Russian Commentators Respond

Technically, Andrei Martyanov isn’t a Russian commentator. He’s an American citizen who has written several books on the Russian military’s development vis a vis the US. However, he’s very familiar with both the Russian outlook on these matters—the US’s use of ATACMS to attack Russia, as well as Russia’s ability to respond. He views are therefore very worth while considering. Today he’s quite brief and to the point.

In the first post he embeds a video of Danny Davis critiquing retired US general Jack Keane. Keane’s view is that the US, by attacking Russia with ATACMS missiles, can force Putin to negotiate with Zelensky. This, of course, is delusional. That’s not how the real world works. Martyanov explains:

Keane Is Not A Military Man...

 ... he is a hot air balloon and a sore loser who wouldn't be allowed to command regiment, let alone brigade in serious army. I totally get the agitation of Daniel Davis, but...

Keep in mind--it is the US which is nuclear-biased country, not Russia. All this talk about Russia using nuclear weapons for now is a moot point--keep in mind, Russia has an overwhelming conventional escalation dominance. Just look at the arsenal. Escalation towards nuclear threshold is a rather complex process and Russia can punish NATO without nukes. I constantly point this out.

Martyanov also links to analysis by a Russian writer that stresses what I pointed to yesterday—that this looks like the “last gasp” (my words) of the Anglo-Zionists. Putin has most of the cards—conventional escalatory dominance:

Irina Alksnis...

 ... penned a good piece (in Russian) on this "permission" for strikes. You can read it here following this link. The only thing Alksnis messed up is the following of the same meme of "red lines". There never were any "red lines"--those are a figment of imagination of cowards in the West trying to probe the limits of Moscow's patience. But she nails it--the US has no space for maneuver left and it is the last step of desperation. Now it is just the matter what NATO's asset will go down first. To remind you about ATACMS ranges. 

With deployment of 50 km in depth behind VSU lines. Lines changed since then, so did the coverage by Russian ISR.

Via auto translation—which means I had to make an extremely important correction in the final paragraph. Note that Alksnis sees this as Keane does—an attempt to force Putin to back down from his clearly expressed conditions and negotiate with the puppet regime in Kiev. The point is to give NATO and the US a face-saving way to get out of their debacle. Having sh*t in their own mess kit, they want Putin to clean it out for them. Again, the real world doesn’t work that way, and especially not with a guy like Putin who has carefully calculated his moves well in advance. Like Martyanov, Alksnis argues that “warfare in the current format is almost exhausted.” The last gasp.

Western countries, specifically — the United States, Great Britain and France, have given permission to Kiev to use long-range weapons deep into Russian territory. We are talking about the ATACMS, SCALP and Storm Shadow missiles, whose maximum range reaches 300 kilometers.

This information is informal. The New York Times reported the decision by Biden, and the decision of London and Paris — Le Figaro. The White House declined to comment without confirming or refuting media reports. And the representative of the Trump transition team said that the new president “may revise” this decision. However, in these words it is transparently read, which may not expose.

At first glance, the chosen method of announcing — through the so far unconfirmed media drain seems strange. However, this is in its own witty decision in an attempt to break the deadlock in which the West found itself, and it meets the interests of absolutely all the groups and clans of the American and European establishment, despite their deepest contradictions and enmity. Including Donald Trump and his team.

Russia wins — both on the battlefield, and in economic confrontation, and in the geopolitical struggle. At the same time, the space for maneuver in the West is narrowed to the limit, regardless of what strategy they will be chosen for further actions — to continue the conflict or to leave it. Opportunities for warfare in the current format are almost exhausted, moreover, given the military successes of Moscow, this will be a waste of increasingly scarce resources. However, there are serious problems with overcoming the conflict. Donald Trump makes bravular statements promising to end the war in a day, but this is possible only if the West recognizes its defeat and accepts the conditions of Moscow. Obviously, for an American this is unacceptable — which means he needs leverage to bargain with which it would be possible to sell Russia to concessions unacceptable to it.

So it turns out that in this case the interests of both hawks, eager to continue to fight with Russia, and pigeons who want to put an end to the failed Ukrainian project and switch to more important areas such as Chinese, and Europeans who are afraid to stay with Moscow one on one, and even with those hanged on the neck of Kiev.

However, here the West has a serious problem: opportunities for escalation and raising rates rest against the critical restriction of — in the position directly voiced by Moscow that long-range missile attacks on Russia will be considered as an open entry of the West into the war with the corresponding reaction of our country.

Over the past years, in confrontation with Russia, the West has used the approach of phasing out and crossing red lines, and now it intends to apply the same technology with respect to the most dangerous, which was personally outlined by Vladimir Putin.

That is why everything happens just like that — strictly according to the method, just this time additional elements and fuses are introduced. First, an unconfirmed incident in the media to see Moscow’s reaction. Moreover, a “carrot” is additionally hanged in front of Russia so that it has an incentive not to react too sharply: Trump, based in the White House, can cancel Biden’s decision — you just have to be patient for several months. And emphasizing the topic of North Korean military personnel, who are supposedly in the border regions and will be the main targets for American long-range missiles, also works in the same direction — they say, all this is primarily a signal to Kim Jong-un, so the third world and nuclear apocalypse will be a clearly excessive reaction of Russia to the flight of ATACMS to the Kursk region.

At the moment, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, they nervously expect how Moscow will respond to its challenge. If there is a reaction that scares Americans and Europeans, we will see a rapid refutation of intruded insides. However, if it seems to them that Russia will not risk putting the world on the brink of destruction due to the arrival of NATO long-range missiles on its territory, then we must wait for such attacks.

The problem is that the western ruling class has ceased to understand the significance and meaning of words altogether, it perceives only power in its most rude embodiment. So it is likely that no today's statements by the Russian leadership will become for the organizers and participants of this adventure sufficiently convincing evidence of the seriousness of Moscow’s intentions.

But there is one vulnerability in their plan: the West believes that Putin is unlikely to start the third world because of such a “trifle” as the arrival of his long-range missiles in the Russian territory — is he [the West] ready to start it himself if Russia in response to the arrival of ATACMS hits a NATO military facility, for example, will hit an American radar detection and guidance aircraft over the Black Sea? The little thing.