via Gpovanman

Sergei Surovikin may be the new kid on the block in Russia’s Ukrainian operation, yet the move made by both himself and Shoigu today was a very mature decision indeed.

Preamble.

Much has been said over previous days regarding the setbacks suffered by Russian forces in the Kherson region, and today Sergei Shoigu has ordered Russian forces to withdraw from the city and return to the eastern bank of the Dnieper river. Whilst an army of armchair warriors are throwing their hands in the air, rather than speaking of doom and gloom, the current situation needs to be regarded both objectively as well as being part of a much larger overall plan both in the East and the West. This article will examine what has happened, why it has happened and where it all may lead.

A Change of Chief.

In October of this year, General Surovikin became the overall commander of Russian operations in the Ukraine. With that, for the first time since hostilities began, the Kremlin had a commander dedicated to this one operation, yet with that, there were problems.

The first was that although he was the overall commander, he was inheriting a situation of others’ making, and the first few months of the conflict had seen some big mistakes on the part of high-ranking officers in Moscow. Other issues were that with the conflict already being in full-swing and attempting to achieve certain objectives, he had to carry them through even when he believed that this may have not been the wisest plan.

He has now been in the job long enough to begin to steer affairs in a direction that he sees more appropriate, and it is beyond any doubt that it was he who decided to first order an evacuation of the population and then the withdrawal of Russian forces from Kherson and to the other side of the river.

The Situation that Was.

Russian forces had spent a lot of time and blood securing the city of Kherson as well as the western bank of the Dnieper river in this region. With Russia’s advances having come westwards, this meant that the river became a barrier to resupply due to bridges having been destroyed by retreating Ukrainians as well as constant bloody assaults from Kiev’s forces. Another danger was the attacks that Ukrainian forces have been making on dams and hydroelectric installations further up the river. Should any of these be breached, this could flood the area causing immeasurable casualties.

Carnage for Kiev.

As we have seen on countless occasions over the last eight months, the manner in which the Ukrainian High Command often conducts operations beggars belief. Never since the stupidity of the Somme have men been herded into battle with no consideration whatsoever of their chances of returning. Attack after attack in the Kherson region has been repulsed by the Russians, the toll of deaths and casualties becoming critical for the Ukrainian government. That said, in every attack, Moscow’s men have also been suffering, and in stark contrast to the way in which Kiev throws lives away, Russia is simply not willing to hemorrhage in order that others bleed more. Moreover, a stagnant frontline with constant attacks is never good for the morale of any fighting unit, the soldiers stationed there being better employed elsewhere.

A Giveaway of Guns.

Another miscalculation on the part of Moscow was the support that the West would give to the Ukraine. We all expected rational support to be given, yet not only have Western states cleared out their arsenals for Kiev, they are putting certain weapons manufacturing programs into overdrive in order to keep their proxy war going.

With the West throwing unlimited arms at Kiev whilst Zelenskiy throws the lives of Ukrainian soldiers away, Russia would also be throwing men and munitions against an opponent in a very dangerous scenario.

The Russian Plan.

The first thing that has to be remembered is that the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine was not planned in a heartbeat the day before it started, but was years in the making; planners obviously wish to make specific gains in a certain manner, but always as part of a larger strategy. Not only that, certain constraints are in place which mean that Blitzkrieg-type conflicts with the horrendous civilian casualties that they cause cannot be waged. If the territories acquired by the Russian Federation are not to be a depopulated wasteland, caution is most certainly the better part of valor and this to a great degree explains why Moscow’s previous advances were as slow as they were. Not only that, in the face of both the risk of Ukrainian attacks as well as of a possible flood, time will show us that the decision to evacuate the population of the city was a very wise move indeed.

With Moscow now moving its positions to the other side of the Dnieper, not only does the river now offer defensive help rather than a logistical handicap, the local geography means the area occupied by Russian forces is less susceptible to the ravages of water should the dams be attacked.

To date, we have looked only at Kherson yet there are also other areas of concern for Russia, some in which battles are already being fought, and others where they may soon start.

U-Turns, Wrong Turns and Turning the Course of the War.

As mentioned, since February Russian forces have suffered setbacks, yet Moscow is not just operating on one roadmap. Should the primary plan hit difficulties, contingencies are in place to ensure that losses are reduced in order to increase advantages later. In the case of the regrouping near Kherson, the high command has decided to prevent lower casualties on the Russian side rather than imposing far greater ones on its opponents. Western media will doubtlessly go into raptures over Moscow’s setback, yet it is not they who are paying in blood whilst never reporting the true costs paid by the Ukrainians.

This in turn means that for now at least, many of the resources engaged in this region can be deployed elsewhere. With battles raging near Bakhmut and Avdeevka, there is no lack of places where they can be used, it better to win individual battles one by one rather than hold a stalemate across multiple fronts.

Losing a Battle can Win a War.

A huge regrouping such as this is the result of lives and equipment lost, yet had Surovikin continued to hold the lines, over time the toll would have been been even higher. Everything that is saved by a withdrawal today will be available tomorrow, materiel being recovered and casualties being avoided. What is also important is that for now at least, thousands upon thousands of Ukrainian troops are occupying an area from which it is much more difficult to launch the suicidal attacks seen of late.

Learning a Lesson.

As bitter a pill as Kherson is, by swallowing it, both the Kremlin and its forces will come away wiser for the experience. Rather than entering into a war to fight for Russians, this has turned into a proxy war, the US having pockets deeper than the Grand Canyon to pay for arms and knowing that Zelenskiy will fight whoever he is told to the last man. With that, we have to look at other aspects of the conflict.

Transportation Troubles.

With logistics as bad as they are in the Ukraine, should Kiev wish to move its assets elsewhere, this will prove a challenge in itself. This means that if the Kremlin is quick, the rapid redeployment of men and machines can score much-needed victories elsewhere.

Infrastructure Issues.

One of the prime objectives of Russia’s assault on the Ukraine’s infrastructure was to force Kiev’s hand into negotiations for a truce. Whilst this has not brought Kiev to its senses, it has been a great success from a Russian perspective, and more of the same would likely yield the same. A faraway war is brought into the houses of the capital every time a Geran visits the capital, and should their use become more widespread, this will bring the country to its knees.

Fresh Fields.

It has not gone unnoticed by many that both Moscow’s and Minsk’s forces have been massing in Belarus over recent months. Quite what is planned or when it will happen is still a closely guarded secret, yet with pressure taken off Moscow to the south, Ukrainian forces concentrating on areas that Russia will vacate and there only being around sixty miles from Kiev to the Belarusian border, perhaps the relief that a withdrawal from Kherson will give Russian forces may signal that the time is ripe for some operation in this area. If strikes on infrastructure cannot bring Kiev to the negotiating table, perhaps bringing the table closer to Kiev may yield results.

Summary.

At first glance, this is an absolute debacle, yet when viewing this objectively, a lost battle is part of a war, and for all the blood being spat by some, it is not as disastrous a move as so many doomsday merchants would like us to believe.

A local conflict was launched which has in time turned into a war which the West cannot afford to ultimately lose. To that end, countries have quite literally bankrupted themselves to support the Ukrainian cause, this being a factor which Moscow did not foresee.

A new commander is in charge now, and if he is to make the current and future situations good, he has to dispense with some of the decisions that went before him.

History has on numerous occasions shown that one apparently ignominious step back can later prove to have been a vital step towards victory. With the conflict having changed so much since February, the world has also been changed by this conflict.

Today, those in the know understand what Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson means; those that do not know will only understand as this step back takes a new meaning in the weeks and months ahead.

via Sputnik

This is why the Kherson operation must be viewed not as a Russians defeat, but as a pyrrhic Ukrainian victory, that means that Ukraine may have achieved a political victory, but the military cost that they take was too high, unsustainable and ultimately will lead to the defeat of Ukraine.

by Fantine Gardinier via Sputnik News

Since 2018, the US has seen its primary strategic focus as preparing for so-called “great power competition” with Russia and China. It claims the two nations are spearheading an effort to overturn the US-run global order established at the end of the Cold War.

US Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the head of US Strategic Command, recently warned the US would soon face a protracted conflict with China unlike anything it’s faced before. Stratcom is responsible for handling the country’s nuclear weapons, as well as the suite of defensive and offensive information capabilities termed C4ISR.

“We have to do some rapid, fundamental change in the way we approach the defense of this nation,” Richard said at a Navy symposium last week.

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” he said. “The ‘big one’ is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested in a long time.”

Richard warned “the ship is slowly sinking” because China is fielding new capabilities faster than the United States, which will soon find itself outnumbered and outclassed on the battlefield.

“[I]t isn’t going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our horses are – we’re not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem,” Richard asserted.

Richard also criticized US stagnation, saying it had “lost the art” of delivering new systems quickly.

“The Air Force went from a request, almost written on a napkin … when they figured out in the late 1950s that the Soviet integrated air defense systems were getting to the point that the B-52 just wasn’t going to make it in, and we needed a thing called a ‘cruise missile,’” Richard recalled. “And so, they envisioned what a standoff weapon looks like.”

The US is already behind China in the key field of missiles, with China fielding a generation of ultra-long-range cruise missiles, a bevy of ballistic missile varieties, and several varieties of hypersonic weaponsfor which the US has no equal and no answer.

Making their debut in the general public for the first time, DF-17 hypersonic missiles join China’s National Day parade held in Beijing on October 1, 2019 © Fan Lingzhi; Global Times

Beijing has also developed a radar capable of detecting stealth aircraft and begun equipping its newest warships with it, putting the US’ vaunted F-22 and F-35 fleets at risk.

However, the Pentagon is especially worried about what it fears was a fractional orbital bombardment system China tested last year, saying it is a part of China’s militarization of space. The US formed a separate Space Force in 2019, although its foundational doctrinal documents made clear that its goal was defending US space supremacy, not preventing the militarization of space.

Comparisons between Russia’s special operation in Ukraine and a presumed Chinese invasion of Taiwan have been made by American leaders since the operation was launched in February, despite Chinese protests otherwise. However, the US has been preparing for a conflict with China since at least late 2017, when the Trump administration began introducing a series of new strategic documents outlining a shift in US foreign policy.

The latest National Defense Strategy, published by the Pentagon last month, continues planning for what it calls “great power competition” with Russia and China, specifying that it sees Russia as an “acute threat” and China as the long-term competitor. In it, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin refers to Beijing as Washington’s “most consequential strategic competitor for the coming decades.”

by J. Kim via skwealthacademy substack

Every major modern war, as US Brigadier General Smedley Butler once infamously declared, is a banker war. The NATO Russian war being fought in Ukraine is no different. Non-EU nations that heavily rely on Russian gas, like Norway and UK, will have to make choices in the near future of whether to align with the US MIB (Military Industrial Banking) complex to uphold USD hegemony in international currency markets or to break away from the US MIB complex for the first time in our lifetimes and join the Central America-Asia-Africa—Russia-South America (CAARS) economic alliance that is forming right now.

It may seem ridiculous right now that the UK and Norway would ever consider joining a Russian led economic alliance, but it probably still seems ludicrous to the majority of people that Germany would consider joining an anti-USD hegemony alliance at this time. But if we are remaining realistic in our assessments of how the progression of our current world war will shape economic alliances in the future, we must consider a future with Germany not on the side of the Allies, as was the case during the previous World War, WWII.

WWIII, will play out whereby, to use the Allies and Axis division of WWII, the Allies will include the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and the Axis will include nearly everyone else. And for even the Asian nations that historically have exhibited complete obedience to the Western, pro-USD MIB (Military Industrial Banking) complex, the government officials of such nations are likely to encounter fierce opposition to this exhibited loyalty in the near future from their citizens, due to the massive destruction of the purchasing power of their domestic currencies that this blind loyalty has incurred.

Those of you that have been following my writings for a couple of decades know that during the 2008 global financial crisis, I stated many times that when the time came for the world’s major fiat currencies to fail, that they would fail in this order: the yen, the pound, then finally the USD. As we can see, my 2008 prediction has started to play out already. The yen just passed 150 yen to the dollar this month, marking the weakest it has been v. the USD since 1990, 32-years ago and marking a loss of 55.2% against the USD just since November of 2008.

Below, I have posted a long-term historical GBP-USD forex chart. Although one can easily spot that the GBP (Great British Pound) is the weakest it has been against the USD in half a century with the exception of 1985, since November 2008, it has weakened a significant 33.6% against the USD, but is still lagging behind the JPY in terms of collapse against the USD.

As WWIII plays out, even strong allies of the USD hegemony central banking complex will have to overcome massive protest on behalf of their citizens to continue to side with the allies in war when the economic missives of war are so obviously hurting their own citizens.

Thus, even as the loyalty of the Allies governments will surely face more challenges as their domestic currencies collapse and plunges their citizens into increasing economic suffering and hardships, several of the largest Allies powers during WWII, Russia (the Soviet Union back then) and China have clearly flipped sides in this world war and are no longer on the side of the Allies. The color coded map below shows the nations (in maroon) that are already part of, and most likely to join the CAARS economic alliance.

Most Westerners, because they only read Western MIB controlled media (as former German editor Udo Ulfkotte admitted that his newspaper was filled with CIA planted propaganda as “news” during his editorial tenure), have zero knowledge of the major fractures between German cabinet members and the US political elite regarding economic issues that have been intensifying for decades now (and of which all paying subscribers on this site, if you’ve read all my articles, should be well aware).

Furthermore, when it is likely revealed, either privately or publicly that a US or US/UK military theater operation was responsible for destruction of parts of the Russian Nordstream gas pipeline in order to punish German economically for their lack of support to the US/UK in the Russia NATO war in Ukraine, German cabinet members will likely interpret these findings as a declaration of war of NATO against them. And this will provide even more incentive for Germany to finally leave the NATO alliance. In addition, former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s leaked phone conversation in 2014 in which she vitriolically spewed, “F*ck the EU!” when discussing the EU’s lack of support for NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine widened the fracture between some economic giants in the EU and NATO, despite Nuland’s subsequent apologies, which were likely viewed by the offended as completely insincere. Consequently, Germany leaving the NATO alliance, as WWIII progresses, to preserve the economic future of its citizenry and the sovereignty of its nation, is a real distinct possibility of which most people around the world are completely ignorant.

It is a near given that the world’s largest producers of gold, silver, platinum and palladium that are not part of the NATO alliance, specifically China, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Uzbekistan, Peru, Indonesia, Sudan, Chile, Bolivia, Kazhakstan, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, will all join the future economic alliance I discussed here, that I have labelled the CAARS alliance in this article. Why? Simply because it behooves all of them, even if they are not major producers of these metals, to join a regional alliance intent on freeing the global prices of these precious metals from the pro-USD hegemonic Central Banking alliance.

When nations with the largest GDPs in Africa, Latin America and Asia join this alliance, it only makes sense that the nations in these regions with smaller economies also join, as their massive debt is denominated for the most part in US dollars and is becoming untenable given USD strength against the fiat currencies of emerging markets.

Joining an alliance will allow such nations to eventually escape the gravitational pull of their crushing USD denominated debt that has withheld the economic development of such nations for decades, if not centuries.

For the above explanation, I’ve attributed entire global regions to the CAARS alliance in the US against the world WWIII map. And why have I labelled the CAARS alliance versus the Allies a military conflict versus just an economic conflict if I have described the entire conflict as economic up until this point? Because economic conflict always breeds military conflict. As I stated in previous articles I’ve published on this platform about this topic, the NATO alliance would never have baited Russia into invading Ukraine if there were no directives to maintain USD hegemony, continue the suppression of gold prices, and therefore maintain the status quo in global power that funnels the world’s wealth into the pockets of the Western MIB (Military Industrial Banking) complex.

And as all major wars begin with economic sanctions (study the economic sanctions levied against Japan during WWII to understand the economic sanctions levied against Russia this year), these economic sanctions, when proven to be insufficient to maintain the status quo, as they have been this year, eventually always transform into military actions (the coordinated explosion of the Nordstream gas pipeline and destruction of the Kerch Bridge joining Russia and Crimea). At this point and time, any rational student of history that understands that all military wars begin as economic wars also understands that WWIII has already begun.

With WW III Already Begun, Could Nuclear Escalation Be Next?

I still stand by my take that if this world war is escalated further in theater operations, that a member or members of the NATO alliance will be the one, not Putin’s Russia, to escalate the economic/military conflict into a nuclear conflict. If it is proven to be true that the US/UK blew up the Nordstream gas pipeline, then their willingness to take desperate measures to maintain the status quo to keep half the world’s population in great economic suffering will have already been proven.

However, even then, I don’t believe the escalation will be via a dirty bomb or an outright nuclear strike, even though the big story this week has been the levied claims of Russian cabinet officials that a “false flag” dirty bomb inside Ukraine may have been tabled by NATO forces as the next phase of this war. Rather, the most likely strike in my opinion, as the MIB complex has shown a willingness time and time again to sacrifice millions of lives as pawns in their military wars to accomplish their economic missives, is something much worse. In my opinion, the most likely escalation of this current NATO Russia war will be a strike against Ukraine’s nuclear reactors that will create a nuclear meltdown and radiation fallout that will sicken and kill thousands, with planted evidence to blame Russia as the culprit of the attack.

The most likely manner in which this would be carried out, if this insane tactic is on the table, is through a cyberattack, of which I warned about extensively here, as it is near impossible to prove up allegations made regarding the origins of a cyberattack without leaked evidence, much as the Western media initially blamed the Stuxnet virus on Iran. However, after the target of the Stuxnet virus was revealed to be centrifuges of the national Iranian uranium enrichment program, this false, trumped up charge no longer remained credible.

The reason I see such an escalation as a possible next step of this military escalation is because such a cyberattack/or direct strike would kill several proverbial birds with one stone. As always during war, when such attacks occur, we must ask, “Cui Bono?” or “Who Benefits?”

“Few men are willing to have the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.” ― Bobby F. Kennedy

Question: “There is the pesky theory that the 1945 bombs dropped on Japan were also maybe “dirty bombs”, supplemented by a firebombing attack.”

Whoever came up with such a “pesky theory” should take a look at the photo of the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the photos of those cities before and after being hit by US atomic/nuclear bombs. No, these cities were not subject to US firebombing raids, rather they were spared from such raids because they were being ‘saved’ for the atomic bombs, because the US wanted to see the effects on undamaged cities.

Question: “Supposedly, a uranium based atomic bomb would leave the target area uninhabitable for centuries, yet those cities were rebuilt in 4 years.

The atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were airbursts (this was done to maximize thermal and blast effects); their fireballs did not come into contact with the surface of the earth. Had they been ground bursts, their fireballs would have vaporized anything they came in contact with; immense amounts of soil and surface materials would have then been made highly radioactive, and produced huge amounts of fallout. The resulting high levels of radioactivity would have made the cities uninhabitable for a very long time.

As it was, many tens of thousands of Japanese died from radiation exposure to the fallout that came down as black rain following the detonation and subsequent firestorm that burned out the heart of the city.

There is much ignorance about toxicity of radioactive materials…

The same radiactive material at the same quantity and same radioactivity can be completely safe and absolutely deadly depending on what form that material is in. This is particularly true about alpha and beta emitters – for example you can safely hold a chunk of metallic Plutonium 239 in your hand, and it feels warm due to radioactive decay. The alpha particles (He4 nuclei) it emits are stopped effectively by the outer layer of skin (dead cells). A few mg of Pu239 in the room as a fine powder, and you are dead from cancer because if you inhale a single dust particle, it will keep causing mutations in unprotected cells. Or take Cesium 137 – it’s dangerous mostly when ingested as it displaces calcium in bones and stays emitting radiation for years inside.

The dirty bomb pulverises and disperses radioactive materials, so they stay in the area in the form which is easily ingested or aspirated, and anyone not wearing proper rad suit and respirator (and following proper decontamination protocols when taking these off) runs a high risk of dying from cancer. The normal civilian life is impossible in the area for years or decades, depending on the level of contamination. There in nothing “psychological” about this danger.

A dirty bomb is a mix of explosives, such as TNT, with radioactive powder or pellets. When the TNT or other explosives are set off, the blast carries radioactive material into the surrounding area. A dirty bomb works completely differently and cannot create a nuclear yield. Instead, a dirty bomb uses TNT or other explosives to scatter radioactive dust, smoke, or other material in order to cause radioactive contamination.

“The main danger from a dirty bomb is from the explosion, which can cause serious injuries and property damage. The radioactive materials used in a dirty bomb would probably not create enough radiation exposure to cause immediate serious illness, except to those people who are very close to the blast site.”

A dirty bomb is not a “weapon of mass destruction” but a “weapon of mass disruption,” where contamination and anxiety are the major objectives. Immediate health effects from exposure to the low radiation levels expected from a dirty bomb would likely be minimal.

On a related note, the USA massively increased global radiation levels by repeatedly testing nuclear weapons, chemical and biological warfare agents on humans without their consent, that this has affected people across the globe, and this is a crime for which the US should be held accountable.

The bomb itself is not going to be ‘just a dirty bomb’. That wouldn’t accomplish the goals of the west: to implicate a sophisticated state actor with motive, meaning Russia. Ukraine (or anyone else) can put together a dirty bomb from any kind nuclear waste. A dirty bomb has to be something Ukraine couldn’t just put together. You need a Skripal/Novichock setup so Russia can be blamed. That means either a dirty bomb containing some plutonium (all plutonium is man made in reactors) or a 3rd generation low-yield nuclear device that will produce very little, but enough fission product radionuclides to be positively identified (and implicate Russia).

This also impacts where such a bomb would be used.

If the bomb only produces local contamination, then it has to be in Ukrainian (NATO) controlled territory. That provides the usual favorable conditions: Russia can only guess what happened and that uncertainty looks like deceptive denial. And the US/UK/NATO will have exclusive access to samples and their distribution. Those samples will be provided to ‘impartial analysts’ (in the West) who will (surprise) fill out the narrative of what was found and what kind of device was used and, therefore, how Russia must be the guilty party. The Assad/Ghouta/Sarin playbook.

If the bomb produces gaseous or fine particle radionuclides, then it could be detonated anywhere (including Russian-held areas) that wind currents would carry radioactive gas/particles to western controlled atmospheric sampling sites. The amounts will be minuscule and pose little risk to the public, but will be enough that sampling sites and US nuke sniffer planes can detect specific fission/fusion weapon byproducts (iodine, xenon, etc.). Again, the west controls the narrative and it will inevitably rule out Ukraine as a potential source and point to Russia as the ‘most likely’ perpetrator. Russia can do all the analysis they want if it’s in territory they control, but anything they report will be discounted as a lie. After all, who can argue with multiple, independent ‘impartial’ western atmospheric sampling sites (the nuclear nonproliferation treaty monitors).

Depleted Uranium is just Uranium with a much lower percentage of lower content of the radioactive isotope of Uranium U235 than natural Uranium. That doesn’t meàn that it is harmless. Even without fissile material uranium is nephrotoxic and may be cytotoxic, teratogenic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic, although direct links have not been documented. Depleted Uranium is primarily used in munitions because it is heavy and when shot fast carries and can transfer a lot more energy than a projectile made of lighter elements. When such projectiles hit something solid, some of the kinetic energy is transferred to thermal energy, vaporizing some of the material and causing a local toxic cloud which can be inhaled, ingested or transferred by touch.

Fortunately, the amount released in this way in any location is relatively small and the percentage of radioactive material released is miniscule. Something else is needed to explain the alleged rise in tumors and birth defects wherever the USA has attacked people, and I would prefer studies by researchers that are not American, British or controlled by them (as so many International organizations, including the OPCW, are.)

Depleted uranium shells do not produce a nuclear reaction. They are not “mini tactical nuclear bombs”…not even close.

Depleted uranium increases penetrative power, this is due to density, not radioactive properties, good for taking out armor. A small amount of radioactive material does get released, which contributes to thyroid issues and various cancers.

If you have ever been around a tank hit by a depleted uranium shell, yiu can see that the damage is very similar to that of what a normal tank shell does. The entry holes (when one can be found) are a little cleaner, that is it.

Posted by: Steven Starr

By Georgiy Berezovsky, Vladikavkaz-based journalist via RT

One hundred years ago, on October 25, 1922, the Russian Civil War drew to a close. It was on that day that the Provisional Priamurye Government, the last anti-Bolshevik Russian state enclave, ceased to exist, in the Russian Far East.

The remnants of the White movement left Vladivostok. By that time, the territory of the former Russian Empire was almost entirely controlled by the Bolsheviks, although islands of resistance continued popping up sporadically in various parts of the country for several more years.

The Russian Civil War wasn’t similar to other such conflicts most people know. Unlike the American Civil War fought between the Northern and Southern states or the Spanish Civil War between the Francoist forces and the Republicans, the fighting in Russia was not simply a standoff between two uncompromising sides. The opponents of the Bolsheviks, which were collectively known as the ‘Whites’, were unable to present a united front against the ‘Reds’ due to discord within their own ranks. Moreover, separatists who were active on the periphery and generally leaned towards the Communists often intervened in the confrontation between the main warring groups and factions, which were the Bolsheviks, Monarchists, Februarists, Mensheviks, Socialists, Anarchists and other scattered forces adhering to various ideologies.

The theater of the Russian Civil War looked very much like a blood-covered patchwork quilt on fire, with short-lived state entities appearing now and then across the vast expanse of the country. It was an ‘all-against-all’ kind of warfare, with numerous coalitions and alliances formed and then disbanded time and again. As this was happening, however, the Bolsheviks claimed more and more Russian territory.

And the Allied interventions – coming from states that had previously been friendly with the Russian Empire and were even supposed to help it crush the Bolshevik regime – took place right in the middle of all that bloody chaos. But instead of supporting Tsarist Russia, their course of action ended up serving the Bolsheviks’ goals.

RT looks back at how the global community exploited the country’s weakness and, instead of trying to disrupt the formation of a state that would later evolve into one of its bitterest enemies, on the ruins of imperial Russia, did its best to facilitate the process.

It all started with foreigners

It’s probably no coincidence that the official start date of the Russian Civil War is identified by many historians as the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion – on May 17, 1918 – even though by that time hostilities had already been going in the south for a few months.

The Czechoslovak Legion was a volunteer armed force with the Russian Imperial Army composed predominantly of Czechs and Slovaks fighting on the side of the Entente powers during World War I. In the fall of 1917, the Russian Provisional Government granted the group permission to increase its force by enlisting Czech and Slovak prisoners of war and deserters from the Austro-Hungarian Army, many of whom wished to fight the Austro-Hungarian Empire for the independence of their homelands and gladly joined the Russians.

Personnel of the 1st Czechoslovakian corps listen to award ordinance. © Sputnik / Nikolai Yeronin

The decision backfired after the October Revolution ended the Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks moved to sign a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers, thus effectively undoing a lot of the Russian Empire’s achievements of the previous decades. The Czechs hurried to denounce the new revolution and declare their support for the deposed government.

Thus, formally, the Czechs turned against the Bolsheviks, but it became clear over the course of the conflict that they were primarily fighting for themselves rather than for any other cause.

First, the Czechoslovak Legion was swiftly reassigned to the command of Paris and effectively became a part of the French army. Second, one of the founders and leaders of the Legion, Tomas Masaryk, who was also the future first president of Czechoslovakia, was actively involved in negotiations with all parties to the Russian Civil War. He abstained from siding with the White movement, tried to forge a relationship with the Bolsheviks and even allowed Communist propaganda in the Legion’s units.

The Legion, which was stationed at the time on the territory of modern Ukraine, was eager to leave Russia for France, but that plan was foiled by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ceded a large chunk of the Russian Empire’s western lands, including Crimea and present-day Ukraine, to Germany. The Czechoslovak Legion had to retreat eastward in a hurry.

Masaryk decided that the Legion should travel to the Pacific port of Vladivostok and even negotiated a deal with the Bolshevik authorities. Tensions continued to mount, however, as each side distrusted the other, and ultimately the Legion had to fight its way to the Pacific along the Trans-Siberian Railway, refusing to surrender its weapons to the Reds or to deal with them in any way – until they had no choice.

Treachery of the Allies

The Czechoslovaks easily foiled all attempts to disarm them and kept capturing towns along their route. Everywhere they went, Whites from the Siberian regions joined them. Also, they were able to seize the Russian Empire’s gold reserve.

However, there were fewer and fewer battles for the Legion to take part in. By autumn, the war with Germany was over and the Czechs had won their independence – an event that, paradoxically, depleted their morale: the soldiers could think of nothing else but returning to their homeland. In 1919, they hardly did any fighting at all – instead, they went on a looting spree. As they were in control of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Czechs would routinely stop trains, rob everyone on board and ’empty’ the train cars of refugees. This eventually earned them their nickname, ‘Czechosobaks’ (which in Russian literally means ‘Czechoslovak dogs’).

One of the victims of the Czechs’ tyranny on the railroad was the White movement’s most prominent figure, Alexander Kolchak, who had been named supreme ruler of Russia not long before. His train was repeatedly stopped by the Czechs in late 1919, until it ended up in the town of Nizhneudinsk. At that time, in the neighboring city of Irkutsk, a leftist group that included Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks established a political group called the Political Center, which demanded that Kolchak hand over power to Anton Denikin. Kolchak was then promised safe passage, but his personal guards were to be replaced by Czechoslovaks. Admiral Kolchak accepted these conditions, but that did not save him from eventually being executed. On January 15, 1920, the Czechoslovaks turned Kolchak over to the Political Center, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries threw him into prison.

After an attempt by White forces loyal to Kolchak to recapture the former supreme ruler in Irkutsk, the interventionists behind the Czechs announced that they were prepared to fire upon the Whites to prevent Kolchak from escaping. To prove that their intentions were serious, the former Entente allies disarmed several units of the White Guardsmen.

As early as January 21, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks surrendered power in Irkutsk to the Bolsheviks. The latter interrogated the admiral and sentenced him to execution by firing squad.

The handing over of Kolchak to the Bolsheviks was, in a way, the foreign legion’s ‘payment’ for a chance to safely leave Russia. With the prisoner in their custody, the Bolsheviks promptly began negotiations with the Czechoslovaks. The two sides exchanged detainees and the Central Europeans promised to return the gold reserves to the Soviets as soon the last foreign soldier left Irkutsk. In September 1920, the last servicemen of the Czechoslovak corps left Vladivostok aboard the US Army Transport ship Heffron.

Admiral Alexander Kolchak, the ‘supreme ruler of the Russian state’, at the front. © Sputnik

But that was not the end of the Czechs’ involvement in the Russian Civil War.

Aliens in Russia’s north

The need to evacuate the legion was used to justify the Western intervention after Germany’s ultimate defeat. However, foreign troops had been on Russian territory several months before the end of World War I. Ostensibly, their presence was the result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, although in actuality Russia’s ‘allies’ from the Entente had agreed on the occupation zones of the Russian Empire well before it was signed. The Bolsheviks’ peace treaty with Germany was just the catalyst to force the Allied powers to act more resolutely.

There was an attempt to justify the intervention by the need to establish an anti-German front in Russia with or without the cooperation of the Soviet government. The Allies were afraid that the Germans, who had landed in Finland, might be able to capture Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, Russia’s main northern ports, which also held military supplies.

The British reached out to the Bolsheviks and offered to land in Murmansk and take the city before the Germans could do so. In spite of the peace treaty, the Reds were indeed afraid of possible German advances, so they took London’s offer while trying to maintain secrecy and shifting the responsibility to the local authorities.

After direct threats from Germany, the Bolsheviks realized they had made a mistake, but it was too late to try to push the Brits out. In the spring of 1918, 1,500 British troops were stationed in Russia’s north.

The subsequent landing of 9,000 more servicemen in Arkhangelsk was not coordinated with the Bolsheviks at all. Apart from the British, soldiers from other countries, including Italians, Serbs, and Americans, were involved in the operation.

Invaders enter Arkhangelsk, 1918. © Sputnik

The Red Army was helpless to thwart the landing and simply withdrew from the city before the Allied forces arrived. Enemies of the Bolshevik government led by Captain 2nd Rank Chaplin tried to exploit the situation, but, much to their disappointment, the British had their own plans for Arkhangelsk. They installed a leftist government headed by Nikolai Tchaikovsky, an English socialist with a long track record of socialist agitation.

The local officers were not pleased by such a turn of events, so they orchestrated a coup in September 1918 and arrested the leftwing politicians. The British intervened by freeing all of those who were jailed and removing the conspirators from Arkhangelsk.

Anti-Bolshevik forces in the sparsely populated northern regions lacked resources and struggled to feed their armies so, consequently, they had to depend on the interventionists, who had no intention of helping the Whites topple the Reds.

Foreign troops spent the whole of 1918 stationed in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk without making any serious attempts at major inroads beyond pushing a few kilometers inside Russian territory.

After the end of World War I, even the Allied powers themselves had trouble figuring out what they were still doing in Russia, given that they were not actively fighting the Bolsheviks and lacked the power to do so. By 1919, the Red Army had become a formidable force that a few thousand foreign soldiers were no match for.

Ultimately, in September of that year, the Allied powers simply boarded their ships and left the region.

Americans in Siberia

The intervention was much more active in the eastern part of Russia, through which the country’s main transport artery, the Trans-Siberian Railway, passed.

The Americans landed an expeditionary force dubbed ‘Siberia’ consisting of about 8,000 troops in Vladivostok in August of 1918. They immediately declared that they were completely neutral and gave assurances that they would not interfere in Russia’s internal affairs or provide support to either the Whites or Reds. While the British in the north were still engaging in political intrigues, the Americans claimed to be simply guarding the railway.

American soldiers from the 31st Infantry marching near Vladivostok Russia. © Wikipedia

Perhaps the American mission would have been less upsetting for the locals had it not been headed by General William Graves, for whom the word ‘monarchist’ was a terrible curse word. Having no understanding of the local situation at all, he thought the Bolsheviks were something akin to America’s Founding Fathers and that they were fighting for freedom against tyranny, while he considered all Whites to be monarchists.

As a result, Graves sympathized with the Bolsheviks and put spokes in the wheels of the Whites. His relations with the latter’s officers, who could see the American general’s actual deeds, were very strained. For example, in the fall of 1919, he blocked a shipment of weapons bought by Whites on the grounds that they allegedly wanted to attack him.

The manager of affairs in the Kolchak government, Georgy Gens, observed:

“In the Far East, the American expeditionary forces behaved in such a way that anti-Bolshevik circles became convinced that the United States did not want to see the triumph, but rather the defeat of the anti-Bolshevik government. They expressed sympathy for the partisans, as if encouraging them to take further action.”

In his opinion, “It was clear that the United States did not realize what the Bolsheviks were, and that the American general, Graves, was acting according to certain instructions.”

Another White leader, Ataman Grigory Semenov, recalled:

“Almost all the weapons and uniforms coming from America were transferred from Irkutsk to the Red partisans, and General Graves, an ardent opponent of the Omsk government, knew about this. The conduct of the Americans in Siberia was so hideous from a moral point of view and just in terms of basic decency that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Omsk government, Sukin, being a great Americanophile, could barely hush up the scandal that had begun to erupt.”

Ataman G. M. Semenov with representatives of the American mission headed by W. Graves. Vladivostok. © Wikipedia

The Canadians also took a symbolic part in the intervention in Siberia. As subjects of the British crown, they sent a small expeditionary force, which mainly carried out police service in Vladivostok. It stayed in Russia for only six months before returning home in the spring of 1919.

Japanese adventurism

The only participant in the intervention that approached the issue in a serious way was Japan. According to various estimates, its army in the Russian Far East was 30,000-70,000-strong. In terms of numbers, the Japanese forces significantly outnumbered all of the other Allied contingents combined. In addition, the Japanese -were the most adamant in insisting on the intervention – and they were also the last to leave. They were the only Allied country to take active part in actually fighting the local partisans themselves.

For this reason, the allies had to constantly pull Tokyo back and tame its ambitions. The Japanese placed their hopes in Ataman Semenov, who could only be classified as ‘White’ because his detachments were fighting the Bolsheviks.

Unlike the Whites in the north and Siberia, who had to buy weapons and ammunition from the Allies (often even defective ones), Semenov received weapons from the Japanese in large quantities for nothing.

Unlike the rest of the Allied forces, which were either engaged in protecting the Trans-Siberian Railway or sitting in port cities without sticking their noses out, the Japanese occupied a significant chunk of the eastern territories, holding all of the larger cities east of Chita by the fall of 1918. With the military support of the Japanese, Semenov’s detachment managed to capture the area of Transbaikalia.

At the same time, the Japanese clearly did not seek to unite with the White forces in order to defeat the Bolsheviks. While they supported Semenov, they were extremely hostile to Kolchak. This animosity also manifested itself in their relations with the Russian commanders. One witness to the Civil War in Siberia, the Latvian writer Arved Shvabe, noted:

“Sometimes, the Japanese approved territorial uprisings directed against Kolchak in order to weaken his position.”

By the beginning of 1920, all of the Allied expeditionary forces had withdrawn from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Only the Japanese remained, hoping they could still get something for their trouble. In order to rid themselves of the Japanese, the Bolsheviks turned to a diplomatic trick. A significant part of the region was proclaimed to be a completely independent state called the Far Eastern Republic (FER), which was not designated as a socialist state. In fact, Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks worked side by side with the Bolsheviks in local government there.

So, it turned out the Japanese were no longer occupying Russian land but rather an independent and neutral Far Eastern Republic, which, de jure, was not even a Soviet state. This made it twice as hard for the Japanese to justify their presence there, as they were under a lot of pressure from their allies, especially the Americans.

Under diplomatic pressure, the Japanese recognized the FER and left its territory. At this point, Vladivostok and the north of Sakhalin were the last places still occupied by the Japanese, who were already in diplomatic isolation. In 1922, Tokyo began to evacuate its troops from Vladivostok.

Japanese officers in Vladivostok with local commander Lieutenant-General Rozanov. © Wikipedia

Two weeks later, the Far Eastern Republic announced its accession to the RSFSR. Having fulfilled its mission, there was no further reason for its existence.

The intervention had ended with the White movement harmed while the Reds were assisted. The Bolsheviks instantly turned into defenders of the Revolution and patriots fighting imperialists (though there were practically none to fight). This greatly facilitated propaganda against the Whites, who were forced to tolerate allies who had been harming Russia.

The interventionists had never set out to overthrow the Bolsheviks and did not fight the Reds. The military contingents these ‘allies’ sent to Russia were miniscule. According to the most optimistic estimates, the number of interventionists, not counting the Japanese, did not exceed 30,000 troops. Against the 5-million-strong Bolshevik army, this was less than a drop in the bucket.

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

In the history of the wars in Europe, and the wars in Asia, there has never been a combination like the present one.

When the Special Military Operation began on February 24, the Russian forces at the western border were counted by the western media at about 190,000; roughly half then crossed the frontier into the Ukraine. They were opposed by a Ukrainian force of about 200,000 entrenched and fortified east of the Dnieper River. Never has an offensive force fought against a defensive force with a ratio of one to one or less; the customary US Army rule of thumb is not less than three to one, and with firepower added to the ratio, preferably five to one.

The line of contact between the two armies, the Ukrainian and Russian, has been differently estimated from the 672-kilometre distance of the Kharkov-Odessa road, to about 1,000 kms to take account of the salients in and out of the Donetsk and Lugansk territories. Compare the length of this line to the trenches of the Allied and German armies between 1914 and 1918 of about 760 kms; the Maginot Line built by the French against the Germans in the 1930s of 448 kms; the Berlin Wall of 1961 of 140 kms; or Israel’s West Bank Barrier, fortified between 2002 and 2005, of 708 kms. Never has so long a line as the Novorussian one been manned by so few.

Not since the US imposed asset confiscations, export bans, and the oil and fuel embargo on Japan between 1937 and 1941, and the trade blockade against Germany from 1939, has US and allied economic warfare against a target country reached the present scale against Russia.

And never before has Russia proved strong enough militarily and economically to bypass, neutralize, overcome, or defeat all three.

At the same time, not since Woodrow Wilson’s stroke of 1919 has a US president been as incapacitated medically as Joseph Biden. Never before have the European allies been as politically incapacitated as the British, French, and Germans all at the same time.

This combination of strength and weakness has spilled the war for Europe into a war of the world. As Hrvoye Moric asks the questions, listen to the new TNT Radio podcast discussing the why, the wherefore, and what happens next.

Click to listen from Min 19:56.

Source: https://tntradiolive.podbean.com/

By the way, at the very end of the interview, as radio time was running out, the comparison is drawn between the British bombing raid of May 1943 against the Mohne and Eder dams in Germany, and the threatened attacks by the Kiev regime against the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam near Kherson; the latter led last week to the evacuation by the Russian army of civilians on the west bank of Kherson.

Satellite image of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper River, October 18, 2022.

The Dambusters Raid, as the Royal Air Force operation is popularly known, targeted the Mohne and Eder hydroelectric dams in the Ruhr region of Germany. Initial British reports indicated that more than 50 towns had been flooded; 4,000 people killed, and 120,000 made homeless. Some of the casualties were prisoners of the Germans being held in a forced labour camp below the dam wall; 53 of the 133 British aircrew involved were killed. The Imperial War Museum summary notes that “although the impact on industrial production was limited, the raid gave a significant morale boost to the people of Britain.” A 75th anniversary assessment of Operation Chastise, the RAF codename for the bombing raid, has concluded: “For all the raid’s audacity and courage; the technical brilliance behind it; and despite the widespread destruction and adverse repercussions for the German war economy that it certainly caused, it did not bring about the long-term crisis for which planners in the Air Ministry and Ministry of Economic Warfare had hoped.”

The Mohne dam, before (left) and after (right) the May 16, 1943, Dambusters Raid.

“Only the defeated commit [war] crimes”, the British novelist John Mortimer wrote not long ago.

OSINT (open-source intelligence) investigators have named real irretrievable losses of Ukraine’s army. As of 20 October 2022, according to OSINT, the Ukrainian Armed Forces had lost 402,000 people, of whom 387,000 were killed.

Losses among mercenaries and volunteers from Poland, the Baltics and Romania totaled 54,000, with 31,240 killed.

These are OSINT figures calculated using funeral agency summaries, morgue extracts and analysis of radio, cellular and satellite exchanges of AFU forces. @RTRDonetsk

The German publication ZEITUNG.DE citing American military experts, including retired representatives of the US Army command, says that the number of deaths among the Armed Forces of Ukraine is over 200 thousand people, or 15-20 thousand monthly. #Ukraine

“Currently there is the Taiwan Policy Act, which is wending through Congress right now. And if it passes, it will signal the end of the One China policy, literally a declaration of war. It prepares for a rotational presence of US forces on Taiwan Island, i.e. turning Taiwan into a military base, fast tracking weapons, declaring it a non-NATO ally, sending $6.5 billion worth of asymmetrical, lethal arms. And it does everything except literally declare war. But among those provisions, Section 803 is about sanctions against China. Exactly the type of sanctions that the US has been levying against Russia,” says KJ Noh, a journalist and political analyst.

Listen to more of KJ Noh’s analysis on the podcast.