Ukrainian military fatalities is now an issue. Prior to this week, most Western military analysts bought in to the Ukrainian propaganda that Russia was bleeding troops, but Ukraine was doing fine. That dog is dead. A new friend, Stephen Bryen, just published a piece in the Asian Times that provides an honest, hard hitting assessment of the peril facing Ukraine. Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute. He served as a senior Defense Department official in the Reagan Administration. His article is titled, Ukrainian military casualties are big trouble for Biden:
Ukraine’s heavy casualties are a signal that Washington’s de facto war with Russia is in trouble. President Joe Biden has to change direction or face a national security crisis that could end his presidency.
Ukraine may look as if it were winning. The truth is the opposite because Ukraine is running out of manpower it cannot replace. It is losing by attrition on the battlefield and, with the Russians systematically destroying its infrastructure, millions of Ukrainians have fled abroad. It is unlikely the country could recover even if the war should end tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Russia’s manpower problems are less severe. Moscow has been replenishing its supply of front-line troops through an unpopular conscription program at home that has now been extended to the territories in Ukraine that it occupies.
Ukraine finds itself in a similar position that faced the Confederacy in 1864 during the American Civil War. The North towered over the South in terms of manpower. Even though U.S. General Ulysses Grant’s forces suffered more casualties than the Southern forces led by Robert E. Lee during 1864, the North could easily replace its losses. The South could not. By April 1865, the South exhausted its ability to provide new recruits and reinforce depleted battalions and was compelled by necessity to surrender.
A similar fate awaits Ukraine. But this is not a repeat of the last year of the U.S. Civil War, where Union troops made repeated assaults on the entrenched Confederates. Russia, in contrast to the U.S. Army under Grant, is not suffering massive casualties and has barely tapped into its military reserves. Ukraine, by contrast, is exhausting its human resources and no longer can provide essential military training within its geographic boundaries.
The photos and videos of Ukrainian casualties are populating the internet. The image below, as I understand it, is a U.S. designed cemetery for fallen Ukrainian soldiers. Each square can accommodate 105 graves. It appears there are 24 burial squares and a potential of 2,520 burial sites.
The following video was posted in July 2022.
Here we are four months later and the body count is still piling up.
Most Americans are still blinded by the anti-Russian propaganda and fail to understand that Russia’s ability to sustain its military operations is robust. My friend Stephen, for example, is still locked into a Soviet-era mentality when it comes to evaluating Russian capabilities. He writes:
Russia, as is by now well known, also has serious problems both in recruiting and training soldiers, and its ability to replace weapons. But Russia also has huge war stocks it acquired before the downfall of the Soviet Union, and it is now bringing some of them to bear in the Ukraine war.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/12/ukrainian-military-casualties-are-big-trouble-for-biden/
The reality is the opposite. It is the United States that is struggling to fill recruitment goals. Russia’s mobilization was misrepresented in much of the Western press as forced enlistment of “conscripts.” The majority of the “new” recruits were experienced reservists. The claim that Russian commanders are providing inadequate training is a Western delusional fantasy. Here is a clip of training soldiers to shoot and move as a team:
My friend Stephen also fails to appreciate that Russia’s defense industry is modern, efficient and working round the clock. The production of S-400 and S-500 air defense systems surpass anything created during the Soviet era. The same goes for Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities. And neither the United States nor NATO have any weapon system comparable to the hyper sonic missiles Russia is using to great effect on critical Ukrainian infrastructure and bases.
As winter sets in, Ukrainian troops will face more daunting odds. They will be more likely to seek shelter and minimize movements because of the lack of vehicles and tanks. Russia, on the other hand, will be able to concentrate fires on the fixed Ukrainian positions, which means more Ukrainian casualties.
If Russia persists with its campaign of destroying Ukraine’s ability to produce and distribute electricity, water and gas, Ukraine’s ability to supply its troops with food and ammunition with degrade substantially. In short, Ukraine faces a dark, dangerous winter.
Can confirm the note you make on the Russian mobilization thing – I, a Russian of entirely eligible military age and alright physical condition, got a call-up notice in late September and turned up at the rally point, but was turned away the moment the clerks in charge of checking records saw my military ID noting that I did not do my conscription year due to staying in college and aging out of conscription by the time I was done. And since that means I didn’t get basic training, they had no use for me, since there’re no plans to do mass basic training and only those who have it already are eligible. (I wouldn’t have even minded going all that much, but their point is only logical.)
I wasn’t the only guy there with that situation either, several of us were just handed our papers back and pointed back at the exit for this reason. If anything, that we got notices at all was a clerical error and there’s a whole MoD campaign of getting local commissariats to keep their paperwork properly updated now that it matters for real so cases like ours wouldn’t happen to begin with.
Aside from that the whole deal was actually rather decently organized, though clearly the system needed tuning (and it’s now getting it). And no-one was corralled in by force or anything – the doors remained open and reservists popped out for a smoke every so often and went back in plus walked around the premises freely, no-one stopped them.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
We can only hope that this and similar things slowly get around. Some people are still so much on the “master-man / sub-man” – trip, (sometimes subtly, like “the Russians have no real economy”) – it’s just unbelievable …
I had to read “economic and military dwarf” not too long ago – and he meant it seriously …
Americans are conditioned to believe that Russia is a backwards country still living in Stalin’s gulags. Propaganda is powerful and had me thinking that way before the confrontation started. Most won’t do 15 minutes of research to find out how modernized Russia has become since the Soviet era. I was never in the dark about how corrupt Ukraine was or the US Govt for that fact. We are turning into a 3rd world country while Russia ascends to a 1st world country and we have only ourselves to blame for sleeping while the elite loot our country.
The Soviet Union was anything but backwards.
That myth needs to die too.
It should have already died when it beat the US in the early phases of the space exploration competition, and yet it still persists. Propaganda is a very powerful thing.
The development of hypersonic weapons that now give such an edge to Russia started long before the USSR fell apart, then was frozen due to the chaos of the 90s, then resurrected, and here we are.
The USSR fell behind in the IT sphere and in automated manufacturing starting in the mid- to late 1960s, but it wasn’t for lack of capability, disastrous political decisions were made that squandered an initial position of parity or even advantage relative to the West, e.g. the USSR was better positioned initially to create the internet, and with an actually useful purpose for it too (rather than watching porn, social media zombifying the population, sharing cat pictures, speculation in imaginary assets, and conducting various shady business) – to be the basis of real-time material balancing for the planned economy. Had that path been pursued, we would be living in a very, very different world now, but it wasn’t. Again, not for lack of capability – they had the scientists and engineers, who created that vision and were ready to implement it, but internal politics intervened.
Brezhnev was repeatedly told in the 1970s “Hey, we are falling behind in such and such areas, we need to change course”, and his answer was “No worries, we are very strong in what matters, the military sphere”. And Indeed, now it is clear that he was not wrong about that, as the fact that Russia now has these advanced weapons building on what was already being worked on in the 1970s and 1980s clearly shows. Imagine that work had not been interrupted in the 1990s and the USSR was still whole, with 2-3x the resources that modern Russia has – what would the balance look like? Not everything was resurrected – there is a laundry list of cool gadgets that were in development up until the collapse and have still not been revived. Some of them might have come quite useful now.
Also, there is this mythology about the USSR being this dark gloomy bleak and depressing place compared to the paradise on Earth that was the West.
That is not at all how it was. The USSR is dark and gloomy for the same reasons the US Midwest and the UK and much of Northern Europe are dark and gloomy – it is autumn and winter half of the year, and quite a but more than half a year in Siberia. Of course Moscow is not going to be bright and sunny like Miami or LA, for objective climatic reasons. When the sky is grey and overcast, there are no leaves on the trees, and everything is covered in mud (snow is much better when it’s fresh, it at least looks clean, but after a while it collects a lot of dirt on it, so it’s back to looking bad), yeah, it’s not exactly the most uplifting scenery, but that’s just how it is and has always been.
But in terms of infrastructure and the living environment life was pretty good, until the very end. Which was not the case in the West. Large parts of New York, mere miles away from Wall Street, looked like literal warzones in the early 1980s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjYIuZNV0uA&t=88
And it wasn’t just NYC, the 1970s and 1980s were also when the Rust Belt initially rusted, and large parts of the country were turning into a dystopian post-industrial moonscape.
The key is that Hollywood mostly showed scenes from the prosperous, rich, bright and sunny places. Even though the reality was so inescapable that in the 1980s the bleak situation in US cities nevertheless did feature quite a bit in movies and on TV, the overall impression the world got was rather different — of paradise on Earth. Well, it was for some, but not for many more others.
I can guarantee you that not a single place in the Eastern Bloc looked like the Bronx, Harlem, Detroit, etc. looked in the early 1980s, or like Detroit, Gary, East St. Louis, the southside of Chicago, the Philadelphia inner city, and countless other places look today.
Worse, currently in the US you have places like the San Francisco and LA downtowns, where you combine shiny skyscrapers with having to always look very careful where you are stepping, because the ground is littered with feces and needles, and you also have to watch your back very carefully because you don’t know what the crazy homeless junkies all around you might do at any given moment. Again, not a single place like that in the USSR.
Those commie blocks that are so maligned as hell on Earth? Well, you only really saw them after a decade or two of complete disrepair and lack of maintenance after the collapse. It was new, nice and clean prior to that, but that is not the picture that has remained in people’s minds.
Etc.
>We are turning into a 3rd world country while Russia ascends to a 1st world country and we have only ourselves to blame for sleeping while the elite loot our country.
The critically important to understand point in this whole situation is that process of turning into a Third world country in the US started in the 1970s. What the collapse of the USSR resulted in was the transfer of on the order of 10 trillions in real wealth from the Eastern Bloc to the West, and that delayed the process. And how it happened is very important to understand too – some fractions in the Soviet elites were tired of being mere managers of all that wealth, they wanted ownership of it, so they sold out their country to the West in exchange for becoming an oligarchy inside the former Soviet sphere.
The reason we have a war is that the 1990s life support injection that the has worn off and that inside Russia a process of clawing back control took place. So now Russia itself has to be broken down and subjugated so that the West can buy another couple decades with the natural resources of Russia.
In the same time the reason the war is being fought like that, i.e. not very seriously so far, is that the internal conflict in Russia still has not been conclusively resolved and there is still a strong influence over what is happening from those oligarchic circles that sold out to the West. There was that story doing the rounds a few weeks ago about how the railways system hasn’t been taken out because if it taken out, various exports of raw materials to the West will have to stop, and that would hurt some oligarchs. That sort of thing…
People could just watch a few Russian car crash videos. Sure, the driving looks bad, but you can see this vast, powerful country in the background. Sixty degrees North!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb0fSlbL9Tk
college kids getting a pass. well, that’s something new.
Something old. College exemptions during the Vietnam war. And when they ran out there were marriage and having children exemptions.
Not new at all for Eastern Europe. I guess you are from other part of the world.
I also have an anecdote that supports your experience.
I’ve got a Russian friend in England, in his early 50s, engineer who’s been living here since graduating. Russian wife and two children, for all purposes British.
He didn’t get any communication from MOD but felt he had to make sure he wasn’t needed. Several of his university friends back in RF volunteered but only one got in. My friend called up but wasn’t accepted.
Bear in mind that this guy, prior to 24th February, was saying Putin wouldn’t invade and had not business invading. A month later he was shaking his head in disbelief at the mess and now he’s telling me he’s come to see the seriousness of the NATO threat.
Imagine. A settled guy with two grown up children and a peaceful prosperous life, doing a job in the U.K. with a lot of social value too. I learnt a few things from this, I have to say.
OTOH i know of a man, 25-30 years, with a truly bad myopia, being about 45 kg 160cm, though rather flaxible and with good stamina.
He got into the gears (at least low level offices need to ramp up numbers), and was transfer Red to the Moscow region conscripts “distribution hub”, where he became everyone’s headache, as not bogyhunters wanted to buy him. In the end he reportedly got landed in canine training centre north of Moscow, a rather elite place, a safe haven for those who can oil the gears. But this guy managed to land there because that unit could not fknd a legitimate reason to refuse taking him.
Sounds like a sitcom…
the Western media has promoted such a false perception of failure on Russia’s side the war should have ended already with Russia in full retreat asking for a truce.
It’s not happening and never was. Keep in mind, the corporate-dictatorial West always accuses its enemies of what they are actually doing – like losing a war.
I look at the mainstream news to see what Holy Shit things they spout.
They are pretty damn good at propaganda. At some point they can just shift and find someone to blame
when it becomes impossible to ignore
the facts.
Americans are so gullible I wonder if they will invent something to blame Trump(and perhaps Biden “but how was he to know what Trump did-and yes he screwed up.”
They certainly won’t attach any blame to Obama, “The Golden One.”
…if they will invent something to blame Trump… — Mike D.
Already in the works…
Trump’s special prosecutor just got a J6 seditious conspiracy conviction handed to him, with which he will attempt to hang Trump…
An implicit conspiracy between two Oathkeepers on January 6…?
If conspiracy is implicit, we are all guilty.
During the trial, prosecutors pointed to the use of the word “we” in text and Facebook messages to demonstrate the coordination that is required to meet the definition of seditious conspiracy. — Yahoo!Life
“100% Larry,”…… onlyway2go !
I have a question concerning UKR MIAs:
I have read that when a troop is listed as MIA his pay can be appropriated by a corrupt higher-up. And that this is happening on a large scale.
Therefore these thieves are making good money off of people they know are dead and whose families are in the dark about their fate and maybe will never find out and the people doing this do not care in the slightest. And so, if true, these thieves are the lowest sort of scum. Evil and greedy.
The question is: If they are fine with profiting off of the MIAs don’t they have an incentive to create even more MIAs?
Wouldn’t this explain most of the hopeless attacks launched by UKR into the teeth of superior Russian firepower?
Those create a lot of casualties, many of whom are left where they fell.
This would also explain the lack of enthusiasm for collecting the dead, even though I have read that, at times, the Russians have offered cease-fires to enable this.
Of course I’ve just read these things, I have no ability to corroborate this information but I am cynical enough to think of it and was wondering if maybe I’m off base.
Thoughts?
That’s just small potatoes. There are so many layers of corruption and war profiteering going on in Ukraine that if the population had as many layers of clothing, they could survive an unheated winter in Antarctica.
Everyone wants their piece.
Even worse is the moral depravity and malevolence of deliberately NOT evacuating the major cities in order to create a humanitarian crises not seen since WW2.
When the RF finally drops the hammer and takes out the remaining 6 critical sub stations on the electric grid and takes it down for good, the civilians in those cities will start to freeze to death, especially young children and infirm and elderly.
Check out what Gonzalo Lira has to say about it
May God have Mercy on them
Slava Russia
Blessings
L
States have to pay a lof of money to the family of dead soldier. Families of MIA get nothing. Collecting dead bodies would mean paying the money.
Hopeless attacks are done in order to gain ground and show everyone that they can “win the war”.
You are not cynical at all. Madeleine Albright said that deaths of 500.000 Iraqi kids are worth it. Deathcount in Ukraine is nowhere near that, yet.
the Ukraine before the SMO was the most corrupt country on Earth. After the beginning of SMO people in power in that country are now laundering billions of US$ left and right (they know their time is limited, so, now if there were any limitations on stealing, they are all gone, grab as much as you can before it all collapses).
There are a few things that the Ukis have done to hide the true casualties:
– The Zelenski regime deliberately hides the numbers of not only dead but also severely wounded (they are intentionally left in the field to rot) in order to avoid paying families pensions and other due payments (more American and dumb-Europeans cash to steal, why bother paying all those patsies / soldiers). Most of the killed are left to rot in the field (except for those who are used for their body parts by flourishing transplant industry in the Uki land). And these poor souls are simply designated MIA, no need to pay the family, no pension, nada. Zelenski and his gang win.
– A few months ago the Uki parliament also implemented a new law which now grants battalion commanders the power of attorney to re-assign ownership of their underlings / soldiers’ property. Can you guess why this was done? Correct, now any commander can make hundreds (or thousands?) of his troops “disappear” (either killed naturally in the battlefield, or helped to be dead “from behind”), and guess who the lucky new owners of these dead suckers are?!
I suspect there are a few thousand other “creative schemes” how dead bodies left to rot in the fields (and not accounted among the dead) fill the coffers of the regime.
So, why rush into some sort of settlement with Russia when this macabre gravy train is so lucrative?!
Russian video does not work for me.
CNN videos don’t work for me. Haven’t for years.
“When we say’ denazification – – what do we mean?
To be proud of the fact that 300 Ukrainian conscripts were killed in a day, or 1,000 were killed a day?
This is a fight, this is a war. In fact, no one feels sorry for each other anymore. At least, Donetsk and Luhansk are not going to feel sorry for anyone. They are extremely serious. And so they will go exactly to the end.
As for how it will all end.
I am really deeply convinced that we will take Kiev, not liberate it. We are liberating the Donbass. Everything else we will take, just as we took Vienna, Berlin, Budapest. Because we can’t physically leave it to our children, our grandchildren. If we stop, we will have a huge potential on our western borders, pumped up with hatred and weapons, which calls into question the very fact of our existence. So it’s either us or them.”
— Dmitry Rogozin
Yes, I think this is the case as well. Russia must take all of Ukraine or at least let the western half go to Poland, Hungary and Romania. Russia cannot risk leaving Ukraine in the hands of the neo-nazi leaders.
Maybe, just maybe the Kiev Oblast will remain as the only remnant of Ukraine?
Do we have any of those hypersonicthingymajigs?
Shit, they’re bombing the grid! Send some AD!!
Uh oh, it’s getting cold! Send winter gear!!
F*ck, we’re out of 155s. Call Boeing!!
Release the SPR kraken!!
Attention Taiwan, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Ursula, 100,000+ KiAs is kind of a big deal. And btw, your way too skinny.
The level of incompetence is next level even by Washington standards.
Here in Poland I treat many Ukrainian patients. One of them has friends who are fighting in the east. The pictures they relay back is that there are hundreds of dead bodies lying in the fields and in cities without burial. The morgues are overwhelmed. No electricity, water, etc. The soldiers are sent to the front with a few catridges of ammunition for many to share. There are not enough weapons. All of the military equipment and aid given by the west is swallowed up in a black hole of corruption and nothing makes it to the front. He also mentioned the constant and massive bombardment by Russian artillery. He told me that by summer 2023 the war should be over.
He tried to explain why he isn’t fighting on the front and said that he doesnt have any experience as a soldier and has been living in Poland this past four years. I told him that it’s ok and he doesnt need to explain himself. I thought to myself that he shouldnt feel obligated to sacrifice himself and be slaughtered at the front in a war that was already lost from the begining.
There’s no shame in refusing to fight for the West.
The proposed concept that black holes are worm holes to other locations in the universe I believe has been proven beyond a doubt.
Western weapons pouring into the black hole of Ukraine and reappearing in Africa, the Middle East and even back into Europe itself seems to me to be uncontrovertible evidence well beyond the empirical.
He doesn’t need to explain why he isn’t fighting.
A regime that does this to its own soldiers is not worth fighting for.
Having looked at his article, I think your new friend Stephen illustrates the problem for anyone associated with the regime who realizes what is happening and wants to warn about it.
Unless they simultaneously badmouth Russia and its position, they will immediately get their ticket clipped and be unceremoniously ejected from their positions. So, at best the assessments they offer are not realistic, just a little less unreal than earlier. Thus, everyone in the US government and media is operating on a totally BS view of the situation and anyone who knows the true scale of the collapse is seriously afraid to mention it.
How are the adventures going ? Greatly enjoy the many and varied points of view here at Larry’s , including yours. Many of these comments appear to be genuine. What a safe little world I live in here in the wide and friendly brown land.
Did I say many comments appear to be genuine ? When Irish eyes are smiling….
Tell us your perspective then, Steve-O, as you apparently doubt the Russian ability to wage war against an inferior aggressor…the same Russian military who ceded vast expanses of their own terrain in order to encircle the 6th Army in one of the few honest battles of attrition in modern warfare. I’m certainly not naïve enough to underestimate Russian fortitude. The Ukrainian courage will continue to wane as this conflict moves forward. We are only in the early stages of the Midgame; the Endgame is still far from manifestation…
They are not afraid. They know exactly what is happening there and they see their own failure. That is the only thing they can do now. Not mentioning is, what they are supposed to do (lie, cheat, steal).
They fight a war putting out total BS and make people believe they are in charge and they are winning. In the end they will even somehow declare victory while abandoning everyone else. Case closed, history rewritten, NEXT! …
People working there are either 100% on their side or out. US government and it’s “agencies” own the media. They have their assets in charge and can state whatever they want. Hence all that “anonymous sources” crap they have been using for quite some time. Works like a charm, no one even questions that stuff anymore. Same goes for deliberately created fake news. Print or televise it and after you get caught, rectify in some hidden article in the online version as an minor journalistic mishap. Works very well in German media.
Well they should be afraid, very afraid. This is not their usual genocide for resources, this is a real war with a powerful adversary winning hands down. America comprises 4.3% of the global population, the collective west 13%. The other 83% who have been slaughtered and pillaged for eons have been waiting a long time for this…..and they want revenge. This won’t end with “escape by helicopter”. Russia, last December, tried a rational compromise, the fools sneeringly thought Russia was bluffing and unwittingly brought us to Armageddon…..the final battle between good and evil. This will change the collective west, not in a positive way, for generations. The US will fragment, NATO and the EU will collapse and the more intelligent of the European countries will shift into the Eurasian orbit.
For eons the West has brought medicine , sanitation, education, democratic government, rule of law, science , reason and banned such brutality as suttee in India and binding women’s feet in China.
The European genius for exploration , be it geographically or culturally.
The Green Revolution that fed Asia’s millions from the 1950’s on.
Those who would sneer these gifts are the ones who should be afraid. Very afraid.
For eons the West has brought medicine , sanitation, education, rule of law, science , reason
So have the Chinese, the Arabs and more, my little hubristic friend.
Ironic isn’t it, that Ukraine’s fascist version of The Enlightenment has ended in lights out.
you’ve been drinking too much of the Western propaganda Koolaid, “another steve”.
Keep drinking, maybe it will make the sinking of the West into the Mad Max world more palatable and “unicorny”.
Well said Sir!
European expansion across the globe was overwhelmingly a good thing.
No sensible person would want to be an ordinary Asian, African or native of the Americas as they were before the White Man arrived.
We were not perfect, but we did far more good than harm. Just look at the population numbers.
Check “Opiums war” on wiki to see all the “enlightenment” that the west bring to China who had great and refined civilization 1000 year before Roman empire.
I’m all for our great civilization that the libtard are destroying, but the “enlightenment” we bring to the world was largely paid with blood.
As a citizen of a former colony, i only have this to say… China gave you paper and gunpowder. India gave you lots of metallurgy, shipbuilding, textiles and mathematics. The Arabs gave you mathematics and astronomy and irrigation. Almost none of these countries has a king any more. So maybe you should get off your high horse and crawl back under that rock you came out from under.
As I have pointed out several times on Gonzalo LIras channel to various peoples believes that the Russians have a trained manpower pool of ten to 15 million men.
Where in the west can you find a comparable number?
Sometimes conscription has its advantages.
Russian total reservists pool is supposed to be 25 million. Considering that not all of them are in their best age or health, getting half of that to be combat ready sounds reasonable.
Small professional armies are intended for terrorizing small countries. Russian military doctrine is based on big wars.
Good points Larry.
NATOs countermeasures in 2023 are likely destabilizing Russia‘s periphery. Another grand strategic goal is peeling off Russia‘s Allies and near Allies.
It’s gonna be a long global war and the Ukrainian Civil War is not the main event.
It’s not just grand strategy, but also RAND strategy 🙂
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
“Meanwhile, Russia’s manpower problems are less severe. Moscow has been replenishing its supply of front-line troops through an unpopular conscription program at home that has now been extended to the territories in Ukraine that it occupies.”
It is not a conscription programme, it is a mobilisation programme, by which reservist officers are drafted into regiments. Western “observers” peddle the lie that boys are being drafted into the army and then, having been barely trained by the military, are sent to the front and that this enforced conscription is unpopular.
It is true that conscripts are drafted every year in Russia for compulsory 1-year military service, a common practice in Europe. All Russian males between 18 and 27 are liable for conscription if fit for service. My son is one such male. There is no mass emigration of 18-year-old males each year from Russia of young men who wish to evade the draft.
Stephen Bryen, senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute, says that SMO front-line troops are being replenished “by means of an unpopular conscription program”. That is simply not true on two counts: it is not a conscription programme but a partial mobilization programme of reservist officers who have already done contract military service, and though many reservist officers have chosen to leave Russia in order to avoid mobilisation (I am acquainted with two such persons), most reservists who were instructed to report for retraining prior to their being deployed for active service did so.
A few weeks ago the MoD announced that the partial mobilization had been completed. Bryant suggests that there are mass protests here against mobilization of reservists and that reservists are fleeing Russsia in droves. That is simply not true.
I presume Bryant is not in Russia now or has visited Russia and has therefore not observed the public dissatisfaction that he claims exists here in Russia over what he calls “conscription”.
Most of the people in the west have been dumbed down by the education system (instead of history they get pure propaganda) and their understanding is based on stereotypes from Hollywood movies. I am sure that for many the Russian army is something like in that scene from Enemy at the Gates, one gun for 5 soldiers…
There was a brilliant shape of criticism, from journalists, ‘above’ a tiranny. You write an article with some true news mixed with the ‘correct top-down’ propaganda.
You write of “resivist officers”. I suspect you mean reservists of any rank and not just officers. My impression was that privates are also mobilized in addition to officers.
I’m not clear if he was speaking of Ukrainian officers drawn from Ukraine’s neonazi militias, in which case ‘recidivist’ to the 1930-40’s would likely be what he meant.
whilst there are many amateurs and armchair generals who enjoy wargaming – either with boards/counters or miniatures (also online with VASSAL), there are also quite a number of professionals who use wargames as a tool for learning etc. One such ‘professional’- John Curry – Senior Lecturer in Games Development and Cyber Security, Bath Spa University is running a wargame of the operation and gives what would be some wonderfully funny observations of the entire situation – showing how he has swallowed hook, line and sinker the British MOD’s farcical read of the the situation. I will keep an eye on his blog to see exactly how he changes the play as winter progresses. I suppose that it is no surprise that gatherings of wargamers such as on BGG (a US site) are also woefully misinformed of events as well as being disasterously naeve in regards to the Russian Peoples.
(I would post links but am unsure of moderation policy re the provision of external site addresses.)
Found his site.
His premises are garbage.
Thus, so are his results.
It might be masochistic of you to keep reading his “thoughts.” Or maybe it’s like academic slap-stick comedy to watch him try.
definitely the latter. 😉
Thanks for taking the time to check it out. 😉
In fairness to John Curry, he has done a lot of good work. However, in this case, he has a conflict of interest. His clients for his professional wargaming work are NATO militaries, thus the highly questionable assumptions re the Ukraine wargame.
Several of his assumptions regarding unit quality, artillery and logistics may have been valid during the first month or so, but Curry does not appear to give credit to the Russian Army as a learning organisation, ready, willing and able to learn from both success and failure and to adapt accordingly.
He appears to ignore the massive deployment of divisional artillery from mid-April and the 11,000,000 or so artillery rounds expended since. This extreme level of artillery expenditure could not possibly be sustained without a very competent and effective logistical support system.
He dismisses Russian PGM as ineffective. But Russian PGM’s are effective. And Russian PG artillery (Krasnopol) has had 30+ years of effective service and development in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and in Kargil for India in 1998 where it was literally a “game changer”, enabling the Indians to destroy otherwise untouchable Pakistani bunkers at high altitude. Better and cheaper than its nearest US equivalent, Copperhead.
He dismisses the Russian airforce claiming “losses forced the Russians to reduce air attacks in order to keep their airforce ‘in being’”. But UKR claims of Russian air losses (280 aircraft/261 helos) are certainly highly exaggerated. Russian airforce is providing effective CAS when required. Russian air doctrine differs hugely from NATO, emphasising long range air and ground launched PGM’s in lieu of deep interdiction strikes by aircraft with short range JDAM/LGB.
Since the introduction of HIMARS, air defense was reorganised, Russian IADS is tasked with interception of UAV’s and MLRS and other ballistic missiles, Russian airforce CAP is responsible for interception of UKR combat aircraft.
It is possible this publicly described wargame is merely part of the British pro-Ukraine propaganda effort, the public face of a wargame with more realistic assumptions forecasting doom for Ukraine.
Some years ago, he wrote a very good article:
“Why Cold War Warsaw Pact Tactics Work In Wargaming”
Very interesting, and amusing.
https://20thcenturywargaming.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/why-cold-war-warsaw-pact-tactics-work-in-wargaming/
I have used his method to play as the USSR in Flashpoint Campaigns Red Storm/Germany Reforged. Win. Every. Time.
I read that post and if he’s telling us the truth there then how can he say that Russia will lose in Ukraine?
Is it because they no longer use those tactics he used?
Maybe they’ve forgotten them? Lost all those manuals in a move?
Or is there is something magical about the UKR forces that will give them victory?
Yeah, the Russians seem to be going slow but they have good reasons for that I’m sure.
If they continue this way they’ll grind down UKR over the course of the next year.
But if the Russians decide to roll old-school it will be over in weeks.
Either way UKR loses.
Curry has to know this.
If he does and but yet says otherwise that means he’s sold his credibility for a paycheck. As others above have pointed out.
He’s not the first and won’t be the last.
Glad my article on Russian tactics was of interest. It has gone around the world and back to me.
John Curry’s bio says that he has worked with the Royal Navy, BAe, the Pentagon and the MoD. No doubt such work is paid for on a consultancy or research grant type basis.
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”. Applies to most of these academics, military and think tank guys.
I read the comments with interest, and with some amusement.
My value, if any, to the wargaming community, is my application of the academic method to validate assumptions. I was the one who wrote the referred journal article that wargaming was an essential but flawed tool. I analysed classified professional wargaming rules written during the Cold War and demonstrated that they included major errors. (This was not the fault of the wargamers, but of the operational analysis the games were based on). As you can imagine the presentation of this at professional wargaming conferences in the UK and USA and Australia was not well received by all.
However, despite my reputation for seeking evidence, people still want to talk to me. I have had 204 requests for meetings about wargaming in the last one and half weeks. These were for meetings about potential work, meetings about potential collaboration, meetings as people are bored, meetings where people want to tell me where I am wrong. I am not going to do any of these meetings except for the 4 requests from different groups of students doing research. Actually, the meetings where people tell me I am wrong are the most useful, as it forces me to revisit my assumptions and data.
My initial wargame, despite uncertainties, was the only one I know of that predicted the failure of the initial Russian invasion. However, it should be noted that I upset some supporters of the narrative of “Ukraine tactical brilliance v Russian incompetence” with my conclusion that both sides were not very good at war; the campaign stalled due to geography and logistics. I did tactical analysis of enough video footage of combat to demonstrate neither side was well trained at that stage.
Wargames allow one to experiment. So I played with the ORBATs and I found that Russia needed 300% more aircraft committed to the campaign, 500% more PGMs and 800% more airborne forces in order to take eastern Ukraine within in weeks.
As for sources, I read NATO sources, but I am not using them. I have other sources. I am always seeking metrics to inform my wargames e.g. rates of advance, casualty rates, tank repair rates etc.. e.g. a generalisation is that artillery shells land on average 300 metres from their target. This is due to the largely worn-out barrels on both sides- no-one expected artillery barrels to be used to fire so many shells. This means that maths indicates it takes perhaps 100 shells to hit a particular trench. That is a lot of shells when one needs to keep moving locations due to counter battery fire (such as drones/ missile strikes).
To be clear, my income is not dependent on me saying what people want to hear. My efforts are not western propaganda, I doubt anyone knows I exist outside of the wargaming world. And I might be completely wrong. The future is not yet written, both Ukraine and Russia can do things that means the Russian army does not break by the end of the winter.
If I am wrong I will happily admit it, then analyse why, then inform my future practise.
The US even dug their graves! Great sponsor! What more could a proxy wish?
We offer cradle to grave coverage in the west. And we mean it.
I can’t imagine anything more perverse. First, NATO engineers arrived to open the bunkers and deep defense trenches following the violent coup d’état in 2014. Note that Ukraine says it has been invaded but never went to wait for the invader at the border like any invaded country. Because the idea of NATO military strategists was to wait in the bunkers for the Russians with an open chest. But the Russians chose to send missiles and especially 152mm artillery. Bloody Fucking horror! In the same way that after Russia sent the ultimatums in December – after 8 years of bombing in Donbass and many more of the siege in the Black Sea with missile ramps in Poland and Romania aimed at Moscow when the US did not wait 8 days in the Cuban missile crisis – to finally discuss with the US the existential threat to Russia, the neutrality and the hypothesis of peace in Ukraine via Minsk agreements.
Biden, NATO and the EU refused and Biden started with that hypocritical game of trying to guess to dates of the Russian invasion for suckers who watch television in the West. Because behind the hypocrisy thousands of ukrops jumped the line of contact in the Donbass with hundreds of illegal heavy artillery pieces with which they had managed to “fool” the OSCE “inspectors” for the total annihilation of the Russian population of the Donbass. Not even OSCE reports could camouflage the more than 500% increase in Ukrop bombings in February. Which obviously configures the preparation of the final attack on Donbass. As Russia is now doing with missiles in Kiev. And if we remember is when Kiev starts to put ice on the imminent invasion very inflamed and starts saying that Russia is not going to invade Ukraine?! Through Zelensky and some limits! It finally dawned on him what could happen to Ukraine! How is it happening! After months of bluffing I was even going to acquire new nukes!
This all goes to show the perversion, hypocrisy and cynicism of the US game of guessing the invasion date. Sick people! Who knew well that the attack they were preparing in Donbass would give Russia no other solution but to invade Ukraine! Because the ones who really invaded Ukraine in 2004 with the Color Revolution like in Georgia and then with the Maidan coup in 2014 were the US! When neo-Nazi laws start to emerge in Ukraine!
Of course, Ukraine still tried to restore peace as early as May in Istanbul, soon banned by the West. But there are also several problems here, we never quite know which part of Ukraine wanted peace and which power would never admit it like the nationalists around the Kiev regime. And the same on the Russian side judging by the low-profile cadres it sent to the Istanbul talks. Would Russia really be willing to accept the official recognition of Crimea, the independence of Donbass and above all the neutrality of Ukraine? What about demilitarization and denazification? What about NATO? And how did the Kiev regime expel NATO from Ukraine? They would sooner cut off Zelesnky’s head or some military leader who also wanted peace! Because in May the US was still very confident in its objectives for this conflict. Wear down Russia and overthrow Putin in Moscow. Already with the new government of Russia in exile as they also tried with Guaidó in Venezuela. With the same objective on both sides of the Atlantic. Looting natural resources and deciding who has access to them. In the case of Ukraine, mainly to boycott China and the EU. As was very evident in the extremism of sabotage of gas pipelines in the Baltic.
In short, another mainly economic war, for energy. Along the lines of Iraq, Libya and Syria. Because beyond ideology and hegemony, the US economy today can no longer survive without foreign resources. Energetics and materials. As not many patriots will believe. But only the hole of corruption in private health after covid is certain bankruptcy! And above all, it makes any desirable change in economic direction unfeasible, which would consume many resources that the US does not have at home! This is also why the US has never been more dangerous to the world. And the trail of death and refugees over the last 30 years is what we all know!
I never believed in those who predicted that Russia would resolve the conflict in a week or in those who now speak of Russia’s many problems in Ukraine in recent months. Often the same people. No one knows Ukraine like Russia, which knew perfectly well what it was going to face. With surprises on both sides as many Russian sympathizing Mayors were executed by the SBU. We are the ones who still don’t know! In Donbass alone there are several bunkers like Azovstal. They only surpass each other in two ways. By the bomb or with surrenders! That’s why this is an artillery war and not an infantry one!
I heard an English mercenary in a video that I don’t know if he is a mercenary or an actor in a propaganda piece to mobilize mercenaries, saying that if 1% of the deaths in Ukraine are the responsibility of the infantry, that’s a lot!! I leave the link at the end. I would like to see another army annihilate the army of Ukraine with an expeditionary force that never exceeded 100,000 in theater like Russia! Always trying to save civilian lives contrary to Western propaganda. And as Ukraine does not decide anything, this conflict always had to arrive this winter for the breaches between the EU and the US to begin! Finally Russia is not only active in Ukraine. Russia is today the great pivot of a multipolar NWO and in my opinion the timing of the conflict was completely planned and does not obey only military operations. As Russia also has no interest in conquering all of Ukraine as is often heard. West of the Dnieper Russia wants the buffer zone it always wanted. Russia today is only interested in expelling NATO from Ukraine!
Any intelligence officer to assess whether it’s a propaganda piece with an actor deploying troops to Ukraine today or an English mercenary who got out of Ukraine just in time?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbD4WBqPg4
CHANGE – Global
Not many will take and or notice but the whole of civilization has been for the past 20 years; values have changed, human behaviours have changed, civilizations have changed, cities have changed, small town have changed, building designs, clothing and lack of it has changed; technologies have changed, habits have changed, attitudes have changed, etc., but moreso, this change has been and is and will continue to accelerate. This acceleration has now reached a point that it can no longer be ignore; saying that, as an old fart of 80 yrs, I find it not only interesting and welcome but excellent. My prophesy for the short term is for necessary bad (for mainly the deserved some) while being for a bright and prosperous for the rest.
This observation must be viewed globally where the influential emphasis is steadily moving from the West – dominated by the Israel led administration of America and their pleasures for murdering and genocide of the defenseless and with sadistic preference – women and children with Bombs and other massive wartime firepower to the East and South – the rest of the Globe. The parasitic criminal West doesn’t welcome this change so magnifies its chosen preferences with as much blood letting and blood flow that the (((MSM))) can cover and glorify with the lies of Goebbels, Sci Fi, false industrial pharmaceuticals and accompanying poisonous injections – in return for your cash.
There is no Global Warming; that which is occuring is that the atmosphere which consists Plasma, that is electrically charge particles, is aligning with the Earth’s Magnetic Field which is rapidly changing its own charge arrangements and positioning in conjunction with the Solar System’s new position within the Galactic structure and organization. Nothing new here; happened many times over the past billion years so.
However, it is about to get extremely cold. There is Justice.
I will predict however, that those that call themselves “elite leadership” , MSM Journalists, and ‘bankers’ will soon find themselves in the stoning fields and or at least redundant – as identical states that have they have imposed on others such as the KIA and MIA Ukrainian people.
The change that cometh is consciousness – that is to say, the change is You.
Yes, “God Loves You”
I recently left a web forum for a software created by a Ukrainian, who had emigrated to another country. A member had posted a disparaging and inaccurate comment about Russia and I reported the comment as inappropriate. Pretty quickly I found out one of the moderators (American as far as I can tell) went full Western propaganda on me in his reply. I chose not to even bother to reply to him.
I am amazed at lack of discernment among some of the most educated and intelligent people that I deal with. I am an American, a veteran but still…I do make every attempt to find the truth in a situation. And in this situation Ukraine has lost far more troops than Russia and, Ukraine will lose so badly it will astound future historians at the foolishness of the West and the Zelensky regime.
I agree. I’m an American from Ukraine and have family and friends in Ukraine. MSM in the USA is outrageously skewed and permeated by the designated “narrative”. I posted a comment to one of the Rep senators on Twitter, who began peddling back on scrutiny of the war in Ukraine, and parroted that the USA was still “committed to Ukraine,” and I was immediately “found” by one of the pro-Ukrainian war propagandists, with whom I wasn’t connected to at all, and who began bombarding me with his “Russian propagandist, go f… yourself” posters, but deleted them immediately when I replied to him that I reported him to Twitter, and I posted the Adelaide university’s study that the half of 5 million tweets re.: Russia/Ukraine war were discovered to be from the bots and another article that Pentagon “operatives” drive the narrative. The point is there is a concerted effort to prevent the anti-war discussion and MSM is flooded by the no-content “Putin =Putler” posters, and so forth.
Most educated and intelligent people are the most dumb and fooled peoples because their “superiority” immunize them to doubt, skepticism and common sense.
Their analyze of a problem is mostly based on ignorance, and their “solution” is 90% of time worse than the initial problem.
For one Adam Smith you have thousand of mini-Staline with “wonderful ideas for a better world” which mostly end in disasters.
It’s terrible. Have always been against this war.
Would love to see some of those brilliant theorists and generous congressional funders in the front line.
I couldn’t agree with you more, especially that second sentence. Liberalism is the ideology of the insane (it is also the ideology of the damned). America is now being run by liberal fools. Their pie-in-the-sky policies have only led to the further collapse of the West and now, ultimately, the slaughter of the Ukrainian people.
Tried to reply but internet dropped out for first time in perfect two years ..and guess what : again?
The L. man may get us in Big trouble and I’m not even a Yankee.
Not to worry. : )
There is an allegation by some ex(?)Intelligence Professor bloke on Sky News that Wagner is recruiting massively in the prisons and using the recruits as cannon fodder at Bahkmut and that Wagner have taken huge casualties there. There is supposed to be a video of Prigoshin who runs Wagner personnally recruiting in a prison.
First I don’t believe that Wagner have taken massive casulaties anywhere and I would expect to see Ukrainian videos of the bodies if so. Does anybody know if there is any truth in this?
Personnally I would favor giving blokes in prison a second chance in the army and it was for centuries common practice in Britain. But apparently it is illegal under Russian law.
Any ideas?
I have read that they in fact are recruiting people from prisons. But they have strict rules about how they handle them. Is basically a second chance but they still have to prove that they mean good only from that point on.
I don’t think they would take anyone who doesn’t seem fit for rehabilitation. That is just my opinion thou.
Tom, have you a link for that? The fact that you have somewhere read it is no evidence of its veracity.
Even knowing very little about Wagner, they need to operate with military discipline and they need people with genuine military skills.
It is consequently conceivable that they might recruit former soldiers from prison, though difficult to believe that Russia would allow those people to leave before their sentence was over. So perhaps recruiting former soldiers on discharge from prison. However, the notion of just recruiting prisoners irrespective of their military experience simply makes no sense for them.
And what are the numbers involved? 1, 10, 1,000?
It’s true that Wagner recruits prisoners. They fight for 6 months, after which they receive a pardon. After that, they either continue to work at Wagner or go home.
Many die, of those who survived, many remain in the war.
As one of the other clever commenters noted, the Russians got the idea from the Dirty Dozen.
The French Foreign Legion has traditionally been a second chance organization for those fleeing the law or who have generally caused trouble and messed up their lives. Recruits are even given new identities and French passports. Seems to work well for the Legion.
I saw the video in prison. For six mos of sign up, deleted sentence, in case of death, heros burial at home. Plus pay.
Theophilus, I have seen a couple of videos circulating on telegram channels of Prigozhin talking to prisoners. He recruits only prisoners who have been incarcerated for MINOR CRIMINAL OFFENCES. He makes clear that the Wagner code of conduct does note tolerate stealing, raping, killing civilians, drugs or drinking on the job. The prisoners undergo a psychiatric evaluation first. After 6 months of service to the motherland — they earn their freedom.
Personally, I think it’s smart to recruit soldiers with minor criminal offences to use on the front lines. Why should good (citizens) soldiers who abide by the law die while “bad” guys sit in prison eating off the very taxpayers money he’s committed criminal acts towards. There was a video of a couple of these prisoners who received accolades. Other prisoners who are in the theatre of battle were talking about how they were proud to be fighting for their motherland. A lot of prisoners land up in jail because they have no purpose or goal and end up making “mistakes”. Being part of this fight gives these prisoners a sense of patriotism and a chance to redeem themselves.
Zelensky released hardcore azov fighters (part of the tornado battalion, if memory serves me correct) sometime earlier in the conflict. These prisoners were jailed for torture, murder, rape, violence.
I should have added that I don’t agree with Zelensky’s decision to release hardcore criminals!!
Aria, years ago, (Vietnam era) I knew plenty of Vets that made a deal with cops and judges to go into the military in lieu of court sentencing for stuff they did (stealing, pot, whatever, minor stuff). The recruiters would sign em up, I never knew one guy that screwed up the deal. Gives an aimless lad a chance to straighten out. Nowadays, for three decades anyway, recruiting requirements demand spotless records, unless something’s changed. That factor was major in why we’re short in recruiting in the U.S.. Wagner’s onto something.
Going before a Judge and getting the offer of Jail or the military was pretty standard in the 1950’s . And probably before that. Not for murder and the like, but for more petty crimes like joy riding in stolen cars.
I’m looking at You, Jimi Hendrix!! <:-)
“Zelensky released hardcore azov [sic] fighters (part of the tornado battalion, if memory serves me correct) sometime earlier in the conflict. These prisoners were jailed for torture, murder, rape, violence.”
Some estimates (if you can trust the coopted ACLU says that “Despite making up close to 5% of the global population, the U.S. has more than 20% of the world’s prison population. Since 1970, our incarcerated population has increased by 500% – 2 million people in jail and prison today, far outpacing population growth and crime.”
Other sources say that the United States as more prisons, and more people in prison, than any other country. In the history of countries. Ever. More than Nazi Germany during World War II. More than Stalin did between the Post War and Cold War years.
People die in prison. Ever see a figure about how many Americans have died in American prisons? Me neither.
Imagine the size of an army the United States could muster if it just emptied their prisons. Given the choice between fighting “for your country,” or dying in prison . . . .
I used to work for a thrift store, this year during the summer months for several days I saw a LOT of various types of prison clothes (the categories were on the back & were different colors too) that had been donated & obviously not purchased. I told a friend & we both realized that prison deaths haven’t been reported the last couple of years, were they ever? I don’t know that though.
We theorized that the covid “vaccine” shots might have been mandated for the prisoners & a die-off could be happening quietly in prisons. We’ve been hearing about athletes, musicians, & other celebrities dying suddenly & a lot of them had been vaccinated. Since death is one of the many adverse effects, I certainly doubt they would be reporting about the death of prisoners.
Linda, concur, many, many prisons (most, maybe, everything is privatized) are privately-run and deliberately “violate” prisoners in order to keep them there longer, garnering more per-day fees for keeping them. Funny thing? After they’re released, they’re responsible for paying back their keep., even after the prisons made their money. It’s hideous. On the other side, if they’re keeping heinous criminals off the street I’m good. But mostly it’s potheads caught trafficking the evil weed and other minor stuff. The wardens make good money from the penal side of the street.
Violent felons can often make for very good soldiers during active and hot hostilities . Turn off the adrenaline and possibility of combat and they turn their aggressiveness back to more pathological pursuits.
Militaries during real War, the Win at whatever cost our your entire civilization is fucked wars” are very different from the kind of wars we have been experienced.
Thinks of the most intense Battles of WW2 from the Losers side. That’s what real War is because when you in it it feels like losing everything and it often brings out the best in the worst sort of people and the worst in the best…
Recruiting prisoners is common practise in war, but is usually kept quiet. Wagner does’t care about that. There are many videos about it. Some recruited prisoners die in combat, other get medals.
Pie in the Sky News is just more propaganda parading as journalism. Useful for entertainment purposes only.
I’ve seen reports of prisoners being conscripted in exchange for their sentence if they complete their training and active duty commitment. It’s not a wholesale “empty the prisons” program. Wagner has been involved and those selected are trained by them and join their ranks. Not every prisoner that applies is accepted. Reported on the colonelcassad Telegram Channel
” most Western military analysts bought in to the Ukrainian propaganda”
Your phrase illustrates a component of why some refer to them as anal-ysts and others less polite refer to them as anal cysts, whilst some of the more polite call them Mirror Gazers.
Still some comics say you should leave the audience laughing and the “senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute.” provided this by :
“Biden cannot survive a crisis over who lost Europe, who lost Taiwan, or who lost Korea.”
Since the current war in the Ukraine is actually a war between a small group of very rich bankers running the show business in the West versus Russia + her allies including China, Iran, North Korea …. the question of manpower shortage/training on the Russian part is a non-starter. Russia alone with ~ 150 million people can go on fighting for many decades if not centuries. This troops/training shortage issues apply only to the dollar promoting banking mafia which would need spend billions or even trillions of fiat money recruiting hooligan-grade fighters as they have done so often in the past. A normal mercenary (of course not mentally challenged) will usually fight for as long as the money comes in and would avoid serious combat situations only because death means no more salary. Also today and in the foreseeable future, no ordinary American, European and their allies’ citizens be willing to seek martyrdom by joining the City of London-based bankers’ war on the rest of the world only because they like to make possible the coming of the UN 2030 Agenda, the Great Reset, Green Program, consumption of food made of insects, gender bending schemes and other balderdash concocted by the great mafia. So, it’s clear, the western banking cabals have only two choices. In case they decide to go ahead with their military push against Russia and the world, their only option is to use their minion’s (US) nuclear bombs right away without further ado, then immediately seek cover, just pray to god and wait see what happens next. The other choice is learn to live with the coming new EAEU, SCO, BRICKS world order which would wipe away most of the wealth and power of the City of London freemasonry banking mafia to the benefit of the global community.
Larry,
F these obvious w off.
How are things in Florida ? Give my regards to that famous Floridian Dr Hugo Hackenbush (horse).
Kevin Shipp [CIA ret whistle blower] on the digitial currency and the debt.
https://vimeo.com/770011418
I read the Asia Times regularly, and I am acquainted with Stephen Bryen article.
Until this very article to which Mr Johnson referred, the writer was among the most cheerful of cheerleaders for Ukraine. Ample examples of his badmouthing Russia should be on the paper’s website.
Without battling an eyelid, he is finally singing a different tune! He now pipes that Ukraine is lost case – a total debacle!
I wonder when he had his epiphany!
Iam not at all a military analyst, but I know enough of history and geography to know that the expectations that a country like Ukraine will defeat Russia in a battle smacks of supreme delusions!
And, to me, it beggars belief that anyone with a brain will think that a NATO that failed to defeat the Talibans after twenty years of trying will somehow triumph over Russia.
No, I mourn neither NATO nor Ukraine – afterall the Russians gave ample warnings, including submitting draft treaties in December on how to rebuild Europe’s Security Architecture.
Alas, as African Elders say: The dog that will get lost will not listen to the hunter’s whistles.
Hi, I read your posts on the Saker blog! Thank you very much for that. Most of the articles I read come from either Europe or the US. It’s really interesting and rare to read opinions from another corner of the world.
What’s important about Bryen’s piece is who wrote it and where it appeared. Yorktown is a right-wing military think tank, very much part of the Neo-con foreign policy making establishment. The Asian Times is certainly not alternative media, but it’s not US mainstream media. Placing his piece there lets us in on with the way these guys are thinking without making a too-big issue of it. Also, note the political tie-in. Looking a year down the road, Ukraine could be (will be) an unparalleled disaster for the Democrats. To sum up: Bryen’s article is a clear sign of panic.
Russia has been talking about the need for a new, inclusive European Security Architecture for over two decades, all to no avail.
The inevitable consequence of today should be no surprise to anyone.
Another talking point that has to be corrected is the one that Russia must be loosing more soldiers because it is the attacking side. This has to be looked at at different levels.
On the grand strategic level, it’s NATO that is attacking since it cornered Russia by moving eastward and allowing Zelensky to talk about acquiring nuclear weapons.
On a strategic level, you could say that Russia is attacking since it started the SMO, although it was Ukraine that notched up the intensity of the ongoing civil war by increasing its shelling of the Donbass manifold. Within the overall conflict perpetrated by the West, Russia made a pre-emptive ground attack against an impending ground offensive by the Ukrainians that their shelling was preparing for.
On a sub-strategic level, Russia made offensives that brought it control over various regions, Ukraine made counteroffensives, Russia made retreats in Kharkov and Kherson.
On an operational level, like currently around Bakhmut, Russia is making offensives but these offensives are peculiar because the proceed very slowly.
The thing is that, this slow manner of attacking operationally provides the Ukrainians with the opportunity and the incitement for making constant attacks on a tactical level, and that is the basic reason is why the Ukrainians are incurring more losses than the Russians. The Russians have set up the battle space in a way that puts the attacking/defending dynamic in a place that plays to their strengths, which is an advantage in heavy weaponry and missiles.
The western information space is constantly ignoring this kind of fractal way the war has to be looked at, confusing different levels and then arriving at false claims.
There are many historical examples of this kind of strategy. The most famous example is perhaps the battle of Waterloo. It was the allies that were attacking on gand-strategic level, because they wanted to dislodge Napoleon after he had regained power in France. On a strategic level, however, it was Napoleon who was attacking since he had to move against the allied forces to be able to defeat them separately before they could join up with each other and become overwhelming. That allowed Wellington to place his forces on a ridge that the French had to attack uphill – the operational level. French columns moving against the English line were shot to pieces – the tactical level.
Interesting view. Thx
I think this is very good analysis. And it shows the way this conflict should be considered. I would suggest a few additions:
1) War is pursued (by people who are skilled) for political ends.
2) The power to wage war is the first derivative of industrial power.
3) Grand-Strategy is a level of abstraction that may not even exist. If it does, the number of people capable of comprehending it is vanishingly small. The number of people capable of operating within it still smaller. Same with theoretical levels above grand-strategy but moreso.
4) It is possible the SMO was a delaying tactic by RUS. The delay meant to allow RUS to re-configure their industrial base and its production to maximize the first derivative. Hence, NATO’s seeming hope that RUS would over-extend and reach the famous culmination point (exceed first derivative) within 8 weeks.
5) If so, RUS would be settling in to a posture supporting a very long-term military conflict.
6) The RUS para air-field strike early on may have been aimed at decapitation.
7) NATO’s beligerence (as you point out) may have been aimed at drawing RUS into a position where RUS could be decapitated.
8) Neither seemed to have worked.
9) I’d suggest we are returned to postures where the conflict is carried out on the idustrial level.
For readers who do not fully grasp the technology underscoring hypersonic missiles, in simple terms it is all about speed, like seven times the speed of sound. Hypersonic is what propels the missile, whether nuclear or conventional, and the implication of such speed is that air defence systems do not even see them coming and have not time to try to intercept them.
Also it is important to note that Russians all do one year’s military service where they get the basic military training. Critically this means that there are 25 million Russians out there in civilian life who could join up and play an important role in their country’s defence.
So with sugh potential in reserve, things look grim for Ukraine.
Red Outsider thank you for the imput and I’m looking forward to your next posts!!
You and Big Serge on TW are my favs.
A couple of weeks ago I saw an OSINT-based analysis of where the dead came from on an Oblast basis.
Surprisingly few of the KIA/MIA/WIAs were from western UA, with the Russian speaking central and eastern Oblasts having suffered the preponderance of casualties. They’re the poor buggers who get pulled off the street and find themselves on the front a day later to get slaughtered while the “nationalists” serve mostly as blocking battalions to keep them from surrendering or abandoning their posts.
IOW, the Ukies have contrived to use the war to serve their ethno-fanatic interests and have the Russian allies do their dirty work for them. Thus, the carnage on the front line is a feature, not a bug. Damn cynical, but that’s what it looks like.
I don’t recall whether the same or another OSINT analysis during the same time period indicated that 100k casualties is a fraction of the real number. It tracked ~700k total through obituaries, hospital/morgue/funeral announcements, social media, solders’ mothers organizations, etc. Doubtless quite a few of those would be duplicates, but the number ~400k seems to have gained traction amongst the punditry, and I’d guess that’s probably conservative.
“IOW, the Ukies have contrived to use the war to serve their ethno-fanatic interests and have the Russian allies do their dirty work for them.”
Well observed.
They were/are following the observations of Mr. Dmytro Dontsov to leave the disgrunted to facilitate “critical masses” when opportunities change, as they did in 1943, 1944, 1954 and 2014.
However they are mostly informed by belief in interpreting “experience” thereby being oblivious to lateral change being/becoming a constant, which their benefactors perceive as precedent. – a component of why some others refer to the interpreters as anal-ysts.
This is true. The problem for Kiev in this is that the western oblasts are generally less populous than the center and east. And because there’s been less economic activity in the west traditionally, as well as a much greater affinity for “Europe”, those oblasts tended to see more migration out. It may or may not be a very effective strategy over the medium and long term.
That was certainly the I got after wading through all the net stuff on how the Ukies/US/UK “manage the Battlespace.” Lots of parallels from other wars and “actions” the same bunch of vampires and idiots have “operated” from their comfy ergonomic butt-buckets. Natsis ran off with a lot of loot including gold from the teeth of corpses in the camps. Demonstrated to be happy to wage war to the last unconnected mope. And now they whine because Europeans don’t want to support them in the style they are accustomed to, while they undermine civil government by setting up some serious criminal enterprises, funded by lootable from the now over $100 billion poured into the black hole of Kiev.
For readers who do not fully grasp the technology underscoring hypersonic missiles, in simple terms it is all about speed, like seven times the speed of sound. Hypersonic is what propels the missile, whether nuclear or conventional, and the implication of such speed is that air defence systems do not even see them coming and have not time to try to intercept them.
Also it is important to note that Russians all do one year’s military service where they get the basic military training. Critically this means that there are 25 million Russians out there in civilian life who could join up and play an important role in their country’s defence.
So with such potential in reserve, things look grim for Ukraine.
“it will astound future historians at the foolishness of the West and the Zelensky regime.”
My 2 cents : it’ll be the final nail in the coffin of the Western-based world order inherited from the 1945 armistice. History with a capital “H” is back and it’ll rock the boat. Meanly.
And isn’t it ironic that the main witnesses to this change are a senile old man in the US, a deluded egotistical buffoon in France and a super-coward in Germany.
Alas, due to the Ukrainium conflict, Russia Today has pulled the Max Kaiser show.
At this time it would be good to hear a different tune to the ‘wonderful, stable state of the World economies’. And the financial aftermath of the outpouring of money for arms.
It is an area of news that is taboo, but affects all of us.
Extreme left wing rags such as ‘the economist’ don’t cut it.
There is a reason why we call Russia, a bear. The bears can’t be bothered by many things. But if they eventually get upset, they are swift, powerful, and deadly. Also, they are incredibly resilient.
Putin asked for 6 months to put Russia on the war path. That was in February, so after 9 months, probably they start to smell the blood in the air.
This is exactly what we should have NOT done.
The situation inside the UAF is apocalyptic in Artemovsk /Bakhmut https://russian.rt.com/ussr/article/1081330-vs-rf-udar-vsu-zaporozhe
From this article:
Panic in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Andrey Marochko, an officer of the People’s Militia of the LPR, said that due to the lack of a directive to evacuate from Artyomovsk, panic moods are observed among the officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
He noted the successes of the Russian military in this direction, while the situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is deteriorating. According to Marochko, there is every reason to prepare for the evacuation of the command and control center to a safer place.
It should be noted that earlier the acting head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, announced the success of Russian troops in the Artyomovsky and Maryinsky directions in the DPR. He also said that Russian units continue to advance, including squeezing the ring around Avdiivka.
Marochko also commented on the situation that has developed against the background of the statements of the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen about the losses of Ukrainian troops. Recall that her statement said that “over 100 thousand Ukrainian military and more than 20 thousand civilians have died” since the beginning of the special operation. The EC later deleted this data.
According to Marochko, the current situation had a negative impact on the moral and psychological state of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“The number of sabotages, unauthorized abandonment of positions, bickering with the command and hazing has increased. The facts of the use of narcotic and alcoholic substances have also increased,” Marochko said.
According to him, there is a sharp increase in social tension in Ukrainian society.
Among other things, Marochko spoke about the repressions of the Ukrainian side in the settlements of the LPR controlled by Kyiv.
“In the settlements of Nevsky and Makeevka (the occupied part of the LPR) there are mass repressions. Representatives of the SBU began to arrest civilians “for complicity with the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” only for the fact that people received humanitarian aid and social benefits,” Marochko said.
According to the data he cited, the presence of relatives in the free territory of the LPR and in other regions of Russia can also serve as a reason for arrest.
_____
The frustration with the fact that the war is not going the way the Ukrainian forces wished is being shown by war crimes being committed against civilians, by the abuse of narcotics & alcohol, and (lately) by the panic that has made the UAF without leadership. The article suggests as if Ursula’s 100.000 KIA statement has caused this depressive state of mind among the UAF soldiers. This is not true. The truth is that Bakhmut/Artemovsk has turned into a Passendale (Ypres) nightmare. I guess we will soon witness another Mariupol-like victory of the RF with lots of POW (talk is about 30.000 UAF soldiers being trapped in the Bakhmut cauldron) being made. Who knows, the war of attrition will end even before the huge Russian offensive has started…
These are happy thoughts. While I agree that the scenario you present re; the battlefield is probably accurate, I’m a skeptic about the war ending. I just don’t see the US/NATO allowing that. The Western establishment has way too much to lose. It will escalate to prevent a surrender/Russia total victory.
Western response to an undeniable impending Russian final victory is a very interesting and important war gaming opportunity. Concede defeat, roll, play dead and abdicate global hegemony power while facing political blowback at home is a scenario that needs to be included; just that it’s a low probability scenario, IMO.
“I just don’t see the US/NATO allowing that …”
My question: Does US/NATO have enough troops and material (i.e. “Industrial production”, “inventories”, etc.) to fight against Russia?
Eva, Probably not, but there is a good chance the response won’t be rational – heck, it really hasn’t been to date. Why would common sense sink in as abject desperation increases? IMO it wouldn’t. The US could deploy 500K and even up to a million troops, albeit w/ piss poor logistics. There’s the Navy, big bombers in the Air Force, Space force? And there’s nukes. There’s Poland and other Eastern European militaries. All of that must look attractive to our diehard neocons and idiot politicians. It might start as a bluff and Russia might call it. Then a very gruesome slaughter ensues.
When I read “poor logistics” I thought we were in Southern Russia in December 1942…
I agree with you. The problem for the west at this point is that it may not control the events but the western information space preparation has not been completed (barely started) to cope with a Ukrainian collapse. The question is how long the west can keep propping up and pushing Ukraine. Arguably, that’s the worst strategy because it can lead to catastrophic collapse.
Unless NATO is ready for a ground war in Ukraine in 2023, the US is running out of options for how to play this so it looks like the US won somehow.
What is the point of all those empty graves when we know that Ukraine leaves its dead and refuses to collect them? Even when Russia is willing to organise ceasefires for that purpose.
After 14/15 there was one guy with one SUV who went and collected the remains of over 1000 people, nearly all Ukrainian troops based on details passed on to him from other soldiers who saw their colleagues fall. He spent a year doing this.
Graves are for those that died in hospitals, after their organs have been harvested.
This is another stain on our political system. It is sad that the majority of the American populace have no idea how they have been thrown under the bus. They still think their interests are managed best by their elected officials. It is sad this wholesale bloodshed is happening in the 21st century between 2 countries who are brothers & cousins instigated by a cabal of globalists who want to enslave the world under a one world global rule.
My worst nightmare is that we’ve passed the point of NO return. The 300-400 K new EXTRA Russian soldiers may be just the beginning. 10x that number is NOT out of ordinary, to START with. (they are defended their motherland)
Make peace NOW, before 5-6 Million Russian trained soldiers will conquer and destroy everything.
( they are talking about taking down the enemy satellites and they have the means to do that) Russia can clean up ALL the satellites in 12 hours or less
Whether you worry about Russian soldiers conquering your country depends entirely on how much suffer from your present government.
Yep. Many people in Eastern Europe would not mind Russians continuing westwards.
I just wonder where all the anti war songs have gone….Tell me where the flowers are, that was the song at the end of world war 2.
Which will be the next song? Is anti war no more popular?
Why should I die for the invulnerability of the Ukrainian borders?
Don’t Believe the Hype!
would be an apt one!
“Why should I die for the invulnerability of the Ukrainian borders?”
Especially when not one American is willing to die for their own border(s).
The fact remains: “No country can make any claims to sovereignty without secure borders.
Or does it? Secure borders? Sovereignty? More propaganda? Virtue Signaling?
I believe the proper phrase is ‘inviolability of Ukraine’s borders’.
It’s a strange world we live in, since decades ago, the question to Americans was ‘Why should we die for the violability of Serbia’s millennium long borders? Let’s just bomb their civilian infrastructure, electric and water grids from 20,000 feet until they surrender.’
Ah, those famous last words of NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. How ironic.
BTW: Did UNMIK ever identify more than 4,000 casualties of mixed origins after two years of looking? Scholz’s genocide indeed.
To an accusation in another venue that MacGregor is pulling 540,000-figures, now 700,000 Russian total forces out of his ass (and anyone here who might be skeptical), I got a little pissed and did some back-of the napkin figuring and replied (hope it’s useful here),
“Because to begin with, ethnic Russian Donbas forces were +-100,000. Resident militia, armed by Russia since 2015, but Donbas forces. Then, Russia threw in +-200,000 when the SMO began. Then, they had a combo of Chechens, Wagner Group and others, adding some tens of thousands more and those guys, Chechens, they’re force multipliers in their own rite.. Now, add in the new 300,000 prior-military reservists in-country, plus Russia has staged another 100,000+- already-active in Belarus north of Kiev. All of that is waiting for the ground to freeze. Plus, Russian rail is bringing in all the goodies like tanks, fuel trucks, Arty and ammo, air defense, food trucks (gotta feed the troops), all the logistics to support all this. It’s MASSIVE. The trains look to be miles-long and they’ve been moving for months. And it’s all new-looking stuff, not like the shit we brought back from Iraq. And it’s ‘easy for them, it’s their backyard, it’s THEIR territory to begin with. Add in Naval forces, the Aviation arm, ISR folks, stuff I’m not even thinking of, tens of thousands more. I was Naval Air, I know what logistics are, supply chains for parts, pilots, soldiers, plus reports on the logistics of this. It was huge, and only to support 6000 crew and a measly 100 planes. These are not numbers pulled out of anyone’s ass.
So, I think the numbers being quoted for the Russian side of things may be very low unless you count the sheer bulk of tactical support and logistics the offensive will require. Then figure the millions who are mobilized in factories, transport, petro, the civilians that make it all go back in Russia. I believe careful tallies yield numbers far higher than just 300,000 on the ground. There’s so much more to it. Hope some of this makes sense, Ziody.”
All this stuff has been reported over the months, it just needs to be pulled together. Larry and Martyanov could do better (anyone could, my analysis is infantile), but these folks really chap my ass spouting it’s not really 300K, or 700K, it’s far, far more.
Mr. Johnson,
To my present understanding, Russia has only used 1 hypersonic missile in Ukraine to date.
The attacks on Ukraine’s electrical grid are via drones, “standard” missiles and cruise missiles.
Is my understanding incorrect?
It seems pointless and a waste of resources to attack unfortified above ground transformers and switching stations with hypersonic missiles.
Shoigu said that they were used 3 times, if I recall corectly. I remember one being used on Soviet era underground ammo storage. I believe that they were used only as a demonstration for NATO, and that the rest are kept to the side as a deterrant.
https://eurasiantimes.com/dead-meat-kinzhal-hypersonic-missile-that-hit-ukraines-russia/
First time used on March 18, 2022 “on a large underground warehouse storing missiles, ammunition, and artillery in Delyatyn village in the Ivano-Frankvisk region”, according to this source dated August 26, 2022.
The world’s first ever military use of a hypersonic weapon took place on March 18, 2022. Russia’s “Kinzhal” (dagger) missile, flying at Mach 10 speed, destroyed a Soviet era deep underground bunker used to store the Ukis’ “Tochka-U” rockets.
This underground bunker (known as “Object 711”) was built by the Soviet Union in the Western Ukraine to be able to withstand a nuclear blast. It was meant to store nuclear warheads. The underground storage was more than 100 (One Hundred!!!) meters deep + reinforced concrete under 100-meter layer of earth.
Kinzhal penetrated all of that and destroyed the storage.
The main reason why Russia used it was to demonstrate to the US government that they cannot start a nuclear war and hope to survive by hiding in a bunker such as the Greenbriar, Mount Pony, or the Raven Rock Mountain. The message is clear — if some of you warmongering-idiots are contemplating a nuke attack, hoping to survive with your family somewhere deep underground — we have a Bad News for you, folks… Just one Kinzhal will be enough to end your useless and miserable lives. So, think again.
Hui, that are important details for me that I did not know, until now.
The capacity to to overcome more than a hundred meters of of earth and stone, plus concrete combined with the capable air defence systems, which could destroy part of the nuclear rockets that attack russia could mean that the nuclear option is off the table.
If so, it would mean a spectacular shift of power on a global scale.
Well, that is clearly leading to to a line of headdaches for a lot of people. Me including.
So, lot’s of thanks.
“President Joe Biden has to change direction or face a national security crisis that could end his presidency.”
Nothing will end Biden’s presidency. Nothing.
Biden getting 250-percent of the vote didn’t end his presidency. Elections do not have consequences. Hunter’s activities didn’t end it. Nepotism no longer ends things. “Ten percent to the Big Guy” didn’t end it. Because everybody has been getting their taste — for a long, long, time.
Even if Biden dies, there’s Jill Biden. There’s Industrial Light and Magic who created a virtual Luke Skywalker and Princess Lea for Disney. Easy-peasy to create a virtual Joe Biden.
There is the constitutional limit about term limits and how long a president can be a president for, but to the ruling regime of the Progressive Socialist Democrats, the constitution is a relic created by old guys and slave owners. Just ask Barack Obama about term limits.
Not to mention the Donald Cook incidents– twice! — involving Keshe tech aboard a Russian interceptor jet a few years ago, interesting how many have forgotten about that particular display. Dead in the water, and limped back to Constantia in disgrace the first time.
I’m sure the USNavy hasn’t forgotten, though.
“Ukraine’s heavy casualties are a signal that Washington’s de facto war with Russia is in trouble. President Joe Biden has to change direction or face a national security crisis that could end his presidency.”
There will be no national security crisis, our fully controlled, famously free press, will never let a story like that see the light of day.
If we really are speaking truthfully, the war has been between Ukraine / NATO forces and Russia for a while now. The United States’ agenda all along has been to de-militarize Ukrainian forces, down to the last buffalo, then, when the Ukrainian military is extinct, the United States then comes to the aid of Ukrainian martyrs. Along with whatever parts of NATO, Europe, the UK (the British Empire that refuses to die), and any coalition of the willing still remaining, the United States will come to the air of Ukraine, once again with the stated goal of saving something that has never existed (democracy). And come into direct conflict with Russia.
The other option, after the last Ukrainian buffalo has died, is for the United States to realize it cannot fight even so much as a one front war, declare victory and go home.
IMO, I don’t think the United States can retreat. At this point, Russia (and China) will follow the bully home and carry out a de-militarization of the United States, beating the ever-living shit out of the United States in the Ukraine or here at “home.”
In keeping with the holiday season, the Death of the United States will be like the death of the Wicked Witch of the West. Whomever does the deed will receive the eternal gratitude of what has become of the American Citizenry, who were reduced to being the wicked witch’s flying monkeys.
This will be a choices the United States will have to make. Just two (2) choices this time. There’s no running away from this one. The United States has run out of Koreas, and Vietnams, and Afghanistans.
The main inquiry I’d have at this point is whether Ursula’s misspeak was intentional, bringing the numerology into the mediascope. “Nothing in politics is unplanned.”
No, I think she wanted to create sympathy for Ukraine. The meant: Look at the brave people of this country. 100 000 of them have given their lives, so we have to do the morale thing and help them to win. Which means sending more weapons and ammunitions.
In my opinion a poor try.
But it was planned, as you said.
Regarding the Russian shoot n move training video. A small point but indicative. When you look at the rifle flashhiders they look like 5.45 AK74’s. There has been a continual bone of contention about how large the transition from 7.62 to 5.45 has been. Due to Russian “procurement” scandals. Again, I think this is Western BS propaganda. It looks like the Bear has went all in on 5.45. Which I concur with. I was buying surplus 5.45 tins of ammo for $75 a tin case when there were no weapons available at the KCR shoot. Finally built a 74 kit up, and then transitioned to an AR 5.45 build with a VooDoo barrel. It is a great caliber. Still eating away at about 60K rounds. And our military is supposedly transitioning to the horrendous 6.8 debacle. Which kicks too much. Is limited to a 20 round magazine. And at 80K chamber pressure is going to destroy the SIG rifle. Another example of Russian procurement being vastly superior to the Western organized theft ring. Weapon geeky post out!
I didn’t understand anything but sounded good 👍
It is a great round/rifle combination. I do note that the AK-74s in the video are older rifles, perhaps decades old version. The newer versions have all black plastic furniture. US reserve forces also tend to have older weapons. Today, many still have the M16A2 (a very good rifle) as opposed to the M4 carbine (which I think is silly with its truncated barrel). Up to recently, some reserve units still had M16A1s from the ’70s.
great commentary.
i still prefer the 7.62 version. yu cannot carry as much ammo but it will penetrate through a few inches of wood somebody else may be hiding behind which the smaller round cannot.
for the russian grandslam makes me think of jan12th which is 6 weeks from know. on that day in 1945 russia launched the final offensive on the eastern front which ended up taking berlin on may 2nd.
if the russians launched a big offensive on that day would be a clear message that they mean business and mean to finish this once and for all probably ending up with the taking of kiev.
regards,
ralpg
the 5.45mm version is much more controllable on full auto due to the ammo’s reduced recoil impulse. The compensator helps with too too. US doctrine emphasizes marksmanship, whereas Russian doctrine has always been about volume of fire. With the 5.45mm you can really hose down an enemy position and fix him while other elements maneuver.
i see what yu mean. when yu look at this ww2 gun. if need be it still could be used in battle today especially with the 71 round magazine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPSh-41
if yu want to look at marksmanship- here yu go
https://www.tactical-life.com/videos/world-record-long-range-shot/
regards,
ralph
AK-74M? Not AK-101 in 5,56x45mm?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1ca52QhGr4
In wars of attrition as a side begins to falter it will no longer be able to provide the depth of force in its defensive arrangements. These holes in defense will be two fold in nature you have the depleted and weakened line units enduring and defending against assaults of the enemy and the “degradation through use” of rapid response unites.. Rapid response units are the formations held in reserve but most likely to do double duty being called to rapidly fill in weakening defenses and also spearhead attacks because then are by necessity of the highest quality and better equipped force…
When a side starts to use lower quality or degraded unites in the role of rapid response in advancing or filling in faltering defenses then this is a strong indication of having suffered high losses. As these units represent the pinnacle of a force structure and a dull pinnacle represents a state of deep corruption for the entire system…
Degradation in these high utility units is a tell of fitness the enemy will often perceive before the higher command structure and long before the politicians.. The Enemy will know before ones own side because they are the ones with the most direct and impactful encounters with these rapid responding units, as is the nature in all power structures bad news that can be concealed tends to filter up the command structure in an absurdly slow manner.
I’ve noticed that Russia has paid special attention to striking and degrading Ukrainian rapid response units which are stationed deep back, they are often hit with the most expensive ordinance, I’ve also suspect operations on snake Island and elsewhere as a kind of honey pot operation designed to lure in these forces as to degrade them through operations… Russians have frequently held an enemy units encircled for what seem like an undue durations these units under great pearl and threat of being overran and captured also act like attractants to the deployment rapid reacting forces.
I cannot be sure these are deliberate decisions to entice engagement with higher value units by the Russians or just coincidences and incompetence but regardless of intent we should always consider effects, intentional or not, first and foremost…
i remember reading long ago that Grants first order after Lee’s surrender was to order the union troops to split their rations with the confederate troops.i have read recent estimates there are 30,000 troops in Bahkmut.the quantity of food,water,medical,ammo,for 30,000 troops daily bogles my mind,tons and tons.i suspect those ukes in Bahkmut are on starvation rations.a very sad situation.the west will not even broach the subject.
Bleating about “Russia having problems restocking ammo and arms” is a desperate westoid cope, because Russia is expending tremendous amounts of ammunition daily without breaking a sweat. So much more than copycat khokhol nazism is being dismantled in Ukraine, the whole westoid picture of the world is crumbling to dust, and it’s a joy to watch.
The magnitude of human suffering is heart wrenching, regardless of who’s side you’re on. A man’s life is all he has. War is an imposed loss on the vanquished and a lesser loss on the victorious. Politicians should be made to go to the front to personally experience the horror of it all. Then, watch the deceitful psychopaths, like Newlander, Kagan, Crystol, Booth and all the other slime, abondon politics for banking.
Most of the folks posting here are aware of the Maidan putsch, the Odessa Trade Council massacre, the shelling of Lugansk and Donetsk, all before the last straw on February 24.
But have you seen the video of McCain and Graham promoting war with Russia in December 2016? Take a look, go to bitchute.com, search for ‘John McCain and Lindsey Graham’.
Have anyone who doubts that the west actively provoked this conflict watch this video and answer, “Who were these U.S. Senators speaking to? Why did they do this in December 2016?” For a bonus question, ask if they can identify any other U.S. politician in the video.
“But have you seen the video of McCain and Graham promoting war with Russia in December 2016? ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWHviwLMy8
Amy Klobuchar. There is supposed to be a large number of Ukrainians living in Minnesota.
The tracked vehicle is the BMP personnel carrier, which is a superior, more modern design than that 8 wheeled item, designated the BTR 60, then upgraded to the BTR 80.
The point being, at the beginning of the SMO, you saw nothing but the BTRs in the videos. My immediate reaction was, “Whats with all the antiquated crap?” And when the talk was about Ukraine frustrating Russia from seizing Kiev at the beginning of the war, my thoughts were, “Russia is trying to capture the enemy’s capital city of 3 million people with 100k troops and outdated equipment? “Я не думаю же” (I dont think so)
Thats when I knew it was some kind of feint. To my everlasting shame, it did take me until March 1st to figure it out
BMP and BTR are two different vehicle classes, and are developed and used in parallel. BTR-82A is anything but antiquated crap.
There wasn’t even 50K troops north of Kiev. It was clear that the attack on city was never planned, once decent estimatest of troop numbers appeared. Attack on Kiev would require more troops than Russians had in the whole region (most of which were in Donbass).
As I told people when this began, Russia has four times the population of Ukraine and ten times its economic power. Russia will win. Note that a quarter of Ukraine’s population is either pro-Russian and helping them, or has fled to the West. And Ukraine’s economy is paralyzed. So now Russia has five times the population and 100 times its economic power.
This reminds me of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Germany was winning for while, but everyone knew they had lost the war. Others state the 300,000 mobilized Russian reservists have had no impact. That’s because the are training!
There should be much more then a quarter of Ukraine’s population that is pro-Russian.
Please check this Poll results “Russian as the Mother Tongue ” conducted by Gallup:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/109228/russian-language-enjoying-boost-postsoviet-states.aspx
Carlton, good to see you, Sir. Concur all. You had it pegged years ago.
After years of “Russia!” hate propaganda and months of “Ukraine is winning!” propaganda, what will the western MSM do when it’s clear that Ukraine lost, is a landlocked failed state, and all of the pronouncements from the U.S./EU/NATO were dead wrong?
Nothing.
Think about the two years of insanity surrounding the Covid lockdowns and all of the “anti-vaxxer” hate propaganda that was spewed 24/7.
Think about the two years of insanity surrounding “Russiagate” and all of “the walls are closing in on Trump” hate propaganda that was spewed 24/7.
What happened to MSM reporting on these years-long events once it was clear the narrative was falling apart?
They just moved on to something else without skipping a beat, as if none of it ever happened.
That’s how it will be with Ukraine. They just won’t mention it again. The billion$ wasted, the lives lost, Ukraine destroyed, its corrupt leaders living in an undisclosed location, the western military machine defeated…
POOF! Gone!
The propaganda machine makes things disappear overnight. It will segue into the next “crisis” without pause or reflection, no doubt spinning everything to once again blame it on the all-powerful Putin.
So true. It will be the planned financial collapse. Perhaps even blamed on “Russian” hackers and then straight onto the all controlling central bank digital currencies and back to QR codes and IDs. The self inflicted energy shortage will be used to roll out carbon credits. In other words the end of the war will lead directly to the on-ramp to the technocracy.
The weapons destined for Ukraine but which we know are being sold on the black market all over Europe will help supply the foreign mercenaries that are showing up in huge numbers in most Western European countries as “immigrants” (very many are single man of military age) -these will be used to impose the new lockdowns and heaven forbid new round of death shot vaccines to “protect” us or rather protect the elites from us.
The truth usually comes out eventually. However, sometimes it’s too late to avoid catastrophes, as in Hunter Biden’s laptop, or cloth masks and shutdowns for covid prevention.
When the truth eventually comes out about Ukraine and the Ukraine-Russia war, will the liars in the “intelligence community” and MSM FINALLY be held to account?
It kafkaesque that anyone still believes them after all the lies – including Iraqi WMD, Trump-Russia collusion, the Chinese origins of COVID-19 is “racist”, Hunter Biden’s laptop being “Russian misinformation”, that men can become women just by “identifying” as such, and hundreds more.
“The propaganda machine makes things disappear overnight. It will segue into the next “crisis” without pause or reflection, no doubt spinning everything to once again blame it on the all-powerful Putin.”
Clearly, the next crisis on the board is China, and if Putin is to blame for the fact our propaganda machine has not been allowed to work on this problem full-time, it is because his formless and lackaidasical SMO has not been able to put this Ukraine crisis behind us.
(Kidding, Putin fans. I understand. This SMO is proceeding with methodical precision, because it must! It’s not easy de-Nazifying the entire western world. Such a titanic, geo-political attritional confrontation takes time. We must be patient.)
Still, I do find humor in our propaganda machine’s inability to focus one thing at the moment, which as you pointed out, it’s proven very good at recently. It has shown, time and again, its ability to sink its teeth into something and not let go … until it is called off, and ordered to sink it’s teeth into the next indoctrination project on the agenda.
This has something to do with the problems of fighting a two front war I suspect. Our propaganda machine’s attention is currently divided, and this division is exacerbated by the fact that the first front is collapsing, and the second, with which it has yet to fully engage, is magnitudes larger and more nasty than the first.
One of my ten year old predictions, is that when we finally get to the real and inevitable “class of civilizations” between the US and China, our propaganda machine will prove as useful to us as a cheerleader is to football team.
In fact, when the going gets tough, and it will, I expect our propaganda machine to desert us and run for the hills.
But how come that no one remember The Dirty Dozen (1967) ?
Lee Marvin Charles Bronson/ John Cassavetes /Telly Savalas /Ernest Borgnine /Donald Sutherland, all about the recruitment(WW2) of 12 convicted U.S.army men, for a commandoraid against a German Wehrmacht position, a castle. Not without problem.
The current issue takes attention away from all the died suddenly. A hundred thousand is the smaller number and that’s so far. Same perps.
here is an article of german medium n-tv talking about guns which should go to Ukraine, appeared in northern europe.
interesting is, that N-tv is mainstream.
https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Waffen-fuer-Ukraine-tauchen-in-Nordeuropa-auf-article23685074.html
Videos of Ukraine graves are just gut wrenching!
How can blinky, nuland, sullivan, zelensky see those graves, or learn of those casualty numbers, and continue with this utterly mindless blood bath, the utterly mindless slaughter and destruction.
I know, they are psychopaths without soul, without heart, without morality, without conscience. And that is the construct of us foreign policy today.
when you look at ww2 the ukrainians losing 100k men killed in action in 9 months is not surprising considering that i read russia is firing between 24k to 60k artillery shells a day. If 50 k of those were infantry when you consider all of the other supporting elements to keep an infantryman fighting then their army would be truly crippled. if one third of the men in a brigade of 4000 men would be considered to by infantry then the ukraine has permanently lost 37 combat brigades worth of infantry so far.
In 1944 the nominal strength of a British infantry division was around 14,000 men, including officers. Supporting elements could be added to the division. It compared in size to the standard U.S. Army division but had less transport.
there were 9 infantry battlions or regiments each with 900 men consisting of 4 infantry companies, support company and hq company.
Each battlion had infantry 36 squads – 9 in each company each of 10 men which are the tip of the spear.
in the entire infantry division of 14000 men there would be only 3240 men in infantry squads whom are supported by the rest of the division behind them.
from what i hav read In ww2 the infantry squads took 50 percent of the casulties in any major action. if a division as a whole suffered 20 percent casulties in a major battle the infantry element would be reduced by 40 percent and the combat capability of the division quite crippled .
There was a canadian battlion whose war experiences are described in the book the regiment by farley mowat who was a part of that unit during the war. he became a famous writer who wrote many books.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/291182.The_Regiment
https://www.amazon.ca/Regiment-Farley-Mowat/dp/1459733894
this unit fought essentially nonstop beginning in sicily in july 1943 and ended the war in europe in holland up to april 1945.
the full strength of the unit was 900 men. By spring of 1944 there were only 200 men left in the regiment that had gone ashore in sicily in july of the year before. Most of the 200 had been in the hq or support companies . During the war the regiment went through 4000 men so it would be safe to assume that over this 22 month period the unit suffered between 200 to 300 percent casulties ;most suffered by the men in the squads of the infantry companies.
the safest combat role in ww2 in my opinion was to be a gunner in an allied 8 inch gun or 240 mm howitzer heavy artillery battery at least 5 miles back from the front line especially after the allies had almost total aerial superiority. A good way to maintain discipline would be if you screw up you will be transferred to an infantry company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/240_mm_howitzer_M1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-inch_gun_M1
regards,
ralph
we all have a “Stephen” for a friend or family member I bet… I know I do.
In a recent interview with George Galloway, posted Dec.6, Scott Ritter stated that “there is a petition that has been signed by Ukrainian wives and mothers, that are asking for the status of upwards of 320,000 men. They want to know where have they gone. What’s happened to them, why aren’t they writing home, why aren’t they phoning home? These are missing.”
It’s very hard to figure out the real death toll. I will first make an argument for a low one.
Fighting be it in humans or animals often takes on the same form. This is a matter of mathematics. Where two opponents are of somewhat similar size be it crowds or individually there is the tendency for them to dance around each other nipping at the sides trying to gain an advantage. Clashing directly means maximum mutual damage. Even if one side has a fair advantage it could still lose large numbers in a direct clash.
This has certainly happened to some degree as a matter of fact. The question is to what extent. If to a great deal then it would be a lower intensity war than people might think.
It is very difficult to tell. For various reasons the Russians desire an approach that minimises death all around. This has caused some difficulties and is changing.
Ukraine is forcing the issue. It has adopted a policy to maximise Russian deaths to attempt to provoke domestic opposition in Russia. This is greatly reinforced by Western advisers. Whether intended or not Ukraine is in effect given a bounty for each Russian killed by the EU, NATO and the USA. Ukraine has a huge incentive to over report enemy casualties.
Ukraine lacks a deterrent in minimising its own losses. It is not reported meaningfully at all. Similarly, any civilian casualties are automatically attributed to Russia. It is quite surprising that Ukraine has not reported its own casualties as civilian casualties. Reporting for civilian casualties is low. This is quite remarkable given that Ukraine would be expected to follow the same propaganda models seen in prior wars and itself is not at all reluctant when it comes to propaganda.
There have definitely been points where the war has been moving very slowly. The media almost makes it seem as if it’s low intensity still with its very limited coverage. However, I don’t rely on the media and have seen among other things a huge amount of footage. It looked relatively low intensity at the start but it has clearly intensified a great deal since then.
When considering data from many sources including footage of funerals I think we’re easily looking at tens of thousand. Some estimates based on rough extrapolation do suggest well over a hundred thousand losses for the Ukrainians is very likely.
I’m not sure about Russia. For propaganda purposes are media wants to reveal their losses as much as possible. Yet while very high numbers are announced for Russians, I don’t see the media actually providing the evidence it should be able to back this up. However, it does look like we can be fairly sure of a few tens of thousands for the Russians as well. The Ukrainians would be expected to be taking similar losses at least to this.
If I do some ballpark figures based on footage of funerals and gravesites in Ukraine then it lands on > 100K very easily. More specifically, between the upper and lower ranges we see a lot of upper ranges in the first few 100 thousands. However, there is no accounting for things such as uneven distribution such as where more crowded gravesites may be more likely recorded.
Given things such as the utilisation of ammunition then we may be talking some very high figures indeed. Some of the upper ranges indicate fast approaching 200K or even higher for Ukraine. Some of the upper ranges indicate approaching half a million though this is doubtful. However, there is a question of how many are foreign fighters. We don’t have much data on this but it may swallow some of what would otherwise be Ukraine’s losses. It is probable that this is at least around 10K.
Given Ukraine’s casualty figures are deemed a state secret and not reported I can’t imagine that it’s particularly good. Especially when they reported some ten thousand earlier, then again later then stopped.
I honestly believe that Ukraine has to a fair degree lost the ability to count. It doesn’t know why has been captured, deserted, vaporised, etc. Ukraine may be to some extent commanding a ghost army. This means it may have somewhat less numbers than it quite realises.
There is some anecdotal evident of this. There are claims of a petition about families not hearing from some several hundred thousand Ukrainians. If this is true which is might be, it’s not implausible. It doesn’t mean that many people are dead but would indicate a fairly large fog of war effect. Keeping everything organised, unavoidable chaos while maintaining operational security produces conflicting concerns likely making it difficult to keep proper track of everything. Ukraine probably behind the scenes has a big MIA versus KIA problem.
On top of this, fatalities are one thing. You also have to consider injuries. A lot of people will have life changing injuries and varying levels of life long disability.