Who puts the "U" in Nuclear? The US, UK, a Union and Ukraine
Capitulation or further extreme escalation could be fraught and depend upon a small number of people who are all corrupt and probably psychopathic.
VST has made a number of predictions around immediate aspects of the Ukraine war, the biggest of which was that 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.
The war to this point has nominally met the US objective of testing Russia’s capacity, which used to be marketed as Overextending Russia, until it became clear that the US had totally misjudged its ability to do such a thing. Continuing to extend the war costs Russia and enables money laundering to continue, but the systemic, self-inflicted damage is plain. Provided that the nuclear Rubicon can be avoided and the cash spigot can be kept open, there remains some reason for the US to keep the war going for a while. Ukraine is also fundamental to much wider crimes that engulf the Biden and Obama Administrations, as evidenced by Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails.
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.
While this article was being written the following events occurred, which variously speak to aspects of the reality of the war.
Defense Minister Reznikov sacked;
Kholomoisky arrested and held in detention;
Ukraine’s mass conscription and possible pursuit of expatriates announced;
Conscription standards lowered to included men with certain diseases (including AIDS), mental health issues and mental impairment, and will now include women for certain compulsory roles and for any volunteer roles;
A British Challenger 2 tank seen in Ukrainian footage to have been destroyed outside Robotyne.
The “U’s” are in the corner
VST still does not believe that Russia will ever initiate a nuclear strike, although it may retaliate against a nuclear attack with some or all of its nuclear arsenal.
VST still sees Russia having no need whatsoever to quit or settle on terms it does not largely dictate because it is militarily winning. No strikes on Russian territory to date are of any real consequence. On this basis, from its perspective Russia should continue to grind through Ukrainian forces and infrastructure to further demilitarisation.
Over the last 18 months, two styles of warfare have played off against each other. Russia has, by any measure, conducted a focused, adaptive campaign that has inflicted huge military damage while limiting Ukrainian civilian and even political casualties. Russian escalation has generally taken the form of increasing strike volumes across wider ranges of targets across the country. Russia has been explicit in stating that various large wave attacks were retaliation for a specific Ukrainian strike, on top of conducting its “daily warfare”. Its arsenal has been largely consistent and predictable. When the war began, an acquaintance put forth the idea that the war was somehow staged because only “old” soviet equipment was seen on the battlefields and being damaged e.g. T64s, T72s, BMPs etc, and the lack of better Russian hardware was suspect. I pointed out that if one calculated that such equipment was physically capable of doing the job then it would make logical sense to employ that equipment first, given it was likely to also sustain the highest loss rates as one learns about the enemy’s capability; why open with your best stuff when the older stuff will do and can be lost? Sure enough, that’s the way this conflict went. Now BMP-Ts, T80s, T90s and the occasional T14 are in theatre against a much weaker and depleted enemy.
By contrast, the West has crossed every single red line it recognised as being escalatory or provocative. Importation of increasing volumes of varied weaponry with increasing strike ranges and destructive power has been combined with direct involvement in attack planning and execution, at the tactical and strategic level. The West has spun a constantly duplicitous narrative then contradicted that narrative time and again. It has also suffered from being made up of a coalition of the disjointed and coerced that cannot act with uniformity, cohesion and speed. It is also now paying the price for what can only be described as a clear lack of preparedness and decades of military cutbacks. Sanction failure and the acceleration and expansion of the BRICS+ strategic network was the point the Overextension plan blew up in the US’ face.
EDIT: Speaking of things blowing up in one’s face, take a moment to listen to this Russian officer describe the challenge presented by Russian minefields and how Ukraine is dealing with that challenge.
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.
The U’s - USA, UK, European Union & Ukraine - are all therefore in a corner largely of their own making, which is a bad place to find themselves. This begs two questions:
How will the Biden administration and the psychopathic triumvirate of Nuland, Blinken and Sullivan react to a certain military loss?
Whether they see a way out of the corner to include the ultimate extension of the war by escalating it into a direct fight between the US and Russia, with some NATO nations forced into the fight?
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.
The narrative swing has included a building arc of background talks to end the conflict.
If the US administration cannot psychologically give up the Ukrainian war via any step down exit path, it will “step up” by some means.
VST believes that this situation will literally come down to the egos and desires of a handful of neocon psychopaths, who are fed by corrupted and seriously misguided intelligence services, then give most of the commands to military leadership that is largely on board with the neocon agenda, which includes insane wokery. It is clear that there are few if any checks and balances involved. There is no meaningful restraining power across the West. The US is egged on by the UK, who suffers the same unintelligible intelligence, captured thinking and political incompetence.
Two questions:
How will it be possible to identify the collapse of Ukraine’s ability to continue conventional warfare i.e. how will we know Ukraine has lost?
What comes next?
Identifying a military defeat in the face of denial
Predictive programming is well underway
We highlighted the Western narrative swing that officially took place a few months ago and continues to grow. Additionally, Ukraine’s propaganda has now descended to the lowest depths of puerility and idiocy (see World’s Worst and Dumbest Propagandist, below), which is another terminal bellwether.
The narrative swing is a form of predictive programming that creates an escape path for Ukraine’s sponsors. However, the NAFO trolls represent a group of self-deluded and utterly blinkered people who openly demonstrate they pay no attention to a balance of information and are ignorant to what is really happening in the information and reality space.
Ukraine is being fingered more and more for the Nord Stream terrorist attack. Increasing numbers of stories cover previously unmentioned Ukrainian casualty counts, the failures and extreme difficulties encountered since June, Ukrainian amputees, and the growing rifts between the US, EU, NATO and Ukraine.
The gap between rhetoric and reality continues to grow.
Rhetoric
Ukraine is winning! (No metrics provided).
Russian soldiers are surrendering in droves.
The USA will support Ukraine forever.
Money spent on war in Ukraine is the best value for money ever because Russians (and Ukrainians) are being killed and no (actually few) Americans are being killed. No other nations enter into this equation/slogan that is repeated across both sides of the aisle by senators, congress people and administration officials.
Russia is a terrorist nation and guilty of war crimes, and Russia will be internationally punished for the war crime of stealing children the accusers have never met.
An undefined genocide is being committed by Russia.
Ukraine is not a terrorist nation and is not guilty of war crimes despite some bodies identifying Ukrainian war crimes, and uncontested video evidence of war crimes exist and have been recorded and circulated by the Ukrainian perpetrators.
All of Russia’s actions are totally illegal at all times and therefore in contravention of the rules of war.
Ukraine can do anything it wants, any way it wants, unrestrained by any norms or rules of war because it is defending itself from an invader.
Ukraine is effectively dealing with its corruption.
The ten point Zelensky peace plan is the only one everyone in the world should support.
If anyone else suggests any form of negotiation and/or they put forward another plan, they are Putin apologists and the only reason why they are making the suggestion is because Russia is losing.
This offensive comprises multiple “shaping” actions that have no metrics. Every action that results in no progress is a mysterious “shaping operation” that no one but Ukraine understands, the results of which are always the desired outcome. Any questions about what is being done or how are illegitimate and anything that was previously said about the offensive, including how it was marketed, is irrelevant and not to be mentioned. Criticism is off the table. The offensive is going exactly as planned and at the correct speed at all times. The achievements after 3 months are incredible and exactly as expected, and are proof that Ukraine is winning and will win a war of attrition against Russia.
Ukraine is successfully employing attrition strategy against Russia, whose armed forces and national autarky dwarfs that of Ukraine.
No one but Ukrainians “understand” this war, so everyone should just STFU because any third party critique is invalid.
As this article was being written, Ukraine actually produced the above piece of propaganda. It was almost like they could read our minds… This is literally the most childish, amateurish propaganda in the history of propaganda. We gave the following feedback:
Russia probably has equal or greater understanding of the war than Ukraine does. Ukraine cannot prosecute any war against anyone without being fully funded and armed by external sponsors. Russia is self sufficient and not bankrupt. Russia understands this better than Ukraine.
Ukrainian Presidential advisor and politician, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted in September 2022 “NS-1 is nothing more that [sic] a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards EU.” Ukraine is being further blamed for that terrorist attack on Nord Stream. Now the US, Sweden, Germany and Denmark have all named Ukraine as the perpetrator, with the crime having been committed by Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhny, who ordered the attack. This official story has recently been fully syndicated across Western press and is available outside of pay walls i.e. it is rhetoric that is designed to be seen widely, not exclusive and serious, truthful reportage by an actual journalist. It states that the US knew for months in advance that Zaluzhny (and possibly Zelensky) planned the attack and actually told him not to execute. That the attack happened under those circumstances while the USA stayed quiet and did not prevent the attack makes for US and Ukrainian joint venture in Europe’s largest ever terrorist attack. This is akin to US complicity in Iraq’s use of illegal chemical weapons in the Iran Iraq war. It is practically the same MO in play in NS if one believes this syndicated story.
Reality
An unverified clip suggests that Ukraine doesn’t have enough Russian POWs to trade for Ukrainian POWs. If true, this calls into question the idea that Russians are surrendering en masse. There are credible reports of Ukrainian units surrendering in groups and sometimes handing over their armoured units, which have been captured on video (troops and their armour). Russia has displayed various intact trophies.
A US plan to extend the war further could well be true. Why? Because the USA’s war economy requires it and Syria is not a large enough conflict with enough support for the USA’s illegal occupation of Syria’s oil and wheat fields. Gen. Mark Milley has stated the US will continually occupy Syria for years to come, assuming it is not forcibly ejected, so why not Ukraine?
The UN has just declared that it continues to find insufficient evidence of genocide committed in Ukraine by either side.
Ukraine cannot win a straight war of attrition against Russia and never could. It remains solely dependent on imported materiel to prosecute any war.
By any Western estimate, Ukraine has suffered losses on such a scale that means the manpower it now has is largely unskilled compared to the start of the war. Any retained skill i.e. experienced and fully trained troops who have survived, been protected or held back, is continually diluted by the ongoing and broadening conscription of zero experience troops trained on a fragmented and sub-minimal curriculum in sub-optimal conditions. Its mass conscription is admission of the critical collapse of troop numbers (confirming high casualty numbers from Russia and Western analysts) and a guarantee of permanently collapsing troop quality and experience.
Tony Schaffer highlights the “diversity stew” of command and objectives, combined with incohesive, foreign language training across the EU at 03:36, and at 08:28 he highlights the mass conscription of 300K more troops of decreasing combat suitability, for whom the training capacity and equipment simply doesn’t exist.
Examples of all types of imported and original weapons systems have been destroyed by Russia including the British Challenger 2 tank, which seems to have been kept away from the frontline for as long as possible, possibly because its ammunition may have been destroyed in early June. There are no Wunderwaffen in this conflict because no sponsor can or will commit meaningful amounts of effective hardware in a timeframe that enables them to be used to maximal effect by competent troops. Time is the key element now, not the hardware.
As VST predicted, Russia has increased its attacks on airfields across Ukraine to degrade its air capability even further (including Pinchuky, Kolomyia, Zaporozhye). Airfield and air force degradation retards its ability to use air launched weapons like AMRAAM and Storm Shield/SCALP missiles. Attacks using the latter have reduced, likely because of depletion of the limited supply, and most were of little to no military consequence. The German Taurus missile is useless without an airborne launch platform.
The fallacy of the F-16 is now admitted to. Barely any Ukrainian pilots are sufficiently fluent in English to learn how to fly the jet and a compulsory 4 month specialist technical English course is required before flight conversion training begins, which turns a claimed 6 month minimum training footprint into 10 months, excluding any time it takes for Ukrainian pilots to become fluent (Class 6) in English. Ground support crew training and competence is a whole other set of issues still subject to language constraints.
Three jet pilots including a PR hype face just died in an airborne collision outside of combat.
USEUNATO and Ukraine have admitted to and cannot fix the ammunition supply shortage problem. The USA can only produce 14k artillery shells a month, increasing to 24k by year end and 85k by 2026 onwards, so it is claimed. Europe cannot significantly bolster supplies to where they are needed. Ukraine fires 3k artillery shells a day with Russia firing 20-60k. Russia has over a million shells and is increasing production above 1 million per year to 3 million plus.
Sheep dipped Polish troops have been variously rumoured to have sustained up to 10k losses over the war. Poland has approximately 200k in its armed forces, of which ~60k are combat troops. A 10k loss is 17% since March 2022.
It is likely that the USA was directly responsible for Nord Stream. Polish MEP and Americanophile, Radek Sikorsky told us as much the day of the attack. The best explanation for his tweet that his wife, Anne Applebaum, could come up with was to describe it as just “a joke” that Sikorsky felt he had to delete because it was clearly too funny. The reality is that Ukraine and its sponsors are trapped in a web of incoherent lies of their own making that exposes Ukraine and its sponsors as liars who are not clever enough to lie effectively. Russia didn't do it, “Ukraine did it” with CIA awareness and oversight, by NATO's own investigation and statements. Or the US did it, by fairly logical conclusion. Neither of those outcomes are right, legal, justified or good.
Russia has reportedly been recruiting more troops to the tune of 20k a month on volunteer contracts (not conscripts), in addition to the yearly conscription quotas of circa 147,000. There is a reported build up of 100k+ troops in the north of the battlefield in preparation for offensive manoeuvres following Ukraine’s self-induced exhaustion. Its increasing military recruitment and mobilisation combined with its war footing suggests it remains well ahead of USEUNATO on the military and conflict curve. Total armed forces personnel is forecast to increase to 1.5m active heads within 18 months, indicating increasing preparation for larger conflict with NATO.
As VST predicted, a three month offensive in at least two places has come to nothing and Russia has commenced offensive operations in the north, although they are grinding rather than rapid. As of now, Ukraine is making claims to have fully taken a village called Robotyne, with speculation about where it pushes to next. This claim was contested by Russia and Alex Mercouris of The Duran believed Ukraine is making false claims for propaganda purposes. Robotyne is about 8-9 miles south of where the line began on June 4th at Orikhiv and it’s 60+ miles to the coast. In “taking” that village it has only arrived at the first major defensive line and it has created its own fire bag or potential cauldron. If it were to somehow cut through to the coast, Ukraine would be flanked on both sides in a corridor. For any of this to mean anything it would have to be able to hold the land it took and keep all the ground free of remote mine activity that would cut off its retreat. It would then have to fight simultaneously east and west along the full length of both of these new fronts, without air cover, in order to progress in just one of those directions. VST is prepared to declare that this is literally impossible for Ukraine to achieve.
Whatever the true state of the fight in Robotyne, Ukraine is around the first defensive line and not, as some sources claim, the second or third line.
The Western press suggests this is a major tactical and strategic achievement for the price of over 45,000 lives and 1000+ pieces of armour (by Russian count). That troop casualty count has been accidentally confirmed by the Western press. Western reporting has stated that Ukrainian deaths circa April 2023 were 17,500 but now stand at around 70,000, a difference of 52,500 over the period of the current offensive. The start and end figures don’t matter (they are both likely undercounts). The differential, having been syndicated in multiple Western outlets, means that it’s basically an official number, which supports Russia’s kill count since June 4th of at least 45,000. That’s the number of men it took for Ukraine to move through 8 miles of mines into a cauldron, having just lost possibly 40-60k men while being evicted from Bakhmut.
The UK is a fundamental and fervent actor in the war who has repeatedly escalated the war rhetorically and via covert and overt military action. It supports forever war like the US because its economy and its political methodology is largely similar to the US. For whatever a UK Defence Minister is worth (likely close to zero), the UK has just appointed one of the shittest ministers ever - Grant Shapps - and produced an insane “Star Wars” style announcement poster. Shapps filmed himself being told what to do by Bill Gates (again).
EDIT: Shortly after publication, as if by magic, WunderMinister Grant Shapps was on Sky news confirming both the loss of the Challenger 2 and his ineptitude and willingness to openly lie. He claimed the Challenger 2 has 6 crew, when it actually has four. He struggled to state that the tank was hit (twice) by artillery. The UK may actually have pledged a further 14 tanks, although whether it delivers remains to be seen. Likely, Challenger losses will follow the pattern of all Western hardware.
No matter the scale or duration of any form of fraud or other crimes the Ukrainian state has been found to have committed, no one of remark will be prosecuted and all that matters is that the acts that have been admitted to were eventually identified. There is zero evidence that they have stopped and practically zero meaningful scrutiny into the operations of the Ukrainian state that is solely funded by sponsors. Reznikov is about to be replaced as defence minister, but will not be arrested or tried for his thievery and corruption.
The arrest and detention of Ihor Kholomoisky (Zelensky’s billionaire oligarch sponsor) is a US sanctioned and directed containment exercise to control someone who is heavily involved in the Biden corruption. It also keeps in place Zelensky as a puppet for the time being by protecting his dictatorship.
The one war crime case against Russia that has been filed in the ICC is insane and has zero chance of standing up to any scrutiny because its evidential basis consists of junk.
The UN has once again said that it has found no evidence of any genocide by either side, although it claims to know that Russia has committed many war crimes.
The pre-conditions for negotiations laid out by Ukraine, although rejected by most of the 40 nations at the Jeddah peace summit that excluded Russia, are impossible to achieve and so preclude negotiations by design. This shall remain the situation i.e. negotiations are blocked by Ukraine and its sponsors.
This offensive has no metrics or strategy that anyone can coherently elucidate. The offensive involves driving men and machines into known defensive structures and the densest minefields on the planet while under constant direct and indirect fire. The increasing destruction of Ukraine’s men and materiel for no sustainable gains is a reality that is not denied. Failure metrics do not exist so the offensive cannot fail.
Moronic political puppets who hide inside US homeland race politics demonstrate their hypocrisy, ignorance and capture when asked the most simple questions, like:
Jamaal Bowman: What do you want to discuss?
Grayzone: The Donbass and Crimea… You know what those are?
JB: …No, educate me.
GZ: …Do you support US aid to the war in Ukraine?
JB: …Yes …because Putin’s a mad man and we gotta stop him, but I’m anti war in general.
Where is the proof of military failure?
Proof of military failure is first and foremost in the gap between rhetoric and reality. When that gap becomes so large that all the propaganda cannot fill it without being clearly identifiable as propaganda, the military campaign has failed. This is where Ukraine is now. As Scott Ritter and Douglas MacGregor have said from near the start, extending this conflict within the territorial and official manpower constraints is to simply drag out the inevitable failure of Ukraine.
The gap between rhetoric and reality is now probably double what it was prior to June 2023 because now Ukraine’s total inability to eject Russia from the territory it occupies is proven beyond question to those who are too dumb to have seen it before. Any leverage Ukraine had as a military nation has now been eradicated. It had leverage up to April 2022. Throughout the war, transparently puerile tactics and rhetoric have been employed that include open Ukrainian intent to employ nuclear false flags to force formal NATO engagement, on top of the US terrorist attack on NS.
Additional proof of failure is found directly in the quality and nature of the employed rhetoric. Podolyak’s NS tweet that it was a “terrorist attack” is now egg on his face thanks to actual Western press reporting of European formal investigations that Ukraine can only formally deny. The West has literally fingered Ukraine for the attack and in doing so, cut its throat.
Kyrylo Budanov stated long ago that once Crimea was retaken by summer 2023, he intended to “physically destroy Crimean citizens whom he deemed deserving. In doing so, he has mirrored Nazi and totalitarian rhetoric and stated murderous intent that will guarantee a significant amount of Crimean citizens would not wish to live under Ukrainian governance.
Kirill Budanov, the head of foreign intelligence of Ukraine, is convinced: the liberation of Crimea will take place in the summer of 2023. Therefore, Ukrainians can already plan their vacations there. The peninsula will be returned in a combination of methods: both by force and diplomacy. “But without force nothing will happen. Our units will go there with weapons in their hands”, he stressed on December 27, 2022 in an interview with the Ukrainian edition liga.net.
Budanov has been proven wrong regarding the success of both Ukrainian force and diplomacy. The latter has completely failed to engage with the most important party, Russia, thus it was destined to fail. This exposes Budanov’s and Ukraine’s incompetence in the use of force and diplomacy.
In the last two minutes of this December 2022 interview, Ben Hodges, former commanding general of United States Army Europe, said:
My assessment is that Ukraine will have liberated Crimea by the end of Summer by August of 2023. I don't know how much of the Donbass will still be partly occupied I think that most of the people that live in those so-called separatist territories actually would prefer to be part of Ukraine versus Russia but the key, the most the decisive terrain if you will, is Crimea.
Ukraine will never be secure as long as Russia still illegally occupies part of Crimea so I believe that by the end of summer Ukraine will have achieved that.
It's too early to plan a Victory Parade but and there certainly is going to be many months of hard fighting between now and then.
…It's a matter of logistics and the Russian Logistics system is very fragile. It's under enormous pressure. The Ukrainian general staff is doing a very good job pounding away at Russian logistics and what we call the lines of communication - the main supply routes. There's only two roads that lead into Crimea. One is over the Kerch Bridge, which is already severely damaged and then there's the so-called land bridge that runs through Mariupol and Melitopol, and the Ukrainians hit an important bridge in Melitopol yesterday or the day before so they're already damaging disrupting the two land routes that lead into Crimea and, to me, Crimea increasingly looks like a trap for Russian forces.
Ben Hodges utterly fails the back test in every aspect of his assessment. Now, Ukraine has not made any progress whatsoever in retaking Crimea. The Donbass remains as occupied now as it was in December. No one has demonstrated that the populations of Donbass and Crimea are being held in place against their will by Russia - although the referenda were naturally disputed - and there are no reported mass exoduses of inhabitants to Ukrainian territories. There are no significant signs of Russian logistics collapse beyond Prigozhin’s possibly overstated or false claim that supplies to Bakhmut were inadequate for a time, but still sufficient to achieve a victory in the hardest battle up to that point. Hodges claimed that the Kerch bridge was severely damaged but after the first strike it was reopened the next day and has remained in use for road and rail until recent heavier attacks. Despite this damage and other Ukrainian attacks on the bridge and the peninsula, Russian forces have not been trapped and nor have Ukrainian forces achieved any significant military objectives in Crimea.
In that interview, at no time did Hodges’ assessment raise or flag air power as a necessary component in achieving his vision of Ukrainian success in Crimea. However, in an August 2023 interview with RT’s Afshin Ratansy on Going Underground, when asked what he would have said to the US and NATO European commanders regarding the 2023 offensives, Hodges said:
I certainly would have told Chairman Milley and Admiral Radekin that we would never have sent American or British soldiers into an attack like this without having already achieved full, total air superiority so criticisms of Ukraine for maybe going a little bit slower than we’d all like without having given them the means to do it how we’d like is unjustified and, frankly, not very helpful.
In December 2022 it was likely that Ben Hodges had sufficient understanding of then current Ukrainian air power and the NATO intent and capability to supply additional air power, including all forms of constraints, which have not changed since then. With that knowledge, Hodges predicted the retaking of Crimea without changes to Ukraine’s air power. In the face of being totally wrong, he alludes to the absence of “total air superiority” as a causal factor. This is inconsistent and incredulous. Ben Hodges appears incompetent in his ability to assess the war and predict anything accurately. By Hodges own assessment, Ukraine has failed militarily between December 2022 and August 2023.
In July 2023, Ukraine ramped up its political campaign of drone strikes on Russian civilian and political targets, about which Zelensky said:
"Ukraine is becoming stronger. The war is gradually returning to Russian territory – to its symbolic centers and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural, and absolutely fair process," Zelensky said.
"Russian aggression has suffered bankruptcy on the battlefield," he continued. "Today is the 522nd day of (Russia's) so-called 'special military operation,' which the Russian leadership expected to last a week or two."
While Zelensky did not clarify what he meant by the war "returning to Russian territory," the statement came after earlier reports on June 30 that several high-rise buildings in Russia were hit by drones.
He may have begun to walk this back, if the translation of a recent interview is correct. He may now consider it if the conflict is taken onto Russian territory, “there is a significant risk that in such a case, we will be left alone.”
Ukrainian “diplomat” and politician, Dmytro Kuleba, has employed “International Diplomatic Play A1” (International Diplomacy for Dummies, page 3) and literally told the rest of the world to STFU about its offensive.
The world’s worst propagandist
VST is loathe to provide publicity, but for posterity and for further proof of increasing Ukrainian desperation, we draw your attention to the most amateur and hamfisted propaganda yet seen.
This is the Twitter page of Sarah (formerly Michael) Ashton-Cirillo, who now claims the title of AFU/TDF Spokesperson and some other titles/roles.
https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV
If you want to see awful propaganda, look there. You will find examples of ultra basic use of language, assertion, and unevidenced claims, combined with childish sloganeering that largely makes no sense. Goebbels and Bernays would be turning in their graves.
Judging by the visible view counts, the audience is limited. People don’t seem to be very interested in this stuff, and one will see from the responses that the audience is made up of NAFO trolls who have a specific, blinkered view, self-propagandise and are very ignorant or dismissive about anything that falls outside the “Ukraine is righteous and winning” line. As VST has said before, this is all the COVID mentality all over again. Anyone who doesn’t fawningly agree with Cirillo and NAFO trolls are instantly “Kremlin agents/Putin’s apologists” etc etc. The whole thing smacks of a certain demographic onanistically fixating on a false and “war stats” orientated narrative pushed by the western press with zero ability to question or look at other information.
Ukraine is about more than one type of meat
Ukraine has long been a source of meat to the international black markets. This is a major factor in the continuation of the war. Do any searching and you will find myriad reports of Ukraine as a nexus of human trafficking of children and adults for sexual and labour exploitation, as well as illegal organ harvesting. Under chaotic conditions of war, all of this will have increased. The markets being served are criminal, moneyed, connected and dark. They integrate with state services and such operations cannot exist without corrupt state involvement. Hunter Biden’s laptop content indicate he is connected to the worlds of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, fraud, money laundering, biolabs and Ukraine. Evidence also shows that Joe Biden knew about and was being paid via Hunter Biden and other family activities.
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).
VST leaves it to you to determine whether the clip further below is entirely kosher, but there is plenty of other circumstantial evidence pointing towards Biden family corruptions and proclivities.
2003: Kidney trafficking is "big business," says Council of Europe
Trafficking networks target poor European countries such as Estonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, where people are pressured into selling their kidneys for as little as $2500 (£1550; €2200), the report said.
2011: Ukraine tops Europe in organ trafficking
The illegal organ trafficking trade is flourishing in Ukraine as the country’s medical infrastructure and legislation make vital transplant organs hard to come by.
The father of a woman named Elena died last year. A few months later, police called her. She told the Russian television network RT:
“The police told me that my father’s eyes were removed from his body to be sold as if they were from a donor. We didn’t notice anything at the funeral, as those who did it disguised their actions. I was told that the morgue’s employees did that, not the doctors. And that a total of 190 dead had had their organs removed.”
https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/ukraine-tops-europe-in-organ-trafficking/
2016: Ukraine's Shame: An Epidemic of Human Trafficking
Since 1991, more than 160,000 men, women and children have been exploited for labor, sex, forced begging and organ removal, according to a mid-2015 report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
In 2008 the Government of Ukraine did not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it was making significant efforts to do so. While there was little evidence of efforts to curb trafficking complicity of government officials and of concrete steps to protect and assist trafficking victims at the national level, local governments made some progress on victim assistance. The government also made modest, but tangible, progress in improving the punishment of convicted traffickers, prosecuting labor trafficking, training the judiciary, and carrying out prevention activities.[1] The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2" in 2017.
In April 2023, I interviewed a refugee from Artiomovsk, Yulia, who told me that as well as having mined and blown up their building, Ukrainian units called "Phoenix" and "White Angels" were kidnapping children in the town.
Source: Twitter search “Ukraine trafficking (human OR organ) -cuba -cuban”
Well written crap, like January 6 you failed to recognize that we have seen the Ukraine invasion in real time. Doesn't require to see a winner to know Russia is the lower with the expansion of NATO borders with Russia by thise countries knowledge of risks to their freedom.