.jpg/800px-Bakhmut_after_Russian_shelling%2C_2022-05-17_(01).jpg)
Those stupid Russians just won´t play by our rules and allow themselves to be defeated...
John Michael Greer on the "Spring Offensive" debacle in Ukraine. I don´t like his crypto-Russophile-isolationism, or his Harry Potter-Star Wars analogies, but his analysis of the military situation probably isn´t entirely off.
Not discussed in the essay: the Wagner Group and how it extends its tentacles in Africa, most recently Niger. Which just confirms that Russia isn´t even close to "losing" anything...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65656356
ReplyDeleteF-16´s aren´t some kind of Messiah either...
The pampered middle class in the Western world want to ban Quran burnings so they can go back to sleep, or take a vacation at Rhodes, or something. But they are soooo anti-Russian, yeah, because Putin is, I don´t know, "anti-trans" or something. These people would shit in their pants if a Russian drone hit their favorite vacation spot, probably demand that Ukraine hands over its eastern and southern provinces, so they can all go back to sleep... Or sleep-walking!
ReplyDeleteDoes the French Foreign Legion still exist? Can they intervene in Niger and rough up the Wagner Group?
ReplyDeleteThe Americans were right about two things: Russia was preparing to attack Ukraine, and the Kyiv offensive was a dismal failure. But ever since, they have been mostly wrong. An idiot can see that the sanctions aren´t working and that the Russians are waging a war of attrition. They don´t care about "optics" (as in "oh no, we have to leave Kherson, what will the media think"). They mostly care about long term results.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea how the West can win this war, especially since the Western side isn´t prepared for a protracted war of attrition (or protracted sanctions - in effect, the Russians are now sanctioning us!) But unless some kind of really dramatic break through happens on the Spring Offensive front very soon, a protracted war of attrition is probably the bottom line. It won´t be pretty, and might involve a lot of drone strikes on Russian territory...
Question is: How will Russia react? And how will the peoples in the Western nations react if the Russians strike, say, Copenhagen with drones? The liberals are already grovelling for Muslim authoritarian regimes over Quran burnings, so why not turn full quisling (or is it Kuusinen) if Russia starts pushing really hard?
The liberals will soon re-discovert that Azov were Nazis, after all, blah blah.
From JMG´s essay:
ReplyDelete>>>In retrospect, it’s clear what the Ukrainian government and its NATO allies had in mind. Once war with Russia came, the Ukrainian army would draw the Russians into a grueling stalemate that would deny them an easy victory and cost them more than the Russian economy could afford. Meanwhile sweeping economic sanctions would finish wrecking Russia’s economy and force Russia into a humiliating withdrawal and an internal political crisis. The long-range endpoint was regime change, leading to the often-stated Western goal of breaking up the Russian Federation into a gaggle of weak, unstable states. These could then be absorbed by the EU, in the run-up to the final confrontation with China a few decades further down the line.>>>
I´m fine with this, LOL.
Somehow, I don´t think "Pride Month" or "Pussy Riot" are a firm basis for geopolitical opposition to Eurasianism, but what the heck do I know... (And no, I´m not against LGB rights or feminism. Just making a point.)
ReplyDeleteIs the Chinese grand strategy to weaken both Russia and the West by gambling on a war of attrition between them? Probably not...yet. But further down the line, who knows? They can pose as "friends" of Russia and "peace-makers" to the Western nations, while weakening both, and then take over both Taiwan and Siberia in one full swoop!
ReplyDeleteDo people even understand that Russia can´t permit itself to lose due to *geopolitical* imperatives? Look at the Eurasian landmass. What do you see? A conflict between the Heartland and the Inner Crescent is baked into the cake since millions of years of continental drift...
ReplyDeleteOceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
ReplyDeleteAzov are heroes as long as they do our fighting and dying for us, but the moment Russia drone-strikes some Swedish suburb, just wait, everyone will go back to calling them Nazis, homophobes and, heaven forfend, islamophobes!
ReplyDeleteSynd att Aziv har så fullt upp i Ukraina. Hade velat se ett uniformsfetishistiskt Azov - block i årets prideparad..
DeleteDe hade kunnat mingla med PKK-anhängarna...
DeleteMiddle class suburb, obviously.
ReplyDeleteUkraine can´t even get Western consumers to boycott Mondelez chocolate...
ReplyDeleteTyckte det var kul och antagligen sant när Mac Gregor sa att man skickar inte klusterammunitioni till Ukraina för att det är så himla effektivt. Det är helt enkelt vad man har kvar att skicka.
ReplyDeleteJa, det var ett reportage redan i julas om att ammunitionen håller på att ta slut i Tyskland. Jägare hade svårt för att köpa ammunition eftersom allt skickades till Ukraina. Den mest absurda detaljen är att Tyskland köper det mesta av sin ammunition från Kina!
ReplyDelete