When it comes to the 404 War, if you only listen to the American side through the mouthpieces of the Pentaloons and the State Department, you will come away with the distinct impression that the US military does not take the Russian military at all seriously. The argument seems to be that Russia is bogged down in Banderastan, unable to make serious progress, incapable of winning, and running out of everything that matters.
Never mind that every single prediction of Russian failure has, itself, failed to come to pass. The Russians are achieving their goals in a precise, methodical, and fearfully effective manner – all you have to do is look at Russian or Ukrainian Telegram channels to see the butcher’s bill that the Russians have stacked up against the Ukrops.
And it seems that some warfighters, at least, in the US military are paying attention to a military that is plainly far more effective than the Fruit-Salad Brigade are willing to let on.
A Rundown of Recent Events
Let us first remind ourselves briefly of what Russia has accomplished.
Russia now controls over 25% of Ukraine’s former territory. If you think like an American, who sees territory and land gains as the key metric for success in war, then this doesn’t sound very impressive – until you overlay Ukraine’s geographical area on a map of Texas, and you realise that Ukraine is about the size of the Lone Star state. And then you realise that the Russians – note that I use “Russians” to denote regular Russian forces, LDNR militias, Rosgvardiya national guard units, and Wagner PMC, altogether – are fighting continuously along a 1,600Km-long line of contact. (That’s a THOUSAND MILES in those silly Imperial units that Americans still insist on using.)
The Russians have an altogether different unit of measure. They think in terms of how much of the enemy’s equipment they have destroyed, and how many of their men they have killed, and in terms of kill ratios. This is why, whenever Gen. Igor Konashenkov gives his daily updates (in Russian), he lists how much equipment and how many men the Russian forces have eliminated. For the Russians, the destruction of armies, not the capture of cities, is what they care about.
We must always keep in mind that the Russian General Staff are keen students of the Art of War. As I have pointed out before, they know their Clausewitz, and the Russians are waging a methodical, precise, extremely potent form of war that is directly in line with their belief that attrition and annihilation of the enemy are key to success. (I will come back to this, it is assuredly not my original insight.)
The Russians have essentially destroyed the best that the Ukrainians have to throw into battle. Ukraine is becomingly increasingly desperate to plug ever-greater gaps in its defensive lines. Despite all of its braggadocio and bluster, it has NEVER, not ONCE, managed to stage any sort of substantial counteroffensive, and has never posed a significant threat to Russian supply lines since April.
The inescapable fact of this war is that Ukraine isn’t just losing. It has LOST.
“Marinus” Speaks
The Russian invasion of Ukraine may mark the start of a new cold war, a “long twilight struggle” comparable to the one that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Empire more than three decades ago. If that is the case, then we will face an adversary who, while drawing much value from the Soviet military tradition, has been liberated from both the brutality inherent in the legacy of Lenin and the blinders imposed by Marxism. What would be even worse, we may find ourselves fighting discpiles of John R. Boyd.
— “Marinus”
All of this seems to have caught the attention of a chap named “Marinus”, who wrote a genuinely superb piece for the Marine Corps Gazette. As I understand it, this is not an official publication of the Corps itself, but is rather an independent journal which publishes articles written by current and “former” Marines. (Keeping in mind the usual caveat that “there is no such thing as a former Marine”, etc.)
In this piece, titled, “Manoeuvrist Paper No. 22, Part II: The Mental and Moral Realms“, this “Marinus” gentleman analyses the, in truth highly successful, Russian campaign through the lens of manoeuvre warfare theory, as articulated by Col. John Boyd and taught to the Marine Corps in the 1980s under the leadership of Commandant Al Gray and others.
This paper has created quite a stir, because it treats the Russian way of war with deep respect, and shows great appreciation for their style of doing things. Inevitably, quite a lot of the Hoholand Uber Alles crowd got very pissy and demanded it be taken down or deleted or cancelled, somehow, because BADTHINK.
Those who actually bothered to read the paper, though, understood quite well the points that “Marinus” tried to make:
- The Russians have made extremely effective use of armoured raids to bypass Ukrainian strong points and keep their enemies off balance and guessing;
- They have combined raid warfare with attrition warfare to grab and hold territory, not for the sake of land alone, but to shape the battlefield in a way that suits them, maximising their strengths and targeting Ukraine’s weaknesses;
- Unlike the West, the Russians have always regarded artillery as the “God of War’ (that’s literally what they call it – Артиллерия, Бог Войны) and have deployed it to staggering effect in Mariupol’ and other engagements;
- In so doing, the Russians have resolved an apparent paradox between “manoeuvre warfare” and “attrition warfare” that has existed since the earliest days of thought on the subject;
- Russian use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) and other advanced technologies have allowed them to bridge the apparent gap between these two modes of operations, and show that they truly understand war at a level that the West does not;
The article concludes with the, highly prophetic, statement noted above. It is superb and I recommend it to anyone interested in such things.
Who is Marinus?
There has been intense speculation as to the precise identity of “Marinus”. I have seen several arguments that he is none other than LtGen. Paul K. Van Riper. I stress that this is SPECULATIVE – nobody knows who he really is. But, if it IS LtGen Van Riper, then it’s worth keeping in mind who that guy is, so that you can put the article written above in proper context.
And who exactly is this man? He’s the guy who spanked the US Navy’s “Blue Force” in the Millennium Challenge 2002 so hard that, had it been a real war, the US would have lost 20,000 casualties in about ten minutes, plus a Nimitz-class supercarrier and 18 other support ships:
In 2002, the U.S. military tapped Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper to lead the red opposing forces of the most expensive, expansive military exercise in history. He was put in command of an inferior Middle Eastern-inspired military force. His mission was to go against the full might of the American armed forces. In the first two days, he sank an entire carrier battle group.
The exercise was called Millennium Challenge 2002. It was designed by the Joint Forces Command over the course of two years. It had 13,500 participants, numerous live and simulated training sites, and was supposed to pit an Iran-like Middle Eastern country against the U.S. military, which would be fielding advanced technology it didn’t plan to implement until five years later.
The war game would begin with a forced-entry exercise that included the 82nd Airborne and the 1st Marine Division.
When the Blue Forces issued a surrender ultimatum, Van Riper, commanding the Red Forces, turned them down. Since the Bush Doctrine of the period included preemptive strikes against perceived enemies, Van Riper knew the Blue Forces would be cominfor [sic] him. And they did.
But the three-star general didn’t spend 41 years in the Marine Corps by being timid. As soon as the Navy was beyond the point of no return, he hit them and hit them hard. Missiles from land-based units, civilian boats, and low-flying planes tore through the fleet as explosive-ladened [sic] speedboats decimated the Navy using suicide tactics. His code to initiate the attack was a coded message sent from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer.
The butthurt, as you can imagine, was WELL over 9,000. Here’s the guy who pulled off this world-class exercise in ownage and asskickery, pictured with so much fruit-salad on his chest that the floor under him probably had to be reinforced to avoid collapsing from the sheer tonnage of achievements.
What did the exercise organisers do in response? Did they say, “Egad, sir! You have taught us a valuable lesson! We tip our hats to you, sir!” and act like gentlemen?
Oh, my poor dear silly boys… OF COURSE NOT!!!
No, they decided to invalidate the entire thing, because reasons, including something about how “no actual enemy would ever use those kinds of tactics”, or some such nonsense. “Those tactics” involved very unusual uses of both high-tech communications, and adaptive low-tech solutions to enemy targeting of those high-tech comms.
In the end, the Navy “respawned” the entire fleet, like it was some sort of HALO Slayer Deathmatch, and rewrote the entire thing to ensure that Blue Team won and Red Team couldn’t do anything but curse and shake their fists at the sky.
(You can read a somewhat less histrionic account of the exercise here – it’s a good read and worth the time, which essentially comes to the same conclusion, that Van Riper kicked Blue Team’s ass and they got really pissy about it.)
Squaring the Manoeuvre Circle
Put simply, whether it is Van Riper who wrote the article or not, the fact remains that it was written by someone who knows and understands manoeuvre warfare theory in the “old-school” manner that the Marines did, back in the day.
But this begs a few questions.
First, what IS manoeuvre warfare, really?
Second, what are the problems with the theory?
Third, are the Russians actually fighting a manoeuvre-based campaign, given that they are literally shelling the Ukrops to pieces and then sending in, basically, cleanup crews?
The most basic explanation of manoeuvre theory comes down to something like the one explicated by William S. Lind and others in their “generational” approach to warfare. Essentially, it comes down to this:
- 1st Gen War: massed formations of infantry smashing into each other until one side or the other is ground down to non-functionality;
- 2nd Gen War: massed formations of artillery blasting everything to pieces and then sending in the infantry – summarised by the French saying, “the artillery invades, the infantry occupies”;
- 3rd Gen War: rapid manoeuvring around enemy positions, probing attacks and raids to figure out where the enemy is weak, keep him off balance, then find an opening, penetrate deep into his logistical tail and rear operating areas with armour, and then roll him up as his forces begin to panic and collapse and run;
The problem here is that the “manoeuvre approach” is, at first glance, at least, entirely antithetical to the “artillery-based approach”. If you try to fit the Russian approach to the 404 War into a “pure 2GW” or “pure 3GW” box, you run into serious issues. Their way of fighting will not fit into either box.
This brings us to some of the well-known problems with many of the arguments made by Manoeuvre Theorists. Our own LTC Tom Kratman explained some of these shortcomings in a piece written some years ago called “Indirectly Mistaken Decision Cycles“, which I have read and commented upon before.
In that article, in the process of commenting upon the shortcomings of applying the classical manoeuvre warfare paradigm to a series of campaigns that supposedly illustrate the use of such thinking in real live-fire situations, LTC Kratman states the following about the US Army’s own understanding of the conceptual factors that determine victory:
Speaking of attrition— eventually— the US Armed Forces, and most of our allies, recognize nine Principles of War: Mass, Objective, Security, Surprise, Maneuver, Offensive, Unity of Effort (aka Unity of Command), Simplicity, and Economy of Force. I think there are at least three more: Attrition, Annihilation (which is a Russian Principle of War), and Geometry (or Shape).
You can condense it all down into the simple (if not particularly elegant) acronym, MOSSMOUSE – or, if you want to go full banana, MOSSMOUSEAAG (which sounds like a rodent went through a very unfortunate accident followed by a heart attack). And if you pay real attention to what the Russians are doing, you will see very quickly that they excel at almost ALL of these areas – except “Mass“.
The Russians and their allies have routinely fought the 404 War with a roughly 3-to-1 disadvantage in manpower, and at some points up to TEN-TO-ONE. That is to say, when the Russian regular army built up its forces along Ukraine’s then-border, they had somewhere between 150K and 200K troops, in total, plus about 50K LDNR militias, and perhaps another 20K or so Rosgvardiya troops, primarily Chechens at the time.
That is a total force of maybe about 250K – of which only about 20% were actual line or mechanised offensive infantry in any given engagement. And they were up against at least 200K Ukrainians, plus tens of thousands of neo-Nazis in the nationalist brigades, plus tens of thousands in the territorial defence force (national guard), and hundreds of thousands of reservists.
How, then, have the Russians managed to outwit and outfight an enemy anywhere from three to ten times its size, while managing somehow to employ both manoeuvre and attrition warfare at the same time? It should be impossible.
Resolving a Misunderstanding
One answer may be found in a rather interesting piece by Maj. Amos C. Fox, writing in 2017 for what I think is the US Army Armour School. In it, he notes that positional (manoeuvre) and attrition warfare are not mutually contradictory – you do not have to take an “either-or” approach, and any attempt to reduce things down to such a dichotomy is very foolish, because none such exists. Instead, he argues that doctrinal flexibility is key to success – that is, switching between different modes of fighting depending on the needs of the situation:
The interchange among maneuver, positional and attrition warfare is predominately driven by the desired effect – in situations where tempo is the goal, maneuver is the preferred method; in situations where overwhelming firepower is required, attrition is the preferred method; and in situations where an advantageous position is sought, or an enemy must be pulled from its current position to one of the attacking force’s choosing, positional warfare is employed. Yet it must also be understood that this trade-off depends on more than just the object but also on the conditions: environmental, enemy-focused, friendly focused and internally focused.
He goes on to list a number of factors in which one style of fighting over another might be preferred. And he notes that it is entirely possible for an army to shape the battlefield starting with attrition warfare, transitioning into position warfare, and ending with manoeuvre warfare.
This is exactly what we observe the Russians doing in the 404 War right now.
Russian Operational Doctrine in 404
The pattern of Russian warfighting in Ukraine is extremely clear at this point. Their operational doctrine is very predictable, and yet nearly impossible to counter. It goes something like this:
- Hit the enemy with overwhelming amounts of artillery to pin their infantry down and inflict devastating losses, both physical and psychological;
- Conduct deep strikes against the enemy’s logistics tail to stop him from being resupplied with munitions, men, and supplies, thereby paralysing him and further reducing his ability and will to fight;
- Conduct positional battles to capture advantageous territory and strong points, thereby moving your artillery closer while preserving your own forces;
- Once the enemy’s forces have been whittled down by attrition, manoeuvre around him to encircle him, cut off all lines of retreat, and boil him alive in a cauldron;
That last is, I think, a uniquely Russian way of doing things. It is fearfully effective, as the Wehrmacht found out repeatedly in WWII, and as the Ukrops are finding out now. Like the Wehrmacht before them, the hohols have gotten to the point where, when faced with an incipient cauldron forming around their troops, those troops now prefer to cut and run, rather than going through another Mariupol’ Situation.
Conclusion – A Uniquely Russian Solution
As “Marinus” pointed out in his piece, the Russians have figured out a very effective way to balance and bridge attrition and manoeuvre warfare by using position warfare and combining it with their exceptional capabilities in modern combined arms warfare. They are fighting what they call a “special military operation” not just for the purpose of killing and destroying the Ukrainian military – they’ve actually done that, pretty much, at this point – but also to subject their own warfighting doctrines to the sternest possible test.
They started out their SMO with a mad scramble to pin down forces in Kiev, with the hope of forcing the Zelensky regime to shit their pants and sue for peace. That didn’t work, because the Americans and Brits intervened and told the hohols that they would supply them with endless weapons and money to keep the fight going.
That pinning manoeuvre was risky, and the Russians paid dearly in blood for it. But they knew that going in. They also used it to buy them time in the south, wherein they took Kherson and Melitopol’ almost without a fight, and then surrounded Mariupol’ and conquered it outright while destroying most of the Azov Brigade’s fighting power. All the while, the bulk of Ukraine’s forces stayed stuck in the north and west, unable to figure out what to do and where to go.
Once that part of the campaign was done, they withdrew their troops from the north on Ukraine, and then settled into a grinding attrition campaign at the strategic level, while openly encouraging positional and manoeuvre battles at the tactical level. By this process, they have inflicted HORRENDOUS casualties on the hohols – I reckon the Ukrainian military dead amount to somewhere around 100K dead, and at least three times that wounded beyond any hope of recovery, plus over 10,000 prisoners and God only knows how many who have deserted or refuse to fight.
The attrition warfare part of their campaign is wrapping up. Once Donbass is cleansed and liberated, which I suspect will happen within weeks, if not days, then the Russians will be operating on terrain that is flat, open, and highly favourable for rapid massed-armour movements west of the Dniepr, toward Nikolaev and Odessa. It will also be much easier for them to take Zaporozh’ye and Kharkov once the majority of Ukrainian forces are destroyed in and around Donbass.
The outcome of this war was not in doubt beyond Week 2 of the SMO. But one thing is for sure:
Never again can the West think of the Russians as an unsophisticated “brute-force” military that only thinks in terms of throwing bodies at a problem. This wasn’t even true of their fighting tactics in WWII, beyond a point – it assuredly is not true now. The West can rail all it likes against Russian “barbarism” and “cruelty” – neither of which is at all true, by the way, given the extreme care that Russians have shown with respect to civilian casualties, and their willingness to absorb nasty attacks against their own civilians without retaliating in kind.
Nor can the West ignore the very real and obvious fact that Russia’s economy is VASTLY larger than they imagined. You simply cannot maintain a war effort of this kind without a massively powerful industrial sector – and we ALL underestimated it, including people like me who have actually lived in Russia. This is the world’s commodities superpower, and the West needs to wake up to this fact, FAST, and stop pissing it off. Not only is Russia’s industrial capacity for warfighting greater than that of the ENTIRE combined West at this point, but it also has a multi-generational technological lead in several key areas, including high supersonic and hypersonic PGMs, short- and long-range artillery, and integrated stealth-detecting air defence.
But, if the West does not take seriously the tremendous advances made by the Russians in warfighting technology, doctrine, skills, organisation, logistics, and capabilities, and above all does not take seriously the fact that the Russians LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES in ways that American and European militaries very self-evidently do not…
Then a shooting war with Russia, which the West very stupidly keeps threatening, will turn into a MASSACRE for the Western powers.
28 Comments
Great explanation, Didact.
I want to highlight one point I keep noticing from the updates your Telegram channel. The Russians are remarkably successful in shooting down anything that flies. This is remarkable compared to the US Patriot and THAAD interception rates. This article is a great summary of what is going on:
https://www.imetatronink.com/2022/08/no-fly-zone.html
You are entirely correct. This is an underappreciated and underestimated aspect of Russia’s capabilities. The fact is that they have the best air defence systems in the world, and we’re now beginning to understand just how big the gap is between them and the USA in terms of handling both subsonic and supersonic ballistic, cruise, and other missiles and artillery rounds.
The US military will be in for a hideous shock once the Russians show what they can really do against stealth jets, if it ever comes to that.
I’m in my 70s. I love that picture of Eisenhower with 3 ribbons on his left chest after winning WWII.
Far as I’m concerned, all these other peacocks since, can eddabagadicks.
Old Gringo. USMC, late 60s-early70s.
Yessir, Good Read.
“Ivan” is not the bumbling dullard TPTB, mass legacy media, and The Pentagram say he is.
Ivan loves his NATION, GOD, and FAMILY.
It shows.
Amen to that. These are the things worth fighting for – not the LGBTQWTFISTHISSHIT flag and all of the garbage that comes with it, not “MUH DUHVERSITEE”, and not some mythical “rules-based international order”.
Keep in mind that the Russians have always given primacy to artillery, even as far back as the Crimean war from 1853-1856 as exemplified in the old Irish Folk song “The Kerry Recruit” which contains the line –
“Oh, there is the story that me grandfather told
As he sat by the fire all withered and old;
“Remember,” says he, “that the Irish fight well,
But the Russian artillery’s hotter than hell.” ”
‘Nuff said.
OODA/Decision Cycle Theory, for collective ground combat, is bullshit.
Such an extreme and ridged statement. How large were the armies in China back in Sun Tzu’s day? How did they maneuver? Oddly, regarding misunderstandings and not asking how to adapt and accomplish something, I am reminded of Tow Rocket Launchers in the backs of jeeps and Humvs, Toyota Gun Trucks racing over the border from Chad into Libya, the war of 1776, Alexander the Great, Leonidas, Gray’s FMFM Campaigning in it’s focus on the Civil War, etc. In approaching from a philosophic way of warfare rather than a checklist method, I would not rule out large scale maneuver and use of as many force multipliers as possible. Question, when an opposing army uses a title wave of refugees, pushing them into the enemy in overwhelming numbers, maybe that could be an example to the use of the OODA loop. Those refugees are going to find the weak points for you, not that they would pull your forces through. Similarly, imagine a “Western” City that has lost it’s utilities, food, fuel, and emergency response services in the winter or summer, and the people are prompted by need to flow like water out to the countryside like locust or burning embers in the wind.
Harry, go here:
https://www.baen.com/decisioncycles
No, for collective ground combat, as presented, it’s just bullshit. So much is it bullshit that, after spending God alone knows how much trying to make it their doctrine, the Marines, last I checked, had reduced it to a footnote in their manual, Warfighting.
Mosaic Warfare Whahahahahahahahaha. When I think about the Russian Federation largely converting to being a Christian nation and country in addition to winning this NATO started existential crisis in the Ukraine and maybe a few other places bordering, I think that perhaps Democrat Party and RINO corruption and money laundering abroad, along with the WEF mass murdering Socialism, might get punished. Let’s not call this “The Ukrainian Spring” though. Certainly, I hope to enjoy the Democrat Party and RINOs losing control of the House and Senate as well. Even when exposed and caught, force must be applied to the wicked, in order to stop them.
Darn, I forgot to include a comment regarding my having changed the name of that James Bond movie with Daniel Craig titled Quantum of Solace to Quantum of Soros (and Schwab too) If you have seen the movie, then you understand how it pertains to what is happening in Europe and the USA RIGHT NOW while the proxy war continues in the Ukraine. What does the “west” losing in the Ukraine mean and set in motion at home? I had better get my next thesis on warfare written so it can be used more readily that reading through Poole’s numerous works.
Russia never stopped being a Christian nation. The Soviets only suppressed it, hard, and now the Orthodox faith is undergoing a dramatic and powerful revival throughout all of Russia.
G-d is not mocked. Very good point. Thank you. BTW, lately, I have been also considering how similar the WEF is to to “Spectre.”
Question, where did the misunderstanding of 4th gen come from? I argue that it came from within the system which should have adopted 4th gen more readily. It represent a resistance to learning and adapting. Gray had grenade launchers, mortars and cannons (even specially adapting new technology rounds to old howitzers) and even “organic” air power (choppers and jump jets). So who said the use of such was not within 4th gen and not within shaping the battlefields of multiple pronged campaigns? I think it is the politicians in the ranks. Sure, you have people like Bassford who wrote Sun Tzu and Clauz Compared, but were they not already woven together as a philosophical approach to warfare? There are a lot of shades of gray between the two extremes. Then again, I am 54 years old, and what in Hades would I know, other than how great my gray hair looks. Shame that there are not enough people out there who really understand 4th gen. Long live Paul Van Riper.
Are the Russian Forces, the real and true students of Gray?
Possibly, but it is unlikely that they consider themselves “students” of the USMC. Manoeuvre warfare has been part of the Russian military tradition for centuries – it is not new to them.
Not a citation or to be taken literally. You know that a war is lost when a politician says we will bomb them until they negotiate, as opposed to we will adapt and win by any means necessary. There are people who would like to restore the US Constitution that after seeing the loss of Afghanistan understood the politicians in the Pentagon, on the Hill, and in the WH have learned very little in the last 30 years. Consider that in the light of the following. 1. The US military post-purges is very different today as opposed to in the early very 1990s. 2. The numerous memos targeting Americans (Tea Party. Patriotic, Parents at School Board Meetings, and Lone Wolf Vet Types) released from Napolitono, Reno, Lerner, Garland, et al. Along with the corruption and use of the IRS-FBI-DOJ-other enforcement to target political enemies and investigative journalists. The necessity for feds to continue to pay their own personal home mortgages, LOL by violating oaths. 3. The differences between the Democrat Party Youth Brigades burning over 500+ Democrat Controlled cities & some forests, the command of clogging this country’s airports with protesters, the coordination of the Chicago Columbus Day Operation, the mobility and numbers of the Boston Anti-Free Speech Operation, the 2020 burning of DC & attempt to invade the WH, AS OPPOSED TO the J6th not being all “Kyle Rittenhouse” or even similar to an earlier 1900s NRA march through DC. The latter shouts “Not serious yet.” 4.. Blue Collar, Farmer, and Trucker resistance against WEF-DNC-NWO policies that have caused and will cause more harm to the economy, aka people. Such includes Gun Control, Controlled Digital Currencies, Smart Phone Identification & Records, Restrictions on Food & Fuel that cause Hyper-Inflation, and more. 5. The widest in depth understanding of the consequences of losing the proxy war in the Ukraine and a few other countries bordering Russia. (PETER ZEIHAN YOU ARE WRONG FOR MANY REASONS. However, I would not expect you or John Poole to bite-the- [cancel culture government] hand-that-feeds-you. Let us just call this an icebreaker sailing on the rails, on the road, in the pipeline, or flying over to another time for another discussion. BTW, has anyone considered that the Ukraine has something comparable to the Mississippi down it’s center too? 6. The threat that is the CCP and compromised people in the “west.” 7. Fellow travelers, I could go down the list more but the “Spectre” of overlap and connectivity is clear enough. I thank G-d for the calming affect and effect as well as hope that 2022 and 2024 elections offer for now. Not to be all Spanish CW, honest elections or not, one must would what the winners and losers will do after. 60 to 70 percent of the country could very well be pushed more conservative simply for survival. Did i mention this happening after the loss of another war. No wonder the major Leftist new networks are so pushing the CW theme at this time. They fear the elections.
I noted a few spelling mistakes, sentence order mistakes, and missing word mistakes at the end of my post. How can I correct them, or can you correct them? While the meaning of the writing is clear enough, the corrections should be made.
Rather the end should read something like the following. “Not to be all Spanish CW, honest elections or fraudulent elections, one must ask what the winners and losers will do after they are concluded. 60 to 70 percent of the country could very well be pushed into becoming more conservative simply for survival necessity. Did I mention this is happening after the loss of another war, a proxy war, but a war none the less. No wonder the major Leftist News Networks are pushing the CW theme so much at this time. They fear the outcome of the elections. Someone I respect once said to me, The issue is never the issue, because their revolution is always the issue. I would add their psychotic will to power is what is found under that veneer of revolution.”
“Then a shooting war with Russia, which the West very stupidly keeps threatening, will turn into a MASSACRE for the Western powers.”
It’s almost like the West is being ruled over by ‘elites’ who don’t care about the people of the West, and are even hostile to the heritage populace of the West.
Yes, you’d think that all of this was, I dunno, PLANNED somehow…
To be fair – in the matter of Millennium Challenge 2002 – the Blue Force analysts claimed there was no intent to rig the game by refloating all the sunken ships and magically bringing all the casualties back to life. The exercise was a couple of years in the planning, cost millions if not billions to run when all expenses are considered…and if it was allowed to reach a natural conclusion of defeat in only two days, participants would certainly have learned a useful lesson in surprise and the critical importance of simple preplans. But they would not have learned anything about how to fight, and many of them would not even have been involved; their side would have lost while they were still getting set up. So the argument is that the exercise was reset in order to give everybody some practice, and get some value out of all the preparations.
That said, it is difficult to not notice that Van Riper’s surprise would not work twice when the enemy was alerted and expecting those tactics, and that the rules were specifically modified so many of his advantages were disallowed. It would likewise be hard not to conclude that a large, arrogant and overconfident force was nearly annihilated using discipline and simple tactics, and staying off the radio.
It should also be considered, in weighing up how the battle in Ukraine is proceeding, that Russia is engaged in combat with a nation it still considers to be brother Slavs, and it is acutely conscious that this is a win/win for Washington – Slavs are being killed, no matter what flag they fight under. It is entirely possible that Ukraine and Russia will one day be allies again, once the cancer of Ukrainian nationalism is chemoed to death, and part of Russia’s slow and deliberate approach is intended to minimize non-military casualties. You can therefore imagine what an unrestricted artillery bombardment might be like if they were not restricted. And they are certainly not running out of ammunition. The only effect the west is achieving by dragging it out is getting more Ukrainians killed.
Talk about mocking the Democrat and RINO insanity. Russia encourages you to immigrate to a place with a higher standard. Here is the commercial. https://youtu.be/CV9bCXIwFTc
Really Really Good Mapping of the Battle Lines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBgEVQ05B7w BTW, If you have relatives in Iraq, pray for them. Iraq we real hot in the last week. Al Sauduuuur has gone against Iran and the USA. The bullets are really flying. Pray. Also, Russia is up to 25% of the Ukraine and the Nazi of the Azov and Aidar are starting to implode. R OODA has increased sped and U OODA is slowing, coupled to lack of supply and soldiers remaining on the Ukraine Side. It is at this point wherein the B52s sent to the UK, the huge number of attack helicopters sent to multiple locations in the EU, the anti-radiation missiles sent to the Scandis, and US soldier might be used by Biden. Russia moved tactical nukes into Crimea and is securing the nuke power plant.
I do not see much difference between the way NATO tried to break off parts of Serbia while bombing the Christians in Cyprus, from the NATO attempt to take Crimea and the Ukraine after Baker’s promise to Gorby. Then there was Georgia. Then there was that “stan” on the other side of the Federation. It is an existential crisis. I think I will watch the Daniel Craig Bond movies from Quantum of Solace through to Spectre again……..how similar art is to reality. A friend of mine said today’s joke on the Simpson is tomorrow’s political reality.
BTW, When will RINOs learn that they will never be accepted by the Devil and approved of by the Devil in the same way that Democrat Party Communist Socialists are??? Maybe the leadership of Serbia could learn a lesson here, instead of joining a WEF controlled, starving, freezing, and poor EU. Demons hate G-d’s own.
Odessa or Bust.
Well that’s how it was supposed to go.