I cannot tell a lie… you got me XD

In fact, that 20-page essay will have to go up tomorrow, as I was out doing other stuff this evening. But I did see that video of the God-Emperor flaying the Narcofuehrer alive for the entire world to see, and yes, it was EPIC.

GOOD points. And yeah, Europe is pretty much heading that direction now – civil war, anarchy, violence, and collapse.

Funny thing about that “three days” remark – you mention it in the context of the Russians, but the West has latched on to this ridiculous notion that the Russian objective was to take Kiev in 3 days. This was never their objective. But this meme apparently comes from a throwaway joke The Putin once made, in which he said it would take about 3 days to take Kiev. This was long before the SMO was even a gleam in Gerasimov’s eye.

The entire Western establishment assumed this was an actual Russian military goal, and has been using it as a meme ever since, to bash the Russian military for incompetence and ineptitude. Yet, it has always been precisely that – a meme, nothing more.

However, the idea that Russia is fighting this war with “one hand tied behind their back” is very unlikely

It is not merely likely, it is a fact, attested by both Russian and Ukrainian commanders on the ground, and by commentators in both countries. The Russians are fighting in a highly restrained fashion. If they were to go full-on, they would have smashed the Dnieper bridges and wiped out Ukraine’s power-generating capacity on the first day of the war, cut off all gas exports to Europe through the two major pipelines traversing the country, and invaded with a force of over 400,000 – not the relatively paltry 90,000 they actually used.

To this day, the Russians continue to exercise restraint, because a quick win IS NOT their goal, and never has been. Their stated goals, from the very eve of the SMO, have been the demilitarisation, de-Nazification, and neutrality of Ukraine. This cannot be done through a quick decapitation strike – it has to be done the hard, painful, bloody way, of wiping out an enemy’s ability to resist, through attrition.

You don’t fight a war like this article, and many others over the last several years, have claimed. You use the manpower you have to end the war quickly.

Do not confuse American military campaigns against illiterate goathumpers and barefoot savages, with war against a near-peer adversary made up of people who are genetically similar to Russians and know how to fight. The Russians have a fundamentally different philosophy of war that comes from actually fighting the very people that Americans only think they learned from – the Germans.

Western militaries think supreme excellence in war comes from manoeuvre. It does not. Manoeuvre is impossible in an environment where the enemy can see exactly what you are doing, through near-peer C4ISR. Manoeuvre only works when dealing with enemies who cannot think and move as quickly as you. The Russians know this, and learned it the hard way in early 2022. So, instead, they use attrition, because that actually works.

No army wants to get into a war of attrition even if they have a large manpower advantage.

They may not WANT to fight a war of attrition, but they have no choice. Such is the reality of the modern battlefield.

Russia hasn’t established air superiority and they couldn’t prevent the Ukrainian’s from invading Kursk and staying there.

As a matter of fact, the Russians HAVE established air superiority – the Ukrainians no longer have any effective air force, and have not had one for many months. Russian strike aircraft bomb Ukrainian positions freely now. Ukrainian air defence is anywhere from weak to non-existent across much of the front. They cannot stop Russian glide bombs, and are increasingly defenceless against Russian missile attacks. The Ukrainian Air Force barely even registers – when it does, it is because another MiG-29 or Su-27 got shot down.

And the Khreat Khokholite Kursk Kock-Up was a trap, as it turns out. The Russian General Staff knew it was coming, and let it happen, because they calculated that the Ukrainians would reinforce failure – which they did. The Russians are quite content to let the Ukrainians stream in with reinforcements of men and machines, which are in turn destroyed in a cauldron – the Ukies have lost a full 62,000 men in that battle, which amounts to at least two full army corps.

We get no information on this war.

YOU might not. I do, because I read both Russian and English Telegram channels, and can see what Russian and Ukrainian war correspondents and soldiers are saying.

But after three years it is clear that there is something going on that prevents Russia ending this war in a decisive fashion.

Yes – the fact that the Russian war aim is the demilitarisation and de-Nazification of Ukraine. They will achieve both ends by slaughtering Ukraine’s soldiers to the point where the country simply collapses, leaving few (if any) neo-Nazis that can start up potential rebellions.

It is an ugly, awful, horrible way of fighting. But it works damned well. The Red Army proved it 80 years ago, and the Russian Army is proving it again now.

One of the stated goals is to demilitarise 404, ideally with minimal Russian losses. This is something best done by attrition over time, which is what they are doing.

The bonus for Mr. Putin is that his EU adversaries, and to an extent even the US, have been substantially demilitarised themseves, and worse still, have thrown many of their best Wunderwaffen against the bear and their military chiefs have learned that they won’t actually roll over the Russians in three days, though their political commissars don’t seem to have grasped that fact on the ground.

You don’t fight a war like this article, and many others over the last several years, have claimed. You use the manpower you have to end the war quickly. Russia clearly can’t do that. No army wants to get into a war of attrition even if they have a large manpower advantage. Russia hasn’t established air superiority and they couldn’t prevent the Ukrainian’s from invading Kursk and staying there.

We get no information on this war. It is very strange. But after three years it is clear that there is something going on that prevents Russia ending this war in a decisive fashion. General Picket was asked years after the Civil War ended why he thought his attack at Gettysburg failed. He said, “I think the Army of the Potomac had a great deal to do with it.” Despite all the cheerleading it appears that the Ukrainian Army is not on their last legs as we have been told for the last two years or more.