Ukraine: US - Russian Perspectives

The Saker is a site that I use sparingly, simply because it’s quite overtly pro-Russian. That’s to be expected, of course, but it often enough has a tone that I try to avoid. That’s not to suggest that the site doesn’t provide useful information, just that I try to be careful when it comes packaged in that format.

Today, pointed in this direction by Larry Johnson, I’m providing a highly edited Situation Report from The Saker. He gets into a lot of detail that I’ve omitted—particular incident reports—in favor of conveying the bigger picture.

The reason I call this post a US - Russian Perspective is because, while The Saker presents a Russian perspective, he includes a youtube video that presents a US presentation of Russian military capabilities. That perspective is derived from a lecture given at West Point. Taken together, I hope these combined perspectives will be informative. Again, a bigger picture:

He begins with reports on massive Russian strikes on infrastructure. As you’ll recall from the Austrian assessment, this is according to Russian military doctrine—preparation of the battlefield:

Dnipro has become the major logistics/resupply/reinforcement hub from western Ukraine. Everything going to the cauldron has to pass through there. And Russian reports indicate a lot of the new weaponry and mercenary troops were hit in major Dnipro strikes.

He moves on to Mariupol, with a report of Afghan special forces present (evacuated by the US from Afghanistan) and details on Ukrainian surrenders. Then he quotes @wargonzoo:

According to the @wargonzo project from sources on the Donbas frontline, based on an analysis of radio intercepts of enemy communications, there are at least two high-ranking retired American officers in the air raid shelters at Azov-Stal.

According to our sources, they entered Mariupol together with PMC “Academy” and most likely are not active employees of the Pentagon. However, at the same time they are extremely important persons for Washington.

“These officers are aware of many covert US operations in third countries and are the bearer of information that is extremely sensitive to Washington,” a source familiar with the analysis of radio intercepts told the @wargonzo project.

It is also noted that in order to conceal this “sensitive information”, the American intelligence services are ready to order the Azov militants to eliminate these two officers. Whether they are alive at the moment is not yet known for sure.”

The next item of interest (to me) is one which I mentioned a few days ago:

Russian MOD has also announced another use of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile to destroy a very fortified underground command center of the AFU south of Kramatorsk. There have been many debates here whether a hypersonic missile can be used as a bunker buster, but clearly Russia is using it as such successfully.

The relevance will be apparent a bit later.

Next:

A French journalist here describes what he saw in his time in Ukraine: https://www.bitchute.com/video/aVZeyycQgXBk/ (video with translations)

In short, he says he was shocked to see American generals running the entire show on the ground, and he says the names of them will be revealed in his new exposé in the French Figaro newspaper this week.

This is further proof that this conflict is truly NATO vs. Russia, and NATO is losing badly.

Another report states: “the United States is moving its advanced headquarters units to the western borders of Ukraine [i.e., to SE Poland]. In particular, the 5th Corps is being relocated. This suggests that it is not the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that controls military operations, but NATO officers. And we are at war not with some puppet regime in Kiev, but with the collective West.”

Again, I’m skipping a lot—some I’ve covered previously, other parts are covered succinctly in the Austrian analysis. But now we get to the US perspective I referred to above:

There is a video that is a must-watch as companion piece to the last SitRep where we discussed the Fort Benning internal U.S. Army report about the superiorities that Russian BTGs have over American equivalent BCTs.

This video is a must watch from about the 27 minute mark to the end

This army specialist gives a talk to West Point, detailing his discoveries and insights into Russian operations in Ukraine. He basically confirms every single point of the Fort Benning report but in greater detail and with explanatory visual aids, etc.

Some of the highlights of his presentation:

• Russia has the most advanced and dense, data-linked air defense on earth

• In a war against Russia, U.S. army cannot expect much air assistance for at least the first several weeks. Even stealth aircraft will not be of much use for various reasons he explains

• Russian EW (electronic warfare) is much more advanced and more ‘combat-ized’ than in the U.S. RF utilizes it in combat squads whereas U.S. barely has any and only at the divisional level

• Russian EW shuts down all communications in huge areas along the front, no cellphones, military radios etc. They break GPS links with drones, making them useless and can even fry the fuses on artillery shells midflight.

• U.S. army produces 10x the frequency emissions of a Ukrainian brigade, which would make it extremely visible to all sorts of Russian EW, drones, advanced weapons

• Russia has far more artillery than U.S. and far greater variety of munition types

And there’s much more.

… artillery is the only real effective force Ukraine has left, and is how Ukraine has created the vast majority of its kills against Russian forces. Pretty much all the western supplied weapons have been proven near worthless and the legacy soviet artillery systems continue to be the workhorses creating results. …

As for NATO and the U.S., many people don’t seem to know that the U.S. is really not as trained or powerful as they’d like you to believe. …, the U.S. has held tank competitions in Europe for the past decade called the Strong Europe Tank Challenge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Europe_Tank_Challenge

You can check the results yourself. The highest that the U.S. team ever scored was 3rd place. ...

Meanwhile, in Russia’s own Tank Biathlon hosted as part of its International Army Games (over 30 countries), here are Russia’s results for the last few years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_biathlon

All of this leads up to the assessment that the US military is not at all prepared to go to Europe and take on the Russian military, nor is any combination of NATO forces in that position. That’s the view of the lecturer, of Horton, and of Macgregor. The US force structure is no longer truly geared to a full scale conventional war. The Saker makes the further claim that Ukraine is, in many respects, more capable than any NATO military that Russia would confront:

But the western public is so propagandized they can’t even imagine that their equipment might be inferior, or worse – that their actual personnel may be inferior to those of other ‘lesser’ countries.

What most people don’t know, and wouldn’t know unless they followed the Ukraine events intimately since the 2014 days, is that when U.S. instructors first started pouring in, in the subsequent years, they were often viewed as laughing stocks by the Ukrainian veterans of the Donbass war. They felt they had nothing to learn from the “elite” U.S. instructors and in fact knew more about combat/warfare than they did.

The fact of the matter is, many Ukrainian troops are much more experienced and trained than even U.S. equivalent troops, AND the Ukrainian troops are better armed. This fact is corroborated by the video posted above in the West Point presentation, where he explains that most U.S. units don’t even have anti-aircraft systems and even Manpads in the modern U.S. army are in fact not widespread. There are videos like this one: https://www.bitchute.com/video/UUidj4zPmDAV/

Which show a Georgian legion in Ukraine, and they are FAR better armed than any U.S. equivalent army combat unit. They have every of the latest weapons, bristling with firepower. There are other photos showing 4 soldiers, each one of them armed with a manpad of a different type. The fact is, Ukraine is so flush with advanced ‘western’ weaponry that many of their teams are simply armed better than any standard western counterpart.

So this goes back to the concept that Russia is truly fighting not only a NATO equivalent force here, but arguably a force stronger than most NATO countries. The only thing Ukraine is missing is the U.S. airforce, which is at the end of the day by far the most powerful and important weapon the U.S. has. In every other category U.S. stands no chance against Russia.

Obviously, I’m in no position to assess all of this. I present it for the readers’ consideration. If we take everything The Saker says we’d be at a loss to understand why US/NATO are also claimed to be directing the Ukraine war effort—beyond providing intel.