgorod, a region of Russia bordering Ukraine.

Russia’s military battled the resistance groups, which described themselves as Russian citizens seeking to overthrow the Kremlin, for two days in what became an unsettling incursion into Russian territory.

On Telegram, Prigozhin posted statements criticizing Russia’s Ministry of Defense for failing to secure the borders.

Prigozhin said in the interview that Russia might face another revolution similar to 1917, when the Bolsheviks overthrew the monarchy and introduced communism, because of corruption during a time of war.

“The only thing this dichotomy can lead to is a revolution,” he said. “In the beginning, the soldiers will rise up and after that, their relatives will.”

Michał Krupa @MGKrupa – NATO: We will send F-16’s to Ukraine!
Russia: Hold my beer

> In late October a Ukrainian Sukhoi-27 Flanker, Soviet-era fighter, was shot down by a long-range air-to-air missile (LRAAM) – the R-37M. This is not the first Ukrainian aircraft to be shot down since Russia’s invasion commenced in February, but it is nevertheless a significant feat for the Russian Air Force because the R-37M took down the Ukrainian Sukhoi-27 from a range of 217km (about 140 miles). This would make the kill the longest on record. The R-37M is a hypersonic long-range air-to-air missile (LRAAM) reportedly capable of reaching Mach 6 and striking targets up to 400km (250 miles) away.

The R-37M has become virtually unmatched, with few potential rivals.Furthermore, it is reported that the R-37M was fired from Russia’s fifth-generation fighter the Sukhoi-57 Felon rather than the Mikoyan MiG-31 Foxhound, Russia’s primary interceptor. The possibility of a fifth-generation Felon executing a target from such a long range is not at all impossible; the Sukhoi-57 has a sophisticated actively electronic scanned arrays (AESA) radar system comprising of the solid state AN/APG-77 – with a range of at least 200km (125 miles); and the N036 Byelka radar which boasts a maximum range just under 400km (250 miles). <

“Meat grinder”: the British Royal Joint Defense Research Institute (RUSI) assesses the prospects for the Ukrainian army so frighteningly frankly. Defense Department analysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds in their report “Russian tactics in the second year of the invasion of Ukraine” do not follow the rules of tolerance when talking about the crisis of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and NATO.

Exclusively for Lomovka

The study indicates that the Russian army is “a structure that has become better able to cope with operational problems over time, as well as learned to predict new threats.” According to RUSI experts, the Russian armed forces pose a serious problem for the Armed Forces – according to various estimates, Ukrainian losses amounted to 300-500 thousand soldiers. They lose hundreds of soldiers and mercenaries a day, and most of the enemy’s losses occur in prolonged positional clashes.

This paradox is true, because the defenders always have fewer combat losses than the attackers. One to two or even one to three, but the APU violates this rule – and it’s not that the Ukrainians on the front line are afraid or do not know how to fight, and even more so not in the shortage of weapons (NATO supplies really turned Ukrainian army into the most armed army in Europe). The bottom line is that Russian troops quickly learn from their mistakes, changing and improving tactics, adapting to any military situations.

The British report that the Russian electronic warfare system (EW) remains powerful, with at least one large system distributed for about every 10 km of the front.

“These systems are largely focused on defeating unmanned aerial vehicles. Ukrainian drone losses remain around 10,000 per month. The Russian electronic warfare system also appears to be seeking real-time interception and decryption of Ukraine’s 256 – bit encrypted Motorola tactical communications systems, which are widely used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the experts said.

It is indicated that Russian air defense systems are directly connected to powerful radar stations. In July 2022, the Russian military moved the main headquarters out of range of GMLRS and placed them in fortified structures. They also connected their headquarters to the Ukrainian telecommunications cable network in the occupied territories, which significantly reduced the possibility of radio interception and its visibility.

FAB-500

Experts from London are making a fog about the tactics of military aviation over the left bank of the Dnieper (according to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Russian Armed Forces have destroyed 480 aircraft and helicopters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine since February 24, and there are no working airfields for the Ukrainians either) and only report that the Russian Aerospace Forces are launching missile strikes on Ukrainian positions from a distance of approximately 70 km from the target.

“The Ukrainian military notes that Russia has large stocks of FAB-500s and is systematically upgrading them into gliding projectiles. Experts believe that the Russian Aerospace Forces “do not have the capabilities to penetrate Ukrainian air defenses,” but point to Russia’s advantages in missiles, including MLRS, and attack UAVs in links of several unmanned aerial vehicles.

“Russian artillery has also improved its ability to fire from multiple positions, as well as quickly change positions, reducing vulnerability to counter-battery fire,” analysts say. There was a shift from 152-mm howitzers to more use of 120-mm mortars. It is believed that the key system for coordinating the actions of fighters and small groups, apparently, is the complex of intelligence, control and communications “Strelets-M”.

Separately in the study are the engineering troops “which have proved that they are one of the most powerful branches of the armed forces”. Russian engineers are erecting complex obstacles and field fortifications all along the front – concrete-reinforced trenches and command bunkers, wire entanglements, hedgehogs, anti-tank ditches, and complex minefields.

The review shows the successful transformation of the Russian army to meet specific combat conditions. There is a structure that gets better at managing over time and that struggles to anticipate new threats. The Russian armed forces are a serious problem for the Ukrainian military, however, if Ukraine can break the static Russian defense and go on a rapid offensive, the Russians may have problems coordinating combat interactions, experts conclude.

by Gilbert Doctorow

Our language is in constant evolution. Partly this is bottom up, from the inventiveness of creative personalities or writers for commercial advertising. Partly it is top down, from the powers that be as they seek to manipulate and control the thought processes of the broad public.

My brief essay today addresses the latter phenomenon and the introduction of the word “disinformation” into common parlance. There is a charming freshness to it, unlike the stale and repugnant word “propaganda.”

The word “disinformation” has a specific context in time and intent: it is used by the powers that be and by the mainstream media they control to denigrate, marginalize and suppress sources of military, political, economic and other information that might contradict the official government narrative and so dilute the control exercised by those in power over the general population. It is to remove “disinformation” from public life that the United States and EU member states ban RT and other Russian media outlets from the internet, from satellite and cable television channels. The censorship here in Europe varies from country to country and is probably most drastic in France and Germany. One would think that these European states are truly at war with Russia, not just giving a helping hand to Kiev.

In reality, it is these censorious states and the mass media that carry their messages with stenographic precision into print and electronic dissemination who are the ones that day after day feed disinformation to the public. It is cynically composed and consists of a toxic blend of ‘spin,’ by which is meant misleading interpretation of events, and outright lies.

The many months long battle for the provincial Donbas city of Bakhmut, or Artyomovsk as it is known in Russia, has been described variously from on high in Washington, London and Berlin. When the likely outcome was unclear, the defense of Bakhmut was called heroic and demonstrative of the brave fighting spirit of the Ukrainians.

Casualty figures issued by Kiev and then trumpeted from Washington suggested that the Russians were stupidly throwing away the lives of their fighting men by using WWI style human waves of attackers who were decimated by the defenders. Russian lives are cheap was the message. The fact that Russian artillery on site outnumbered and outperformed Ukrainian artillery by a factor of five or seven to one was freely admitted by the Western propagandists as they pleaded for increased supplies to Kiev. They, nonetheless, issued casualty reports for the Russians that inverted the force correlation. It was assumed, obviously with reason, that the public was too lazy or too uninterested to do the arithmetic.

At one moment, the spin doctors in Washington, London and Berlin said that Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut made sense because it was pinning down Russian forces and giving time to the Ukrainians to train and position their men for the heralded “counter offensive” during which they would overrun Russian positions at chosen points in the 600 mile line of combat and drive a wedge through to the Sea of Azov, opening the way for recapture of Crimea. Those were grand words and ambitions to justify continued and ever rising Western military assistance to Kiev.

At another point, the spin doctors said it would be better if Ukraine stopped losing men in Bakhmut and launched instead that much vaunted counter-offensive. Now we were told that Bakhmut is just a Russian fantasy, that it has no strategic value.

In the past couple of weeks, the Russian command has issued daily reports on the progressive capture by Russian forces of Bakhmut, square kilometer after square kilometer. We were told they controlled 75%, then 80% and most recently more than 90% of the city proper while artillery bombardment of the remaining blocks of high rise residential buildings that were being used by Ukrainian defenders for their sniper attacks and intelligence reports on Russian troop movements pulverized everything in their path.

At this point, the attention of Western media defending truth against Russian disinformation was directed at the Ukrainian “successes” in recapturing settlements on the flanks of Bakhmut. Just three days ago The New York Times was telling its readers that these “breakthroughs” by the Ukrainians put in jeopardy the Russian forces holding the city proper: they might be surrounded and compelled to surrender or die. The possibility that the offensives on the flanks were only intended to facilitate withdrawal of remaining Ukrainian soldiers from Bakhmut and were tolerated by the Russians to avoid bloody fights to the death – that possibility crossed no one’s mind at the NYT, it seems.

Midday yesterday, 20 May, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group which did most of the fighting for Bakhmut on the ground, claimed total victory. In the evening, President Vladimir Putin announced to the Russian public that Bakhmut was taken. Joyous messages of congratulations filled the internet message services in Russia as the broad public celebrated a victory as iconic as the Battle for Stalingrad.

Meanwhile, the defenders of the Western public against Russian “disinformation” were hard at work, straining their brains to find what to say. This morning’s New York Timesstill speaks of the battle for Bakhmut as undecided, pointing yet again to the Ukrainian hold on the flanks.

Given their losses in men and materiel defending Bakhmut, the surrender of the city to the Russians will be a great blow to Ukrainian fighting morale when it is finally admitted. So will the fate of their Commander in Chief General Zaluzhny who, according to Russian sources, has been hospitalized for the past two weeks and remains in critical condition after falling victim to a Russian strike on a provincial command center which killed most of the high officers around him. If nothing else, this speaks to the amazing success of Russian military intelligence directing their firepower.

Meanwhile, Western media attention to Ukraine is conveniently redirected at the nonstop travels of President Zalensky who went from his European tour on to the Middle East, where he attended the meeting of the Arab League, and thence via French military jet to the G7 gathering in Hiroshima where he held talks with fellow heads of state and joined them for the obligatory group photos. All the talk was about when the U.S. will formally give its consent to the dispatch of F16s to Kiev. For the disseminators of Western disinformation this is a wonderful distraction from a war that clearly is going badly for Kiev and in particular a distraction from the counter offensive that looks less likely with each passing day of Russian military strikes on the command centers and weapons stores of the Ukrainian side.

The plume of radioactive smoke and ash that rose from the Khmelnitsky store of British depleted uranium artillery shells in Western Ukraine after a Russian missile strike, just like the extensive damage to the Patriot air defense installation near Kiev by a Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile tell us all what will be the fate of future Western arms deliveries to Ukraine. It is an interesting question how much longer the Ukrainian military or politicians will put up with their high flying, good life President while the country is well on its way to hell.

via Gilbert Doctorow

by Sergei Markov

The US’ plan as seen from Moscow:

1. It starts with a maximum offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

2. Followed by maximum international pressure on Russia as a result of the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to sign an agreement to freeze the war, and open so-called peace talks.

3. The signing of a truce. – That would be used during the US election campaign.

4. Meanwhile deliveries of powerful weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, strengthening their military potential.

5. The opening of a new stage of the war.

6. The goal is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. The West is aiming to take control of the Donbass and Crimea.

7. Exposing Russia’s refusal to accept West’s conditions as super-rigid.

8. Transferring the conflict to a new phase in order to finally subdue Russia.

9. Partition of Russia, its complete elimination as a large independent country.

This is the long-term planning of the war in Ukraine as envisioned by the US planners.