I think the Russian Special Military Operation is kicking into a new gear and that the United States and NATO are mystified and confused about Russia’s next steps. We do have a couple of clear benchmarks — the end of the grain deal, which means Russia is likely to take more aggressive actions in shutting down maritime traffic in the Black Sea that could benefit Ukraine, and the latest terrorist attack on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. President Putin left no doubt that there will be a massive retaliation for the latest Ukrainian attack on Russian civilians.
Russia appears to be employing a micro-version of Sequential Operations, which was a center piece of the Soviet plan that defeated the Nazi armies during World War II:
The concept of sequencing operations to achieve campaign objectives is not unique to AirLand Battle doctrine. M.N. Tukhachevsky, in his manuscript New Problems in Warfare describes the historical development of the notion of sequencing battles to achieve the objectives of a war. In it, Tukhachevsky attributes to the changing nature of the battlefield the need to sequence operations. According to Tukhachevsky, operational art during the period of Napoleon principally involved the function of “deploying” forces to permit maximum combat power to be brought to bear in a decisive battle. Toward the end of the Napoleonic period there arose the need to conduct several battles in order to create the pre-conditions for the decisive battle of the campaign. Waterloo is an example of such a campaign. Subsequent to Napoleon, armies increased in size, weapons became more destructive, and the dimensions of the battlefield increased in width and depth. The ability of an army to destroy an opponent in one decisive battle vanished. Both the American Civil War and World War I clearly demonstrated this. In 1926 Tukhachevsky commented further that:
“The nature of modern weapons and modern battle is such that it is an impossible matter to destroy the enemies manpower by one blow in a one day battle. Battle in a modern operation stretches out into a series of battles not only along the front but also in depth until that time when either the enemy has been struck by a final annihilating blow or when the offensive forces are exhausted in that regard, the modern tactics of a theater of military operations are tremendously more complex than those of Napoleon and they are made even more complex by the inescapable condition mentioned above: that the strategic commander cannot personally organize combat.
This was written almost 100 years ago but is prescient as hell. Tukhachevsky’s wisdom is still relevant and seems to explain what is happening along the 800 mile line of contact in Ukraine.
Which brings me to an excellent piece written by my friend, Stephen Bryen. WAGNER IS BACK TO FIGHT AGAIN (Prigozhin and Surovikin are Gone). You can read the full piece at Substack here.
Wagner troops are in Belarus training the army there. More Wagner troops are now in a convoy on their way to Belarus. A spokesperson for Wagner and one of its top leaders have released videos with essentially the same bottom line: they will defend the fatherland and support Russia’s military and civilian leaders.
Wagner is back and they appear to be positioning to play a strategic role for Russia and Belarus. . . .
The Prigozhin-led attack aimed at Moscow on June 24th was a near disaster for Putin. The Russian leader was moved out of Moscow as a security precaution. Loyal forces, including Chechens, Presidential Guards and police, were moved in to protect the Defense Ministry in Moscow, Prigozhin’s main target.
Prigozhin apparently believed that key leaders in the army, aside from Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov, would support his takeover, purge the defense minister and chief of staff, and put Prigozhin and, perhaps, Surovikin in charge of Russia’s armed forces. Putin would be handed a fait accompli. Either he could accept the change or, in Prigozhin’s view, he would be replaced. Prigozhin saw himself as Russia’s power broker and, depending on how things turned out, perhaps Russia’s new President.
Putin, it seemed, also was unsure about the loyalty of the army. That uncertainty was no doubt prompted by concern over General “Armageddon,” Sergey Surovikin.
Surovikin, who served as a special consultant to Prigozhin and Wagner, was extremely angry with the army’s leadership. Surovikin had been Commander in Chief of Russia’s armed forces from October 8, 2022 until January, 2023 when he was replaced by Valery Gerasimov. Surovikin was given the vague title of Deputy to Gerasimov, and while allegedly keeping the job, became a special consultant to Prigozhin. The humiliation of Surovikin, dished out by the “old guard” in the Army, no doubt led him to strongly back Prigozhin. Both of them made their move after the Bakhmut victory.
I want to remind you that you can be friends with someone and not always agree with them. My experience with Steve is that he gives an honest assessment based on the facts available to him. He may be right about his assessment of Prigozhin and Surovikin, but I have a different view.
I have an alternative hypothesis for Wagner and Surovikin. Let’s start with Wagner. It is a creature of the GRU, which I think means it is used for psychological operations as well as conventional military ops. It has limited military capability because it is primarily light infantry. My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that it depends on the Russian Big Army for artillery, armor and air support. Yet many in the media and the Biden national security team assign an exaggerated importance to Wagner. In my opinion Wagner is the squirrel running around in my back yard and my dogs are barking like crazy as they focus on the critter’s every move. Wagner is like a chess piece doing a dance in a strip club — peeling off layers of clothing and lingerie while the West leers lasciviously.
The Russian intel officers can see and read that the West is obsessed with Wagner — ascribing to it almost magical combat powers. That leads me to believe that public information released about Wagner is deliberate and part of a broader masking operation. Moving Wagner to Belarus and focusing on its “new” leadership will have the effect of forcing Ukraine and NATO to bolster forces and defenses on the northern front. I continue to believe this is part of a maskirovka op to convince the West of a narrative that will force NATO to shift forces towards Belarus and away from other parts of the battlefield where Russia intends to strike in force.
I also think there is deliberate manipulation of the Surovikin narrative as well. When Prigozhin started his feckless mutiny, Surovikin was very quick out of the box with a video supporting Putin and warning the Wagnerians to essentially hold fire or risk destruction. At no point during that 24 hour drama did Surovikin shit on Gerasimov or the chain of command. Now that he has “disappeared” a narrative has emerged in the West that is having similar Wagnerian effect on the intel analysts and planners. It was Surovikin who saved the Russian Army from being trapped in Kherson. I think the Russian military leadership is using Surovikin to persuade the West that he is no longer a threat worth worrying about. Gerasimov could be using Surovikin to promote the meme that chaos reigns in the leadership of the Russian military.
Meanwhile, there is a marked uptick in Russian air operations and missile strikes. That is Surovikin’s command, or at least was his command. The fact that his family is not raising hell on social media or using surrogates to raise hell further convinces me that his supposed “absence” is part of a broader deception operation.
I want to give a belated kudo to U.S. Army Major Russell J. Goehring, whose description of Tukhachevsky’s novel view of modern war caught my attention. The Russians are not in the grip of chaos and uncertainty. I suspect the views of Tukhachevsky is a key part of the foundation of the Russian Special Military Operation.
This is my 4am wake-up call 🙂
Almost all of us who frenetically follow this war expect Russia to attack once Ukraine is exhausted but it sounds a damn lot more professional to use terms such as “sequential operations” – thanks.
I remain with your opinion on Wagner despite the KGB and GRU having lost every battle in the fiction books I read as a teenager. But I appreciate the link to Stephen Bryen cause we should always have an open mind in the arena of disinformation and our era of State hate for us citizens. It’s great to be right but its oikay to be wrong so long as we are always searching for the truth.
General Surovikin is on annual leave!
( after winning the Air SMO plus the construction of 3 winning defence lines.)
So take your slippers off and have a well deserved sleep in.
Just like what the general is dooooin.
Sweet dreams are made of this……Larry has the vid.
I remain with your opinion on Wagner despite the KGB and GRU having lost every battle in the fiction books I read as a teenager.
I suspect that in the USSR and even the RF, the KGB and the GRU won every battle.
IIRC there were a raft of movies in Soviet times showing how heroic KGB officers foiled Nazi plans. And then there was the real life Richard Sorge.
Why do you think a kid like Putin wanted to be a KGB officer?
“If” has become “when” as far as a Black Sea Shut down: [Sutton – covert shores pro UKR]
http://www.hisutton.com/How-Russia-Could-Torpedo-The-Grain-Deal.html
Hitler didn’t burn Paris. Putin will not burn Kiev…. but he may make it pretty dark there.
Zelinsky rents a flat: ….and over here..is Mr. Hillter….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQkcP0olmQY
I was under impression that it was Ukraine that shut down all shipping to / from Ukraine by laying 10’s of thousands sea mines. This would have been to prevent potential seaborne landing near Odessa but it also blocked Ukraine from any grain shipments, and incidentally, blocked use of sea drones to attack Crimea and Russian shipping. Grain deal was meant to be a two way street, benefiting both sides in their grain shipments but in the end only Ukrainians benefited and to top it off, they used mine-free channels to launch sea drone attacks, something I believe was disallowed in the agreement.
Hitler did intend Paris destroyed in 1944 but his subordinates refused
Yes Paul, you are correct in that. Sanity was in the lower ranks.
Some weeks ago I read a comment somewhere, maybe Moon Of Alabama, that made total sense to me. Whoever it was raised the question of why NATO imagined Ukranazistan could beat Russia, and answered it this way: NATO built up a Ukranazistani army that it itself believed that it could not beat without using nuclear weapons. Since NATO thought
1. Itself invincible, Russia infinitely weaker, and
2. Russia would and could not use nuclear weapons in Ukranazistan, full of ethnic Russians with relatives in Russia
it concluded that Russia was doomed to fail and collapse.
It makes more sense than any other interpretation of NATOstani behaviour in recent years I’ve come across.
Surovikin is most certainly not gone. The most likely scenario is that he’s just been removed from the public eye.
Yep. Hubris. They say pride goeth before the fall, but I would add that believing your own bullshit is right up there.
Maybe he’s dealing with the grain deal.
the man named Tukhachevsky was dubbed by the contemporary as “Red Napoleon” for his innovative theory on sequential battle and helped modernized Soviet War doctrine in the early days of the Soviet Armed Forces. Seem like his doctrine have survived by the like of Zhukov, despite the one who wrote it was killed in a political purged. If Stalin had allowed Tukhachevsky to live and let he does what he does best, imagine what the Soviet could have done in WW2.
He was prescient in his ideas. We keep hearing, and have for a year now, how Russia is exhausted, out of ammo, losing, Putin is dying or going to be replaced. Wishful thinking, and perhaps a bit of projection given FJB and his dementia. Yogi Berra had a corollary to Tukhachevsky’s ideas – “it ain’t over ’till it’s over.”
The other adage NATO should ponder is that “it isn’t the dog in the fight, it’s the fight in the dog.” There’s a lot of “fight” in that Russian dog, and he’s more than up to the fat, bloated, NATO dog.
NATO will go down in history as a dog that caught the car…
Many historians I respect have tried to find the truth about Tukhachevsky, but no one has conclusive evidence. This matters for historical understanding, because Tukhachevsky was by far the best Soviet commander at the time. There are two main scenarios as to what happened: one pro-Stalin, the other anti-Stalin. Scenarios which fall in-between have even less evidence. The pro-Stalin view is that indeed Tukhachevsky was in negotiations with the Germans for a compromise peace, and that this was kept secret from the Politburo and Joseph Stalin. So Tukhachevsky would have been plotting a coup, using top-level Red Army officers. The anti-Stalin view is that Stalin was jealous of Tukhachevsky being the top general, and perhaps also because in the war against Poland, in 1920 the Soviets utterly failed to capture Warsaw, and Stalin and Tukachevsky supposedly blamed each other. I would cast some shade on that notion because Stalin held a lower position and was only indirectly involved in that failure. IIRC, Stalin thought trying to take Poland was a fool’s errand and was not surprised when it failed. History shows that Stalin had good reason to be paranoid because while some conspiracies were simply imagined for Stalin’s own use, some conspiracies did exist. Stalin’s practice was heavy repression and killing lots of people.
The main thing is that Stalin continued to purge good officers in the thousands, and most of the surviving officers lost courage and initiative. For that, the Russians paid a very heavy price in the early years of WW2 when initiative and experience were needed at Stavka.
There were only a few weeks between he arrest of Tukachevsky and his execution in June, 1937. All the Soviet archives have been declassified since the start of this Century. Historians such as Geoffrey Roberts and Michael Jabarra Carley have been combing through the archives for new material, though I’d guess not with a focus on Tukhavesky. But if there is anything, I think it would have turned up by now. The speed with which Stalin handled the affair tends to exclude the intermediate scenarios. Either Stalin was so frightened by the prospect of army officers rising up, or Stalin already knew this was a nothing-burger. A professional investigation would have taken more than a few weeks to unravel any conspiracy. Make of it what you will.
Let me add two things to my previous comment:
1. It’s quite possible that Tukhachevesky had been in secret negotiations with the Germans, but the real question is whether this would have been done with the full knowledge and supervision of the Politburo – or not.
2. The German archives don’t shed any light on this. The archives could have been purged. or such sensitive material never got entered. Dr. Annie Lacroix-Riz has pored through the German archives, including the Foreign Ministry, and she didn’t find anything, but Tukhachevesky was never a focus for her. In her 2006 book (2nd ed. in 2010) “Le choix de la défaite: Les élites françaises dans les années 1930” she only has a few lines about Tukhachevesky and thought him a traitor. However the material she dragged out of all the German archives tells a remarkable history of French British and German conspiracy and cooperation to create the Drang Nach Osten.
I can only say one thing ,that everyone in the West , the media ,different analysts ,most of them were fooled by Wagner mutiny. Nobody got it correct ,nobody. There were a few who had doubts but nobody was close to the reality. It looks like there is another Hollywood in Russia too. That’s all I can say.
It looks like ,as more info comes out ,you Mr. Larry , you are getting close to reality .You are one of those few , who had doubts about the mutiny from the beginning and they will be confirmed in the next couple of months. Russia played the entire West so nicely. It was just another nice play from Russia. All the participant actors played very well their roll . Well done.
Mooi, u begrijpt het.
Het Westen kreeg wat ze wilden zien. Zwakte van Rusland.
Wankelen van president Poetin.
Afbrokkelen van binnenuit.
Tenminste dat denken ze.
Ze krijgen wat ze niet zien.
U ziet het ook anders.
Ik geloofde de muiterij niet.
Dat was wat het Westen wilde zien.
Zwakte van Rusland.
Wankelen van president Poetin.
Afbrokkelen van binnenuit.
Ze denken van alles te zien.
Ze krijgen wat ze niet zien.
How many in the West knew of the plot against FDR involving Smedley-Butler ?
How many in West knew Truman would fire MacArthur ?
How many in West knew of the Plot to remove Hitler 1938 discussed with London ?
How many in West knew about plans to remove Wilson Government in London in coup 1969 ?
I knew of the first two 😁
Paul, wasn’t the Wilson coup intended for May 1968?
You need to read Israel Shimars article on the Unz.com it explain a lot that no one is talking about. It all needs to be verified but the historical timeline is accurate.
Very interesting assessment, with your experience your views are always of great interest. Time to sit back and watch what happens.
Larry, I generally agree with your assessment. I don’t see any evidence that Russia is in any way anything but organized and focused. I suspect the next move will be Odesa, in line with your commentary. I believe that is a key objective as it gives Russia control over offshore gas reserves, something not generally discussed, but likely at the top of Putin’s mind.
They have plans, goals, objectives, and just because they haven’t shared them all doesn’t mean they aren’t in place. The Kerch bridge attack may be a catalyst to speed things up a bit, but the Russians are a patient bunch, and can stick to a good plan without being easily distracted. Timing wise, I think the bridge attack might have come at a serendipitous time for Russia, as a broader attack was likely near anyway. We’ll see.
I am amazed that nobody in the western media managed to twig on to Russia effectively moving thousands of troops close the Kiev in broad daylight, under the guise of moving Wagner. If they make any kind of move to Kiev, just after the Ukrainians shit themselves, they’ll rapidly redeploy forces to Kiev, leaving a clear path to Odesa. I have to believe Odesa is the real goal. And, if Wagner takes a poke at Kiev and they don’t redeploy resources, Kiev will fall. Win-win for Russia.
I can’t wait for others’ thoughts, as the game is getting interesting indeed.
Odessa is difficult to approach from direction of Kherson city on account of significant river estuaries (Limans) that are in the way. I believe that in WW2, USSR army approached Odessa from the northern direction. For this reason, Russians would likely surround and at least isolate Kharkov before heading south-west.
Prigozhin is now what – 60+ miles from Kyiv and wanting to redeem himself…
Odessa is the real goal, and the end goal. We are nowhere near the end. As already noted, it has to be taken from the north.
Might look at Major Gen. Svechin “Strategy”, and and Col Isserton’s “The Evolution of Operational Art” and and “Fundamentals of the Deep Operation” along with Marchall Tukhachevsky for a further theoretical underpinnings of Soviet and RF millitary development prior to WWII.
Zhukov’s conduct of the 1933 – 1938 war with Japan in Mongolia applied these unique approach to decisively defeat Japan in the Battle of Khalkin Gol in 1938, bring an end to the Japanese border vioaltions and encursions into Soviet Mongolia, and kept Japan from attacking the Soviets after Barbarossa.
These aproaches were futher developed by Zhukov, Vasilevskii and others in Stravka in the crucible of WWII, The Great Patriotic War in the East. Look at ‘Óperation Bagration’in 1944 for a full development of these methods. They are part of the DNA of the RF forces today.
Read the Breyer piece, and am more in line with your view. Major General Popov may need some R&R, may have been somewhat insubordinate, or maybe will turn-up in another important place and command. Maskirovka? Time will tell.
People talk about SMO escalating into WWIII. New Flash – IT IS WWIII. 404 is the primary kinetic venue, but Africa, Syria, and open and hidden provocations in the ‘stans, the ‘soft-underbelly’of the Heartland have been going on for a while. The old economic looks on it’s last legs – an important development – a new multipolar world is being born.
Interesting timez!
Add this gentleman to the list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Triandafillov
An overview: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2018/Blythe-Operational-Art/
Yes! Triandafilov died in a air accident, mid-career, but was important as well. There are others.
The atricle on US military developing it’s own form of ‘Operational Art’is nicely summarized by Col Blythe in the other link you provided. Or , rather the lack of the US millitary’s developing a doctrine of ‘Operational Art’. Gen. Stary’s ‘Air, Land, Battle,’a useful beginning was never developed. Nor was Col. Glantz’s excellent work on ‘The Great Patriotic War in the East’ ever mined for the lessons it contains from the Red Army’s victory. Blythe’s conclusion: “Despite these criticisms of operational art, the concept remains firmly embedded in the military doctrine of the major military powers.”is unsupported by his article and simply not true, but likely neede to be added to get it published.
Blythe also understates the impact of the nazi general’s Halder Project,”and certain other nazi war criminals singing to exonerate their own war crimes, in it had a major effect on US and OTAN military doctrine. The nonsense John Boyd sold to Cheney about ‘Manoeuver Warfare’and the totally wrong lessons taken from the Gulf War didn’t help either. But there is always ‘Total Global Annihilation’ to fall back on with thousands of nuclear weapons!
Interesting timez…
I get the feeling that the Russian military academicians are rubbing their hands in glee and drafting hands-on practical lessons for various levels of military expertise to be performed by soldiers on rotation basis to get unique combat training unparalleled in the world in all of history. Different kinds of terrain and weather, different kinds of weapons in different combinations. Military theoreticians would be simulating war games and checking them against actual outcomes. The longer the war, the more and better would be the training level in Russian military across the board, of course at the cost of tragic civilian and military lives. Since the pace of war is governed by secret geopolitical calculations by the Russian and Western governments, it is logical to get the most benefit out of a difficult situation
And the Western military training consists of male soldiers wearing skirts and high heels, learning correct pronouns and getting on a fast track to career growth via gender reassignment surgery.
LOL
The inimitable Ray McGovern made an excellent moral point:
The Pentagonians scoured the cupboard shelves and found them bare, but for cluster shells for the 155mm tubes, and said, “Send ’em!”
It shall soon scour the cupboard shelves and find only tactical battlefield nuclear weapons.
OK, having no moral or ethical scruples or strictures on sending cluster munitions (which are only really useful against clumped-up people), what sctuple or stricture will impose against sending tactical nuclear weapons?
Nada.
“Send ’em!”
The most troubling aspect of this is that the American populace is ignorant, compounded by its insouciance, and it don’t care none, neither.
Alas, O Babylon, Alas, ALAS!
“It shall soon scour the cupboard shelves and find only tactical battlefield nuclear weapons.”
There must be plenty of white phosphorus munitions, and chemical weapons on those shelves too.
A good article in Sputnik that, in a roundabout way supports the ideas in Larry’s article of the “sequential” approach:
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230718/us-bid-to-prolong-ukraine-proxy-conflict-risks-getting-stuck-in-another-quagmire-1111954804.html
Some key lines that represent what Russia must know from simple observation:
“Krainer Analytics Founder Alex Krainer, a Europe-based financial analyst, said while the war may have filled the US defense industry’s pockets, it also undermined many perceptions of its strengths and American’s military prowess.
“Outside this event, war in Ukraine has also taken the glitter off of western weapons and the military industrial complex. For a very high price, it produces inadequate quantities of shoddy goods,” Krainer said.
“The whole thing has been outed as a con and a paper tiger.””
Every postwar US presidential election has been contested with the challenger accusing the incumbent of being weak on defence……..
Kennedy campaigned on a “Missile Gap” with USSR, which did not exist, to the detriment of USA at least…….
Reagan went OTT and Stockman his Budget Director was rolled over by the MIC to set USA on a Profligate Path to National Insolvency which has accelerated ever since……..
When Reagan was in full blossom there were books published with a blister-packed nut on the front cover stating this nut cost Pentagon $7,000 but for you it is free with this book at $12.99……..the era of $50,000 coffee machines for B-1 bomber that could brew coffee while flying inverted (a US speciality to froth the milk I believe)………
Anyway, the US has a trade deficit and a budget deficit which are created by an oversized Defence Budget and the reconfiguration of US manufacturing towards the “protected” Military Sector. …….GE bought RCA and shed its consumer business for its radar tech………and so on – Texas Instruments exited consumer goods for Mil-Spec
The point is what has been exposed is 40 years of Waste and Corruption at the very least…….of shiny toys and hyper politicians feeding ever more braid to Contractors’ Sales Staff employed as Pentagon Officers and serving Officers…….featherbedding their upcoming retirement
Sequential Operations sounds like it’s just a fancy military term for having a plan.
Good one, concise and apropos. And the NATO approach seems to be incon-sequential, as in no effective plan. Maybe like taking a laxative to a shitstorm.
No it is more.
It means running feints to concentrate enemy forces or even disperse them ……….it means combined arms warfare across many theatres sequentially by draining enemy capability
It is not linear like a movie. It is probably like a homicide detective in a big city who, unlike in Hollywood, is not focused on one case but probably ten, which he must sequence CND phase………the TV ratio of Doctor to Patient or Detective to Victim is unaffordable in Real World ……. So too are the military scenarios in US propaganda videos of overwhelming
firepower and resources…. In real world never there
No, it’s still a plan, but a serious one. Proper plans are not linear, because no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Real planning is about contingency planning. When Putin says that everything is going “according to plan” it doesn’t mean that all is great. It means that all bad things have been expected to an extent, and some contingency plans were made in advance.
The psyops in this operation are incredible, almost by the minute a new thing is hatched to try and gain converts or manipulate the message from both sides (mostly from west side).
credibility wise the Russians hold more sway, they say what they do, and do what they say to a large extent, are reserved in forecast and stats presented.
The west or Ukraine in particular make bold completely fabricated claims daily on almost any and all topics, from being the builders of the pyramids, to taking crimera by last month.
i suspect when Russia eventually wins or the west has to retreat and change tack due to fiscal and economic disasters at home, Russia will underplay its war making ability and let slip the really expensive weapons the west makes are strong and powerful and we should be worried if they make them in much larger numbers. All to make the us in particular double her military budget again at the expense of everything else.
The little I know, Larry, I am in a complete agreement with you about “maskirovka”. Putin always plays such a long chess game he plays on many tables simultaneously, that we, mere mortals, cannot even comprehend his moves. Mind you, often this long game seems to be TOO long and complicated, assumes that parties playing following the rules – which not once brought him almost to his demise (and with him, the Russian military). He is a great politician but I am not sure he is a great military leader. This role he (naively?) assigned to Gerasimov and Shoigu and gave them “carte blanche” (maybe his biggest mistake?).
Anyway, since you do not read Russian TG but I do, I read (don’t remember whose version) that Surovikin is assigned a role of preparing a new army of new/recent volunteers (140K or so Shoigu was talking about) somewhere “out of sight”. I like this theory maybe just for the fact that I do not believe that such a great commander could be just discarded in the same way Prigozhin was. I would definitely love to see him back victorious.
All hail Prigozhin.
It is rarely noted that Surovikin was Spetznaz in Afghanistan and therefore GRU affiliated which is why he could monitor Prigozhin and have influence on Wagner officers.
Also Tuchachevsky was purged by Stalin around 1937 after a plot by Heydrich in RSHA to remove him, since he had been heavily involved in Red Army side in Wehrmacht training in USSR after 1919 when Guderian was developing his tactics in USSR training grounds and German factories were producing materiel inside USSR such as Junckers aero-engines by-passing Versailles Treaty restrictions
It is clear as Europe’s largest frontier with a flat Central European Plain that Soviet tactics would be totally different to Anglo approaches where land battles always had a maritime logistics chain
The Front Russia has today is longer than the entire Western Front in 1916 and despite having huge artillery and concrete bunkers the Germans still could not enter Paris unlike 1940
Russia knows much more about what happens in Kiev than Washington does ironically even if U.S. thinks it is giving orders………US has certainly alienated Europe’s populations from their ruling regimes and US only focuses on political theatre without any idea of popular revulsion against US
So Russia needs to see Western Europe face another winter as economies crash. For instance BAe is closing UK’s last two explosives factories and merging production with France in a factory in Bordeaux so for all the huff and puff out of London explosives for shells will be imported ……. Hardly an upgrade in capability !
Yes! That was the third possibility, and I forgot it. Thanks for bringing it up. The Germans may have played the Soviets and set up Tuchakevsky for a fall. Historians have discussed that and it might have been. I just looked on Wikipedia, wondering what was RSHA, and I see the Cold War “poisoned the well”, so the truth is even less likely to emerge.
This isn’t going to go well for Ukraine. Most of Nato is down to a 3 day supply of ammo, I take that with a grain of salt and say that a day is a week. 3 weeks of ammo ain’t much. Back in my days as a security specialist in the AF in europe, My M16 had 4 thirty round clips. Everyone knew to not set to full auto. Now onto the real issue, I sure as hell would not want to be on a boat in Odessa. Somebody at MOA says a ship in port at Odessa may be the carrier for UK’s underwater drone that attacked the bridge. The media is in a denial here in the states about everything. But that is another story about how the intelligence services here have been in charge since JFK. It is like trying to explain fascism and how the Buckley decision has been the worst the Supreme Court has made since Marbury. I am rambling after a few Crown Royals. I am starting to think that most of our top brass has no clue to the things Sun Tzu espoused. But then again I always get stuck on Intent in the Book Of Five Rings. I have been questioning everything since reading 1984 in 10th grade in 75. I used to read Antiwar alot. Zerohedge led me to MOA and here.
I also sensed something fishy in an inadequate convoy parading toward Moscow claiming grand subversion which, within 24 hours, became a nonserious grain of salt.
All an organized deception.
Deception over the heads and beyond reckoning of US/UK.
They know it now.
And it’s driving them deranged.
Where he got his fuel from and how much he had would be a moot point.
John Helmer states Shoigu was actually in Rostov-on-Don coordinating forces to nullify whatever Prigozhin or his accomplice Dmitry Utkin were considering……
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Utkin
Clearly Russian State did not overreact and is certainly not driven by Western media scripts in contrast to Western politico-military policy which clearly is driven by Media Oligarchs
Prigozhin definitely seems like a rat bastard. I hope Surovikin is trustworthy. He looks like such a nice boy.
Surovikin is a solider. Prigozhin is a common thief that got lucky. They have nothing in common, execept the haircut (leaving aside spare ones that Prigozhin keeps in the closet).
Przeciez to Ukraińcy prowadza walkę sekwencyjna. I to z powodzeniem
The Ukrainians, according to the calculations of the Polish leadership and the ruling elite of the entire West, should have recaptured Crimea, Kaliningrad, captured the Kuban, the western part of Russia, overthrow Putin, dismembered Russia and started dividing the Russian natural resource pie last year.
As for the rest, you are right – they are successfully defending themselves, using almost the entire potential of NATO.
“Never fight the Russians” – Bismarck.
Translates as:
“All things considered, it is the Ukrainians who are conducting a sequential battle. And successfully at that.”
Sequential sucide.
Anglo-Saxon germanic mentality very predictable, barbarianly simple, cave-man like, based on brute force, threats etc. Russian mindset much more complicated. In my country, we call it the “Byzantine mind” a labrynthine mental complex which focuses on shrewdness more than anything else. The Russians, as are all chess-master peoples, are guided by it and masters of it.
“Anglo-Saxon germanic mentality”
Who could write such oxymoronic nonsense ?
There is little “germanic” about Anglo-Saxons if you mean English……….there is a total difference in thought-processes and paradigms. Only someone who has zero comprehension of Germany historically or today could write something like that. The only part of Germany where there may be any overlap would be Hamburg as a Hanseatic City…………
Americans today are not run by Anglo-Saxons so much as descendants of East European Jews………..look at how many senior politicians have children married to Jews – Biden, Trump, even the grandchildren of John F Kennedy………..the State Department is not white shoe but Jewish in composition at senior levels……..
The British Government today is barely English………Sunak’s family arrived in UK 1966 from Africa………..Suella Braverman……..James Cleverly (mother from Sierra Leone)…….
You should look at German thinking – it is so alien to Anglo-Saxon culture as evidenced by its legal system, its lack of client-lawyer confidentiality, its lack of accountabiliy, the absence of professional ethics or disciplinary bodies, lack of prosecutorial independence, and the limited independence of the judiciary, and absence of constraints on conflicts of interest
Suck it up bro, suck it up and spare yourself the third-grade history lesson!!!!! The truth hurts, don’t it??? When Putin and the Russians keep on referring to Nazis who do you think that is directed at, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Slavic countries??????? Funny how all the germanic countries in Europe are all the most gung-ho anti-Russian sending more arms than anyone else: Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and your much revered Germany.
Anglo-Saxons are not Germanic. Nazis existed ONLY in Germany and Austria not in Spain or Portugal or Italy.
Nazis were funded by US to protect their investments in Germany where 2% US GDP had been invested in major corporate acquisitions
“Anglo Saxons are not Germanic” but French Canadians call us tetes carrees (squareheads) all the same.
I guess double-headed Byzantine eagle comes with complimentary “Byzantine mind”.
Putin was a neoliberal Poster boy. The way he purged RF army in 2006/07. No one in Russia saw it coming till this day no one whispers about what/why it had happened.
Keeping foreign reserves in unfriendly jurisdictions and promoting austerity in Russia, No wander why decent Russian businessmen tends to sell his business to foreign corporations to facilitate his exit from Russia.
Russian central bank coordinated policies with IMF and BiS more often than Kremlin.( age old propaganda that central bank should be independent from central government)
Regarding Wagner the soldiers who are fighting are mainly from “the purged army”
Putin did what stalin had done before him. Stalin had to free soldiers who was imprisoned by communist purge to fight the war.
Like wise Putin had recall all the” purged army” Wagner was there to incentivize them, lure them out to join the cause otherwise they could have gone and fought for Ukraine( they had bigger axe to grind)
Wagner was not a light infantry fighter for reference pls check the hand over of armaments to RF army.
When Putin came to power the way he purged have always caused problems in the bureaucracy.
Do you know 10 ex prime ministers now live in Natostan they have always been will to sing if the prize is right for them. Let’s not forget countless numbers of mid level to high level bureaucrats who eagerly collaborates for residency/ citizenship for them or their immediate family member( Russian law doesn’t allow them/family members dual citizenship)
Fun fact every one is talking about Crimea bridge did you know that money was diverted from a much needed bridge whose construction has been going on since 1988/89. Looks like Putin isn’t eager to finish the construction, here again no whispers nor rumors can be found( my guess is good as yours)
His fate will be similar to stalin. A power hungry politician will come one day to purged his legacy just like it was done to stalin’s legacy and guess what black propaganda from Natostan will be more than willing to participate in it.
As long as the beast is not dead, the beast can kill you.
We are not in a circus where we play with wild animals.
Ok, putting aside the Wagner show, this is what I think: Doesn’t it seem a little too convenient to Russia that exactly the same day they will enforce their step down on the grain deal the Ukras decide to attack Crimea?
I don’t know, but false flag operations are not exclusive to the West, and how beautifully this incident gave the perfect excuse to shut down for good all that grain deal whining blabber.
Not that I give a s**t about the deal, there is no deal when one of the dealers do not fulfill his part of the agreement, but I think Russia faked that attack on Crimea to make their point, it is: not only the grain deal was a charade from the very beginning, but it also gives the Ukras an edge to use the Black Sea to attack Russia.
Well, not anymore it seems.
the grain deal expired at the exact moment that ukraine attacked the kerch bridge: the symbology is there, but it was ukraine that tried to make use of it, not russia.
russia attacked itself on the kerch bridge in much the same way that it blew up its own nordstream pipelines, bombed its own kakhovka dam or tried to detonate its own nuclear power plant in zaporizhia .
here are simplicius76`s excellent observations on the kerch bridge attack from his substack blog:
“The most important thing to note, though, is that the timing of this attack happened on exactly July 17th, which was the long awaited grain deal expiration date, if you’ll recall. That is not by coincidence.
It means this attack was specifically done to try to stymy Russia as much as possible in terms of putting it between rock and hard place in making its decisions. In essence, it’s designed to erode Russia’s stature with its allies, particularly Turkey.
Russia wants to give the appearance of interest in grain deal talks for the sake of its allies. This puts Russia in a position of two weak moves. Either they continue talks and look doubly weak because now it shows that even large-scale terror attacks on their infrastructure have no effect on their red lines; or: they completely discard the grain deal but now take a big prestige hit with their allies like Turkey and even China which recently signaled it greatly favors the grain deal extension.”
I watch Dima at the Military Summary Channel, for the most part Dima is a goofy little shit but once in a while hits on something. Dima has noticed that a few of the most successful Russian Generals have “disappeared”, Surovikin being just one……
I remain convinced that the Prigozhin affair was a feint, “look over there, a squirrel!”….. What do we know about Wagner build up in Belarus? Daily more tents are added to their camp ground, a few Wagners teaching a few Belarus Soldiers basic military fundamentals…
If the Russians can move at the right time and fast enough they can catch Zelensky in Kiev, bottle it up and lay siege to the city, not assault it. Zelensky and his Azov’s will squeal for relief and the line of contact, currently under enormous pressure, will collapse…. Just like the start of the SMO but with forces now in place…
Zelensky would be free to walk out of Kiev, sit at the awaiting desk and sign the unconditional surrender before departing for Miami….
Great info, thanks, Larry.
I live and work in SKorea, and the rumor mill here– the very few who are interested in what’s really going on, rather than thinking how fwee and wich they’d be if only they could move to Ameweeca to escape the vewey evil and bad North Koweean wolves (that a 30 year old US ballistic submarine will pwotect them fwom, anyway)- has it that Surovikin is “vacationing” at the Pacific Theater military HQ near Vladivostok.
Who knows what on Earth he’s doing there, eh?!
(Negotiations with NKorea underway are scurrilous mistruths, btw.)
Benoist Bihan has recently (March 2023) published the first extensive study of Svetchin, and the clash between his views and those of Tukachevsky. Like Glantz, M. Bihan considers Svetchin the capital thinker for operative art.
The book is called Conduire la Guerre. So far, it’s in French only, and would appear to be the first ever attempt in French to examine Soviet/Russian operative art theory in any depth. It takes the form of answers to about 300 questions, put to him by Jean Lopez during lockdown by e-mail (!).
Not being by any stretch of the imagination a military expert myself, I should be most grateful for other readers’ assessment of Conduire la Guerre. Although I have read the book, I am doubtless not competent to review it.
(BTW, M Bihan would not appear to be very taken with Russia or her present Government, but that is neither here nor there in relation to the book’s important subject matter).
Wagner is the Russian military imo, just as the black sea is Russian.
The grain deal was a great ploy by the Russians too. NATO got comfortable with shipping in arms and special forces through odessa and the EU had cheap Ukrainian grain to boot.
If I’m reading the situation clearly, the black sea will be totally cut off to non Russian shipping and the upcoming harvest will have to travel by road to feed the EU market.
Let them eat cake started a famous revolt a few years back. When the price of a baguette hits 3 or 4 euros soon, which it will, how long then till the collapse of Europe?
Western policy is dictated by the precepts of PR. So we see months of announcements of grand plans to strike down to the Sea of Azov, bisect the land bridge to Crimea and send all those pesky Rooskies packing back to Moscow. Elensky flits around Europe and US, always begging for more money and weapons, and bragging about how they’re going to thrash Vlad the Bad’s armies.
Our political leaders always need “something” to announce to the press after such visits. They scratch around and figure “Ah, this is something, we’ll do this!” And Ukraine gets another batch of “something” hand-me-down weapons and ammo. This is how not to equip an army for a series of operations.
Russian policy is dictated by military philosophy and logistics. If Russia were to start an operation today, the orders for everything from ammo to fuel to toilet paper were placed at least 6 months ago, it was manufactured at least 3 months ago and assembled since then in the depots needed to dispatch it to the lines according to a schedule.
If they’re planning a series of operations, there will be a series of purchase orders to ensure the required supplies. They don’t need to announce in the press what their great and grand plans are. It seems to me, with recent moves in the north of the front, that they’re cognisant of Sun Tsu’s teachings (a) to spoil your enemies plans and (b) to strike where your enemy is weak.
I concur with comments above that Odessa is an unlikely target in the short term. A seaborne assault would be logistically difficult to support and difficult to conceal in advance of an assault. The Dieppe raid in 1942 shows how difficult it would be to capture a defended port.
Back in 2014, Putin “disappeared” for maybe 3 days, and Western journalists went bonkers about Putin’s wherabouts and / or state of health, demanding that Putin show himself. On the ground that he has atomic weapons, and they have a right to know that he is well – as one deranged Journalist of The Guardian argued.
Some reader suggested that this was an attempt at a western power play – if you can force someone to show themselves in public, you have some power over them.
We seem to have no control over Surovikin.
Surovikin may have gone to ground for longer than 3 days, but then, so has Zalushny. Who we are assured is alive and well, nothing to see here.
we’ll never know if surovkin saved anything. we just know that he fleed from kherson, setting a major tactical failure for russia. and the counteroffensive he avoided? if it was a counteroffensive like this one, that traslated in a major defeat for ukraine, the russians just lost a chance to settle a victory. he was the most hyped general in history, but he didn’t manage to accomplish anything relevant. but i think the real reason cause this incompetent was kicked out was the waste of missles and artillery on energetic structures that were soon repaired but the rate of waste of russians artillery became a problem, so when they kicked pout surovkin the russians also diminished strongly their missle usage, so that the western press cpould writ that the russians finished the ammo. and then the prigozin disaster, that was the most successful move of the west. there is enough to tingk he’s a 5th column, but it’s also possible that surovkin is just a total failure of a commander
Błędem było atakowanie tylko podstacji transformatorowych a nie również elektrowni
Larry, concurred.
I hesitate to blog about Russia’s strategy in fear of giving it away. Maybe we should do the same?
Had the same thought myself. This site could probably be the go to site for western intelligence agencies, wouldn’t be surprised.
This is clearly NOT the go to site for western intelligence agencies.
Too funny!
The West is obsessed with the idea that Putin wants to reestablish the old USSR. Even the morons realize that that was not really a manageable entity. Putin has enough trouble running the biggest land mass on the planet.
Putin would settle tomorrow, had they given him his original 6 everyday points. He would happily have packed up and gone home anywhere along the line. — He does not want Ukraine. — This Crimean obsession is idiotic. Russia will fight down to the last Russian to keep what has been Russian since 1654 – (The Rus are Ukrainians) They gave Crimea to “Ukraine” after 300 years of brotherhood, to cement their relationship. — A country does not put its naval fleet in “enemy” territory, Crimea was easier to run from Ukraine. — Gr
Ukraine will regret not understanding its history. — Gr
De Gaulle favoured a “Europe des Patries” which would have been far preferable to this US confection run by the puppet von der Leyen…………
I hear so many Citizens of USSR state what a tragedy it was Yeltsin killed it off – it was for many a Confederation of Entities within a Common Citizenship and Space……..
It would appear the prospects of a “Union” in terms of a “Confederation” of “Sovereign States” within a new Economic Union offer attractions……..but the Soviet Union suffered from the fact that Russians rarely ran the USSR – it was Ukrainians or Georgians………
In the same way England is the ONLY part of UK not permitted its own Legislative Assembly of English MPs……..it is the only one not tolerated to fly its own flag…….nor to promote its own ethnic identity……….because it would be explosive for the Union where it is the dominant economic force paying all the bills for 10 million not living in England……..
RFSSR was the biggest population centre of USSR yet the CPSU seemed to promote Ukrainians like Brezhnev, partial Ukrainians like Khrushchev, Georgians like Stalin………for the longest period of its existence: that is why Putin does not want to recreate the OLD USSR
Anti Putinites often misquote his famous comment that he made many years ago:
The half quote that they love:
“Anybody that does not mourn the passing of the Soviet union has no heart.”
The full quote in a much larger speech:
“Anybody who does not mourn the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart.
But anybody who seeks it’s return has no brain.”
“…the Soviet Union suffered from the fact that Russians rarely ran the USSR – it was Ukrainians or Georgians…”
I put together a list of the Soviet leadership history, and you are correct, though Lenin was at least half Russian, and nobody knows Andropov’s ancestry afaict, and I think Malenkov was Armenian. The ancestry of some of the leadership is unresolved, to my knowledge.
To add to the list, the Cheka was created by Poles Dzerzhinsky and Menzhinski, and Lenin’s Kremlin guard was Latvian (I think). Most of the actual Russians in the leadership were excuted by Stalin.
Though there were more Russians in the leadership after the removal of the Anti-Party Group by Krushchev, mainly in foreign affairs.
Reasons for this may be that the common and official language of the USSR was Russian, and the capitol was Moscow, following on the facts of the Czarist empire.
Consider the “holodomor” was during Stalin’s time — a Georgian, and the leaders on the ground then in Ukraine were Krushchev and Kaganovich…Ukrainians.
Ukraine and Georgia have been of long term interest to NATO, as we know.
dje
De Gaulle favoured a “Europe des Patries” which would have been far preferable to this US confection run by the puppet von der Leyen…………
I hear so many Citizens of USSR state what a tragedy it was Yeltsin killed it off – it was for many a Confederation of Entities within a Common Citizenship and Space……..
It would appear the prospects of a “Union” in terms of a “Confederation” of “Sovereign States” within a new Economic Union offer attractions……..but the Soviet Union suffered from the fact that Russians rarely ran the USSR – it was Ukrainians or Georgians………
In the same way England is the ONLY part of UK not permitted its own Legislative Assembly of English MPs……..it is the only one not tolerated to fly its own flag…….nor to promote its own ethnic identity……….because it would be explosive for the Union where it is the dominant economic force paying all the bills for 10 million not living in England……..
RFSSR was the biggest population centre of USSR yet the CPSU seemed to promote Ukrainians like Brezhnev, partial Ukrainians like Khrushchev, Georgians like Stalin………for the longest period of its existence: that is why Putin does not want to recreate the OLD USSR once again but a new form for the software era rather than the iron and steel era
Ukraine regrets a lot of things by now. I wonder if the US has some iota of wisdom left to do the same.
For what I see, I can tell than the Russian MoD are planing “the office job” and let the guys in the front-line do what is to being done without that much of planning involved. Strategic thinking for the NCO, tactical for the CO in sum.
Now if you do the “recently dismissed officers” list , what you end-up with is an Army commander, a Chief of staff, an armored corp commander, an assault force commander , an airborne commander and an artillery commander … that’s a new experienced army corp command structure cherry-picked along the front. The manpower is there, the hardware is there … maybe not for a “grand battle plan” but to patch the disparate section aligned along the border in the Kharkov region for now. Just setting things in place and oiling the machine.
Banderist are not squichy-squichy enough for an all out now. Russian don’t need more cowbell but some more keen to cooperate AFUs.
It seems to me a huge disinformation campaign created by the Russian authorities to confuse NATO/US/UK and their lapdogs.
Bringing confusion, the massive intelligence groups from West stays occupied trying to find some “rationality” to what is happening in the battlefield and in the offices, giving time to Russia to prepare and advance the next step of the SMO. Putin has the approval of almost 80% of population. Any attempt against him, would be severely punished.
Here we are again with Prigozhin, Surovikin, and others, and still no consensus?
Prigozhin is free and alive? Seems odd to me, trying to overthrow the Russian Government. Look at what the US does re: Jan 6th!
Shhh…don’t tell or do tell everyone that Wagner is defeated, disbanded, and in Belarus.
This is way too amusing, poor Putin to weak to punish Prigozhin, what ever happened to “Valid the Impaler”. Ah the good old days!
How many hundreds of millions would the CIA pay to have a traitor take out Putin?
Like Tootsie Pops, the world may (will) never know.
‘Gerasimov could be using Surovikin to promote the meme that chaos reigns in the leadership of the Russian military’. ‘When weak, feign strength. When strong, feign weakness’. It’s easy to say but many Russia friendly commenters, even astute ones, can’t really bring themselves to believe that ‘war is based on deception’. It just rubs them the wrong way. It’s .. ‘oriental’. But be that as it may, the effect of feigning weakness is to embolden those political forces in the West to keep the pressure on the Ukrainian military to keep throwing men and machines into the fire traps, the business end of attrition. My hunch is that the military leadership is skilled. They recognise that the neocon leadership also has existential issues and are perfectly capable of believing the lies they are obliged to keep repeating for fear of loosing their power. Particularly striking was Prigozhin’s rant where he claimed that Shoigu misled everybody about Ukrainian intentions on the eve of Feb. 24, and therefore confirming the leading Western claim of ‘unprovoked Russian aggression.’ This one was right up there with the earlier assertion that the Ukrainians retreated in good order from Debaltsevo – way back when. WHO is he talking to? This is not the stirring stuff calculated to call the patriots to the colours. But he said it. Why? I proceed on the assumption that there are no significant divisions within the military leadership and that Prigozhin was their mouthpiece. The antics were staged to foster an intended effect on the enemy and .. it worked splendidly.
You know you spend too much time online, when your first thought is that the title should be: “What Russian Military doing?”
I think the gig is up , with the Irish Mercenary Video allowed to be played by Sky news. Tells you everything” You are not shooting goat herders in the back Walley”the Brits like the Japanese realize they have awaked a sleeping Giant, (Bear)and are looking for an off ramp.
Re: Tukhachevsky
I would recommend reading the 2 or 3 articles by BigSerge on that substack concerning the evolution of Russian military tactics and strategy – it talks at length about sequencing.
And no, there is zero evidence of sequencing so far. Why is sequencing needed when the Ukrainians are obligingly sticking their body parts into the meatgrinder?
Re: Prigozhin
I think you are being a hammer here seeing an intel nail.
It isn’t the least bit hard to believe that Prigozhin tried to do something stupid given the prospect of losing the crown jewel of his billion dollar empire.
Nor is it unprecedented for a pawn to suddenly start acting contrary to the interests of the wannabe manipulator – see Saddam ranging from war with Iran to invading Kuwait.
Just because Putin didn’t shoot Prigozhin doesn’t mean a damn thing – Putin doesn’t shoot anyone. If Khodorkovsky wasn’t shot, why then would Prigozhin?
“Why is sequencing needed when the NATO is obligingly sticking their body parts into the meatgrinder?”
I remember a couple months ago shoigu said that they had enough people that signed up to join the army to create a new army. Who else better to lead this new army other than surovikin and all these recently fired commanders.
I am with Larry on this one – I believe that the Russians are conducting a very sophisticated and multi layered maskirovka to not only move men and materials unwatched during the so called Wagner mutiny but they were also hoping to tempt Poland and the Baltics to get involved during the Air Defender exercises so that they could pulverize their enemies, secure both the suwalki gap and kalingrad and position missile systems aiming at both rammstein and bondsteel – Nobody should be surprised if surovkin and Popov and pirogzhin and all the so called purged Russian generals pop up where they are least expected
If you carefully reread Russia’s original security proposal, they offer the same degree of protection for neighbouring States against Russia as they do for Russia against its neighbours. Russia was willing to bind itself too.
They were rejected by NATO because NATO wanted war, not peaceful coexistence .
Those Countries which surrender their Sovereignty to NATO are declaring that given the choice between war or peaceful coexistence, they too want war.
Their citizens need to take note of the choice their Governments made.
Larry you are a “shite disturber”!!
You just refuse to go with the flow, my man!
Your thinking, researching and speaking about concepts that are above the leaderships comprehension is the flaw that genetically excluded you from any higher position.
BTW, great read and thoughts – once again! You and Andrei are eclectic intellectual doppelgangers.
Do you have any favorite music/movies you want to share with your readers on Fridays to give us more insights into how your mind might actually work?
Kudos, because I know those in power “really dislike” people who think and speak independently.
Giving the appearance of weakness by drawing Ukraine forces into the meat grinder looks like ‘rope-a-dope.’
Or perhaps Russia has latched into the adage ‘two can play at this game.’ By that I mean you in the US thought you could weaken us by sanctions and war. But the longer this goes on, and we will go on as long as the US wants, it is boomeranging, and it is the whole West that is getting weaker. So, we hate it, but we shall play as long as you want.
I agree. Big, loudmouth, arrogant west getting it’s clock cleaned financially, strategically, and militarily slowly but surely. Fools. Use of nukes by the west would surely bring world wide condemnation and reprisal.
Wasting precious money on a war that cannot be won for reasons that are dubious at best is utterly insane. History will not be kind to western “leadership”.
How do you do strategic and operational deception when you have to assume that eyes in the sky are watching everything you do? I think we are learning how as we watch Russia.
Patrick,
It also helps if the military leaders refuse to listen to what the eyes in the sky show as they are invested in a different narrative. Peter principle : promotion to the level of incompetence!
PS if you are the PA of Russia Observer, please start writing again!
When you superficially study the Great Patriotic War, it looks like a series of great operations, Moscow, Crimea, Stalingrad, Kursk, Bagration, Berlin …however when you study it in detail you realize that it was a “constant grind” interspersed with the great operations. The small battles and constant grind don’t make make good history/reading and occurred at the small unit / tactical level so are doubly hard to see. For most Soviet units there were no long pauses, with the commanders always wanting to prove themselves as devoted and loyal to a suspicious Kremlin leadership. Pick up a memoir or history of a small unit in the conflict and that will become readily apparent… the day to day war diaries of these units demonstrate constant grinding brutal conflict and are exhausting to read.
*This was also a feature of the Napoleonic Invasion, where the small skirmishes took a greater toll on the Grand Army than the Battle of Borodino, etc.
Larry, yes, Wagner is a pys ops wrapped in a diversion, wrapped in military strategy (or something like that).
I think, also, this is playing to western pre-conceptions and projection. After decades of excursionary wars against irregular forces, the US reconfigured its military towards special forces (and euro-NATO reconfigured its military into small police forces) and a jobs program for the MICC. This was the future of wars, I have read. Its well known that special forces are too light to do be more than a speed bump against a proper army (Combined arms); however, the west believed that passé due to its air superiority.
Thus, Wagner plays perfectly to western projection and pre-conceptions about the military arts, as it re-inforces US internal careers. Meanwhile, in a war of attrition, its the artillery that does the real work, and they are ignored, I believe, not just by the MSM, but also by the NATO handlers and “advisors” in Ukraine and the generals in DC, who focus on Wagner to avoid answering the question why the non-special forces cupboard in the West is bare (and who’s career should be sacrificed for this mistake)?
As I understand it, Prigozhin got in trouble, when he proceeded to end the Bakhmut attritional battle in victory. Fortunately, and I like the recent Duran comment on the two generals, Ukraine continues to throw forces to their death against Bakhmut, so due to NATO/Ukrainian poor strategy, the attritional battle continued despite Prighozin.
Larry, second thought. Evaluation of the West’s actions to the SMO, demonstrates that the west broadly under-estimates Russian capabilities in many areas (economic, technology, finance, agriculture, diplomacy, military, etc.).
Your friend seems to underestimate the ability of the GRU to keep track of internal dissent. There is zero historical evidence of KGB or GRU incompetence, so this is more like a religious belief (facts are irrelevant) / comfortable delusion.
I think Russia is going to go over to the offensive. Probably pretty soon. I think there is a point where the Russian public demands that they at least make an attempt to actually win the war decisively. There are also some signs. The Ukies are making noise about Russian build ups. Its been nearly a year since the Russian mobilizations and that is enough time to train and equip these units and cycle them through some areas for a little combat experience. They are probably ready and if they don’t use them, the units will start to degrade a little. I’ve also seen some fairly neutral sources talking a out how the Ukies have achieved superiority in tube artillery and that the Russians appear to have some shortages. That also fits into the narrative with the Russian general who was sacked a week or two ago. There are lots of reasons for shortages, but one of them is that units are limited in their fires because reserves and stockpiles are being accumulated for offensive operations. Large scale offensives are almost ALWAYS preceded by a period of buildup that involves changing priorities and local shortages of munitions and supplies as they are shifted elsewhere in readiness for the coming offensive.
Nothing terribly insightful in my remarks. Just my two cents.
Larry,your take is the most rational.Surovican has shown himself to be a stauanch Russian patriot beginning with his actions during the Moscow coupe.Now suddenly he is mounting a coup of his own!I don’t think so.
I’ve cracked it! It’s so obvious. The real reason for the animosity by Prigozhin and Surovikin towards Gerasimov is that the former are bald whilst Gerasimov has a full head of hair. It all makes perfect sense now.
Scott’s Part 2 is now available
https://rumble.com/v30nd8w-a-scott-ritter-investigation-agent-zelensky-part-2.html
Scott Ritter just released a film outlining the evidence Ukraine’s Zelensky is a British asset. Confirms much.
Scott Ritter Bombshell: Zelensky is a British Agent. Otherwise, the NATO Death Cult Continues
https://abeldanger.blogspot.com/2023/07/from-pirate-city-of-london-ukraines.html
With all due respect, what a piece of shit on Substack! I confess that when I started reading it, knowing that it was from a colleague of Larry’s, a former CIA operative, I still thought of some piece of counterinformation or pure and hard propaganda when right at the beginning he mentions that Prigozhin thought he had the Russian army on his side from him?! But when he immediately mentions that Surovikin could replace Gerassimov as Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and Prigozhin could be the next President, one can only conclude that the author knows zero about Russia! Any teenager could write the same on Telegram! What a disappointment!
Larry himself and other former CIA operatives often refer to the shit that the CIA is today as an intelligence agency but in fact the CIA has been a shitty intelligence agency for decades. After 9/11 with all the powers it received it became simply the largest global Terrorist Organization! At the level of analysis, its a giant fake news and propaganda agency. Fabricating processes like Russiagate or the propaganda of this war. And about what is really going on in the world with bureaus in all embassies, it always seems to know very little. And at an operational level it is a terrorist agency, pure and simple. Which has specialized over the years in coups d’état, today better known as regime change operations! But even these operations are often very poorly planned and many end badly. We only remember the successes. Like Euromaidan. And It’s enough to listen to this interview to understand how the CIA and Ambassador Pyatt also always had many doubts about the success of the operation. Snipers are called to Kiev because the Euromaidan was dead. In short, both Yanukovich and Russia didn’t stop the coup because they didn’t want to. A mystery!
Biden’s corruption led to Ukraine’s destruction: fmr. Kiev diplomat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgj3p2jIVtI&t=3s
Reminds me of Andrei Martyanov’s great obsession with Ivy League PhDs. Andrey who I like to read whenever I can with great military experience but Andrei should also know that the death of journalism was much more fatal for US Democracy! As we see in this war! Because the great raison d’être of journalism, in addition to the final objective of informing, is to supervise all the instituted powers. There is no Democracy without journalism and this war also only started due to the biggest disinformation campaign ever in the “free world”.
There are a lot of smart comments on this site. Much is written about what I do not know or do not understand. Lots of other points of view. It’s interesting to be enlightened.
At the same time, with regard to Russia, there is a misunderstanding of some issues, which is not surprising. The Russians themselves do not always understand what is happening and why. I am no exception either. However, I will make a few remarks.
1. About journalism, democracy and oversight of government – Russians have a saying: “lost your head, do not cry for your hair.”
Under the conditions of global dominance of transnational financial and economic corporations and military structures (the Pentagon and NATO) there is not and cannot be any democracy, freedom and, accordingly, there cannot be high-quality honest journalism.
2. About Prigozhin’s rebellion –
There was no disguise or cunning plan (agreement) of Putin. There was a real banal mutiny of an oligarch who relied on his private, very well-armed, shelled army with a huge number of hidden shells and who tried to save his assets and his money. Money – above all. Money and power. For a lot of money, you can not only sell your homeland, but also your mother. Without PMC “Wagner” Prigozhin is nobody.
Do you remember why sanctions were imposed against Russia? In order to raise the Russian oligarchs to rebel against the government and Putin, as happened in 2014 in Ukraine. But in Russia by that time there were no longer oligarchs in the classical sense of the term. There were and are very rich people who have no power, no private punitive formations, no monopoly on violence. And Prigogine had such an army. And the Ukrainian oligarchs had their own private paramilitary formations.
The fact that Prigozhin quickly merged is simply explained: none of the powers that be, the army and the people seriously supported him, with the exception of a small number of exalted citizens and corrupt near-military bloggers and journalists whom Prigozhin corny bought.
3. On the causes of the war in Ukraine –
In the Russian segment of the Internet in 2006-2007, a great remarkable analytical work appeared, which was vigorously discussed at the Global Adventure forum.
Sergei Muravyov. “Reconquista Brief Plan (Fundamental US Goals)”
A summary of this work can be read here.
https://judgesuhov.livejournal.com/70084.html
So, the work stated that in order to achieve its goals, the United States would destroy the world energy market, destabilize the Middle East, Asia (the war of all against all) and … most importantly … pampered Europe. Without a war in Europe, the United States will not achieve its goals. And the war in Europe will begin with cutting off Russian gas and with a civil war in Ukraine.
All this was predicted 15 years before the special military operation.
Everything is going according to a long-established plan, as in the First World War, as in the Second World War, with adjustments for the scale of the current financial and economic crisis and the colossal US public debt. And poor old Biden is just a scapegoat.
I wonder what can help here ? Bombing three more weapon factories in Odessa or other city ?
The fact that three cluster bombs were used on a basically civilian target, on the territory of the Russian motherland, proves that this Ukrainian proxy government and their sponsors are not interested only in the destruction of Ukraine, the destruction and suffering of its people. They don’t care what happens in Odessa, Kiev, Zhytomyr, to name a few .They keep the Western equipment and materials moving around ,they transfer them from one warehouse to other and the infrastructure is repaired in a few weeks.
There is only one viable solution in my mind , and I hope the Russian political and military leadership realizes this sooner than later , not only because of the urging of the general staff and Russian military bloggers , that there is a need for radically change of the ground battlefield situation. Air cover is of course essential, effective missile and drone strikes are necessary, but wars are decided on land (In spite of the fact that the USA had 100% air superiority in Vietnam) .
Well we will need probably around fifty well-rested, well-trained, well-equipped divisions with material rewards sufficient for 4-6 weeks of offensive operations, which Russia does has both. I am not a military strategist ,expert or whatever ,this is only an opinion based on some well read facts. 1. An encirclement operation should be launched from the Kupyansk and Zaporozhe regions, with an inner and outer front line. 2. Another from Belarusian and Russian territory to encircle Kiev.
3. And the second one from the Belarusian territory, as an auxiliary strike, an advance along the Polish border.
In this case, the Ukrainian army would break in maximum two weeks and will disappear, surrender in four weeks. I do not wish the death of anyone , mostly poor conscripted Ukrainian soldiers, but their capitulation and disarmament would happen.
If I see this as an amateur strategist, the Russian generals, who are not listened to by the political leadership and insist on insufficient, limited ground action at all costs, see it much better than I do.
And what is the alternative then ?
The fact that cluster bombs could wreak havoc in Moscow, Saint Petersburg , and in large and small cities as well. Sooner or later, the Kerch bridge will be damaged to the point of being unusable. The European Union and the USA want to maintain this active combat operation for four years (!!!), with the goal of continuously “weakening” or braking Russia.
Is this tolerable ? I hope a similar plan will be implemented by Russian leadership sooner then latter .