Oh, No! Say It Ain't So.

Nah, I enjoy this shit, honestly))

This week’s Nato summit in the Hague was marred by a tragic irony. Donald Trump achieved a major diplomatic victory as his calls for increased European defence spending converted into reality. ... While Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary-general, repeated the age-old trope about Ukraine’s irreversible path towards alliance membership, his words felt hollower than ever before. The Nato summit’s dismissal of Ukraine’s concerns is emblematic of an alarming broader trend. After more than three years of attritional war with Russia, Ukraine finds itself lacking the manpower and weaponry to triumph. During their inflammatory Oval Office meeting with Zelensky, Trump warned that Ukraine was “running low on soldiers” and JD Vance, his vice-president, railed against forced conscription on the Ukrainian streets.

As they say--cope harder, losers. 

Larry! LOL!

 The best opening of analysis of the month))) 

The hot political event this year is the NATO Summit in Washington, DC. All Western world leaders showed up, not to discuss NATO’s future, but to see if Joe Biden survives the meetings without dumping a load in his Depends or keeling over dead. Sort of the same reason people attend a car race — i.e., they are waiting for the crash. Nothing like a fiery car wreck to get the adrenaline pumping.

Read the whole excellent piece at Larry's blog.  

Well, No.

Or rather--it all depends. Uncertainty and the task of resolving it in weapon systems is one thing, for that one needs a serious STEM background (engineering, usually) and modern computation and signal processing. But this kind of "uncertainty"...

A frustrated President Volodymyr Zelensky launched a furious broadside against Ukraine's NATO allies Tuesday as they began a summit still unsure how to advance Kyiv's membership bid. Zelensky, who will come to Vilnius during the two-day summit, denounced as "absurd" the reluctance of some NATO leaders to provide a clear timetable for Ukraine to join the alliance. "Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit," Zelensky tweeted. The alliance backs Ukraine in its battle against Russia's 16-month-old invasion, but several members — notably US President Joe Biden — oppose giving Ukraine a timetable for membership.

... actually is very "certain". In fact, there is no uncertainty here whatsoever, while weakness was there (still is) from the get go. Same goes for NATO "support" for 404 because here basic math and physics play role and the US simply doesn't want those pictures of burning Abrams tanks and shot down F-16, F-15, F-35 et al being demonstrated for the whole world to see. Simple as that. You see, no uncertainty. 

Now about this:

Arriving at the talks, President Emmanuel Macron said France would join Britain in supplying long-range cruise missiles to allow Ukraine to strike Russian targets in depth.

Now, I think it might be the time for Russia to look attentively at France and her assets as potential targets. What is it going to be? I am sure General Staff has ideas. The best way to deal with hysterical chihuahua is to kick it under the couch. But, in general, the first day of NATO "summit" confirmed that NATO "doesn't want", a euphemism for being scared shitless, the war with Russia. NATO simply has no real resources for that. Russia does and that makes all the difference. Per NATO ramping anything up--wet dreams, once one considers the state of economy of combined West. 

Meanwhile, the old fool is still around:

Veteran US statesman Henry Kissinger said he wouldn’t criticize Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, according to a video published by a pair of Russian pranksters. The centenarian thought he was talking to the Ukrainian leader himself. The duo, who go by stage names Vovan and Lexus, posed as the Ukrainian leader during a video conference with Kissinger, they claimed on Monday. A full hour-long episode of their show, which was based on the prank, was released on social media the next day. According to one of the shown clips, at one point they asked Kissinger whether he believed Moscow blew up its own undersea energy links with Germany last September. At first the centennial former US official seemed hesitant to respond, but the fake Zelensky insisted. “I, frankly, have thought it was you,” Kissinger finally said, according to the dubbed over translation of the exchange.

This relic passes in the West for the wise statesman. Everything you need to know...

Yeah, Yeah, Sure.

What those boys and girls in Pentagon and London (and other chihuahua capitals of NATO) do not understand that Russians can calculate better than them combined in the field which matters in real life: operational and strategic planning. Especially a strategic one. It all reminds now a famous Russian cyclical nursery rhyme about the priest and his dog. 

The priest had a dog,
And he loved her.
The dog ate a piece of meat,
He killed her.
He buried her in the ground,
And he wrote an inscription...
(Then begin again.)

And so is NATO and 404.  Politico, which is a herald of every possible perversion policy from DNC and the White House reports:

A small group of Western allies are engaged in “advanced” and “frantic, last-minute” negotiations to finalize a security assurance declaration for Ukraine ahead of this week’s NATO summit in Lithuania, according to four officials familiar with the talks. For weeks, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany have been discussing the issue with Kyiv, and have also reached out to other allies in NATO, the EU and the G7. The idea is to create an “umbrella” for all countries willing to provide Ukraine with ongoing military aid, even if the details vary from country to country. The effort is part of broader negotiations at NATO and among several groups of nations over how Western allies should display long-term support for Ukraine. 

And the fundamental question in this geopolitical The priest had a dog is: supply with what? Militarily the writing on the wall is already there. As Larry noted a few days ago:

Ukraine’s attempt at a Hail Mary (the football play not the Catholic prayer) victory by seizing swaths of territory from the Russians is a failure. The Russians have intercepted every move and Ukraine’s negligible advances are counted in single digit kilometers along with piles of Ukrainian corpses and burned out huld of Western supplied tanks and armored personnel carriers.  

Today, the boy has corroborated while speaking to ABC News. And the US providing cluster munitions to 404 is just another sign of desperation and admitted fact that NATO simply ran out of other, less "controversial", types. I am sure General Staff knew it and anticipated it--West's "economic data" is largely a fiction, as is industrial capacity and this is the only thing which matters in serious geopolitical game. Generally speaking, it makes no difference whatsoever for the outcome but it also illuminates well Russia's strategic goals, one of which is demilitarization of NATO. Demilitarization of NATO means running it out of crucial military materiel and that is why I am getting really tired listening to US supplying "cutting edge" weapons. Truth is, the US has no cutting edge weapons unless one counts a rumbling 70 ton pile of metal such as M1 Abrams of F-35 a cutting edge. Patriot PAC3 IS a "cutting edge" weapon--we all know how that thing performed. 

Now, RT has shown Shoigu visiting Russia's MoD firing ranges in the South. Make your own conclusions on why and factor in Russia's military production which makes one in NATO downright puny. Will Russia continue with Strategic Defense MO while continuing offensive operations at selected axis or two? Possible, but maybe not. But that is what escalation dominance gives you, while observing inner-NATO hustle and further decomposition of globalism. Bought yesterday a couple of Combat Air and Air Forces magazines (need them for the book), boy, the number of articles on Ukie Air Forces dropped to zero in the last few months. What happened, people. Alexander Mladenov, I am calling you. There was so much written on all those Ukie AF "operations" and "successes". Where did it all go? This is what happens when one "serves" for a whole year as a "reserve officer" in the Bulgarian Air Defense, whatever that means. 

Yet, good ol' boys from Top Gun: Maverick  school of advanced air combat studies continue to live in the La-La Land in which there are no true integrated air defenses, no S-500s and S-400s with Buk-M3s, no capable Air Forces and opponent's genuine netcentricity. What can I say--they are incapable of learning. Considering the fact that very many of them, inevitably, went through the US public schools' system in the last 20 years--there should be no surprise whatsoever. And so, here we are at the square one:

The priest had a dog,
And he loved her.
The dog ate a piece of meat,
He killed her.
He buried her in the ground,
And he wrote an inscription...
(Then begin again.)

Rinse, spit, repeat.

A Photo, A Contrast.

Do you know what photo is that? 

     

This is the photo of wives of the leaders of the NATO members on their gathering in Brussels. Yes, wives, all right? The dude in the second row right behind the right shoulder of always stunning Melania is also a... wife. He is a wife of Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel and his (her, its?) name is Gauthier Destenay. This is so progressive and so... fabulous. 

I was reading today about T-4 Truman Kimbro, the recipient of Congressional Medal Of Honor, who died heroically at the Northern Face of the Bulge, saving his squad, while mining, being severely wounded, the cross-roads near Rocherath during the Battle of The Bulge. 25 year old kid sacrificed his life delaying the breakthrough of German armor into the rear of his 2nd Infantry Division and saving his combat buddies. I am preparing the post on Ardennes ordeal. The contrast between this photo and what Truman Kimbro did (Russians know an outstanding heroism when they see one) and what Western Europe, which Allies liberated, has become can not be starker. What would this real American hero say, should he be alive today, about the country near which he inscribed his name into the pantheon of military heroes? This is not a "What would Jesus do" type of question, this is a real moral metric relative to which one has to judge oneself. One could see this moral bar raised again in Russia with her immense Immortal Regiment marches. But as I said before, and I will repeat it again: 

     They didn't fight at Kursk and Omaha Beach for this.