Whole Lotta Copin' Goin' On
Yep, that’s Alex Christoforou channeling Jerry Lee Lewis. We’ll get to that below but, since this Friday afternoon post might appear a bit disjointed, here’s the thumbnail roadmap. I’ll be presenting news bits that will be addressed in the Alex’s monologue. However, since the video is for subscribers I can’t embed it and will have to summarize it—too long for a transcript now.
We’ll start with a report that Doug Macgregor repeated yesterday, speaking with Judge Napolitano. Macgregor—who certainly does have good sources—stated that the go-ahead for the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam was given by Victoria Nuland. Not a surprise.
The latest news from Ukraine is that the Ukrainian forces have launched a major new attack, although it ran into trouble and had to be paused, due to heavy losses:
Huge battle is going on on the Zaporozhye front: the AFU is advancing in waves on Pyatikhatki
After reports that the attack in the Vasilyevsky district was repulsed, the enemy brought fresh forces into battle on the Kamenskoe-Pubkoye-Pyatikhatki line.
After clearing the passage in the morning, AFU conducted artillery preparation and moved forward tanks and lightly armored vehicles to the positions of the 19th division.
In the course of the fighting, the AFU suffered significant losses, partially retreated, but continued the offensive in waves.
After fighting for landings [“footholds”?], the AFU stormtroopers managed to enter the outskirts of Pyatikhatki and cling to the first houses. At the moment, there is a sweep of the Pyatikhatki . AFU is delayed to make up for losses. At the moment, Russian Army ATGM (An anti-tank guided missile) and artillery operators are working hard. Russian Army is actively beating AFU with howitzers, MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System), "TOS-1" and mortars.
There are direct [tank on tank?] tank battles.
Russian Army infantry launched a counterattack in the village, RPG ( rocket-propelled grenade launcher) and ATGM are being used used.
Russian Army attack helicopters came to the rescue, burning the AFU equipment.
Big Serge comments:
Big Serge
@witte_sergei
I think one of the biggest surprises from the Ukrainian counteroffensive thus far has been how aggressively Russia has contested the gray zone - they laid minefields well forward of their main fortifications, and have consistently counterattacked.
3:29 PM · Jun 16, 2023
This probably accounts somewhat for Ukraine losing many vehicles still in their approach columns. Clearly the AFU did not expect the screening line to fight so hard. To be fair, I didn't either. Thus, all the fighting is taking place miles north of where we expected it.
I think what Serge means when he says “the AFU did not expect” is something like: Ukraine’s NATO planners and strategists didn’t have a clue about Russian intentions.
Big Serge reports on the latest escalation—although I haven’t seen this reported elsewhere:
Big Serge
@witte_sergei
Well, looks like the United States will be sending Ukraine about 50 ATACMs. F-16’s will be coming soon as well.
What will Kiev ask for when neither of these systems turn the war in Ukraine’s favor? US boots on the ground?
There are no brakes on this train.
12:18 PM · Jun 16, 2023
The ATACMs discourse will probably be very similar to the discussion about Leopards. Like the Leopard, there is nothing *wrong* with the ATACM per se, but they aren't going to qualitatively shift the war in the face of a robust and essentially unscathed Russian air defense.
I think we can thank the British and the Storm Shadow for breaking the taboo on donating mid-range standoff weaponry.
The reference to F-16s reminded me of a fascinating article that I saw yesterday, which has (contrary to Will’s statement) been reported in various authoritative outlets. If you read the article you’ll see that, basically, the Su-#) used it’s EW capabilities to disable electronic systems on the F-35, then flew rings around it. Old F-16s surely aren’t much of a concern for the Russian air force:
Haven't seen this reported elsewhere, but a follower just replied to one of my posts with this very interesting link: earlier this month a Russian Su-30 freaked out an F-35 pilot over the Baltic Sea, appearing "out of nowhere", as it were.
Su-30 has used Khibiny EW system while intercepting the F-35
Russian Su-30 has used Khibiny EW system while intercepting the F-35 - this is what an Italian pilot claims, telling about an incident over the Baltic Sea.
Russian media claimed this system defeated the USS Cook’s Aegis system in the Black Sea in April 2014. Don't know if this is true, but there's been a lot of buzz around the Khibiny. [Read about the USS Cook incident at this link.]
The Khibiny is an important tactical platform, along with many other systems (air, land, and sea.) Russia has a layered EW architecture from tactical to strategic—ranging from guys in the backs of trucks at the front to systems based inside Russia that range thousands of kilometers. It’s worth checking out the Murmansk-BN, Moskva-1, Krasukha-2, Krasukha-4, and Avtobaza. These operate at operational and strategic levels. Far more “reach.”
So now on to The Duran. Here’s my summary, based on what Alex Christoforou had to say about the Milley/Austin road show in Germany. Read it in light of the preceding to see the cope. If you subscribe to The Duran, the segment begins in the 9 minute range:
The NATO Defense Ministers/Military Heads meeting took place the other day in Germany, and there was a whole lotta copin' goin' on. The focus of the cope was the stalled Ukrainian "offensive" that NATO is struggling to get moving again. For public consumption, the narrative has changed. Originally the offensive was supposed to be a Ukrainian blitzkrieg that broke through the Russian defenses and drove to the Sea of Azov, cutting Russia's land bridge to Crimea. That would put Ukraine in a strong position to negotiate favorable terms with Russia. That was always a fantasy but, having promoted this fantasy publicly, NATO needed to come up with a new narrative. They couldn't call the offensive a flop and a war crime (against the hapless Ukrainian draftees being savaged by Russia's military), so they're now saying it will be a "marathon” that will, of course, involve heavy casualties. Milley and Austin both propounded this new narrative at the meeting, including the line that huge losses--of Ukrainians--were "expected".
Another part of the new narrative is that Ukrainian morale is "high" and Russian morale is "low"--according to Milley the Russian soldiers are stuck in defensive positions and "don't even know why they're there." Ukrainian morale will overcome Russia's kick ass military superiority.
Milley cited Napoleon in support of his more than dubious argument, but actually it reminded me more of this:
The French army incorporated the doctrine of élan vital into its thinking during the leadup to the First World War by arguing that the spirit of individual soldiers was more important for victory than weapons.
That was at the beginning of WW1. They learned differently as the war progressed.
Meanwhile, reports are coming in that part of the reason for the stalled offensive is that the Ukrainian soldiers were refusing to advance into the killing zone again. These reports have been popping up on multiple Ukrainian and Russian Telegram and Twitter accounts, along with videos of Ukrainians surrendering in large groups. That fits in with the capture by the Russians of intact Leopard tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles in recent days.
The Ukrainian forces have still not even reached the first of at least three Russian defensive lines. They're still stuck trying to muck their way through the grey "crumple" zone. Austin tried to throw doubt on the scope of Ukrainian losses of equipment, but Zelensky is currently making the rounds of Europe again, begging for more tanks. Zelensky, in an interview yesterday, moaned about Russian air superiority and again begged for F-16s [see above].
In Switzerland, where Zelensky was supposed to address Swiss legislators, the largest Swiss party was apparently a no-show for the event. The Swiss government will transfer tanks to Ukraine by first sending decommissioned tanks to Germany, but the half empty Swiss parliament is an obvious sign of Euro Ukraine fatigue. There’s also a rumor that the UK is begging the Ukrainians not to feed their Challenger 2 tanks into the maelstrom, fearing that their destruction will be bad for the export market. Israel will also be sending older Merkava tanks to Ukraine--selling them to two countries, only one of which is European, which will then transfer them to Ukraine. Sounds like a good deal, although not so much for Ukraine, getting more worn out equipment.
Meanwhile, the Russian economy is projected to grow by 2% this year. The EU? Not so much. Oh, and the Czech leader suggested that Russians in the West should be given the Japanese-internment-in-the-US treatment. Really—that was the comparison he used. So much for American leadership, I guess.
Finally, for a good read that’s getting a lot of recommendations from people like Will Schryver—I like it, too—check this out:
Round Two? There Is No Round Two.
Game pretty much over in Ukraine.
Nothing earth shaking or that you haven’t already thought of, but well written and common sensical. It’s lengthy, but to offer one example, the author discusses at some length the now obvious fact that much of the collective West’s military capability is tied up in systems that are either inferior to Russian systems or are irrelevant to the type of war being waged on the ground in Ukraine. Worse, the collective West, led by the US, embraced misguided “doctrines” of warfare, and is now at a complete loss as to how to address what’s going on in Ukraine. For example, the West has invested fabulous amounts of money in developing “air superiority” fighters, but failed to understand that the Russians were going in a different direction with their layered air defense:
Because of the frightening cost of these aircraft, they have inevitably become the de facto platform for all purposes, and are expected to do everything, thus increasing the cost even further. The result is a generation of aircraft which are unlikely ever to be needed in their primary role, since they will not face an adversary that has the same doctrine, and so get pressed into service performing subsidiary roles that simpler and cheaper aircraft could do better: the equivalent of chartering a helicopter to take you to the local supermarket. In the early days of the conflict in Mali, the French Air Force used Rafales, flying out of metropolitan France and refuelled several times, to bomb Islamic State militant concentrations. One former Mission Commander calculated that it cost around a million Euros to kill a single jihadist, but the Rafale was the only aircraft available.
Thus, the West is at a massive structural and doctrinal disadvantage with airpower, and it is hard, if not impossible, to imagine what practical military tasks its air forces might successfully perform in a hypothetical conflict with Russia. There’s a good chance, in fact, that the age of the air-superiority aircraft is finally over, given the unprecedented advances in missile technology of the last few decades, and the mind numbing cost of individual airframes today. Now, it’s often said that NATO doctrine presupposes air superiority. This isn’t really true historically: in the Cold War NATO never expected to challenge, let alone overcome, Warsaw Pact control of the airspace over their own forces. Its aircraft relied on flying low and fast to survive in the most hostile air defence environment in the world, while hoping to retain at least some margin of air superiority over NATO territory. It’s truer to say that NATO has been operating for twenty years in environments where air control (and thus its fighter aircraft) are simply irrelevant, and the artillery metaphor of air power has been dominant.
Check it out.
Listening Mercouris now. He's saying that the breakthrough, to succeed, had to happen in 1-3 days. Didn't happen. Plan B seems to be kill more Ukrainians.
Mercouris: Russia Repels Ukr Attacks, Claims Controls All Contact Line