via Strategic Culture

The West trying to provoke and force China to launch a military operation against Taiwan

1. Foreign delegations from Canada, Great Britain and Denmark are expected to visit Taiwan in the coming months.

2. Western countries operate according to a proven scheme. First, China “swallowed” the flight of Nancy Pelosi, then the American congressmen, and then everyone else is going to fly.

3. Everyone realized that it was possible to push further, their goal was to demonstrate China’s weakness by provoking military actions that the globalists had been planning for a long time.

4. If China is not provoked by trips, they will move on to the second stage, raising the level of provocations. Sabotage is not excluded.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting a prison in Donbass where it knew dozens of its own POWs were being held.

The Ukrainian authorities were aware that their soldiers, who surrendered to Russian forces at the Azovstal steel plant, were being held at the prison in the village of Yelenovka, as Kiev itself insisted on them being placed there, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin said on Wednesday.

The shelling of Correctional colony No.120 in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in late July killed 50 inmates and left 73 others wounded. The facility held members of the infamous Azov neo-nazi battalion, who were captured in May after being holed up for weeks at the Azovstal steelworks during the Russian siege of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.

“On May 20, 2022, the surrendered servicemen of the Azov nationalist battalion were taken to the pre-trial detention center in the village of Yelenovka. The Ukrainian side insisted on this particular place for their detention,” Fomin said during a briefing for foreign military attachés in Moscow.

Kiev’s attack on the prison was deliberate, with “the Ukrainian leadership giving the order to carry out the missile strike because the Azov fighters started giving testimonies exposing their crimes, including those perpetrated against peaceful civilians,” he insisted.

Another reason for Ukraine hitting Yelenovka was to scare its own troops on the battlefield and “deter them from surrendering,” the Russian defense official said. Many Ukrainian soldiers have been recently laying down their arms, he added.

Aleksandr Fomin denied Ukraine’s “groundless” claims that Moscow struck the prison itself to pin the blame on Kiev, saying all the evidence shows that the missiles came from the north-western direction, where Kiev’s forces were located.

Last week, RIA Novosti news agency cited an unnamed high-ranking Pentagon official, who suggested that if Ukraine did shell the prison in Yelenovka, then it did so unintentionally.

The Russian deputy defense minister insisted that those words were nothing but “a clumsy attempt to justify the provocation by the Kiev regime.”

The attack on the detention facility was carried out with HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, supplied to Ukraine by the US, and the Americans have been claiming that those are “high-precision systems, which hit the targets they were meant to hit,” he said.

Also, in planning its strikes, the Ukrainian military actively relies on space and air reconnaissance data provided by the US and its allies, Fomin added.

In a bid to curb further speculation, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that it had officially invited experts from the UN and the International Red Cross Committee to carry out an impartial investigation into the incident in Yelenovka.

🇺🇲🇷🇺🇺🇦 American economist Jeffrey Sachs: “Ukraine will disappear from the map, or a third world war will begin”

Among the well-known Americans who disagree with the official White House version of events in Ukraine, a serious addition: the economist Jeffrey Sachs has warned that the conflict in Ukraine will not end with the defeat of Vladimir Putin. “Ukraine will disappear from the map, or the third world war will begin,” he gave a forecast of the development of events during the Free Thoughts on the Future conference.

It is noteworthy that Sacks blames the West for starting the current conflict, saying that there is only one option to end hostilities – NATO must admit that it will not expand at the expense of Ukraine. The arrogance of the Western military alliance, which refused to take into account the demands of Russia to ensure its security, is the reason for the outbreak of hostilities in the center of Europe. And if the West really wants peace, Sachs believes, it needs to end the war against Russia, not on NATO terms, but with Moscow’s interests in mind.

The situation around Taiwan and Kosovo shows us what kind of world we have entered – a world where it is possible to very quickly slide into a large-scale conflict.  The US and the West are showing so far that they are able to control the situation and turn the spiral of escalation back, but it is clear that their actions are more and more spontaneous, not strategic.  And this in itself is a sign of their weakening, which is inevitably followed by destabilization around the world.  The hegemon is losing the reins of power.

But the main front is now in Ukraine, where the West has made its main bet for entering the next round of the struggle for world domination, since its elites believe that Russia can be seriously weakened there.  In this they are mistaken, Russia will come out stronger from the SMO in Ukraine.

by Alexander Kharchenko

Since we are talking about the Iranian military-industrial complex, I will share my observations. For 5 years in Syria, I worked side by side with the Iranians and saw their Wunderwaffe on the battlefield.

At first it seemed strange to me that the Iranians make low-quality copies of AKs, crooked gun barrels and terrible tank shells from which the crew is dying. At the same time, they had good thermal imagers, ATGMs, and their attack UAVs chopped up ISIS in thin slices in the long ago 2017. Let’s figure out this paradox.

It is useless to compare the Russian military-industrial complex with the Iranian one. We have different philosophies. We wanted to fight head on with NATO, while the Iranians were preparing Afghanistan for the Americans to the tenth degree. The Persians* realize that in open combat against the NATO armada they have no chance. Therefore, their military strategy requires those types of weapons that the Russian army has not paid attention to for decades.

Based on the Afghan experience, the Persians realized that the defeat of the armed forces did not at all mean defeat in the war. The Iranians learned to conduct professional guerrilla warfare. In Syria, Yemen and Iraq, they honed their skills in building “territorial defense”. Highly motivated and poorly trained natives of one village, under the guidance of an Iranian mentor, became a formidable force capable of resisting both ISIS and Hadi forces.

The Iranians were preparing to burn American convoys from ambush, so they produced tens of thousands of large-caliber sniper rifles, ATGMs and thermal imagers. In addition, they mastered the production of cheap but effective UAVs for strikes against American bases. Reconnaissance of American positions requires thousands of UAVs with good cameras, and they were able to arrange their production because it was critical to their safety. At that time, we were building rockets capable of circumnavigating the globe.

While we were modernizing the nuclear triad, the Persians, with the help of a powerful ideology and competent actions of the special services, turned their nation into a weapon of a new kind. You can still defeat an army, but you can never defeat a whole nation. And from the Persians, we can learn not only the experience of building UAVs.

(c) Alexander Kharchenko

@OpenUkraine 🇮🇷 Leading pro-Russian Ukrainian channel on Iranian military industrial complex and warfare:

*Most people are not aware that Persians make up only ~55% of Iran’s population and when one wants to show respect one calls all of them “Persians” – ZradaXXII.

via Moon of Alabama

On July 2 Lysichansk came under Russian control:

This comes only a week after the cauldron around Lysichansk began to close. Until a few hours ago there was still a chance to flee from Lysichansk but the only passable road was under Russian fire. It is not know yet how many made it out or how many gave up and were taken prisoners.Some of those who retreated went to Siversk some 20 kilometer west of Lysichansk. That city will be the next bigger target in that campaign sector.

The speed of this operation was much faster than the one in Mariupol. That points to diminished capabilities and soldier motivation of the Ukrainian forces.

The now much shortened frontline frees up several battalion tactical groups on the Russian side which can now be refitted and rested to then move elsewhere.

The front has since consolidated:

In a week or two those BTCs which now rest and resupply will be back. They will create a new cauldron around Siversk and maybe Bakhmut, decimate the Ukrainian forces within it to then capture the whole area.

The artillery preparations for the next push had began immediately after the fall of Lysichansk. The ‘week or two’ have passed and the attack on the next defensive line (yellow line in the east) from Siversk to Kurdiumivka has begun. Yesterday ground fighting was reported within Siversk and Soledar.

Source: LiveUAmap (not fully updated) – bigger

In a week or two the line down from Siversk to Krasna Hora will probably be under Russian control. Bakhmut, which is very fortified, may take a few more days to fall.

The battle will then move to the next defensive line further west (also marked in yellow). That line is anchored in the north on Sloviansk which has a railway line (black) coming in from the west. That railway line allows the Ukrainians to supply their current frontline with heavy artillery ammunition and fuel.

Sloviansk will be attacked from the northwest, the northeast and southeast. The force disposition map below shows that the Ukrainian defenses in that area are rather weak.

Source: MilitaryLand.net – bigger

(The map above uses NATO symbology. The marking within the blue (friendly) rectangles shows the type of the unit. ‘Crossed bandoliers’ are infantry, ‘tank tracks’ stand for armored units, a black dot designates artillery, a combination of tank tracks and crossed bandoliers means mechanized infantry. The marking above the rectangle shows the size of the unit. An X means brigade (3,000-4,000 men), three vertical lines a regiment (1,000-1,500 men), two vertical lines a battalion (300-600 men) and so on. Each unit is ‘organic’ in that its has its own artillery or mortar group and other attached support like transport and medics.)

The Ukrainian lines in the northeast of the Donetzk oblast are held by pure infantry troops of dubious quality (i.e territorial defense brigades). Most of these have already been mauled by Russian artillery attacks and are down to 70% or less of their original strength. They have little capability to withstand the motorized (and armored) Russian forces that are moving against them. The Ukrainians have very few armored reserves behind the front that could intervene and oppose those Russian attacks.

Now let’s look at the bigger picture in east Ukraine. I have marked 5 defense lines (yellow) which all run north to south along major highways or railroads.

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The two in the east (right side) will fall within the next two or three weeks. The only really major one of the other lines is in the west (left side) running from Kharkiv through Dnipro down to to Zaporizhzhia in the south. It will be nibbled up piecemeal. Kharkiv, the anchor in the north is already under attack. Zaporizhzhia in the south is under long range artillery fire. The center around Dnipro will be attacked from the east as well as from the west side of the Dnieper river (see below). I believe that the Russian side intends to completely take that western line before the winter sets in.

Now let’s look at the southern front where the Ukrainian forces attempted a counterattack on Kherson. For orientation: This map has Dnipro in the upper right.

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Kherson in a major city on the western side of the Dnieper river. If the Russian side holds onto it it can move up to the economically important industrial mining area of Kryvyi Rih and from there launch an attack on Dnipro from a southwestern direction.

This is a major strategic danger for the Ukrainian side. That is why it collected lots of forces around Mykolaiv (Nikolaev in Russian transliteration) and attempted a counterattack on Kherson. On the force disposition map we can see motorized infantry, marine infantry, artillery, helicopter, and missile brigades all positioned in or around Mykolaiv.

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Over the last days those forces used heavy artillery in an attempt to destroy the reservoir dam and river crossing near Nova Kakhorvka on the right side of the above map. This would have flooded the area south of Kherson and would have made its defense way more difficult. But so far all major Ukrainian attacks on the dam and along the southern frontline have failed.

The next map shows the main reasons for that failure.

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All the Ukrainian units in and around Mykolaiv have come under very heavy artillery fire by the Russian forces. Major targets were unit headquarters, ammunition dumps and any larger groupings of soldiers. The planned Ukrainian counterattack on Kherson was thereby destroyed even before it took up its starting position. I am not aware of any Ukrainian reserve forces that could be moved there to revive it.

All together the Ukrainian forces are in a dire state. They have little to withstand further moves by the Russian side.

Now let’s look at the U.S. support for the Ukrainian forces.

Next to man portable small arms, Javelin anti-tank missiles and stinger anti-air missiles, a major U.S. delivery has been the 100 light howitzers M-777 and their standard 155mm ammunition. These are rather flimsy guns and slow to redeploy. Some 70% of these have by now been disabled or destroyed.

Those 100 howitzers did not have the digital systems that allows for precision ammunition to be used with them. The U.S. has since send another 18 M-777 howitzer with digital aiming systems and 1,000 rounds of precision ammunition to be used with them. The delivery included three artillery detection radars. Those three batteries, with six guns each, will thereby be used in a counter artillery mission against Russian artillery.

The U.S. has also delivered 18 12 HIMARS long range missile systems to the Ukraine. An additional 3(?) systems have come out of German and British depots. They are the new Wunderwaffe Du Jour.

The main use of the HIMARS system has so far been the destruction of several Russian ammunition depots (vid) some 50 kilometers (30 miles) behind the front lines.

The Russian side will use the obvious countermeasures against such attacks. Larger depots will move further back, smaller ones more near to the front will be dispersed and camouflaged. Missile and air defenses will be brought up to defend the depots. Special forces will move behind the Ukrainian front-lines to hunt down the HIMARS missile systems. I have seen two videos of such units attacking Ukrainian S-300 air defense systems far behind the front lines with anti-tank weapons and sharpshooter rifles.

Over the last weeks some HIMARS and other systems have been hitting Donetsk city and have caused a high number of civilian casualties. The Russians have launched special counter battery missions which have been successful in hunting some of those units down. Some Russian Tochka-U missiles systems, no longer in service with the Russian forces, have been given to the forces of the Donetzk Peoples Republic to defend their main city. The Tochka has a similar 100+ kilometer reach as the HIMARS but is less precise.

There is no oversight over where the ‘western’ weapon deliveries to the Ukraine go to. Here is a civil car with Albanian number plates loaded with British and U.S. anti-tanks missile. The Ukrainian military has admitted that such transfers are happening. We can only guess where those weapons will end up.

Of the 18 HIMARS the U.S. has delivered two were reportedly destroyed and one, including its ammunition, was allegedly sold to the Russian side. There were also reports that two French Caesar artillery systems have been sold to the Russians. Those will become nice show pieces right next to all those Nazi Tiger tanks that ended up in Russian military museums.

Tomorrow the parliament of the Russian Federation will hold a special session likely about the war in Ukraine. I have seen no hint of what it might decide to do but it will probably enable Russia’s president to use more forces in Ukraine than he currently does.

The Ukrainian side is losing hundreds of soldiers per day which leads to lots of funerals with questionable symbolics (old video).

It is high time for the Ukrainian and ‘western’ side to stop the war and to re-enter into negotiations with the Russian side.

The entire Western world is fighting Russia via Ukraine, Aleksandar Vucic has said

The Ukraine conflict is in fact already a world war, given that the West is fighting Russia via its proxies in Kiev, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic told local media on Wednesday.

“We should understand that amid the world war – because all the talks that it is a regional or a local war must be dropped – the entire Western world is fighting against Russia via Ukrainians. It is a global conflict,” he said in an interview with Pink TV.

The president said that the ongoing global war is what concerns him the most, and, in his view, it will only get worse. He also added that the conflict in Ukraine is taking its toll on the Balkans, reiterating that Serbia would do its best to keep the peace in the region.

Moreover, Vucic believes that after Russia gains some more ground in eastern Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will approach the West with a certain “proposal.”

“I know what awaits us. As soon as Vladimir Putin has done his work in Seversk, Bakhmut and Soledar, after reaching the second line Slaviansk-Kramatorsk-Avdeevka, he will come up with a proposal. And if they [the West] don’t accept it, – and they won’t – all hell will break loose,” he predicted, without providing any details on the would-be initiative.

The Serbian president also offered the reminder that his nation maintains close relations with Russia and China, adding that pursuing such policies does not come easy for Belgrade right now.

Vucic’s comments come after Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin said in early July that the West should apologize to Belgrade for the 1999 bombing campaign instead of forcing it to become a “NATO foot soldier” in the conflict with Russia.

By Ivan Zuenko, Senior Researcher at the Institute of International Studies and Associate Professor of the Department of Oriental Studies, MGIMO, Moscow.

If there had not been an active rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing over the past decades, and if Russia did not have an Asian alternative to European markets for oil and gas, it would not have been able to attack Ukraine.

Does this mean China is the main beneficiary of the European crisis and that the situation is developing according to Beijing’s plans?

There are various ways to assess the nature and consequences of the events that began in February. But what is clear is that they cannot be considered in isolation from the historical context, which should include at least the last eight years, starting with the Western-backed overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych’s government in Ukraine.

Or better yet, the whole period of the post-bipolar world order since the USSR came to an end in 1991.

Nor should it be reduced to the relationship between Moscow and Kiev. The situation in Ukraine is a consequence of the fact that since the end of the Cold War, the countries of the Euro-Atlantic bloc have not been willing to create a comprehensive security system in Europe that includes Russia. The current conflict and its economic aspects involve most of the world. Moreover, in a situation where the tactics of ‘total cancelation’ and the severance of economic and humanitarian ties constitute the main leverage against Russia, the Chinese factor has proved to be key.

If China had not adopted a benevolent neutrality towards the Russian military operation, had not continued to buy Russian goods and thereby provided a reliable strategic rear, the continuation of the offensive would have been objectively impossible.

But is China the main beneficiary of the European crisis, as asked at the outset? For me, the answer clearly is no.

The current course of events has not been to Beijing’s liking or in its interests. China itself is convinced that the US is practically the only party that stands to gain right now – it regards Washington as the ‘warmonger’.

The coalescing of ‘the collective West’ – based on the imaginary dichotomy of ‘democracy vs. authoritarianism’, a ‘battle between Good and Evil’ – harms China’s interests by cutting off the possibility of normalizing relations with the US, which, for purely economic reasons, would be beneficial for Beijing. It also reduces China’s room to maneuver in Western Europe, which is a key market for its goods, notwithstanding the sharp increase in energy and food prices, which are essential to the stable development of the Chinese economy.

Overall, the situation for China is complicated. The country has been preparing for the fact that sooner or later, its natural ambitions for the role of a world leader (the concept of ‘the Chinese Dream’) will have to be backed up with muscle. Economic pressure, the imposition of sanctions on China, and the aggressive rhetoric of Western leaders over the past five years have left Beijing with no choice but to prepare for a future war – regardless of whether it is ‘hybrid’ or ‘trench’. However, events have unfolded too quickly, and at present, the leadership does not yet feel it is ready to proceed with the kind of decisive action that Moscow has taken.

Moreover, China thinks that time is on its side, and Beijing’s task now is to maintain a neutral stance for as long as possible, building up its forces while hoping to weaken its competitors.

The Euro-Atlantic capitals also realize this and they are forcing geopolitical pressure on China. The ‘indivisibility of security in the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific’ thesis has already emerged in rhetoric, effectively suggesting the creation of a ‘global NATO’.

Thus, we are moving from a European security crisis to one that is truly global.

In practice, a global NATO is already in the making, and the US-led military bloc’s Madrid summit in late June is the best proof of this. For the first time in NATO’s history, the Pacific states – Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea – were invited; actions were intensified to form ‘quasi-alliances’ such as the QUAD (the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the US, Australia, Japan and India), AUKUS (the trilateral pact between the US, Britain, and Australia), and the Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP: AUKUS plus Japan and New Zealand). In contrast to the ‘classical NATO’, which has long been perceived in China as a vestige of the Cold War and intra-Western conflicts, these alliances have an unambiguous anti-Chinese orientation.

Eventually, the Ukraine crisis may be remembered as a sideshow before the main event.

via Moon of Alabama

In Summer 2004 Col. (ret.) Patrick Lang published Drinking the Kool-Aid which described the way in which group think had led to the war on Iraq. The idiom itself has a sinister background:

[Jim Jones, a self-styled “messiah” from the United States] called together his followers in the town square and explained the situation to them. There were a few survivors, who all said afterward that within the context of the “group-think” prevailing in the village, it sounded quite reasonable. Jim Jones then invited all present to drink from vats of Kool-Aid containing lethal doses of poison. Nearly all did so, without physical coercion. Parents gave their children the poison and then drank it themselves. Finally Jones drank. Many hundreds died with him.

Many have never heard of that story or have forgotten it. The idiom’s meaning had changed:

What does drinking the Kool-Aid mean today? It signifies that the person in question has given up personal integrity and has succumbed to the prevailing group-think that typifies policymaking today. This person has become “part of the problem, not part of the solution.”What was the “problem”? The sincerely held beliefs of a small group of people who think they are the “bearers” of a uniquely correct view of the world, sought to dominate the foreign policy of the United States in the Bush 43 administration, and succeeded in doing so through a practice of excluding all who disagreed with them. Those they could not drive from government they bullied and undermined until they, too, had drunk from the vat.

With regards to the war in Ukraine Pat himself has sipped the Kool-Aid. It has clearly clouded his judgment.

In a recent comment at his blog, Pat writes:

ChubaI never let patriotism or any other sentiment cloud my analysis. Russia is past the “culminating point” of its offensive and is subject to a sudden reversal of fortune.

The ‘culminating point’ is a term of art described in the book “On War” by Carl von Clausewitz. Born in 1780 Clausewitz served in Prussian army. He later joint the imperial Russian army in its war against Napoleon before returning as chief of staff to the Prussian military:

Clausewitz was a professional combat soldier who was involved in numerous military campaigns, but he is famous primarily as a military theorist interested in the examination of war, utilising the campaigns of Frederick the Great and Napoleon as frames of reference for his work.

Even today “On War” is still a must-read for any military officer.

The culminating point is discussed in Book VII ‘The Attack’, Chapter V ‘Culminating Point of the Attack‘:

The success of the attack is the result of a present superiority of force, it being understood that the moral as well as physical forces are included. In the preceding chapter we have shown that the power of the attack gradually exhausts itself; possibly at the same time the superiority may increase, but in most cases it diminishes. The assailant buys up prospective advantages which are to be turned to account hereafter in negotiations for peace; but, in the meantime, he has to pay down on the spot for them a certain amount of his military force. If a preponderance on the side of the attack, although thus daily diminishing, is still maintained until peace is concluded, the object is attained. There are strategic attacks which have led to an immediate peace but such instances are rare; the majority, on the contrary, lead only to a point at which the forces remaining are just sufficient to maintain a defensive, and to wait for peace. Beyond that point the scale turns, there is a reaction; the violence of such a reaction is commonly much greater than the force of the blow. This we call the culminating point of the attack.

The attacker, in Clausewitz’s description, has a moral and physical force advantage at the start of the battle. But as it attacks it usually also has the disadvantage of taking more losses than the defending side. (One rule of thumb is that the attacker needs a power ratio of 3 to 1 over the defender to win a battle.) Taking more losses than the defending side means that the relative advantage of the attacker diminishes over time.

As the battle (or war) proceeds the actual power ration shrinks from 3 to 1 to 2 to 1 and then to 1 to 1 or even lower. There comes a point where the attacker is down to the minimum force needed to keep the other side away. Beyond that is the culminating point of the attack. If the battle or war does not end before that point is reached it will likely end in the defeat of the attacker.

Pat Lang claims that Russia has reached the culminating point and has thus exhausted it forces to the point where it has no longer advantages and is now likely to see a reversal of its fortune. But that presumes that we are seeing a typical war like those Clausewitz took part in or Napoleon’s or Hitler’s marches towards Moscow, the first of which, depicted below by Charles Minard, Clausewitz certainly had in mind.

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Napoleon’s grande armée indeed suffered attrition, from 450,000 down to 10,000 men, that exceeded the culminating point.

But the war in Ukraine is a ‘special military operation’ and very untypical for several reasons.

Russia attacked with a force that was smaller than the Ukrainian forces. Over all roughly 120 Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG) from Russia with 1,000 men each plus some 50,000 soldiers from the Luhansk and Donetzk republics took part in the war. At the begin of the war the Ukrainian forces had 250,000 soldiers and they have since mobilized several hundred thousand more.

Russia uses far more sophisticated weapons than the Ukrainian side. These are long range weapon and cruise missiles that hit supplies and incoming troops in the rear of the frontline as well as strategic targets. It has an excellent and nearly impenetrable air defense and electronic war fare capabilities that a high ranking U.S. officer described as ‘eye watering’. Russia has a huge advantage in artillery capabilities and a sufficient amounts of ammunition to sustain a high rate of fire over years. It can also outproduce the ‘west’ with regards to new weapons and supplies.

All this has led to the very unusual effect that the Russian advantage on the battlefield has increased over time. It may have been 1 to 1 at the beginning of the battle but it has since increased to about 2 to 1 or even higher.

In his latest briefing (vid) the head of the Austrian military academy Colonel Reisner shows how the ratio of forces has changed over time. At 7:10 min in he shows this chart.

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He explains that at the beginning of the battle for Donbas in April the force ratio was 93 Russian BTGs against 81 Ukrainian BTG equivalents. On June 26 the ratio of forces was 108 Russian BTGs versus 60 Ukrainian battalion equivalents. Russia had increased the size of its engaged forces while the Ukrainian side had lost 25% of its capabilities. So according to the Austrian military the force ratio at the start of the ‘special military operation’ was 1.15 to 1 and on June 26 it was at 1.8 to 1.

What we are seeing is the opposite of the decrease of the ratio of forces that Clausewitz described as the path to the culminating point.

A recent talk by a high ranking Ukrainian general confirms the high rate of attrition of the Ukrainian army. He says that ‘western’ weapon deliveries only cover 10 to 15% of the Ukrainian losses. In fact the ‘west’ can no longer produce enoughnew weapons and ammunition to cover those losses.

In Foreign Affairs Prof. Barry Posen writes about Ukraine’s Implausible Theories of Victory:

Ukraine’s backers have proposed two pathways to victory. The first leads through Ukraine. With help from the West, the argument runs, Ukraine can defeat Russia on the battlefield, either depleting its forces through attrition or shrewdly outmaneuvering it. The second path runs through Moscow. With some combination of battlefield gains and economic pressure, the West can convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war—or convince someone in his circle to forcibly replace him.But both theories of victory rest on shaky foundations. In Ukraine, the Russian army is likely strong enough to defend most of its gains. In Russia, the economy is autonomous enough and Putin’s grip tight enough that the president cannot be coerced into giving up those gains, either.
…
Ukraine’s leaders and its backers speak as if victory is just around the corner. Butthat view increasingly appears to be a fantasy. Ukraine and the West should therefore reconsider their ambitions and shift from a strategy of winning the war toward a more realistic approach: finding a diplomatic compromise that ends the fighting.

Lt.Col. (ret) Daniel Davis agrees with Posen:

In short, there is no valid military path through which Ukraine can hope that trading space for time will result in stopping Russia’s methodical progress through Ukraine – much less reverse it. To continue contesting every town and city is to ensure the Ukrainian casualties continue to mount and its urban areas destroyed. In the end, Russia is still likely to achieve a tactical victory.

It is necessary, in light of these physical realities, for U.S. and Western policies to change. Continuing to give verbal support to Ukraine and claiming that eventually, Kyiv’s side will win the war is not likely to change the outcome and is likely to result in a policy failure for Washington.

Prof. Posen criticizes the false numbers that various organizations put out to show high losses of Russian forces:

Early on during the war, boosters of Ukraine argued that Russia could be defeated through attrition. Simple math seemed to tell the story of a Russian army on the verge of collapse. In April, the British defense ministry estimated that 15,000 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine. Assuming that the number of wounded was three times as high, which was the average experience during World War II, that would imply that roughly 60,000 Russians had been knocked out of commission. Initial Western estimates put the size of the frontline Russian force in Ukraine at 120 battalion tactical groups, which would total at most 120,000 people. If these casualty estimates were correct, the strength of most Russian combat units would have fallen below 50 percent, a figure that experts suggest renders a combat unit at least temporarily ineffective.These early estimates now look overly optimistic. If they were accurate, the Russian army ought to have collapsed by now. Instead, it has managed slow but steady gains in the Donbas.

The numbers and other claims that the British defense ministry puts out get repeated in the U.S. by the neo-conservative Institute for the Study of War. Nearly every U.S. media quotes one of those two sources.

They are serving the Kool-Aid Pat Lang, TTG and other around them have been drinking since the beginning of Russian operation.

They also presume that Russia could not intensify the war. The president of Russia disagrees with them:

Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try. We have already heard a lot about the West wanting to fight us ”to the last Ukrainian.“ This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but that seems to be where it is going. But everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet.At the same time, we are not rejecting peace talks, but those who are rejecting them should know that the longer it goes on, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us.

True to form the British defense ministry used that to serve more Kool-Aid:

“Despite President Putin’s claim on 7 July 2022 that the Russian military has ‘not even started’ its efforts in Ukraine, many of its reinforcements are ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment,” an assessment from Britain’s defense ministry said on Saturday.One sign the defense ministry pointed to was its expectation that fresh Russian troops would be deployed with MT-LB armored vehicles. The MT-LB, first designed in the 1950s to pull artillery, is not heavily armored and can mount only a machine gun to protect its forces.

I bet that we will not see any MT-LB at the front line. I doubt that we will see any at all. Russia still has thousands of tanks, real ones, that it can send should there be any need for them.

All the Kool-Aid drinkers also forget that this war is about much more than this or that town in Ukraine or even Ukraine itself.

As Putin said:

But here is what I would you like to make clear. They should have realised that they would lose from the very beginning of our special military operation, because this operation also means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the US-style world order. This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world based not on self-serving rules made up by someone for their own needs, behind which there is nothing but striving for hegemony, not on hypocritical double standards, but on international law and the genuine sovereignty of nations and civilisations, on their will to live their historical destiny, with their own values and traditions, and to align cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality.Everyone should understand that this process cannot be stopped. The course of history is inexorable, and the collective West’s attempts to impose its new world order on the rest of the world are doomed.

No Kool-Aid served in Washington or London will change that. It is thus better to stay away from it.

via Moon of Alabama

This morning I watched an hour long discussion (vid) by ‘experts’ at the Center for Strategic & International Studies about assessing Russia’s war in Ukraine. I have to say that these folks know nothing that is relevant. They seem to have never heard of Sun Tsu’s dictum ‘Know your enemy’:

Sun Tzu says, “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy,” but how do you become your enemy? You need to put yourself in the place of your enemy so you can predict his actions.

Not once did the CSIS people consider the view of Russia or its real intent. They talk about this or that U.S. option but do not even once consider how the other side would react to it.

One of the CSIS ‘experts’ says that Russia had planned to take Kiev but failed. Take Kiev with what? There were some 20-30.000 Russian soldiers near Kiev which has some 3 million inhabitants. Historically one needs one soldier for every 40 civilians to occupy a city or country after the fighting is mostly over. Russia would have needed more than two and a half times the number of troops it had around Kiev to take and hold the city.

Several of the CSIS ‘experts’ have previously held high government positions in the security state. With folks like them it is no wonder to see how badly the U.S. plan to drag Russia into a long war in Ukraine is playing out.

As Daniel Larson correctly writes: We should’ve known sanctions on Russia wouldn’t work as intended

The other side of the game is much more conscious of the real situation and it does consider and correctly predicts U.S. reactions.

On Thursday the Foreign Minister of the Russian federation Sergey Lavrov gave three interviews to different news outlets.

The first one with TASS was quite short.
Transcript: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with TASS news agency, St Petersburg, June 16, 2022

The second one with BBC shows an acerbic Lavrov who several times reminds the interviewer that many cruel things had happened in Ukraine before the “Special Military Operation” started on February 24, that negotiations had failed and that Ukrainian duties under the Minsk agreements were not carried out. The interviewer tries again and again to neglect that historical context and to put the blame for the war on Russia. Lavrov calls that a form of ‘cancel culture’.
BBC: Video with English subtitles
Transcript: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with the BBC TV channel, St Petersburg, June 16, 2022

Question: But the situation changed four months ago …Sergey Lavrov: The situation has not changed. We are going back to what the Minsk agreements were coordinated for: protecting Russians in Donbass, who have been betrayed by the French and Germans. The British also played a leading role. All our Western colleagues kept saying they were unable to make Kiev honour the Minsk agreements.
…
Question: In the eyes of the West, Russia is responsible for these people. Do you think the death sentence …

Sergey Lavrov: I am not interested in the “eyes of the West” at all. I am only interested in international law, according to which mercenaries are not combatants. So nothing in your eyes matters.

The last Lavrov interview is with a Russian TV station. It is the longest but also the best. It explains Russia’s position quite well and is easy to understand.
Transcript: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with the NTV network, St Petersburg, June 16, 2022

A day after Lavrov’s interviews president Vladimir Putin held a speech at the 25th St.Petersburg economic forum. The transcript is here:
Full text of Vladimir Putin’s speech at SPIEF June 17, 2022

The speech is long but the second part is about domestic economic measures in Russia and not of much interest. I recommend to read the fist part in full but here are a few bits:

A direct result of the European politicians’ actions and events this year will be the further growth of inequality in these countries, which will, in turn, split their societies still more, and the point at issue is not only the well-being but also the value orientation of various groups in these societies.Indeed, these differences are being suppressed and swept under the rug. Frankly, the democratic procedures and elections in Europe and the forces that come to power look like a front, because almost identical political parties come and go, while deep down things remain the same. The real interests of people and national businesses are being pushed further and further to the periphery.

Such a disconnect from reality and the demands of society will inevitably lead to a surge in populism and extremist and radical movements, major socioeconomic changes, degradation and a change of elites in the short term. As you can see, traditional parties lose all the time. New entities are coming to the surface, but they have little chance for survival if they are not much different from the existing ones.
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Incidentally, the Americans have adopted sanctions on our fertilisers, and the Europeans followed suit. Later, the Americans lifted them because they saw what this could lead to. But the Europeans have not backed off. Their bureaucracy is as slow as a flour mill in the 18th century. In other words, everyone knows that they have done a stupid thing, but they find it difficult to retrace their steps for bureaucratic reasons.
…
The very structure of Western sanctions rested on the false premise that economically Russia is not sovereign and is critically vulnerable. They got so carried away spreading the myth of Russia’s backwardness and its weak positions in the global economy and trade that apparently, they started believing it themselves.

While planning their economic blitzkrieg, they did not notice, simply ignored the real facts of how much our country had changed in the past few years.

Exactly.

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National Defense Magazine had an interview with the logistic commander of the Ukrainian land forces which includes some revealing details.

BREAKING: Ukraine to U.S. Defense Industry: We Need Long-Range, Precision Weapons (UPDATED)

First, you have to understand that the frontline is 2,500 kilometers long. The frontline where there is active combat in more than 1,000 kilometers long. That’s like from Kyiv to Berlin.
…
Think about this: one brigade occupies around 40 kilometers of the fence line. That means that to cover the active combat conflict we need 40 brigades. Every brigade is 100 infantry fighting vehicles, 30 tanks, 54 artillery systems — just for one brigade, and we have 40 of them.I’m not going to talk about the anti-tank guided missiles or anti-tank guided weapons for now. I’m just talking about heavy weapons. As of today,we have approximately 30 to 40, sometimes up to 50 percent of losses of equipment as a result of active combat. So, we have lost approximately 50 percent. … Approximately 1,300 infantry fighting vehicles have been lost, 400 tanks, 700 artillery systems.

I believe that those loss numbers are too low. The daily Russian clobber list counts more than double of those numbers as destroyed. While that list is very likely off (as any such lists inevitably are) I doubt that it is off by that much.

Colonel Markus Reisner of the military academy of Austria provides a presentation (vid) about the ‘heavy metal’ the Ukraine has lost and for which some replacement is now coming from the ‘west’.

According to him Ukraine started the war with 2416 tanks and other armored vehicles, 1509 field artillery and mortars, 535 MRLS and so on. (Ukraine like had additional depots with more rusty weapons in various states of (dis)repair.) It has additionally receive 250 tanks and other armored vehicles, and some 200 field artillery pieces and 50 MLRS.

It had in total 21 active brigades with 14 more in reserve plus various support units. That is less than the 40 the Ukrainian commander says are needed to cover the frontline and no reserves. The newly delivered stuff could provide for one or two more brigades. But with a 50% loss rate at least half of all that is likely already gone.

The Ukraine is not building reserves that could launch a counterattack but seems to send anything that comes from the ‘west’ directly to the frontline. It is in total far too little to replace the daily losses and certainly not enough to create forces for counterattacks.

The Ukrainian logistic commander also mentions that the U.S. delivered howitzer are very vulnerable:

Unfortunately, we don’t have an opportunity today to have foreign supplied equipment sent back to a restoration facility simply because of time constraints. That is why we are discussing spare parts here so that we can maintain and repair that equipment right in the field.For example, the M777 artillery systems are really prone to being damaged by enemy artillery. For every battery of M777, there are six pieces.

After every artillery contact, we have to take two artillery pieces and take them back to the rear to maintain them because some of the subsystems are damaged by shrapnel. This happens every day.

I bet that Soviet era equipment is much less prone to break under fire.

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Last but not least let me point you to a fine essay by Aurelian about the future of the ‘west’ as the new reality sets in.

The Hinges of History Creak.
The future will develop not necessarily to the West’s advantage

However, western nations continue to act as though they were economically and militarily superior, and to try to coerce nations on which they are economically dependent, as well as fighting a proxy war against a nation which has more combat capability in Europe than they have.
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In this sense, Ukraine is a test to destruction of both NATO and the EU, and the wider, western-dominated multilateral system they are both part of. NATO, in particular, has just been confronted by exactly the kind of situation that its founders expected—the exercise of Russian military power—and it did effectively nothing. No amount of hand-waving, no amount of sanctions or arms deliveries, can change that fact, which in turn changes everything. NATO and the EU can prolong the war, cause more suffering, and destroy many economies, including their own. But they can’t fundamentally affect the result, and the nature of their responses, beneath the surface posturing, demonstrates that they know this.
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There is another new normal now: a Europe in which Russia is the largest military power, and where the West as a whole is dependent on Russia, China and India for its economic prosperity. This is not new, of course, but it’s a shame that nobody noticed it before.

And the reason for that is that the ‘west’ in its arrogance has for far too long listened to fake ‘experts’ like those at the CSIS.

Note: More on “Know your enemy”. Among other pragmatic observations applied to terrain, morale, and manpower, Sun says in the very first chapter, “Laying Plans”, Pt.6

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away;when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. These military devices, leading to victory, must not be divulged beforehand.