Ukraine: Slow Motion Car Crash

This is what happens when you let drunks drive.

We haven't written about the Ukraine war for nearly a year because our articles, subject to ongoing periodic testing, were largely correct. In the last article, we provided a large amount of reasoned predictive analysis. We feel almost all of it was correct and has come to pass.

The full article can be found here. We've distilled the article into its key predictive elements below. There follows some thoughts about the most important topic: what lies beyond.

…The war would be done in conventional terms in roughly September/October because the rate of expenditure of sponsor cash, and the depletion of available men and materiel would culminate in a point of collapse that VST roughly extrapolated to land by the start of winter.

VST still stands by that prediction. On the math of attrition warfare within the present constraints that prevent NATO from directly entering the conflict, Ukraine cannot win.

However, that certainty could be the genesis of black swan events that radically change the conflict along one or more dimensions.

There’s also an obvious sticking point: Russia. There looks to be an increasing chance that Russia’s strategic approach sees it deliberately extend the fighting into next year depending upon its attitude towards pacing and capacity under exogenous battlefield conditions i.e. its view of the optimum way to achieve its objectives of enforced Ukrainian neutrality via demilitarisation, denazification and a form of ruination.

It would appear that it has always been in Russia’s interests to end the war as quickly as possible but this dynamic has changed as Russia has gained the upper hand on the battlefield. Ukraine’s circumstances and command has shown that it is incompetent, corrupt and involved in the money laundering and crime cover up scheme. It has wilfully burned its men and materiel against Russian defences and continues to do so. This means it is now also in Russia’s interest to let Ukraine keep doing this for as long as it is willing, in order to demilitarise Ukraine as far as possible. Should significant extension happen wherein Ukraine manages to get yet another wave of meat on the field via its mass conscription policies, then significantly greater but unpredictable escalation could be the result; not because there will be overwhelming Ukrainian force, but because destruction of these latter forces will drive increasingly desperate Ukrainian (and sponsor) acts.

Russia is not fighting at max capacity and it is constantly ahead of the capacity curve, while having clear, stable, public objectives. Western observers are unlikely to know any internal Russian truth and there have been public staffing and command issues and events. Despite this, Russia has still remained cohesive enough on the battlefield. NATO is permanently behind the curve and cannot conventionally recover on either time or tangibles while it is constrained by a proxy war format. The only way it could recover is for NATO forces to enter the conflict directly across air, land and sea but this is still unviable because of the nuclear angle and the lack of uniformity of will across the NATO bloc.

One or more exit strategies need to be made available. This can be as simple as the burgeoning “blame each other” strategy that is now employed as predictive programming in the Western press, but it is incredibly thin. However, it could be enough. Given that the USA literally fled from Afghanistan with its tail between its legs and basically acts like nothing happened, complete abandonment of combat in Ukraine could follow a similar format that gets swept under the rug with the Biden crime family, the UK Conservative Prime Minister X and the bungling, thieving Ukrainian proxy puppet dictatorship.

Provided Russia continues to state that negotiations are an option (just not on Ukraine’s terms) it largely satisfies the need to give the West a way out of the corner. That way out is still as humiliating as admitting defeat. It is the emotional response towards such a humiliation and the true objectives of Nuland & Co that will determine whether a military failure results in capitulation or escalation.

What comes next?

VST believes that all of the above combined with the ever widening chasm between rhetoric and reality is proof not only of military failure, but political failure as well. Ukraine has politically failed, from before the start of the war, to understand what it truly was and would become: it was a basket case pawn being gaslighted; it would become a straight-jacketed loon locked away on the periphery of NATO and the EU, while others picked over its possessions. It has failed to achieve a fundamental political objective of protecting its citizens and territory at the lowest cost and for the highest return. Instead, it has achieved the exact opposite. Internally, this is total failure. It has also been humiliated on the international stage by the way the West and its primary sponsors have effectively set it up as a scape goat for Nord Stream and readied it for jettisoning by labelling it a terrorist state in all but name.

Russia must balance Sun Tzu and Napoleon

Now, there is a potentially dangerous dichotomy that could lead to extreme outcomes.

Sun Tzu said “never put your enemy in a corner” because the enemy will fight maximally. An escape path of some kind should be provided to avoid desperate ferocity of a terminal situation.

Napoleon said "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." USEUNATO and Ukraine appear to have made serious mistakes and are willing to keep making them. The more mistakes they make, the further into an almost self-made corner they go. That, unchecked and exploited by Russian military success, could lead to the rapid onset of escalatory desperation that Russia may not be able to fully anticipate or contain.

There is a balance to be struck but for the war to end in a form of negotiation both sides must agree to tango. The West and Ukraine is refusing talks while Russia has always kept that option on the table, even if the terms become increasingly one-sided. Hopefully, keeping the backchannel lines open and sticking to sufficiently diplomatic language will be enough, while the meat grinder keeps grinding, to keep away from any kind of nuclear escalation or the overt involvement of NATO troops (beyond what is already admitted to.

The most obvious challenge to the above is our claim that the war would be done in conventional terms by last Sept/Oct, yet here we are. By that time, it was fully admitted that Ukraine's summer offensive had utterly failed; Ukraine had committed suicide by running troops and armour into static defensive lines where they were destined to step on landmines and be picked off by ranged weapons. The kill ratio in that period was over 5:1 in Russia's favour. The West went from claiming an impending victory to admitting complete failure in less than a quarter. It was a total abomination of military manoeuvres.

As that phase drew to a close in Sept/Oct, the fix was in. “In conventional terms” Ukraine had unquestionably lost the war, barring a black swan event.

It took months for a new tranche of funding to be released from the USA and EU because of growing internal resistance in the face of collapsing narrative and admissions of failure. When money was allocated, it didn't take long for the obvious to be admitted: most of the cash wasn't going to the war but rather the simple operation of the Ukrainian state's functions. From circa $60bn something like $45bn wasn't going to the war. Exactly how much was earmarked to be stolen is anyone's guess. This was further admission of collapse.

High energy systems don't always explode in an instant. They can spin on and spin down. If they periodically get their spin extended, the timeline drags on. This is exactly what Ukraine is: both sides have high energy inputs and are invested in focusing that energy on their objectives. This is why Ukraine spins on and down, rather than just going bang.

Russia did what many had long been saying it had done and would do: fight on its terms. In another article, we said that we expected the Russians to apply pressure along multiple sections of the front with a breakthrough in maybe two places, where it would then reinforce and drive in.

Russian forces will surge and try to breakthrough a different point on the front to ensure that no matter the progress elsewhere, it is uncontained in country somewhere, saturating Ukraine’s management and resources.

This is largely what happened, but not in immediate response to or during the failed Ukrainian suicide drive. Russia waited for Ukraine to bleed out then ground forwards and it's been chewing up the lines ever since. The best the Western press can do is continue to invent literal fantasy, keep schtum or claim that Russia is losing because it's not progressing at a rate they invent. All of this is total garbage.

We said all of the obvious limitations of foreign jets couldn't be overcome in any meaningful way and that airfield denial would be the easiest, certain course of action. Even a nonsense plan to base jets outside Ukraine was subject to exactly the same limitations. Publicly declaring that plan to your enemy is retarded.

Why has it taken the Western press a year plus to identify self evident issues?

https://x.com/ArmchairW/status/1807259079812796636?t=qSN5gCeWqPQJ4gnY1o3tAA&s=19

My criteria are simple - these are weapons (defined loosely) that were heavily hyped by Western pundits that actually failed in service.

So, for example, the Leopard 2 isn't on here because it's actually a perfectly functional tank that has performed in line with other tanks.

10. The Ukrainian Foreign Legion

After the war kicked off, Western outlets began encouraging adventurous foreigners to travel to Ukraine to fight. These new recruits were housed in barracks at the Yavorov Training Ground.

One Russian missile strike largely ended the project.

9. Switchblade

This "drone in a can" was supposed to allow Ukrainian troops to deliver lethal, precise strikes at standoff range.

While drones have transformed the Ukrainian battlefield, Switchblade itself was complicated and ineffective.  I've seen five used in two years.

8. NASAMS

This surface-to-air AMRAAM adaptation fell prey to the problem that all SAM adaptations of air-to-air missiles do - missiles designed for high-speed aerial launch don't have the legs to perform from a dead stop.

Far from "closing the sky," this system has been MIA.

7. Excalibur shells

This GPS-guided precision 155mm artillery shell performed well in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Russian jamming has apparently rendered it ineffective on the far harsher Ukrainian battlefield.

6. The Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb

This LEGO-esque combination of a 227mm MLRS booster and a GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb was supposed to allow the AFU to stretch their HIMARS systems out to 150km.

The slow-moving glide bombs were shot down easily by Russian air defenses.

5. Bayraktar TB-2

Ukraine bought these Turkish drones en masse after their good showing in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.

As it turns out, Russian air defenses are a little stiffer than Armenian ones. They were shot down in droves and quickly withdrawn from combat.

4. Challenger 2

The UK donated a company of its premiere war machines to the Ukrainian cause, with shills hyping them to the moon as indestructible.

The Russians were unimpressed and blew one up. The British government reacted by demanding the rest be withdrawn from combat.

3. Javelin

When the war started this IR-guided fire-and-forget antitank missile was hyped as a magic wand that could delete Russian tanks at the push of a button.

Battlefield conditions and Russian countermeasures degraded its performance and it has rarely been observed in use.

2. The "Arsenal of Democracy"

The Western powers vowed to keep Ukraine supplied with everything needed to win the war. They have failed to do so.

Once derided as a "gas station with nukes," Russia produces substantially more war materiel than the entire Western Alliance.

1. Sanctions

The most comprehensive sanctions regime in history, intended to collapse the Russian economy and force Putin to surrender, comprehensively backfired.

Russia is now wealthier than ever despite fourteen rounds of sanctions, while European economies wither by the day.

As of today, the failed state of Ukraine is in a nose dive. Zelensky is being cut loose and set up as we and others said he would be. The nonsense peace summit was junk. He and his own administration are now capitulating by admitting the need to talk to Russia and therefore to Putin. Its Air Force is destroyed, its airfields practically gone or fully marked, so no imported air power can be usefully employed, just as we said. It's out of air defence, ammo and men of much skill or consequence. More and more of what was described as “Russian propaganda” is being admitted, including Azov Nazi troops acting as blockers i.e. Forcing meat waves of Ukrainian conscripts to advance at the Russians under threat of being killed by their own.

Russia has not changed its pace, tone or objectives save to escalate its warnings to the West to stay out of the conflict and warn of end times if attacks against it step up. It has no choice but to issue these warnings while having to absorb the petty and inconsequential attacks by NATO against inland and often civilian targets because it doesn't want to launch nukes. Overall, this tactic is working. As a result, NATO forces have been shown to be incapable of taking action that could shift the battlefield outcome and NATO members have humiliated themselves by revealing their lack of coordination, shizophrenic panic and constant admission of physical and political constraints they cannot overcome, all while claiming that Russia must not win.

Macron had to walk back all claims that French troops would overtly after enter the theatre. As we and others said, Britain admits it had no consequential military power to project into serious war against even near peers. The USA, despite its scale, is facing the same reality, as is every country in Europe.

There are growing fractures across the USEUNATO clown show. Following the US cluster bomb attack on Crimea that only killed civilians on a beach, America had to call Russia directly after having deliberately cut direct comms lines early in the conflict. The rumour is that Russia said it knew America was directly responsible and would be held accountable.

Meanwhile the corrupt EU reappointed Von der Leyen and the completely toxic Kallas, who has been and continues to employ essentially racist, historically fictitious and utterly inept rhetoric that conflates and confuses Soviet and Russian history while whitewashing her own familial complicity and corruption through the Soviet era right through to the present day.

If you weren't afraid before, you should be now.

That the EU's latest senior diplomatic appointment quotes Timothy Snyder as some kind of military strategist is a red flag. Snyder is a modern day Democrat in group spinmeister pushing hyper subjective pro hegemon noise:

Hungary, in its 6 month EU Presidency, is doing all it can to undermine the USEUNATO insane war hawks by overtly abandoning NATO militarism and running direct diplomacy with Russia. This is probably the smartest single move by any EU nation throughout the conflict. It is willing to lead for its interests and that of the world, for which it will pay a harsh price on top of the literal extortion by the EU that's fined Hungary €200m and €1m/day for refusing to accept migrants.

Real leadership doesn't run with the pack. It makes rational decisions based on multiple factors and contradictory evidence while exercising extreme caution towards group think and coercion by the in group. It seeks answers and evidence from sources and shuns received opinion and it's not afraid to test “wisdom”.

Last year we highlighted the toxic but incoherent propagandists in the Daily Telegraph, specifically Richard Kemp, Hamish De Bretton Gordon, James Kilner and Robert Clark.

If you check X you'll see that Kemp and HDBG get practically no views (hundreds to a couple of thousand, and a few thousand respectively). Added together they get lower views than the clearly psychotic Sarah/Michael Ashton-Cirilo, such is the utter comedy of calling any of these people journalists, reporters or credible. They are simply garbage propagandists and intelligence service lackeys and fortunately X shows that no one is listening to them. The DT's comments contain the same accounts saying exactly the same zero thought things punctuated by someone who calls out the garbage propaganda.

Look through these article collections. Just the headlines show you what Britain, through the lens of its stenographer, the DT, is: a foreign policy Grimer Wormtongue with a much greater psychotic, psychopathic and sadistic bent, who lives in a bubble and peddles a narrative that is periodically dragged back to version of reality by real world events. They also show contrasting narrative shift and collapse. These are pitiful collections of junk that don't contain analysis. They are simply very short collections of nonsense assertions that contain no reasoning or evidence. They are never right.

What you find in the Telegraph is typical of the UK press as it is a syndication machine. The same pattern is found across the US press: pro narrative fantasy punctuated by recognition of exogenous reality that forces a recalibration of their fake narratives.

This is the case for both the Ukraine war and the Israeli Palestine conflict, wherein the Israeli press itself destroys not only the Israeli official narrative but the Western one as well.

ICC in the Ukraine war

There is no practical value to the ICC regarding this conflict. The cases filed and the warrants issued are highly questionable, especially regarding the supposedly stolen children. Most of the claims of “genocide” and such were all shown to be highly suspect by Western sources very soon after they were held up. The casualty numbers and ratios of civilians to combatants doesn't support genocide and nor does the type of fighting. United Nations casualty figures for both sides don't support such accusations and never have.

The ICC is also dealing with three other problems that the West has created for itself:

• The attitude towards the court by the US hegemony under parallel circumstances;

• The Israeli Palestinian conflict;

• The ICJ.

The US hegemony has totally undermined the ICC by its selective recognition of its validity. The ICC doesn't have jurisdiction over Israel but it does over Russia, according to US State Department. The US threatens the ICC when it suits it. It will intervene and block the ICC using any means it feels appropriate. It will deny enforceability should a ruling be made. Russia can simply mirror this stance or elements of it with equal legitimacy if it wants to. Despite the war continuing for 2.5 years, the ICC still hasn't begun a trial in absentia, which it could do should it have the evidence.

The Israeli Palestinian conflict is a yard stick against which to measure ANY other conflict. There is simply no comparison. Israel is committing genocide with its sponsors. That conflict makes Ukraine look like the most precise and measured execution of warfare ever. You will struggle to find pictures or video of civilian casualties from Ukraine at a fraction of the volume that have come from just months of Israeli mass murder. The Russian government's communication and political action is the polar opposite of Israel. All of this combines to create contrast between the ICC arrest warrants. The ICC has literally been forced to act against Israel because of the scale of its genocide and the ICJ cases. Remember, the ICC has issued arrest warrants for Bibi & Yoav based on direct, multiple infractions of the Genocide & Geneva Conventions. Russia has not expressed intent to commit genocides, unlike most of the Israeli Knesset.

No one has submitted any case to the ICJ against Russia. That is a court Russia recognises. No Western press outlet has asked why no one has done this.

What next?

We expect the war will continue to Odessa, the landlocking of a rump state and the establishment of a DMZ. Kiev will probably remain in the rump state that's split across Poland, Romania and maybe Hungary (provided stiff security requirements are met and Hungary gets the control it wants). Through that structure, the EU will be bled dry by the reconstruction fraud that is guaranteed to follow. There are serious implications for Europe in this that the EU leadership are hiding and ignoring but shipped political operators should exploit.

Between now and then, the fighting will continue until the rate of Russian advancement accelerates to a rate detectable and undeniable in the Western press on a weekly basis across 30%+ of the front. That sounds like a very qualitative measure, but it's not. It's a fairly hard metric that is a clear indication that Ukraine's forces will have been so decimated that Russia, with all its caution, can progress unopposed. This will comprise increasing mass surrender and Russia declaring a sky rocketing kill ratio. It has recently formally revealed 5:1 average with peaks at 8:1, while also claiming recent kill counts of 1200 Ukrainians per day, implying 400 Russians KIA. Under these present circumstances, this is being reported:

Like it or not, the Russian MOD has proven itself to be largely accurate for a state organ with a vested interest. It's been cross checked by the Mediazona BBC and United Nations kill counts and no one has ever called them into doubt. Ukraine, on the other hand, is simply projecting its own losses and presenting them as Russian, as it always has done.

Russia continues to kill NATO forces operating inside Ukraine illegally and covertly. It is in its interests to manage those kills because the West has trapped itself by having them there. Russia should continue to target them and keep NATO in its own trap, thereby exploiting its lack of competence.

None of NATO's pseudo strategic statements are true. Ukraine cannot win. Ukraine cannot join NATO (because it won't win, its corrupt AF and it's always been a basket case liability to be chewed up and robbed).

None of the EU's similar claims are true, for the same reasons. Ukrainian refugees also drive EU/UN Replacement Migration strategies that serve more than one purpose in the post Covid world. Ukraine is never joining the EU as Ukraine.

We've said consistently that the measurable gap between rhetoric and reality is the measure of success or failure. Russia doesn't do rhetoric. It does its version of facts, which is not rhetoric. It backs those facts with performance in whatever arena it's talking about, be it war or national or international economics. When Putin speaks at the SPIEF he fulfils the role of a CEO. No Western political leader can or does do this.

Have you ever asked yourself why not?

Remember, you've got Kaja Kallas on your side who believes nuclear war is impossible and nothing to be afraid of, whose husband makes money from Russia in spite of sanctions, who whitewashes her family history of complicity and privilege under Soviet occupation that she does in a racist manner as a reason to exact revenge against Russia via the big bullies in NATO because She leads a loyal zero nation of no consequence. She ignores that Russia is not the Soviet Union.

She plays off against Sergei Lavrov who has to do no work to deal serious damage to the legitimacy of western politics.

Whether you take him at face value or consider the subtexts, him simply saying “I don't care about UK politics,” is damaging for the UK's narcissistic tendencies and struggle for legitimacy on the multipolar stage as elements of the US hegemony are ejected from weak nations in Africa and abandoned by BRICS+.

Regarding insurgency at the start of the war we said this in March 2022, right at the start of the conflict:

If stable neutrality cannot be achieved or enforced, Ukraine will remain a long term bipolar liability where nuclear, chemical and biological threats persist. An insurgency could target the nuclear reactors, any operational biolabs, gas lines or wheat supplies. Biolabs could be directly dealt with in a conventional manner by Russia once their information/political capital has been expended. Nuclear reactor damage will threaten Ukraine, Russia and the EU, which could be enough to keep those targets off limits or jointly and heavily defended. Gas supply disruption is containable within Ukraine so insurgents run the risk of losing any popular support. Disbursal or loss of control of armaments or uncontrolled armed forces dissolution would be a repeat of the mistake the US made in both Iraq and Afghanistan, so I expect Russia will do what it can to shore up and destroy inventories under the banner of demilitarisation, at the very least. Captured hardware is being used to bolster DPR and LPR forces, so it makes sense to persist with building up those forces by depleting wider Ukraine. That would bolster that front/border from Ukraine but possibly result in an active militarised border or territorial buffer zone.

In The Context of Conflict, October 2023 we wrote:

Both sides of war are always sponsored by those who profit from it. The US hegemony is a fundamental war economy that cannot be changed in short order with a policy promise here or there. The energy and interests in that system are gigantic, which guarantees this state of affairs will persist for a long time and in that time, the use of war to achieve other fascistic objectives will occur. That war will cover overt conflicts and increasing amounts of covert warfare including insurgency, coups and the like, in the face of declining real military power while the time needed to remilitarise at the expense of one’s people ticks by.

What Russia is absorbing now was inevitable and will continue, probably beyond the Ukraine conflict because it is the way the US and UK fight: underhand, covert, through proxy and insurgency. Georgia and Dagestan have both seen CIA/NATO insurgency operations again and this is likely to periodically occur over an indefinite period but none of this is new. Georgia has already called out Western responsibility for insurgency and this tactic is important to employ.

Zelensky is now being directed to negotiate, but this will take a few more months before something like a serious attempt emerges. We anticipate this will be accompanied by the aforementioned accelerating movement of the front. We believe Russia has no choice but to maintain a position of military supremacy and smash more of the country in order to achieve an absolutely certain political outcome knowing that USEUNATO will betray it and continue insurgency operations inside Russia as a form of childish and petty spite that could have disproportionate, black swan consequences down the line.

Russia's revenge for the recent Crimea attack is hard to guess. We anticipate it will not take the form of an overt conventional military strike on US interests, but rather a much more damaging, long lasting hybrid response that somehow undeniably cements Russia's power on the world stage. Her recent engagement with North Korea is a form of such action but isn't this revenge act. Perhaps a large strategic move into Africa beyond what is already occurring, the occupation of former US bases and overt assistance for the Palestinian resistance nations including the import of air defence gear to counter US air power could all factor. It may also take a stance similar to Iran in unleashing a controlled onslaught against points of US or NATO power inside Ukraine, although a retired 2 star US general has just immediately died on return from Ukraine (read he was killed there and repatriated). It's a mistake for Russia to attack anything outside of Ukraine, which is what the USA has been trying to provoke in order to shift the rules of engagement. Russia won't make that mistake. Information Warfare cannot be ruled out either, especially this close to the election of a geriatric, senile pant-shitting criminal.

On balance, the war continues to favour being strung out by Russia because it damages the whole of USEUNATO each day and drives all of its members further towards the cliff. In doing so, it weaponises all of the citizens’ discontent set within general Empire collapse.

All of Russia's present administration lived through the USSR's hypernormalisation and collapse. They know what that looked like, how it felt and what it involved. They know how difficult it was to recover from. They know that the West is now in hypernormalisation of its own kind and, now that they are official enemies (despite Russia trying to avoid this) effective hybrid warfare includes anything non military that accelerates hypernormalisation and collapse. This includes the humiliation and ridicule of people by simply proving to them how bad all of their leadership and ruling infrastructure is. All Russia needs to do to prove this is continue being successful in its global endeavours while winning in Ukraine, even if it remains a slow, steady grind into winter. Just being a contrast to the US hegemony proves that globe spanning turd cannot be polished.

For the West, losing the war serves an internal purpose that it is actively pursuing: the final implementation of totalitarianism across the US hegemony using invented threats of Russia and China as a reason to remilitarize. That goal, we posit, is nothing to do with actually fighting Russia or China but about wealth extraction, full internal control over populations and the implementation of the WEFian vision of fascistic neo feudalism.

This is the wilful pursuit of the Orwellian construct of Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia, in the minds of the stupefied Western citizenry who, each day, descend further and further into slavery and denial as they smoke copium to dull the ringing of cognitive dissonance.

The three fictional superstates of the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four are Oceania (black), Eurasia (red), and Eastasia (yellow). 'Disputed territories' are indicated in grey....

Kaja Kallas isn't afraid of nuclear war because she said that being afraid of nuclear war stops us from fighting Russia and being able to destroy it in the way she wants. She wants us to attack it so hard that we smash it into hundreds of tiny countries. That is literally what she says she wants, despite having zero mandate for such a goal and absolutely zero credibility in contributing anything to such a fight. She is so incisive in this vision that she doesn't need to address the notion that it is exactly such a goal that would certainly trigger nuclear war. The sole raison d'etre for Russia's nuclear arsenal and doctrine is to stop people like Kallas doing to Russia what Kallas has explicitly said she wants to. She literally comes across as a retarded child bent on militarism with zero understanding of politics or realpolitik.

So, under such great and psychopathic leadership, you can now safely follow Kallas and the non existent Estonian Defence Force into the escalation of an ongoing fight that the West cannot win, that could lead to a short fight that no one wins. Don't be afraid. Lithuania and some NAFO online trolls will be backing up Kallas so Russia is bound to collapse any moment now.