A Peculiar Math.

Mr. Burns, CIA Director, gives his "estimates". 

ASPEN, Colorado (Reuters) -The United States estimates that Russian casualties in Ukraine so far have reached around 15,000 killed and perhaps 45,000 wounded, CIA Director William Burns said on Wednesday, adding that Ukraine has also endured significant casualties. Nearly five months since President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Russia's neighbor, its forces are grinding through the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and occupy around a fifth of the country. Burns, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, said those gains have come at great cost.

Burns, who heads an organization which HAS to know, which most of the time is not the case nowadays, heard about this ratio--a very rough one--of one to three of KIAs to wounded during combat and, using his math skills decided to come up with a base number of Russian forces' KIAs and then multiply it by 3. So, 15,000 KIAS x 3 = 45,000 wounded. Sure. The only issue here is that Burns, evidently, doesn't understand how this works in real life and what it takes to provide hospitalization and transportation of those both KIAs and wounded to the rear areas and there is no med-evac activity, even through open sources (remember, OSINT--Open Source Intelligence), which is even remotely commensurate to Burns' claims. 

Yes, there are KIAs and wounded on Russian side, not to mention the fact that the bulk of those also comes from LDNR militias, but if Mr. Burns would be a serious and responsible professional, not an average US political appointee who needs to lie for a living, the real number would have been--estimates only--about 15,000 wounded and, by following this 1 to 3 ratio, about 5,000 KIAs on Russian side. But then again, even the brief look at the American "elites" today tells one everything one needs to know. When even Pentagon begins to express grave concern:

President Biden issued some surprise comments weighing in on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's upcoming Taiwan trip, telling reporters Wednesday that the US military think's it's "not a good idea" for her to visit the island.When asked specifically about the potential trip which days ago began to widely be reported, earning condemnation and a warning of "forceful measures" from China, Biden said, "The military thinks it’s not a good idea right now, but I don’t know what the status of it is.”

Pelosi also wants to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, so, as you can see, the legislative activity in the House is at its peak and this old mummy is getting involved fully into foreign policy without having a clue what she is doing, which is a normal Modus Operandi for Washington. 

In related news, what everyone knows in Russia has been reiterated today (in Russian)--HIMARS are controlled by NATO personnel and the tactics is pretty primitive: "hide" HIMARS rockets behind VSU's salvo of MLRS (such as Smerch or what have you), allow local Russian AD to expend its missiles shooting initial salvo down and then launch HIMARS rockets while Russian AD complexes reload. Well, it is a kindergarten thinking which already was addressed by "portioning" of AD assets in any given locality, reserving missiles for shooting down HIMARS missiles. They are being shot down in large numbers. Even when one considers almost real time targeting provided by the US to VSU, Pentagon doesn't have a concept of modern and effective front line air defense and the only thing which they have going for them is the high mobility of HIMARS which leave the position immediately after the launch. Nothing new, really. In general, this is the extent to which Pentagon realistically can get involved without beginning to lose personnel and assets in Middle East. That is easily arranged. 

Now they want to send combat aircraft to 404.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is working to decide how best to train Ukraine’s pilots as the embattled nation’s air force looks to modernize. In comments at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Wednesday, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said Ukraine will need to shift its air force away from legacy Russian MiG and Sukhoi fighters and toward more modern Western-made aircraft. With the supply of Russian spare parts for MiGs cut off, Brown said, Ukraine will have to eventually move to other fighters. It remains to be seen which platforms make sense, he said, but there are many possibilities — not just U.S.-made fighters such as the F-15 and F-16, but the Eurofighter, Swedish Gripen and French Rafale could also be options for Ukraine’s air force. “Part of this is understanding where Ukraine wants to go, and how we meet them where they are,” Brown said. “All of our allies and partners have an interest in ensuring Ukraine can provide for its own security.” Later at Aspen, asked why the U.S. doesn’t give Ukraine some of its aging A-10 Warthogs — which the Air Force has long sought to retire — Kendall said it’s “largely up to Ukraine” to decide the aircraft it wants.

Sure, let those arrive to Ukraine, LOL. I am positive there are many Russian pilots of Su-35s and Su-30SM (will omit now Su-57s) and crews of S-400s and S-300V4s who are salivating at the possibility to down a few F-15s or Rafales. Per A-10, it is not even serious, A-10 is a good CAS aircraft, but it is very slow and it never faced anything like S1 Pantsir or Tor M2, let alone Buk-M3. Not to mention first rate air force. But sure. Looks like this Aspen Forum was one huge concentrated fantastical thinking and butt-hurt gathering. 

Meanwhile Ukies and Washington continue to masturbate to Russian mobilization in the piece from Ukie propaganda outlet titled: General mobilization in Russia would mean Putin's failure in Ukraine – Ukraine’s intelligence

According to the official, the Kremlin regime now considers it better to conduct so-called covert mobilization, which does not require the declaration of martial law, as well as recruiting mercenaries. Skibitsky confirmed that Russian losses in Ukraine are significant, but at the same time not critical, since Russia has large mobilization resources. "But we already see the problems they have," he said.

But for some reason this, oh so desired, mobilization doesn't come. I addressed this issue yesterday in my latest video and the unraveling of the guiding myths of America's self-proclaimed global status continues with acceleration and desperation now oozes from every pore of what's left of the contemporary so called governance in the United States. We ain't seen nothing yet.

The Endspiel.

This, in chess, is called "the end game". Primarily in chess, in other sports and war they use this term too.  

The Islamic Republic of Iran has officially submitted its application to join the group of five emerging economies made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, the foreign ministry in Tehran announced on Monday. The move comes after the Iranian president addressed the BRICS summit last week. While BRICS is not a treaty bloc, it has a “very creative mechanism with broad aspects,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday, according to the Tasnim news agency. He added that Tehran has already had “a series of consultations” with BRICS about the application. Iran’s membership would “add value” for everyone involved, said Khatibzadeh, noting that BRICS members account for up to 30% of the world’s GDP and 40% of the global population. 

The isolation of the West continues, hence desperate (and stupid, I may add) attempts to "blockade"  Kaliningrad, which will cost Lithuania her economy and no, Russia will not "follow" the US plan to start a war in Europe to allow the US repeat its saving from catastrophe on the eve of the WW II, which DID save the US. Washington's primitive historic and geopolitical thinking is so transparent that Russia had very little problem anticipating West's behavior. Here is one example out of many. 

Here is Marshal Rokossovsky ferry. She is a very respectable vessel of 12,000 tons dead weight and she is already servicing the route Ust-Luga--Kaliningrad. Her sister-ship Marshal Chernyahovsky is undergoing sea trials as I type this. Both ferries are designed in St. Petersburg but were constructed at Turkish shipyard Kuzey Star, because Russian shipyards are simply too busy. More vessels of similar class are getting ready to join this route which is already serviced (IIRC--please check yourself) by other 9 vessels. 

Will NATO fleets dare to interdict this SLOC? Do not put it past desperate Washington, but then again, they will have to consider Russia's Baltic Fleet and those pesky Kinzhals, Zircons and Onixes with Kalibers, which can sink any combination of NATO navies not only within Baltic Sea but in their respective bases. The argument that this way of supplying Kaliningrad is more expensive than by rail is absolutely invalid. Yes, it is more expensive--but Russia will subsidize and she is awash in cash, in fact many in Russia do not want such a strong Ruble too--but it is more expensive for the peace time, it is not a peace time and this mode of supplying the Kaliningrad exclave works just fine. 

And, of course, Argentina applying to BRICS and Bolsonaro being on the phone with Putin constantly gives a hint that Russia doesn't view American "sphere of interest" as untouchable. It is the end game for the United States and its lapdogs from EU. So much so that this proverbial fantastical thinking begins to dominate everything in the West. 

The idea of putting a price cap on Russian oil exports in order to keep the oil flowing but reduce the Kremlin's revenues from it might sound rather exotic at first glance—but the idea has been around for a few weeks now. It did just get a major push at the G7 meeting that began last weekend, but the challenges to its implementation are quite substantial. An oil price cap for Russian crude was first floated during talks between U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and EU officials on finding a solution for the inflation problem while limiting Russian oil revenues. It quickly became clear that limiting Russian oil exports was not the best idea. The United States, the UK, and, more recently, the EU, have all imposed bans on the imports of Russian oil and oil products, but China and India have stepped up their purchases as Russian crude trades at a sharp discount to the international benchmark. The EU, meanwhile, is buying up Russian fuels ahead of the embargo that will come into effect at the end of the year.

You know what I am doing with these so called "policies"? Right, I declare myself a Superman and then call on Sergei Victorovich Lavrov to give a short summary of the situation with Western "elites". 

For those who are new to my blog, this is Lavrov at press-conference with Saudi foreign minister a few years back, where he reacts to this minister's statement by whispering--Дебилы, блядь--Imbeciles, fuck. Applies fully to the West. In fact, even more so.

Fantastical Thinking As MO...

Fantastical thinking began to dominate Western political mind somewhere around early 1990s and it never subsided. Many do think fantastically, it is nothing new, daydreaming is one such example, or, for that matter, "discussions" on the "tactics" of Maverick from the latest Top Gun, as if people are talking not about purely fictional BS but about serious tactical and operational reality. But it is one thing when some 35+ years old boy discusses Maverick's maneuvers in the latest flick, totally another when the admiral (right) of the US Navy parades himself as a clown.

Ukraine will determine the terms of any peace deal with Russia, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told the state-run Voice of America broadcaster on Friday. While others have suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should cede some territory for peace, Kirby said Washington is preparing for what could be “a prolonged conflict.”... Kirby insisted that Ukraine can fight on, and told Voice of America that “Mr. Zelensky is going to get to determine what victory looks like.” “Of course, we want Ukraine to succeed on the battlefield, and we want them to succeed at the negotiating table, if and when it comes to that,” Kirby continued. “We’re not at that stage right now. But we believe that President Zelensky is the one who gets to determine what victory looks like. “Our job is to make sure that he has the tools available to him to do that in the most efficient, effective way.”

Of course, Mr. Kirby's admiral rank is a some kind of accident, because his resume is rather subdued. And one has to wonder why he remained a restricted line officer, not eligible for command at Sea, before going to... PR. Obviously spewing BS came naturally to him and that is why he thinks fantastically and continues to propagate things so "advanced" for real military science and real military professionals, that the issue arises not about his professional adequacy which is non-existent, but of his mental state, because he introduces a new concept: utterly defeated power dictating terms of peace. In related news, Clausewitz was proven wrong by Kirby because classic Clausewitz dictum about war's main objective being "to compel the enemy to do our will" by means of war, a euphemism for defeating the enemy, is, apparently wrong. Mr. Kirby and many US generals are, evidently, convinced about it now. 

Take fantastical thinking by such US military "analysts" as Generals Petraeus or Keane and you will see that Mr. Kirby is not alone. I will omit here description, done on many occasions by me, of psychiatric reasons for such a fantastical thinking, but here is truly genuine US combat officer who for decades is consistent in his views, many of which (not all) were correct, speaking about why when meeting with Churchill in Moscow in August 1942 (where Sir Winston went to inform Stalin personally that there will be no Second Front), Stalin noted that "Great Britain is a sea animal, Russia is a land animal."

MacGregor speaks here about what Glantz and House spoke for decades--a complete flipping of WW II history from feet to the head. Many, even in Pentagon, still cannot grasp the scale and the scope of Soviet operations in WW II and that is why so many in the West toil tirelessly to rewrite the history of WW II in such a way as to arrive to Earl Ziemke's conclusion that Nazis were defeated on the secondary theaters of operations or on June 6, 1944 with D-Day commencing. But I am ON RECORD for many years, the US Army never fought anything comparable in scale and scope of present day SMO. Unless one wants to insist that, not taking anything away from heroism of Allied soldiers or tactical and operational capability of Allied officers, Battle of the Bulge eclipses Stalingrad, Kursk or famous "10 Stalin's Strikes", including full demolition of Wehrmacht starting with Operation Bagration. Here is David Eisenhower, the grandson. 

The explanation for consistent failure to forecast or anticipate anything from Russia is easy: it is a combination of arrogance and incompetence, exacerbated by a deep seated complex of inferiority. That is why this history of the events will be steadily erased from the Western historiography until the world of fantastical history, in which the United States is omnipotent and omnipresent power "for good" will substitute reality. 

Meanwhile, while Kiev is getting ready to "dictate" terms of peace (a euphemism for the US feeling a coming defeat and, thus, BSing people), Russian forces, who, evidently, "ran out of ammo" and smart munitions, today wiped out three brigades, by means of massive strike by stand-off weapons, of VSU, namely 65th, 66th motor-rifle brigades and 46th aeromobile brigade (in Russian). Somebody, explain to BoJo and Kirby that Russia fights "economically" to save as many civilians as possible, but can turn on the pain dial to more than 11 and somebody in the West begins to recognize it. As per Russian Navy, since post-WW II period it was, is and will remain a classic Sea Denial force with very limited "power projection" capability--two-three serious (maybe four) LHDs and, maybe, two-three aircraft carriers, not counting Kuznetsov. How they will look like? Who knows. Russia "... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all." What a historic irony that John Quincy Adams unwittingly meant Russia of 2022, not just the United States of 1821.

As You All Know...

... from the most honest and freest American-Ukrainian MSM (yes, the US MSM are disinformation machine and run on Ukie BS "intel") Putin "has a cancer", Shoigu is, probably, dead and Valery Gerasimov was targeted in 404 and was wounded by victorious 404 forces. Larry Johnson has already elaborated on Putin's "cancer":

Guess what? The United States Intelligence Community also has weighed in and reportedly believes that some dark days lie in store for Vladimir. Their source? Open Source media. In other words, the alleged Russian General posting on Telegram. If you are a U.S. tax payer and wonder what the Intel Community is doing with your hard earned dollars you now have a partial answer–they are reading social media. Unclassified by the way until they slap a TS on a document that they are sending to Dementia Joe passing on the Telegram gossip.

Judging by the US MSM "experts" in combined arms warfare or intel, who exhibit a high school level of "understanding" of the warfare and intel with propaganda, most of them, it seems, have a fantastical thinking. They, as good ol' Caucasus proverb says, think that if they repeat the BS many times it will come true. You know, if you say Baklava 100 times you will eventually start tasting sweetness in your mouth. That both underscores utter incompetence and desperation. But that's Putin's "cancer" thing. 

Now dead Shoigu and wounded Gerasimov seem today to be very much alive and unscathed, and, in fact, in good working mood while holding a selector (conference) meeting in MoD. Obviously, the video is not available on YouTube yet, but you can watch it by following the hyperlink below and here is what important in this TASS report:

МОСКВА, 4 мая. /ТАСС/. Прибывшие на Украину транспортные средства НАТО с оружием и амуницией для Вооруженных сил Украины (ВСУ) будут уничтожаться, заявил в среду глава Минобороны РФ Сергей Шойгу на селекторном совещании."США и их союзники по НАТО продолжают накачивать Украину оружием", - сказал Шойгу. Он отметил,  что любой транспорт альянса, который прибыл на территорию страны с вооружением или материальными средствами для нужд вооруженных сил Украины, рассматривается как законная цель для поражения.По словам Шойгу, в ходе спецоперации военнослужащие России обеспечивают безопасность населения Донбасса, проявляют отвагу и мужество и с честью исполняют свой воинский долг. "Российские вооруженные силы продолжат выполнять все задачи, поставленные верховным главнокомандующим", - заявил министр.

Translation:  MOSCOW, 4 May. /TASS/. NATO transports with weapons and ammunition for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) that arrived in Ukraine will be destroyed, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Wednesday at a conference call. "The United States and its NATO allies continue to pump weapons into Ukraine," Shoigu said. He noted that any alliance transport that arrived on the territory of the country with weapons or materiel for the needs of the armed forces of Ukraine is considered a legitimate target for destruction. According to Shoigu, during the special operation, the Russian military ensure the safety of the population of Donbass, show courage and courage and honorably fulfill their military duty. "The Russian Armed Forces will continue to fulfill all the tasks set by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief," the minister said.

This is really bad news to NATO, because even if to consider salvos by supersonic (Mach-2.8+) P-800 Onyx missiles, which exhibited since Syria and incredible, not just anti-shipping capability and range of well in excess of 800 kilometers (get a hint from 3M22 Zircon) or M=9, 2000 kilometer range Kinzhal any "airlift" to 404 by NATO looks like this for Onyx alone. 

Do not also forget that Iskander uses TWO types of missiles. Considering the fact that Russia has an excellent space-based intel and recon assets, targeting will not be a problem. If the US (and its NATO poodles) think that they can supply Nazi regime in Kiev with, quite useless, actually, weapons, Russia, certainly, has the right to cut those "lines of communications", including air transports. For MiG-31 K with Kinzhal taking off from Rostov-on-Don it would take approximately 10-12 minutes to take off and reach the launch point in about 1000 kilometers of any air field in Western Ukraine and that gives any NATO transport about 10-12 min. + around 300 seconds (or about 5 minutes) to reach the target. Right, about 17 minutes max. Make your own conclusion on the probability of transport aircraft with weapons survivability. After all, it takes a significant time to unload one, well in excess of 17 minutes. In the end, any airfield could easily be wiped off the map and that is what Shoigu talked about today. 

You know, about playing hard. Ask Congressman Adam Kizinger if he wants to pilot one of those C-17s to Ukraine. He wanted to fight Russia, let him experience a real war. It is not the same as flying transports into Iraq or Afghanistan.