Jacob Dreizin is, by his own description, “an immigrant, a U.S. Army veteran with two master’s degrees, a long-time Washington, D.C. area resident, and a family man”. I was not aware of him or his activities until a few days ago, when the Greek gentlemen over at The Duran mentioned his name in connection with one of their livestreams. (If you are not already watching Alexander Mercouris and his long daily updates, or Alex Christoforou and his excellent two to three daily updates and Clown World takes, then you are very much missing out on some of the absolute finest geopolitical commentary and thinking that you will find anywhere.)
Heretofore, Mr. Dreizin generally sent out his opinions on various topics using a mailing list. Recently, though, he started up a long-form blog, analysing videos, pictures, and Telegram updates, to provide a comprehensive overview of the Banderastan War. His ability to analyse the evidence from the battlefield is, indeed, absolutely outstanding, and you will learn a very great deal about the situation on the ground from watching his videos and reading his words.
A couple of days ago, he uploaded a longer-form video on the subject of Russia’s actual plans on the ground. Here it is, prefaced by the most excellent Mr. Mercouris:
The whole thing is assuredly very much worth watching. I think that Mr. Dreizin is very largely correct in his conclusions, but I differ (mildly) with him about Russia’s original “Plan A”.
In my view, the Russians were not necessarily pushing for a swift decapitation strike in the very early stages of the war. They choppered in large numbers of airborne assault troops on the very first day, after bombing the crap out of the Ukie C&C capabilities, in order to achieve one very specific purpose:
The Russian General Staff wanted to pin down the very heavy Ukrainian defences in and around Kiev, keep the enemy off balance and guessing, and tie up their best men and most mobile units in an urban environment, waiting and watching for a Russian assault that would never come.
And, in this respect, they succeeded, brilliantly.
That 40-mile-long convoy that sort of “stalled” outside of Kiev and never actually moved? That was there entirely for the purpose of distraction. They never encountered enough serious resistance to justify the time and attention that the Ukies and the Western presstitutes gave it – there was NEVER any “heroic defence” of Kiev, at all, because the Russians NEVER ACTUALLY ATTACKED IT in sufficient force.
They were never going to, either. You DO NOT invade a city of 3.4 million people, spread out over an area roughly comparable to that of New York City – Kiev encompasses roughly 840 Km2, New York City’s total land area is about 780Km2 – with less than 60,000 troops. It’s Just. Not. Done.
In this respect, I do not believe that there was a real “Plan A” of the type that Mr. Dreizin describes. It is possible that the Russians hoped for a quick decapitation strike, but it is also clear that they planned for a more drawn-out, difficult, probing campaign that would require them to drive hard and deep into enemy territory with very nearly kamikaze-style units.
The speed and power of that pell-mell charge also explains the inordinately large number of Russian vehicles that they left strewn all over the roads of Ukraine. The Ukies claimed that they had scored dozens or hundreds of kills on Russian tanks and armoured vehicles, but subsequent analysis indicates this to be wishful thinking, at best. The far more likely reality is that the Russians simply used their older and expendable vehicles to as fast as they could into Banderastan in a pinning manoeuvre designed to keep the Ukie Army completely off-kilter.
Instead of conquering and holding the territory and installing their own governments, the Russians aimed to keep the forces in and around Kiev and the major northeastern urban centres – Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov, and so on – tied up and threatened. Once the situation in the south changed to the point where Kherson, Melitopol’, and now Mariupol’ were all fully or almost liberated, the Russians knew that they could afford to reposition their forces and move major concentrations southward.
That is where Mr. Dreizin’s analysis of the Russian “Plan B” comes in. Here, I think he is entirely, 100%, absolutely correct. The Russians HAVE switched tactics. Contrary to the bleating of the whorenalists, they have no fixed timeline and are instead focusing all of their attentions on one single objective: the total destruction of the JFO in the Donbas Cauldron.
This, they are achieving, thoroughly, with a level of firepower and brutality that is genuinely terrifying. If you are following my Telegram channel, you will see a long stream of updates on the subject, indicating just how methodically the Russians are wiping out Ukrainian forces.
I very rarely show the true horror of the war on that channel, simply because I do not wish to show you the gore and blood. But trust me when I tell you that I have seen quite enough videos and pictures of slaughtered Ukrainian troops littering the ground around Donbas.
If I never have to see any more of them – any more videos or pictures of far too many sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, uncles, and even grandfathers, turned into bloody and charred piles of meat – then I will be very happy.
And based on what I am seeing, I can tell you this:
The Russians are turning the JFO into hamburger.
The volume and power of their artillery out there is astonishing. They simply don’t let up. They bombard Ukrop positions day and night, and those who are going through it, describe it as something straight out of the bowels of Hell itself. The Russians are currently pushing steadily south from Izyum, and north from and around Ugledar, to close the jaws of a vise behind the most heavily reinforced Ukrop areas at Kramatorsk and Slavyansk within the DNR’s territory.
Once the jaws of that trap close, and they appear to be getting closer every single day, as there seem to be a bit less than 200Km separating them, with hundreds of Ukies dying and surrendering every day, the Russians will send their heavy armour in and obliterate anything that is left.
This is classic, and I mean TEXTBOOK, Russian battlefield strategy.
You want to know the scariest part, though?
The Russians are doing all of this without committing the real bulk of their reserves and the best of their forces into the fight.
They are still holding back a significant number of their forces. Apparently, there is a sort of “quick reaction force” of some kind posted across the border in Russia, not very far from Kiev. They are sitting out there to threaten the forces holed up in Kiev, where apparently there are supposedly up to 60K Ukrops still on site. (I reckon those numbers might be a little high, but I’ll take them for now.) If those forces leave Kiev to try to relieve their compatriots in Donbas, they will quickly find Kiev threatened yet again.
Beyond that, there appear to be substantial Russian forces still left in Russia, Belarus, and Crimea. The Russians seem to be taking things extremely carefully, and their top leadership plainly understand that the Banderastan War is only the latest salvo in a much longer campaign against NATO itself, and the Russians are saving their best and most capable troops, and their top-of-the-line equipment – like their T-14s and Su-57s – for the long-anticipated direct clash with NATO.
That clash may well be closer than we might like to admit. The big news today is all about some very weird stuff happening in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria, which the Russians recognise as an independent state of Russian-speakers. Two Russian radio antennae were destroyed in what the Transnistrians are calling a “terrorist attack”, and some other incidents have been reported from within the country.
The Ukies are now saying that they want to mount an assault against Transnistria to secure what they call the largest ammunition reserve in all of Europe. They want to take the two brigades that they have in the southwest of Ukraine, located near Odessa, and invade Transnistria, where there is a relatively small garrison of Russian soldiers, to capture that ammunition and use it in the fight against the Russians.
Put aside the fact that, if the Ukies mounted such an attack, they would be operating completely exposed to bombing and cruise missile strikes from the Russian Aerospace Forces, the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and possibly even flanking manoeuvres from the Russian Marines onboard the fleet itself. The rumour is that the Romanians, Moldovans, and Ukrainians will attempt to attack the Russian garrison in Transnistria on three different sides, possibly with overwhelming force.
If this happens, that might be a direct attack by a NATO member, against Russia. And the inevitable Russian response would result in open war on continental Europe between Russia and Romania.
On top of all of this madness, the Ukies are DEMANDING to be let into NATO, immediately. Seriously, they are acting like snotty little children in a candy store, whose parents just say yes to everything – which is pretty much how the Western powers have actually treated the Ukrop government officials. They just give them endless amounts of materiel, munitions, financial assistance, and direct cash injections – never mind that at least 40% of it, and I reckon probably a hell of a lot more, is lost to graft and corruption and black-market sales.
This has every indication of spinning way out of control. If the Romanians are dumb enough to join in an attack on the Russian enclave in Transnistria, and thereby attack Russian troops directly, then we are likely to see a rapidly escalating war that will get completely out of hand – up to and including the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
If that happens… it’s been nice knowing y’all, lads, because we’ll all be dead, or close to it. The Russians have already stated quite bluntly that, if the Limeys continue to supply advanced weapons to Ukraine, then they will not rule out taking “appropriate measures” to respond.
I interpret that to mean, “shooting down British aircraft over Polish airspace”.
The next few days and weeks will tell us just how bad the war is likely to get. The spate of attacks in Transnistria indicates an attempt to widen the conflict beyond Ukraine, into Moldova, with Romania and Poland and maybe even Bulgaria.
Let us hope that cooler heads will prevail. But ultimately, the end of this war will take the same shape that I have been arguing in favour of for weeks now – the partition of Banderastan into several Russian client-statelets at minimum, and the total destruction of Ukraine as a viable state.
Future generations are going to look back on this episode of history in utter horror – if we all live long enough to have descendants, that is – and wonder how the HELL our leaders of this time (except for the Russians) managed to let things get so out of control.
1 Comment
Let is the wrong word. Forced is more accurate.
A distraction is needed to prevent nations from overthrowing their corrupt masters, and so the folly of WWI is intentionally recreated.