The day Bakhmut fell and Artyomovsk’s skeleton lay smoking, the western narrative machine began to grind into action to undo its previous gibberish and that of Zelensky.
Now, we are to believe that the battle for Bakhmut was a deliberately laid trap by Ukrainian forces in which to grind Russian forces, to the tune of 100,000 dead and injured Russians. We should believe that figure despite no evidence that backs it up, in light of intel releases that prove Ukraine’s claims of Russian casualties are persistently false.
Since VST last posted a Ukrainian MoD Russian casualty figure of 189,460 (28/04/23), the figure has now risen to 203,880, which is a 7.5% increase in less than a month that has resulted in a Ukrainian defeat. In that period, 14,000 Russian soldiers have supposedly been taken out of the fight, where losses are likely to have been concentrated in Bakhmut and sustained by Wagner, whose size is hard to know but claimed by Wikipedia to be 50,000+ as of December 2022. On a common sense basis, assuming half the 14,000 losses were sustained in Bakhmut, 7500 casualties per month would entirely deplete a force of 50,000 in 6.6 months, and the Bakhmut campaign ran for 7.5 months. We can play with these numbers, but we already know that the Ukrainian MoD is lying about casualty rates and its own predictably increasing counter again demonstrates that something smells rotten in Kiev.
Zelensky again proved his cluelessness as a leader and statesman when he vaguely guessed that Bakhmut was “only in our hearts” in response to a question of whether the city had actually fallen. On the same day, other Ukrainian officials denied it had fallen and that significant resistance inside and around the city still persisted, thereby contradicting the President’s claim or undermining his knowledge. One would have thought that he would maintain a direct line regarding the conflict, irrespective of where in the world he is. The official’s claim of significant occupation and fighting is simply proven or disproven by upcoming changes in the frontline. If, in the next month, the frontline doesn’t move east, the officials are again proven to be lying.
Two days after Bakhmut was declared captured by Prigozhin, the Ukrainian claim to have ground down the Russians was circulated after the exact opposite claim was applied to Russia’s “Bakhmut meat grinder”.
Russia: “We ground our way through the Ukrainians in Bakhmut, in line with our objective to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine.”
Ukraine: “No, we ground them down and now they will be less able to attack us, although we have further diminished our capability to push Russia from our borders, conceded ground we said we wanted to keep, and have not been able to mount a simultaneous counter-offensive of note elsewhere on the front that changed the frontline to an equivalent degree.”
Such tit-for-tat will be resolved in the form of strikes, maneouvres and changes to the frontline. This is simply a narrative reversal on the part of Ukraine, who claims that somehow, the Ukrainians have the ability to re-enter and re-take Artyomovsk should they deem it necessary. This is utterly ridiculous. Whatever the true scale of losses incurred in defending the city, the same or greater losses would be incurred in retaking it, and for what strategic outcome? On manpower alone, Ukraine cannot fight another 224 day battle there.
Comparison to Hiroshima
Amateurish, insensitive, unjustified bombast was again employed by Zelensky in Japan as he compared Bakhmut’s ruination to Hiroshima. There is no comparison between a conventionally fought battle in the midst of a conflict between neighbours and a US airburst nuclear strike on a nation that was in the process of surrendering in World War 2. The situation, tactics and outcomes of both strikes do not compare. Even the scale of devastation is incomparable. A city of 70,000 inhabitants was largely evacuated, with some rough estimates of civilian casualties in the 5-10,000 range. Conventional weapons and warfare have left it in ruins, akin to FIBUA fighting in World War 2. As for Hiroshima:
People on the ground reported a pika (ピカ)—a brilliant flash of light—followed by a don (ドン)—a loud booming sound.[148] Some 70,000–80,000 people, around 30 percent of the population of Hiroshima at the time, were killed by the blast and resultant firestorm,[149][150] and another 70,000 were injured.[151] It is estimated that as many as 20,000 Japanese military personnel were killed.[152] U.S. surveys estimated that 12 km2 (4.7 sq mi) of the city were destroyed. Japanese officials determined that 69 percent of Hiroshima's buildings were destroyed and another 6 to 7 percent damaged.[153]
This comparison betrays yet again the level of amateurishness employed by Zelensky’s speech writers, who seek to invoke invalid emotional responses in the general population who are largely uneducated about events, via a constant stream of media soundbites that will be endlessly streamed with no critique or analysis in order to create an illusion of justification for war extension and ever increasing money laundering in theater.
What Zelensky’s utterly inept simile says is “Russia and Wagner are capable of razing cities using conventional weapons and tactics and in doing so, have shown that they can overcome 8 years worth of NATO military investment and defensive construction, without employing the full spectrum of their force.” Russia has not subjected Bakhmut to the kind of aerial shock-and-awe campaign that the US as employed repeatedly in Iraq and Afghanistan from the outset of those invasions where no effective air defences existed.
To invoke Hiroshima is also to say “this looks like an event that hammered a retreating nation.”
Escalation via F-16s
The above paves the way for the next level of escalation: the nominal agreement to send F-16s from a selection of non-US countries to Ukraine. Somehow, non-English speaking pilots who have not been taken out in the conflict to date are able to be rendered fully combat effective on a totally alien airframe in 4 months. Those aircraft will be exposed to the S300 - S500 air defence network that is capable of destroying 4th and likely 5th generation fighters. This implies two things: that the pilots will either be cannon fodder in the overall picture, or that NATO pilots will actually be flying significant numbers of the airframes if combat effectiveness is to be achieved. It also ignores three key points. First, the F-16 is not a jet; it is a weapons platform that requires the entire platform of basing, personnel, maintenance, fuelling, armament, administration and services. This is not just about training pilots. Without the platform’s services, the jet cannot be effective. Second, aircraft need runways. Third, jets have limited range, time on target and payloads meaning that in order to “carpet bomb” you need a lot of F-16s. If you are not carpet bombing, exactly how are 500-2000lb bombs deployed in such a way as to deliver significant volume and scale of strikes to push back a mixed force with over 250,000k men along 2,500 km front? The lethal blast radius is something like 35 meters for a 2000lb-er. Aerial launch of cruise missiles would increase their effective strike range but expose the jets to attack and air launched missiles are still vulnerable to air defences. Use of anti-RADAR weapons still risks exposure and requires co-ordinated tactics against air defences. If the F-16s ever make it into theater, it’s VST’s bet that they will not be a game changer.
What VST now predicts is that Russia will, if it hasn’t done so already, switch targeting to every airfield across Ukraine, including all civil airfields. It will also expand air defences in anticipation. Whatever it has been doing to date, it appears to have coped with the Ukrainian Air Force’s capability and has significantly reduced it such that no mention has ever been made of the force of Ukraine’s air campaign as having been decisive in stopping the Russian advance. The Ghost of Kiev was the Rapidly Ending Story of Ukraine air power. If Ukraine’s Air Force still had capability, manpower and airframes, F-16s would not be required. The UAF is said to have “outperformed” that of Russia, who has not exercised the kind of air superiority wielded by the US in other theaters. This is for the obvious reason that Ukraine’s air defence network was substantial and comprised not just ex-Soviet S300 and BUK units, but also whatever the west has supplied including MANPADS of various forms. Russia is literally flying up against full scale air defence and yet it has slowly ground it down. “Ukrainian” F-16s would be up against the same and expanding Russian capability. If they were to survive, the F-16s would have to be used judiciously over a long time frame. However, it is now claimed that F-16s alone would be the replacement or compensating factor for a diminishing air defence network. This does not make sense, even to a lay person. What is being claimed by the west and Ukraine is this:
The UAF’s air capability and ground-based air defences are reduced.
F-16 jets with limited range and endurance would compensate for this reduction and be able to take out ground-based targets and airborne missiles, aircraft and drones.
Those F-16s would provide game-changing compensatory capabilities despite what is required to keep them in the airspace of the largest country in Europe.
The air defence capabilities of an F-16 squadron are not directly comparable to an integrated, ground-based air defence network that covers overlapping blocks of airspace and comprise batteries of dedicated air defence missiles. The F-16 loadout has to be split across fuel, bombs, air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions, meaning that one jet would never be carrying just 6 or more air defence weapons. Ground-based air defence is always defending when set up and activated. The F-16 has to be in the air and in a location to be able to do anything for a limited time over limited range, and when it’s BINGO fuel it points the opposite way and RTBs.
The above goes to illustrate the literally childish nature of the escalatory narrative being peddled by the west when it comes to F-16s, or any kind of imported jet power. We also have to believe that Ukraine is continually capable of maintaining runways of minimum and optimum take-off and landing distance for a loaded F-16 without Russia being able to eventually detect them. Think about what this entails. An airfield, be it permanent or temporary needs fuel, arms, maintenance and personnel facilities. Jets might be able to land on a long stretch of wide highway in theory, but can they actually operate there for significant periods of time? This is not the same as the Harrier or helicopters who have either curtailed or zero runway length requirements (Harrier was never actually used in a large scale conflict from mobile FOBs for sustained operations and always suffered a payload/MTOW/range/endurance issue). It is feasible by design to constantly move a helicopter Forward Operating Base around a battlefield in the form of a refuelling truck, a weapons truck and a field repair unit, because a runway is not required.
This 14-month-old article claimed that UAF pilots were totally outperforming Russia because of their greater tactical flexibility, without providing any proof beyond the opinion of a commentator. That opinion is now rendered junk by the request for more jets. It is claimed elsewhere that Ukraine was operating secret and defended airfields in the west of Ukraine. Without air-to-air refuelling, Block 50 and 52 F-16s are listed to have:
Combat range: 295 nmi (339 mi, 546 km) on a hi-lo-hi mission with 4 × 1,000 lb (454 kg) bombs
Ferry range: 2,277 nmi (2,620 mi, 4,217 km) with drop tanks
Combat range is a variable, depending upon weight, mission profile (speed, route and altitudes), required ToT and targeting/strike/mission profile. It is unlikely that Wikipedia’s information here is reliable, but let’s keep things simple.
Ukraine is roughly 650 nautical miles wide at extremis. The F-16’s combat range means that without airborne refuel it would have to be based about 150 miles from its target area, with low or near zero Time on Target based on combat range alone of 295nm. Even expanding these basic numbers in favour of the F-16 to put it 200 miles away with a ToT of 20 minutes, does not put its base out of range of any of the Russian cruise missile capabilities in play at the present time. Combine that Russian strike capability with satellite and AWACs ISR; the ability to track and trace a F-16 to and from its base then strike still exists. If you fly a jet low, its fuel burns faster. If you fly a jet high, it becomes more detectable. The US did not prosecute massive air campaigns while sustaining few airframe losses because F-16s are immune to effective air defence. The US has never faced effective air defence since Korea and Vietnam. It is a pipedream to present the F-16 as some form of late-to-game panacea that will strategically reshape the conflict against Russia. Air power is multi-layered and complex. One bunch of jets just doesn’t cut it.
Furthermore, the west is literally telegraphing the weapon, the time and nature of the reinforcement, thereby giving Russia adequate time to formulate and enact anticipatory and reactionary plans. Pick a Russian missile, check the ranges and weep. We have already seen that whether ground, sea or air launched, Russia has a cruise missile strike capability that spans most if not all of the theater as of now. Those weapons simply need to be capable of blowing one or two deep holes into a runway to deny any aircraft its minimum take-off and landing distance, which depends on the aircraft’s weight, thrust and lift envelope and varies with fuel and payload. If, for some reason, Russian warheads cannot do this (we know they can) then the aircraft, hangars or key platform facilities are just as vulnerable to smaller warheads (a small drone can destroy a jet and costs only thousands of dollars). It could be possible to insert a covert team with a drone swarm near an airfield and destroy multiple targets with a single, simultaneous and autonomous/pre-programmed strike. That covert team may only be a few men with ten drones in an airdropped cannister.
The clear tactic employed by Russia is to wait for weapons to enter theater. It cannot attack supplies outside Ukraine’s borders for obvious reasons. All ground attack vehicles and all forms of munitions that have been supplied so far could be moved and stored almost anywhere, meaning they had to be found, tracked and then attacked, and the Ukrainian combined forces were huge. It now has a choice regarding foreign jets: either take out the airfields now and prevent the import of the jets in the first place, or wait until they arrive. Provided that Russia can effectively identify all useable airfields, it makes sense to wait and let the jets arrive, then launch a massive anti-airfield and anti fuel campaign. Even if all the jets got airborne and conducted a single wave of attacks, without airfields to land at the jets are rendered unusable after that first strike. By waiting to attack jets in theater, Russia gets the legitimate opportunity to destroy all those NATO jets permanently, just as it is doing with all other NATO weapons. This, of course, plays into the western war machine’s objective of creating production demand for replacement weapons that is designed to move the western economies into war mode to extract wealth and compensate for collapsing civilian economies.
VST will back test the above as time progresses. One caveat: the timeline of the war is variable and events could render F-16 deliveries moot.
The west has finally confirmed what it has always denied: that, short of nuclear weapon use, there are no more redlines for the west to cross and that World War Three is well underway. NATO personnel are actively involved with fighting on the ground and inside Russia. Polish, French, US and British personnel are in the frontlines, as reported by Russian ground units. These personnel are not necessarily “foreign fighters” of the International Legion. US Intel confirms they are professionals operating inside the theater.
Supply of obsolete F-16s from US vassal states in limited number is a form of US hard power being used against those vassal states in furtherance of the US hegemon war economy, well before it is about achieving any military objective against Russia.
Wagner’s Future
Accurate estimates of Wagner’s size and losses are unknown. Only its recent achievements are visible. What role it will play in this conflict remains to be seen and will hinge upon further recruitment and authorised mandate. There are unconfirmed rumours that it will be furnished with greater mechanisation to lift it from an infantry assault force with some artillery and reportedly limited air power. Time will tell but it would make huge sense to do this.
VST now predicts that Wagner’s future and that of Russian PMCs has been guaranteed and lies outside Ukraine. Over the next decade, Russian interests will cement across Asia, Africa and South America in line with the Belt and Road Initiative, and trade and strategic relations through various programmes and bodies e.g. BRICS+. VST suspects that Russian PMCs will play a key, growing role in providing contract asset, service and force protection of Russian interests and relationships. Wagner’s Ukraine record is highly marketable to any nation looking for contract mercenary force that is free of US ties. Provided that the terms under which Wagner works are under the control of the client nation and its discipline as a PMC is consistent from the perspective of the client, it stands to gain a massive foothold on multiple continents. It is Russia’s general conduct of foreign relations backed by Wagner’s combat capabilities and discipline that will set it apart from any western PMC, all of which are inexorably tainted by western agendas, records and being a way for the west to exercise hard power by any means.
The Future Threat Landscape
The context in which these PMC services will be provided is now being explicitly demonstrated in Syria and Ukraine. The US hegemon is ramping up its use of proxy and terrorist strategies and tactics, under the cover of a captive UN, OPCW, ICC and other major bodies. The world knows this is and it has always been a modus operandi of the US, who has just achieved the installation of a vassal administration in Thailand. Nations who wish to resist this will swing towards military and PMC allegiance with non-US forces and Wagner will play an increasing part in this landscape.
The US has deliberately seeded increased terrorist capability by releasing weapons via Ukraine, which are totally uncontrolled and unaccounted for. The various groups who possess those weapons will remain in the purview and influence of the CIA in order to act out power plays on behalf of the US, in part. This happened after the fall of Libya when, as explicitly stated to the US by Gadaffi, terrorist and para-military groups took control of arsenals and shifted them across Africa and the Middle East. Those groups came under the control of the US in Syria and elsewhere, where it conducted proxy terrorist warfare against Syria. Going forwards, VST expects more forms of this in more locations. The US has willingly and directly upskilled and equipped the Taliban in Afghanistan, who is now recognised and dealt with as a legitimate governing power. The US gave it $85bn worth of US combat hardware when it ran away. This is not the first time the US has wilfully equipped enemies. It achieved the same thing with Saddam Hussein.
The BRI and wider Chinese and Russian strategic efforts will come under attack from increasing terrorist groups across the globe. Nations that ally to Russia and China will suffer greater internal de-stabilisation that China and Russia will have to counter. PMCs will provide increasing profit-generating means to do this while steering clear of UN Charter violations. Across Europe, terrorism, dissent, activism and low level violence is likely to increase and elements of heavily armed criminal operations will grow. This will provide authorities with the pretext to increase authoritarian approaches to internal security including information control and militarisation of police and security services. Despite total surveillance capabilities already in place, terrorist attacks of the kind of isolated bombings and shoot outs in densely populated areas will increase because natural ones will not be effectively detected (this is a historically admitted shortcoming of bulk surveillance) and the US hegemon will allow and foment key events or false flags in order to rule through fear and disaster capitalism. The causes of these attacks will transcend the kinds of Islamic extremism seen to date. The groups will take on mixed ideologies and identities, from straight up well-armed criminals to anti-authority groups acting against the various WEF-type policies around block-based governance and totalitarian control. In other words, these will substantially comprise false flag attacks for the specific purpose of creating mass control pre-texts; essentially a focused extension and evolution of the “war on terror”. More attacks on infrastructure e.g. food supplies and internal networks will feature and be blamed on internal uprising that must be quashed, while those attacks serve the ESG and climate change narratives. The FBI has been playing this role since the days of J. Edgar Hoover and has been fully exposed as being behind the majority of the internal US domestic terror threat and its Censorship Industrial Complex, in concert with myriad other alphabet agencies. It is the same across the Five Eyes and Europe.
Within this, the already declared threat of “bioterrorism” will increase and the next pandemic is likely to be declared upfront to be caused by a deliberate release of a biological agent. The blame is likely to be pinned on a nation state that is the US hegemon’s next small enemy, who will not be Russia or China (they have the capability to prove deniability) but will have been set up by the US e.g. via pre-existing relationships with the US and some installed biological capability. Bill Gates himself explicitly predicted a bioterrorist event when he tried to present the plot of the Terry Gilliam film, Twelve Monkeys, as an upcoming threat. You have been told. Watch Gates give the British Chancellor his instructions:
World War 3 - The Hybrid War
WW3 is, in VST’s opinion underway. It is foolish to believe that WW3 should look or feel like WW2. WW2 fighting is taking place on the ground in Ukraine, but is updated via modern weapons and tactics. The WW3 element is far more expansive and involves war being waged not just against a stated enemy, but against the citizens of the nations supporting the action in Ukraine. Your nation is waging war against your brain through cognitive warfare. You are your nation’s enemy to be contained, controlled and used. Your masters are using your nation’s resources for ends that you never sanctioned, and diverting money and wealth from you to themselves at rates and on scales that have never been seen before. All of it is being done using fear of people who will never actually attack you and threats to your daily life that don’t exist.
WW3 does not actually employ nuclear weapons, which simply lie at the periphery as a nominal backstop that keeps the fights out of the nuclear nations and inside a proxy theater and narrative. NATO is attacking Russia directly, on its territory. Russia simply must absorb, tolerate and contain those attacks through non-nuclear means. This is why these attacks can be executed - because NATO knows that Russia cannot and will not respond to terrorism with nukes.
Even after Ukraine winds down, WW3 will continue. The game here is to clear the west’s inventories, activate the war economies, rearm on a next gen basis, and use the fomented Chinese and Russian threats to do it. Of course, there is serious economic and political competition from Russia and China, but it’s nothing that the west hasn’t knowingly and deliberately created, enabled, employed and directed via economic, political and financial decisions spanning decades. Right now, it is utterly nonsensical to think that within 12 to 24 months, the US is capable of repeating Ukraine in Taiwan and “win”. That’s a given. That’s not the game.
The US cannot project enough conventional military power in the Taiwanese theater in either the South China, East China or Philippine Sea to defeat China in any kind of kinetic war and “take” Taiwan. To do so would require multiple carrier battlegroups, submarines and the ability to launch imported air and ground troops from neighbouring territories on a persistent scale that would defeat China’s forces. The US has significant foothold across the region, but the truly valid pre-text and explicit agreement of all of those nations would be required. This takes considerable time and effort to credibly convince them that China is worth attacking, given that it is the world’s nuclear armed sweatshop among other things. At risk in Taiwan is 60% of the world’s chip supply, which could be annihilated in days. Replacing that capability is an ongoing effort that will take years, with Intel’s European plans slated to produce from 2027. The possession of hypersonic missiles by China and Russia (whose operational capability is proven and inventories suspected to be increasing) means that a single missile is required to destroy each US carrier and with it the mobile air power that has been key to its dominance. A 2,500km range based in Hong Kong puts all neighbouring countries, the whole of the three seas and the tip of Japan in strike range. Russia could literally deliver Kinzhals into China through Russian and Chinese airspace unhindered to be stationed anywhere in China.
The USA therefore needs time to develop a mobile or installed defence against hypersonics, and proven hypersonic attack capability of its own. No doubt, both things are being continually worked on despite recent claims that US development failures may have spelled an end to a hypersonic program. There’s no way that the US has just downed tools on this programme, given that Russia and China prove it’s possible and decisive.
Overcoming any of the above force imbalances does not explain or justify why the US could legitimately face off directly against Russia and China over Taiwan in kinetic war. Furthermore, according to JP Morgan:
The reality is that a complete decoupling of the US economy from China is neither possible nor desirable. It will take many years to shift the supply chain, and the US will remain dependent on China in many areas. However, investing in the technology sector now requires a change in thinking to navigate the economic implications of multi-polarization. Investors need to consider the broad investment themes associated with geopolitical risks rather than just taking a bottom-up view.
If war cannot unpick the above and isn’t even technically feasible in the next several years, what purpose does this seemingly nonsensical narrative serve?
On a simple level, it is simply a different take on the “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Trump claimed that his plan was to do deals, be strong in the face of China and Russia (but do deals with them to keep everyone happy), onshore money, jobs and manufacturing back into the USA, increase energy independence and exports and re-establish the former glory of the USA. This was rubbished by his myriad opponents.
All of these things are being enacted through war in Ukraine and a potential war in China. The Democrats are pursuing the Trumpian objectives while using on overt war to do it, but refusing to acknowledge that it’s really the same plan. Europe is being forced to up its defence expenditure just like Trump wanted. It is a captive customer of US energy exports. Its connections to Russia have been severed. The money flow from Europe to the US is making the US greater at the expense of its vassals. Looks like Trump’s plan was everyone’s plan all along. Maybe that’s because it’s not really Trump’s plan. It’s THE strategic objective that can be messily implemented in many different ways by whichever puppets are pulling levers behind a thin curtain.
Ukraine is a disposal ground for out of date war tech and a testing ground for full scale warfare where old, largescale tactics can be re-established by testing Russia. The “new” enemies of Russia and China replace the failing “war on terror” narrative and its narrower anti-terror tactics, which could morph (see above) thanks to weapon proliferation. These new enemies justify and drive the west into war economy mode via Cold War 2, which is an economic pathway alternative to the failing post-Cold War financialization. The rebalancing of the world in Cold War 2 will see the underlying co-ordination of financial instruments including dollar dominance, CBDCs and integrated control systems over citizens across the globe. In all of this, many nations are playing a part. Ukraine is being enslaved with debt and makes promises to be the testing ground for any WEF policy. Sri Lanka and India are willing to use Digital ID, as the west has already implemented the systems in all but app. The globe is getting to grips with controlling crypto and making it the tool of the masters, and will co-ordinate financial resets and CBDC implementations for cross-compatibility and interchange.
Cold War 2 is the way you move 8 billion people into a global reset. It doesn’t have to be perfectly orchestrated or fully planned. You just need to light a fire in a nightclub, hit the alarms and watch literally everyone run for the exits. It doesn’t matter how many of them die in the stampede, as long as you made the suckers go where you wanted them: outside, into the rain, where you are standing by to sell them medical care, umbrellas and taxi rides to safety.
Regarding the bioterrorism threat, I wonder if Greece will be the patsy.
Also, I'm sure the Gates video is very relevant, but I can't listen to his voice. All I hear is Kermit the Frog.
Wow, thank you for such a well written article