Ukraine Update 9/7/22

The big Ukraine story of the day is that Ukraine, against all reason, has launched a second “offensive”. In fact these aren’t offensives in any proper understanding of the term. However, there are several articles out that give a good overview of the current state of affairs. Above all these articles expose the massive miscalculations of our rulers.

We’ll start with Larry Johnson:

UKRAINE AND RUSSIA–IT IS A MATH PROBLEM

The main point Johnson is making can be found here:

… Russia not only has destroyed Ukraine’s stockpiles that existed at the start of the war, but it is eliminating planes, tanks and MRLS systems subsequently provided by NATO and the United States.

To understand what’s going on, first take a look at this comparison of the two militaries:

Beyond the obvious overall imbalance, what’s immediately apparent is that the Ukrainian equipment is heavily weighted toward static defense—ground to ground missile launchers and anti-tank weapons. This fits with what we’ll see later, that the overall strategy that the US foisted on Ukraine was to provoke Russia into a major assault on Ukraine (by having Ukraine bombard the Donbass republics) and then savage the attacking Russians from defensive positions, especially using anti-tank weapons.

The Russians did not oblige. Instead they have methodically destroyed much of Ukraine’s equipment as well as destroying large amounts of weaponry supplied by the US and NATO. Please note—while large amounts of this weaponry was older Soviet stuff (Polish T-72 tanks, for example), by no means all of it was. The US artillery and missile systems are front line systems being taken from out own forces for destruction in Ukraine. None of this equipment, as it turns out, is easily replaceable.

Two examples will illustrate the scale of destruction. We’re using Russian numbers for the equipment they say they’ve destroyed. Those numbers may be inflated, but are likely close to the truth:

• Ukraine started the war with 2870 armored vehicles; Russia has destroyed 4845 tanks alone as well as “5,343 special military automotive equipment;”

• Ukraine started the war with 1962 artillery systems; Russia has destroyed “3,369 field artillery and mortars;”

• Ukraine started the war with 90 ground to ground missile systems; Russia has destroyed “825 multiple rocker launchers.”

No matter how you sort this, that’s a lot of destruction. It seems that not only is Russia demilitarizing Ukraine, it’s also demilitarizing NATO to a remarkable degree.

Moon of Alabama has a powerful post today that makes the same point, but goes even further:

Ukraine Loses Soldiers - Europe Its Economies - All For No Gain

Moon starts out with a discussion of the reckless carnage that Ukraine is self-inflicting, urged on by the Neocons. Then, to back up his point, he quotes extensively from an article in the WaPo. The WaPo reporter was able to interview some Ukrainian soldiers in hospital, who were wounded in the hoax-offensive against Kherson. Get a load of this excerpt. What’s being described by these Ukrainian casualties is not an offensive—it’s mass suicide:

In dimly lit hospital rooms in southern Ukraine, soldiers with severed limbs, shrapnel wounds, mangled hands and shattered joints recounted the lopsided disadvantages their units faced in the early days of a new offensive to expel Russian forces from the strategic city of Kherson.

The soldiers said they lacked the artillery needed to dislodge Russia’s entrenched forces and described a yawning technology gap with their better-equipped adversaries. 
...
Russia’s Orlan drones exposed Ukrainian positions from more than a kilometer above their heads, they said, an altitude that meant they never heard the buzz of the aircraft tracking their movements.

Russian tanks emerged from newly built cement fortifications to blast infantry with large-caliber artillery, the wounded Ukrainian soldiers said. The vehicles would then shrink back beneath the concrete shelters, shielded from mortar and rocket fire.

Counter-battery radar systems automatically detected and located Ukrainians who were targeting the Russians with projectiles, unleashing a barrage of artillery fire in response.

Russian hacking tools hijacked the drones of Ukrainian operators, who saw their aircraft drift away helplessly behind enemy lines.
...
Oleksandr said the Russian artillery fire was relentless. “They were just hitting us all the time,” he said. “If we fire three mortars, they fire 20 in return.”

The Ukrainian soldiers said they had to carefully ration their use of munitions but even when they did fire, they had trouble hitting targets. “When you give the coordinates, it’s supposed to be accurate but it’s not,” he said, noting that his equipment dated back to 1989.
...
Russian electronic warfare also posed a constant threat. Soldiers described ending their shifts and turning on their phones to call or text family members — a decision that immediately drew Russian artillery fire.
...
Denys, sitting upright on his hospital bed, said almost every member of his 120-person unit was injured, though only two were killed.

A 25-year-old soldier being treated for shrapnel wounds said that, within his unit of 100 soldiers, seven were killed and 20 injured. Ihor, the platoon commander, said 16 of the 32 men under his command were injured and one was killed.

Ukraine’s injured soldiers have been spread out to different hospitals across southern Ukraine to free up the main medical facilities near the Kherson region for incoming patients.

As for Europe losing its economies, this map showing steel plant closures says all you need to know—although the entire post is highly recommended:

Adding support to the above is Jacques Baud, interviewed at The Postil Magazine (h/t Larry Johnson). You may recall from earlier posts that Baud is a Swiss military intelligence officer attached to NATO, and that he spent several years helping to train the Ukrainian military, so he speaks with some real expertise. Very brief excerpts from the immensely long interview—I’ve dispensed with ellipses for the most part:

By hiding many aspects of this conflict, the Western media has presented us with a caricatural and artificial image of the situation, which has resulted in the polarization of minds. This has led to a widespread mindset that makes any attempt to negotiate virtually impossible.

The one-sided and biased representation provided by mainstream media is not intended to help us solve the problem, but to promote hatred of Russia.

TP: It is commonly said in the West that this war has “proven” that the Russian army is feeble and that its equipment is useless. Are these assertions true?

JB: No. After more than six months of war, it can be said that the Russian army is effective and efficient, and that the quality of its command & control far exceeds what we see in the West.

Firstly, ... It should be remembered that what the media call “Russians” is in fact a Russian-speaking coalition, composed of professional Russian fighters and soldiers of the popular militias of Donbass. The operations in the Donbass are mainly carried out by these militias, who fight on “their” terrain, in towns and villages they know and where they have friends and family. They are therefore advancing cautiously for themselves, but also to avoid civilian casualties. Thus, despite the claims of western propaganda, the coalition enjoys a very good popular support in the areas it occupies.

Then, just looking at a map, you can see that the Donbass is a region with a lot of built-up and inhabited areas, which means an advantage for the defender and a reduced speed of progress for the attacker in all circumstances.

Fourthly, the West and Ukraine have created a misleading picture of their adversary. In France, Switzerland and Belgium, none of the military experts on television have any knowledge of military operations and how the Russians conduct theirs. Their “expertise” comes from the rumours from the war in Afghanistan or Syria, which are often merely Western propaganda. These experts have literally falsified the presentation of Russian operations.

Thus, the objectives announced as early as February 24 by Russia were the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of the threat to the populations of Donbass. These objectives are related to the neutralization of capabilities, not the seizure of land or resources. To put it bluntly, in theory, to achieve their goals the Russians do not need to advance—it would be enough if Ukrainians themselves would come and get killed.

Which is exactly what is happening with the “counter-offensives.”

In other words, our politicians and media have pushed Ukraine to defend the terrain like in France during the First World War. They pushed Ukrainian troops to defend every square meter of ground in “last stand” situations. Ironically, the West has only made the Russians’ job easier.

There is an additional problem—retreat without air support is difficult to impossible and entails heavy losses. This problem has been in the making since 2014. The US/NATO advisers assumed the Russians would foolishly rush the massive Ukrainian defenses and be slaughtered.

In fact, as with the war on terror, Westerners see the enemy as they would like him to be, not as he is. As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, this is the best recipe for losing a war.

The West does not want to see the situation as it really is. The Russian-speaking coalition has launched its offensive with an overall strength inferior to that of the Ukrainians in a ratio of 1-2:1. To be successful when you are outnumbered, you must create local and temporary superiorities by quickly moving your forces on the battlefield.

This is what the Russians call “operational art” (operativnoe iskoustvo). This notion is poorly understood in the West. The term “operational” used in NATO has two translations in Russian: “operative” (which refers to a command level) and “operational” (which defines a condition). It is the art of maneuvering military formations, much like a chess game, in order to defeat a superior opponent.

For example, the operation around Kiev was not intended to “deceive” the Ukrainians (and the West) about their intentions, but to force the Ukrainian army to keep large forces around the capital and thus “pin them down.” In technical terms, this is what is called a “shaping operation.” Contrary to the analysis of some “experts,” it was not a “deception operation,” which would have been conceived very differently and would have involved much larger forces. The aim was to prevent a reinforcement of the main body of the Ukrainian forces in the Donbass.

The main lesson of this war at this stage confirms what we know since the Second World War: the Russians master the operational art.

TP: Questions about Russia’s military raises the obvious question—how good is Ukraine’s military today? And more importantly, why do we not hear so much about the Ukrainian army?

JB: The Ukrainian servicemen are certainly brave soldiers who perform their duty conscientiously and courageously. But my personal experience shows that in almost every crisis, the problem is at the head. The inability to understand the opponent and his logic and to have a clear picture of the actual situation is the main reason for failures.

Since the beginning of the Russian offensive, we can distinguish two ways of conducting the war. On the Ukrainian side, the war is waged in the political and informational spaces, while on the Russian side the war is waged in the physical and operational space. ... The trouble is that at the end of the day, the reality of the terrain prevails.

On the Russian side, decisions are made by the military, while on the Ukrainian side, Zelensky is omnipresent and the central element in the conduct of the war.

The Ukrainian army has been extensively trained by American, British and Canadian officers since 2014. The trouble is that for over 20 years, Westerners have been fighting armed groups and scattered adversaries and engaged entire armies against individuals. They fight wars at the tactical level and somehow have lost the ability to fight at the strategic and operative levels. This explains partly why Ukraine is waging its war at this level.

But there is a more conceptual dimension. Zelensky and the West see war as a numerical and technological balance of forces. This is why, since 2014, the Ukrainians have never tried to seduce the rebels and they now think that the solution will come from the weapons supplied by the West. The West provided Ukraine with a few dozen M777 guns and HIMARS and MLRS missile launchers, while Ukraine had several thousand equivalent artillery pieces in February. The Russian concept of “correlation of forces,” takes into account many more factors and is more holistic than the Western approach. That is why the Russians are winning.

The so-called “counter-offensives” proclaimed by Ukraine and the West in Kharkov and Kherson in April-May were merely “counter-attacks.” The difference between the two is that counter-offensive is an operational notion, while counter-attack is a tactical notion, which is much more limited in scope.

Because Russia’s economy was thought to be comparable to Italy’s, it was assumed that it would be equally vulnerable. Thus, the West—and the Ukrainians—thought that economic sanctions and political isolation of Russia would quickly cause its collapse, without passing through a military defeat. Indeed, this is what we understand from the interview of Oleksei Arestovich, Zelensky’s advisor and spokesman, in March 2019.

As Arestovich said, the idea was that the defeat of Russia would be Ukraine’s entry ticket to NATO. So, the Ukrainians were pushed to prepare an offensive in the Donbass in order to make Russia react, and thus obtain an easy defeat through devastating sanctions. This is cynical and shows how much the West—led by the Americans—has misused Ukraine for its own objectives.

The result is that the Ukrainians did not seek Ukraine’s victory, but Russia’s defeat. This is very different and explains the Western narrative from the first days of the Russian offensive, which prophesied this defeat.

But the reality is that the sanctions did not work as expected, and Ukraine found itself dragged into combats that it had provoked, but for which it was not prepared to fight for so long.