What A Load Of Contrived BS.

I repeat--you cannot explain to 99.99% of people within the Beltway what real war is, how military strategy is subordinated to the strategy of the state (meaning geopolitics in a larger sense). Lastly, you cannot explain it to the average US MSM journo or "analysts" (or "expert") which is a euphemism for the general lack of culture and ignorance.  

The war in Ukraine is reaching a new phase, and US strategy is undergoing an important shift. Fears of Russian nuclear escalation are receding as fears of a long war featuring unrelenting attrition are increasing. So President Joe Biden’s administration is ramping up support for Ukraine now in hopes of producing an eventual diplomatic resolution — an “escalate to de-escalate” strategy that may prove very difficult to execute. Nearly a year into the war, uncertainty about its course is greater than ever. For the first six months, Russia had the initiative: The major questions were when, where and with what success it would attack. Over the following five months, Ukraine had the initiative, and analysts tried to divine the location and prospects of its counteroffensives.

Hal Brands, read my lips--the United States can not do "strategy", it never could after WW II. It took SMO to expose utter incompetence of the US "elites" with all their military, diplomatic and academic institutions. It is a parade of the ambitious amateurs who are no good for any serious task of statesmanship, despite all their hefty fraudulent degrees. US "diplomacy" is a butt of jokes among the rest of the world, US military cannot fight a serious combined arms conflict with peer, without sustaining catastrophic losses, and now even NYT--this propaganda sewer is forced to admit:

KYIV, Ukraine — Andrew Milburn, a former American Marine colonel and leader of the Mozart Group, stood in a chilly meeting room on the second floor of an apartment building in Kyiv about to deliver some bad news. In front of him sat half a dozen men who had traveled to Ukraine on their own dime to work for him.

“Guys, I’m gutted,” he said. “The Mozart Group is dead.”

The men stared back at him with blank faces.

One asked as he walked toward the door, “What should I do with my helmet?”

The Mozart Group, one of the most prominent, private American military organizations in Ukraine, has collapsed under a cloud of accusations ranging from financial improprieties to alcohol-addled misjudgments. Its struggles provide a revealing window into the world of foreign volunteer groups that have flocked to Ukraine with noble intentions only to be tripped up by the stresses of managing a complicated enterprise in a war zone.

Aw, what a drama. Did anybody tell those guys high on kicking doors of the Iraqi and Afghani villagers' houses that their "skills" and "experiences" are not applicable in the REAL war combat zone, against the enemy which is armed to the hilt and, quoting ZZ Top, "knows how to use it." In fact is very good at fighting at any tactical and operational levels, while in terms of strategy... That is really something else when speaking on the 80th Anniversary of the conclusion of the Stalingrad Battle.  

Ukraine’s plans to seize Crimea from Russia are unlikely to succeed in the near future, lawmakers in the US House Armed Services Committee were told at a classified meeting with the Defense Department, according to Politico. The outlet reports that it spoke to four people who disclosed details from the meeting but wished to remain anonymous. Although the sources did not explain what had led defense officials to their assessment, they stated that the main assertion was that Ukraine does not have the capability to drive Russian forces out of the peninsula. Nor do they expect that situation to change anytime soon. If Kiev attempts such an operation, its success cannot be guaranteed, one of the sources noted. Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh declined to comment on the classified briefing or discuss “hypotheticals or speculate on potential future operations.” However, Singh claimed that Ukraine’s “ability to fight and take back sovereign territory… speaks for itself.” 

There is a famous Lenin's slogan: Study warfare in the most genuine way (Учиться военному делу настоящим образом). They never learned shit, evidently, in Washington.

About Energy, Again.

You already heard (read) Putin's Executive Order on sales of oil, which effectively cuts the EU and the US off the Russia's oil. No, I mean it--the idiots thought that Russia will kneel and crawl back to Washington to ask for forgiveness. To demonstrate the degree of imbecility--there is no other term for description of West's "elites'" abilities--Die Welt, the rag from the country which is being obliterated economically as I type this, decided to "analyze" Russia's economy. 

Russlands Wirtschaft hält den westlichen Sanktionen besser stand als gedacht. Neben den Rohstoffpreisen sind dafür vor allem zwei Gruppen mit geradezu idealen Fähigkeiten verantwortlich. Sie lehnen Putins aggressive Außenpolitik tendenziell eher ab und verfolgen eine Mission.  

Translation: Russia's economy is holding up better than expected against Western sanctions. In addition to raw material prices, two groups with almost ideal skills are primarily responsible for this. They tend to reject Putin's aggressive foreign policy and are pursuing a mission.

Die Welt means, of course, drum roll... drum rolling... German Gref and Elvira Nabiullina. You see, this is another proof that you cannot fix stupid. 99% of graduates of Western "economics" departments are morons with zero grasp of modern world, and you know that I speak and write about it non-stop. Herr Steiner who wrote this BS, and whose "education" is in Philology and Russian Literature, is a classic example of European "expert" who has no clue. Most of them don't, yet he waxes strategic just because he may have read Crime and Punishment in Russian and dined with Moscow's beau monde, who themselves are nothing more than parrots of West's ideological platitudes. 

Meanwhile,

Russia plans to ramp up geological prospecting and exploration of hydrocarbons - gas in particular - in the country’s east as it looks to increase supplies of gas to Asian partners, Russian Natural Resources and Environment Minister Alexander Kozlov has revealed in an interview.“We have set a priority for ourselves in geological prospecting and exploration and in aiding the search for mineral resources, particularly hydrocarbons, to be geographically closer to future consumers and transport infrastructure. For example, the Power of Siberia pipeline, gas from which goes to China. We have made the decision to carry out geological exploration throughout Yakutia and to do everything to [understand the production potential] in relation to hydrocarbons, particularly with gas, to be known. So that there’s not one, but more pipelines going in the eastern direction. Because this is guaranteed revenue for our country, guaranteed sales to a major partner,” Kozlov said.

Somebody, please, explain to cretins in Die Welt that Germany's, and Europe's, prosperity and economic development in the last half-a-century was based almost entirely on Soviet/Russian affordable energy. Hey, when even such moron as Borrell admits:

"Our prosperity was based on China and Russia. [Russian] Energy and [Chinese] market. And clearly, today we have to find new ways for energy, from inside European Union as much as we can because we should not change one dependency by another. The best energy is the one that you produce at home. And this will produce a strong restructuring of our economy. That’s for sure, people are not aware of that but the fact that Russia and China are no longer the ones that were for our economic development will require a strong restructuring of our economy," Borrell said at the annual conference of EU Ambassadors in Brussels.

One has to take a heed, not to mention to at least try to study basic Physics, especially molecular theory of matter and thermodynamics to understand why EU "prosperity" is a thing of the past. One cannot fight laws of physics by issuing political proclamations--the only skill Western political and "intellectual" class have. 

That brings us to the issue of SMO and why it is going this way and not the other--very simple, Russia is simply waiting. Waiting for what, you may ask? Obviously for irreversible political changes precipitated by military-economic ones. That is why another fine product of the West's BS academics, Charles Kennedy, reacts so sorely to Mr. Medvedev's fun predictions:

Medvedev’s Absurd Predictions: $150 Oil, A U.S. Civil War, And EU Collapse. 

I don't see any absurdity in Medvedev's predictions headlined in the title of Kennedy's piece, because EU is slated for collapse because contradictions between EU nations are unsolvable and we all already see how those cracks begin to widen. Per US civil war, Mr. Kennedy better look around and note America's internal dynamics:

More than half of Americans expect that a civil war will erupt in the United States sometime in the near future, according to a study designed by a group of academics associated with the University of California Davis Violence Prevention Research Program and the California Firearm Violence Research Center. When asked to respond to the statement "In the next few years, there will be a civil war in the United States," 47.8 percent of respondents chose "Do not agree." 36.4 percent said they "somewhat" agreed with the statement, 8.4 percent agreed "strongly," and 5.3 percent agreed "very strongly." The remaining 2.1 percent chose not to respond.

After all, Medvedev, being a troll of the 80th Level, based his predictions on a very real economic and social dynamics of the modern combined West, and it is, pardon my French, a very shitty dynamics all around. Ah, yes, good ol' Dmitry also used to be Russia's both Prime Minister and President and in such a capacity had, still does, the access to the highest state secrets of Russia and knows things we don't know. 

And finally to the "revelations" of the Mozart Group's big honcho about Ukraine:

“A corrupt, fucked up society. I’m not a big fan of Ukraine. Ukrainians violate the Hague Convention. They should not film their crimes on video, so as not to attract the attention of the media. Yes, Ukrainians are violating… They film a number of things they do with prisoners of war, violating the law on military conflicts. Guys, the murder of Russian prisoners (a common thing). It’s not about Ukraine. I had the Ukrainian flag tied to my bag, but I’m not “Oh my God, Ukraine is so awesome!” No, cause… fucked up people are running Ukraine!”

Welcome to the real world and war, pal. I bet they didn't teach this in your educational facilities and USMC. What law of military conflict are you talking about, Colonel? SS were using Russian children for target practice in occupied USSR in WW II, Chechen and US funded separatists loved to cut heads and castrate POWs, so do VSU people. Rape and robbery is their natural MO. Yes, Colonel, it is not about Ukraine, it is about the US desperately grasping at the last straw of her grossly inflated self-proclaimed hegemony and because of that willing to use any means, including genocide to prolong own agony, by inflicting it on millions upon millions of other people. "O, say, can you see..."