State Of The Conflict, May 11, 2022
While it may seem that things have settled down, in reality the conflict is simply deepening. An overall assessment would seem to indicate that Russia is making steady progress on most fronts—economic as well as military.
A brief story at Zerohedge reveals from the mouth of a highly authoritative source that the sanctions regime is a complete joke. The European nations are going through the motions, talking the talk, but in the real world they’re doing what they can to maintain their Russian energy supplies. The problem is, they’re having to do so at greater expense, causing harm to their economies:
The title basically says it all, but I’ll add a brief excerpt:
Three weeks ago we reported that when faced with the actual, brutal consequences of its anti-Russian virtue signaling and harsh language, Europe's fake united front promptly cracked crack as several European gas buyers quietly paid for supplies in rubles as Russia had demanded - in breach of Brussels sanctions - and we predicted that soon virtually everyone in Europe would follow in their footsteps and similarly bypass EU sanctions. Moments ago, one of the most powerful people in Europe - former Goldman partner and ECB head - Mario Draghi, confirmed just that.
Speaking during a press conference in Washington D.C. after his meeting with Joe Biden, Draghi said that European gas importers have already opened accounts in rubles with Gazprom.
The Italian PM was responding to a question asking if he is confident that Italy will be able to pay for gas without breaching sanctions and therefore gas flow to Italy won’t be affected.
“I’m actually quite confident, but for a silly reason. There is no official pronouncement of what it means to breach sanctions. Nobody ever said anything about whether rubles payments breach sanctions or not, how these payments are organized. So it’s such a gray zone here.”
The result is that, far from reducing the ruble to rubble, the Europeans are causing Russia a very different sort of problem—the ruble is actually stronger than Russia would like it to be at this point:
behind the scenes, Europe not [only] continues to actively pay Russia billions every day, but is doing so on Putin's terms and helping send the Ruble soaring!
In the meantime, Russia and its allies around the world are moving ahead with their financial restructuring of the world, while Americans and Europeans suffer from self-inflicted economic wounds.
On the military front, Russia continues to follow its game plan (we’ll be quoting Larry Johnson’s explanation of how that looks at ground level a bit later). Rather than adopt the approach the US/UK coalition hoped for—rushing headlong into massively fortified Ukrainian lines—Russia continues to implacably dismantle Ukrainian lines with its enormous advantage in firepower, while starving the Ukrainian frontlines of supplies. Doug Macgregor touches on this while speaking of bigger issues:
The Threat Of Polish Involvement In Ukraine
The war against Russia in Ukraine has evolved, but not in the way Western observers predicted.
With regard to the Polish role, I continue to be of the view—although less confidently than before—that Poland will step back from the abyss, will not do anything insane that would lead to direct conflict with Russia. As for the big picture of what’s going on in Ukraine military developments, Macgregor cites an interesting CNN interview with a retired US general, who visited Poland to get a close up look at the state of the conflict. Here’s a brief excerpt from Macgregor’s article—I skip his arguments regarding an expanded Polish role:
Russia’s enormous advantage in strike forces—rocket artillery, tactical ballistic missiles, conventional artillery, and aircraft—combined with significant Ukrainian deficiencies in mobility, air defense, and strike assets, made the Ukrainian decision to defend inside urban areas inevitable. But Ukrainian forces’ inability to effectively maneuver and coordinate counteroffensives on the operational level ceded the strategic initiative to Russian forces early. It also simplified the conduct of Russian “attrition by strike operations.” Key Ukrainian airfields, bridge sites, railway junctions and transportation assets were neutralized or destroyed, isolating forward deployed Ukrainian forces from resupply or reinforcement.
Ten weeks after the conflict began, it is instructive to re-examine the strategic picture. The war against Russia in Ukraine has evolved, but not in the way Western observers predicted. Ukrainian forces look shattered and exhausted. The supplies reaching Ukrainian troops fighting in Eastern Ukraine are a fraction of what is needed. In most cases, replacements and new weapons are destroyed long before they reach the front.
Confronted with the unambiguous failure of U.S. assistance and the influx of new weapons to rescue Ukrainian forces from certain destruction, the Biden administration is desperate to reverse the situation and save face. Poland seems to offer a way out. …
Let’s turn to the CNN interview that Macgregor links. The retired general hews to the establishment narrative to some extent—that dynamic of retired military cheerleaders is also addressed by Macgregor—but does let the cat pretty much out of the bag. His initial assessment is simply brutal, and his later attempt to argue that there’s some sort of possible successful exit strategy falls flat on closer inspection. Contrast Macgregor’s account with the initial assessment by the retired general and there’s little difference—except that the general goes into more detail regarding logistics
Here's the lead in to the actual interview:
The former commander of the US Special Operations Command in Europe, retired US Army Maj. Gen. Mike Repass, says the international community has to greatly increase its support for Ukraine if the embattled nation is ever going to be able to drive the Russians out.
Repass has advised the Ukrainian military for the past six years on a US government contract. Last month he visited Poland and western Ukraine to get a better feel for the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. I spoke to him Friday and Monday.
He says the Ukrainian supply chain for military equipment is inefficient and that additional military forces are required to drive the Russians out of Ukraine.
To win the war in Ukraine, Repass advocates that the US and its allies build up a Ukrainian strategic force amounting to five brigades of up to 40,000 soldiers capable of mounting offensive operations to force the Russians out of their country.
Repass will later argue that building up five new Ukrainian brigades outside Ukraine--after massive losses to Ukraine's frontline forces--and reinserting those brigades with the necessary equipment back into Ukraine in time to make a difference is a doable—even easy—thing. After you read his more detailed comments you'll see that that just can't be true. Consider:
BERGEN: What did you learn on your trip?
REPASS: One, that Ukraine still needs a lot of help. Two, NATO is moving too slow. Three, we don't have visibility on what happens to military equipment when it gets into Ukraine.
…
… The problem is that the Ukraine's army needs additional capabilities to be able to drive Russia out of Ukraine.
BERGEN: Why?
REPASS: Because they don't have enough combat power to do that, meaning enough equipment, firepower and trained soldiers at the moment.
Repass goes on to suggest that the Russian military is crappy and doesn’t know how to fight wars. He even suggests that the Iraqi military that Macgregor helped destroy was in some way equivalent to the modern Russian military. Nevertheless, the reality Repass describes is an unfolding disaster for Ukraine and its backers.
Moon of Alabama quotes MSM stories to paint a very bleak picture of the situation for Ukrainian forces in the Donbass:
Ukraine - Congress Passes The Bucks, Realism Sneaks In, Poland Plans For More War
For example, this grim report is from the NYT:
At the main hospital in Kramatorsk, a city in Donetsk, ambulances stream in day and night, carrying soldiers wounded at the front, who describe being pinned down by near constant shelling.
About 80 percent of the patients are wounded by explosives such as mines and artillery shells, said Capt. Eduard Antonovskyy, the deputy commander of the medical unit at the hospital. Because of this, he said, very few patients have serious injuries. Either you’re far enough from an explosion to survive or you aren’t, he said.
“We either get moderate injuries or deaths,” Captain Antonovskyy said.
That view is exactly what you’ll get from this 17 minute interview with a Canadian mercenary, just returned from Ukraine. Listen to it and ask—does that sound like the side that’s winning?
Larry Johnson, commenting on this video and other similar accounts, describes what the Russian military is doing—they are not expending their personnel unnecessarily:
Watch this video. Afghanistan, US infantry take small arms fire from the building in front of them, call in an airstrike, a bullet appears to strike the ground in the camera field at 2:26, bomb hits at 2:32, Now watch this video. Afghanistan, US infantry in a hollow, some gunfire but pretty relaxed, call in the air force, A-10s arrive at 3:34 and make several passes, loud cheers. There are plenty more videos like this from NATO’s recent wars. Take fire, sit still, call in the air force to blast whoever is shooting at you. (Collateral damage? Who cares? Blow up the whole building and everybody in it.)
No doubt “Shadow” and “Wali” and the rest of them, remembering their experience in a NATO war, expected to be on the giving end. Instead they found themselves on the receiving end. In their interviews, they describe two front-line experiences in Ukraine. In the first they are setting up a sniper position in an apartment building (not using civilians as a shield, I hope) when they’re knocked out by a tank round. Never saw it coming. In the next story “Wali” learns how to use a Javelin anti-tank missile and the two set off to go tank-hunting. They find two Ukrainian soldiers in a trench and “Shadow” gets in the trench while “Wali” goes off to look at the Russian tank. The two Ukrainians get out to have a smoke – BANG! – when “Shadow” recovers consciousness, one of the Ukrainians is dead and the other dying. The two Canadians apparently decide that that’s enough for them. They never actually saw a Russian through their sniper scope.
What’s going on in Eastern Ukraine right now is something like the two Afghanistan videos but the other way around and on a much larger scale. The Russians inch forward, if they meet resistance, they plaster it with artillery. Inch
It’s slow motion in terms of territory, but Ukrainian capabilities—both in terms of personnel as well as equipment—are being steadily “degraded.”
Dr. Shipwreckedcrew.substack.com
@shipwreckedcrew
1. All members of Cong are actively seeking campaign funding for Nov.
2. US military supplies sent to Ukraine come mostly from US defense industry.
3. $40 billion in Ukr support = sales by US defense industry to US Govt ->"Lend-Lease" to Ukr.
4. Campaign donations in return.
The second half or so of this video has Alex Mercouris giving his views on Draghi's trip to DC. Basically he outlines the high degree of disunity in the EU and the extreme pressure on the EU caused by the sanctions--especially on Germany.