One of the puzzles of the war in the Ukraine, debated by those watching through sources outside of Western media, is why are the Ukrainians doing what they are doing in this war. Their tactics make little sense and suggest the over all strategy is something other than what has been stated. In fact, official statements from the Zelensky government have become absurdly strident. They bring back memories of Baghdad Bob during the American invasion of Iraq.
The initial phase of the war had the Russians dashing in, probably hoping for a negotiated settlement based on the Minsk accords. Some think they underestimated the Ukrainian capabilities and willingness to fight. There are lots of people who claim to be psychics, knowing what was in the minds of the Russian planners, but no one knows what the Russians expected. All we know is they got a bloody nose in the opening weeks and had to reconfigure their war plans.
This is the nature of war. The old line about no war plan lasting first contact with the enemy is a cliché because it is true. The Russians had to change gears and they did that in the early spring. They settled into a strategy of shelling the Ukrainian positions with their superior artillery and missile systems. They also gained air superiority so they can hunt down Ukrainian targets all over the country. This is a low-cost way to slowly and methodically grind down the Ukrainian military.
Here is the puzzle. Why have the Ukrainians not responded to this change in tactics so as not to be slowly ground down by the Russians? Logic says they should have withdrawn from the Donbas to more defensible positions. This would have preserved their best troops and much of their equipment. They could have appealed to the West for better air defense systems to protect their army as they prepared for a counter offensive at some point in the future.
No one really seems to know how much Western military gear has flowed into Ukraine, but the best guess is more than enough to supply a million man army. The Europeans dumped a fair bit of old equipment onto Ukraine, but they have also supplied a fair bit of modern equipment as well. The Russians have modern equipment, but the militias, who are doing the bulk of the fighting, are relying on Soviet era tanks and armored personnel carriers so this old stuff is not worthless.
Of course, one of the lessons of this war is that old planes, trucks and tanks can be repurposed as unmanned vehicles. The Russians are actively converting their old aircraft into crude drones. They are not as good as the high end stuff, but it is better than scrapping them. Ukraine could have been doing this as well if they had pulled back from the Donbas and been preparing for a counter offensive. Instead, the old equipment has been hurled into the meatgrinder of the Donbas.
The elephant in the room whenever discussing the war in the Ukraine is the massive amount of corruption. We know from the Trump years that many American politicians were on the payroll of corrupt Ukrainian firms. We know the State Department is full of Ukrainian operatives. We know that what ties these people to the Ukrainian government is highly corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs. Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma, an oligarch controlled energy monopoly in Ukraine.
That is the key to unriddling the Ukraine war strategy. The key players in American foreign policy only care about harming Russia. The neocon obsession with Russia goes back generations now. They have made clear on multiple occasions that their only goal in the Ukraine is to inflict as much damage on the Russians as possible. This has come from senior people in the Biden regime, as well as various characters operating in the unofficial foreign policy establishment.
Take the Russia obsessed foreign policy establishment and join it to the hyper-corrupt Ukrainian regime and you have the makings of a grand grift. The other piece of it is the Military Industrial Complex, which will sell NATO countries trillions in new arms over the next decade, to replace what is going to Ukraine. The Ukraine has become a massive money laundering scheme. Billions flow into the place with little or no accounting and much of it ends up in anonymous bank accounts.
This is where the Ukrainian ware strategy fits into the scam. The neocons need a narrative to sell the politicians and the public. The “heroic Ukrainian defenders willing to fight to the last man” is the story they initially sold. Over the last few months, the new story has been “If the heroic Ukrainian defenders just had better weapons, they could take the fight to the Ruskies!” The myth of the wonder weapon, of course, works nicely in the Raytheon brochure.
Meanwhile, the actual Ukrainian fighters are hunkered down into massive, fortified locations while the Russians shell them day and night. Reports from the front suggest few of the weapons are making it to the men. CBS did a report suggesting that only 30% of weapons have gone into battle. They were forced to recant, but their reporting comports with what others have said. The fact is, no one knows where this stuff is going or if it is even useful to the soldiers.
The whole thing relies on defending a one thousand mile front in the Donbas against an endless artillery barrage. Imagine a front that stretched from New York to Miami and along the way cities have been turned into massive, fortified bunker complexes and you have a good idea of what is happening. The Russians shell these fortifications at will and the Ukrainians have no chance to take the fight to the Russians. They just have to sit there and take the pounding for public relations reasons.
Even by current standards, this sounds amazingly cynical, but stop and think about what happened during the Covid panic. The people who made tens of billions on a dangerous, experimental vaccine are not going to blink at sacrificing tens of thousands, maybe millions, of Ukrainians to make billions in profits. The people who turned America into a pirate’s cove are taking the strategy global. Everything is a grift and no grift is too bloody or monstrous.
At some point, a marketing plan with the phrase “to the last Ukrainian” in it will run out of Ukrainians to sell it. There are ongoing shakeups in the Ukrainian leadership so that part of the grift may be starting to crack. There are growing rumors of defections in the military as they wake up to what is happening to them. Of course, the truly terrifying winter that lies ahead for all of Europe cannot be ignored. The reality of Ukraine will become apparent and then what happens?
History says not much. Covid is a good guide. There is no doubt that trust in the institutions has declined as a result of the Covid scam. The ongoing effects of the vaccine could blow up into a major scandal. None of which has moved people into the streets, but there has been a cumulative effect on the public psyche. A collapse in Ukraine would be another blow to the regime. Still, it is hard to see this being the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but crazier things have happened.
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The LAPD sent Ukraine a ton of expired body armor a few weeks ago. That had to cost a bunch of money that could have been used to clean up the hobo junkie camps setup next to everything. Who knows, maybe they saved some scratch and had Gavin McGinnis deliver it. Crazier things have happened.
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The money they are pushing through is just the total amount they would have laundered through Ukraine if Russia had not invaded over a longer period.
Its like they forward projected, then worked out how much time they had left. I would not be surprised if there is some sort of agreements between the players of the amounts to loot on a geographic basis. Its just what any organized crime group or corporation would do.
Given their endless ways to graft, they also then worked out they could get rid of the all the on books useless or pretend weapons they have already gouged out of the tax base, and add that to the total.
Should be called “Operation Endless Graft”
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Re the coming winter. My book cover designer lives in Hesse, Germany. She and her two young kids sneak into the nearby forest at night (as it is illegal) to collect wood for the winter. This is a supposedly first-world country. And its making women and children steal twigs.
She also informs me that as of October 1st, the law is changed to allow their army to operate domestically.
“And then one day, for no reason at all…”
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That is oddly the same date the mandatory mask mandate in public comes back in Germany.
What a very odd coincidence.
Surely no plan, it must be another emergent behavior.
once is accidental, twice is coincidence, the 38,743 time is enemy action.
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That’s some good sass
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It’s okay, Americans will be protected by the IRS army!
They can crack your bank account, snoop your internet history, SWAT your house…
And are authorized to shoot you on the spot based on their “opinion” of the situation.
Stable women and unexcitable diversities encouraged to apply!
Directed by loyal pervert overlords, of course, whose loyalty is bought in the coin of their desire.
Hel-looo, national police force, since the locals have to stand down (and are broke anyways.)
Bonus for when Raytheon starts selling directly to Cartel. They have lots of money.
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Cloud-adjacent relatives from Frankfurt visited a few weeks ago. They are absolutely convinced all is well, and Chancellor Scholz will make certain there is plenty of food and fuel. I noticed the wifey, who was raised in the communist east, ate more than usual and nodded hesitantly at times.
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Great column!
Although, that’s too short to post so…
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The worst case scenario in this proxy war we are fighting with Russia is that we win. So crazy.
I’m glad to see you write this,
“The people who made tens of billions on a dangerous, experimental vaccine are not going to blink at sacrificing tens of thousands”
You claimed early on you would get the vaccine if it became necessary. It appears you’ve changed your mind on that
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I just finished a “true story” of high finance in Russia, a book called Red Notice by Bill Browder. The names dropped in that book are notorious from McCain to chrystia freeland to the usual financiers. The tale pretends that bill is the good guy but he was part of the reason Putin appears to have somewhat nationalized banking and industry in the post cold war Russia. By the end of the book, and knowing that there’s no “good guy”, I was left sort of chuckling to myself that anyone would write a “true story” about one “good” bag of snakes against a “boogey-man bad” bag of snakes…and that anyone should care one way or the other.
The Ukraine grift appears to be not much different than what was attempted in Russia but seems to have been more successful now that we know how much of Ukraine is owned by foreigners.
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The fact that the Russians haven’t destroyed the Ukrainian power grid yet shows they have incredible restraint.
This is SOP for American’s waging war. Causes immense harm to the civilian population.
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This has been the American modus operandi since Sherman.
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“The American Way of War,” in the words of Sherman bootlicker VD Hanson, who pops a woodie when describing midwestern boys putting the torch to Southern homes.
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“A collapse in Ukraine would be another blow to the regime. Still, it is hard to see this being the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but crazier things have happened.”
I can’t lie and say that I don’t wake up every day hoping for the revolution. However, I don’t think you’ll ever see anything happen until normie griller starts losing money and shelter. Once the food supply goes, then the cracks start opening up. You still have normie conservative thinking “we’re all one race”.
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It seems like the (((neocons))) are bound and determined to wreck the west, if not the world in any way they can. If the Ukes want to fight it out to the last man, woman and child, have at it – but don’t do it at the behest of the evil US “leadership”. Speaking of which, when are the damned Europeans going to end this abusive relationship? Maybe this winter will be the kick in the ass they need to finally jettison the globohomo empire once and for all.
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“Who is this prisoner named Samson chained up on the basement?” 😀
I bought a little Raytheon stock thinking it would soar due to all the money flowing into Ukraine. It has been flat since early May with the exception of one brief spike in June. Must be some other companies making all the big money off this war.
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The initial expectation was this would provide the MIC with an Afghan-type revenue stream, which lasted twenty years or so. It obviously will not. The Ho House is trying to infuse as much cash as possible into the grift on the front end as a result. There probably will be one more really big boost, which would be a good time to dump the Raytheon shares. Look for Uncle Lloyd to shake his money maker to MISTER BOJANGLES before real hard the last cash infusion. He’s got a real job he wants to revisit after this grift and an employer to keep happy.
3
“Take the Russia obsessed foreign policy establishment and join it to the hyper-corrupt Ukrainian regime and you have the makings of a grand grift. The other piece of it is the Military Industrial Complex, which will sell NATO countries trillions in new arms over the next decade, to replace what is going to Ukraine. The Ukraine has become a massive money laundering scheme. Billions flow into the place with little or no accounting and much of it ends up in anonymous bank accounts.”
Beautifully out. I couldn’t agree more. That mindless zombie and that wastrel son of his are just the tip of the iceberg as far as corruption is concerned. But from the stance of “grand strategy” this is another self-inflicted blow to the declining US empire. Probably not fatal but one more nail in the coffin, as they say,
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Look, since the ‘West’ has made it clear that they are ‘at war’ with the East (and always have been), perhaps the East was in on the game too. Knew it was at war with the West, at least since 2014, perhaps 2008, or 1952.
Or 1917.
And since they might know the Achilles Heel of the West is their Ponzi finances, effeminate males and female-run societies – not to mention lack of energy and raw materials, the East, far from being the comic book villains the West ping-pongs back and forth from, say between clown and Darth Vader – planned a LONG campaign all along.
The long campaign right in their backyard. Short supply lines. Well known terrain.
The long campaign that then allowed them to destroy the West’s economies, with what appears to be at best, an assist via the malfeasance of the West’s leaders. The longer the East drags it out, the nearer winter comes. Imagine, the Russians counting on winter during war? No one could have expected the thinkers of the West to anticipate this.
The West has run its wars at the end of endlessly long supply lines, and despite its collective bluster, has lost every one of them. After all, based on the current year, can World War II really be called a “victory” by the West?
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Great piece. And again, if you want to truly despair for the future of the human resources department known as “america,” look no further than the posts and comments on space lawyer Glenn Reynolds’ “Instapundit.” Gadzooks, “republicans” are truly the stupidest and most delusional people on the planet. That’s what you get when you learn “history” from the Claremont Institute and the likes of Dinesh D’Souza, Dennis Prager, Brian Kilmeade and V.D. Hanson, I suppose.
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Pavlov’s Armchair Warriors scare the hell out of me; they’ll probably sing “God Bless America” as they are marched into the showers. Those Grillers had better order up some extra beer and charcoal for the day this ends in the way it inevitably ends.
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” The people who turned America into a pirate’s cove are taking the strategy global. Everything is a grift and no grift is too bloody or monstrous.”
Someone needs to do a body count and calculate how many dollars have been made per murder. The next time some State Department flak lectures China about human organ harvesting, it would nice to see it respond with those figures. On a personal note, the two times I have felt actual shame about being an American have occurred under the Zombie president: when “he” ordered the murder of Afghans at the wedding party as a “response” to the young soldiers he got killed bugging out of there, and when no doubt “he” orchestrated the murder of Darya Dugin recently. Just minor atrocities compared to the thousands of other atrocities of the Empire over the last two decades, but particularly nauseating ones.
That’s some awfully bad juju that eventually will be answered, and, unfortunately, we are all human shields here. The Neocons don’t quite have a communist or Nazi body count yet, but they certainly are in third place for modern history. This won’t end well, domestically or internationally. As for the Ukraine itself, it depends on what is meant by “winning.” The MIC/Israel Lobby “won” Afghanistan because it gave them a 20-year revenue stream. Ukraine won’t go on much longer but it probably also has been lucrative.
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> Someone needs to do a body count and calculate how many dollars have been made per murder. The next time some State Department flak lectures China about human organ harvesting
Albright said flat out starving 500,000 Iraqi children was a price she was willing to pay. We’ve been a mafia nation for a long time.
1
Two more factors. European economic collapse will hit us. They won’t be able to buy our exports, slamming our industries.
And the collapse in the Global South will send tens of millions more refugees through our Southern border.
A bug as well as a feature of Western societies is the comfort and affluence of a society comes at the price of any real spiritual devotion to any higher cause, whether is be God, Country, or one’s own people. The weird western tranny obsession is almost an anti-cause, as there is nothing life-affirming or transcendent about it.
It works great when everyone is just as demoralized and spiritually dead as everyone else, but becomes a huge problem when there’s a real external existential threat. Ukraine hasn’t gone full west, but the spiritual decay is enough where, even if they have enough weapons for a million man army, there aren’t a million men willing to fight, and who can blame them?
Would go as far as to say within 10 years, our military will be so spiritually dead no amount of expensive gadgets will save it. Heck, look at the Artemis flop as exhibit A of what happens when a high IQ but demoralized people simply try to reproduce the victories of the past.
1
“why are the Ukrainians doing what they are doing in this war.”
The Ukrainians are not independent actors. The ruled class does what they are told by authority until the latter has been thoroughly delegitimized and when fear of the consequences of not obeying authority exceeds fear of the consequences of obeying authority. Local Ukrainian ruling class are indigenous colonial administrators of the GAE who are well paid by the internationalists to keep their ruled class obedient.
“Logic says they should have withdrawn from the Donbas to more defensible positions.”
While the Z-man is certainly correct in pointing out the anti-Russian angle to what passes for Ukrainian operational strategy, the disproportionate (relative to the rest of Ukraine) fertile farmlands, industry, expansive coal and natural gas deposits, and power generation in the Donbass owned by local oligarchs also plays a role. These oligarchs, who are overwhelmingly Jewish, could care less about the Ukraine as a country worth preserving if they can’t maintain possession of the titles to the property they stole after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian strategy is therefore the result of a confluence of interests of the local oligarch grifters and their more cosmopolitan brethren, the globalists.
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