Well, About Time.

I never hid my opinion about Mr. Girkin (aka Strelkov) and I stressed not for once that not only he IS NOT a military leader--he never was one, having NO military education and having his failures in Donbass hushed over from military amateurs by his self-promotion and friendly media--but that from the start of SMO his "opinions" and "forecasts" on issues of modern geopolitics, combined arms operations, Russian Armed Forces, NATO et al were nothing more than a delirium of a bitter loser who black-mouthed Russia and "Putin's Regime" at every opportunity. He, certainly, has been able to create a sort of cult among a group of ignoramuses and for the last several years was pursuing his political ambitions, together with some other remnants of Russian Spring from Donbass, such as Pavel Gubarev, who saw a political process of integration of LDNR into Russia as a good opportunity to both enrich themselves and exercise their egos larger than cathedral. 

Well, as was pointed out for years by many in Russia: not only Girkin was a guy culpable in surrendering Slavyansk to VSU (only interference from Alexander Borodai saved Girkin from being executed in Donetsk) but his open support for 404 was becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day, including some very strong signs that he might have been the SBU asset from the get go. Well, Girkin's political career, as pathetic as it is, is over now:

A Moscow district court has ordered former Donbass militia commander Igor Strelkov to be remanded in custody until September 18, according to a press release on Friday. The controversial figure has been charged with public calls for extremist activities. Russian media earlier reported that Strelkov, who is also known by his real name, Igor Girkin, had been detained in Moscow on Friday amid allegations of extremism. Court documents show that he was charged with public calls for extremist activities made on the internet. The offense is punishable under Russian law by up to five years in prison, with a ban on occupying certain government positions for three years beyond that. The judge explained her decision by stating that Strelkov has a vast network of contacts as well as skills that could help him attempt to flee justice, RIA Novosti reported.

For Western audiences subsisting on propaganda and sensationalism it is often next to impossible to have proper perspective on such personalities or events, e.g. Prigozhin and Wagner and their blown out of proportion military "capability" while in reality sustaining catastrophic casualties. So, in the Manichean world of black and white images, the fact that Girkin is an enemy not just of Putin but of the majority of Russians and that his "military accomplishments" are rather minuscule, or that Prigozhin now is under a scrutiny by some serious people in MoD and FSB and he WILL answer for Russian heli and IL-22 pilots shot down by his "troops", is very difficult to process. Understandably so. 

But here it is, long anticipated reaction of the nation which is at war to someone who always was an enemy. Mr. Gubarev also was detained today, especially after it was disclosed that very large sums of money have been "appropriated" by this once "hero" of Russian Spring. Nobody is above the law, especially during SMO. It is also a good signal to all those "voenkors" ranging from lowlifes such as Sladkov or Pegov, to "analysts" of Rybar or Podolyaka "caliber" who have been spreading open disinformation for many months now, that times are changing. And that is about time. Needless to say that practically all of them are people who merely used their geographic location close to SMO battle-lines or large audiences primarily for promotion of their personal financial interests and egos, and discrediting by default the work of real military reporters. 

I am on record, TG channels on SMO are primarily trash, with exception of official MoD or FM channels and channels of such people like Marat Khairullin--the rest is sheer trash. That is why, as an example, I had to disagree with Scott with regards to Alexander Kotz who left his mark through supporting Maidan and providing a constant stream of BS, despite being identified as Kremlin propagandist. So, today's putting Girkin and Gubarev behind bars where both definitely belong is a good sign of Moscow's intentions to finally clean the cesspool of people who either consciously or due to sheer stupidity have been working for the enemy.

Now, for those who still continue to misread numbers of VSU losses and use a blanket term of "casualties" standing for the sum of all KIAs, MIAs, WIAs, instead of the specific category KIA--Killed in Action. Many people continue to ignore the crucial distinction in Russian MoD reports. Like this:

MoD uses the term "уничтожено" (annihilated), in terms of personnel it means KILLED. Thus the numbers presented are those of KIAs not of "casualties". Realistically MoD can only generally estimate number of wounded, but it has better documentation of KIAs, especially with modern means of objective control. Even Putin today spoke about tens of thousands KILLED (погибших) during VSU "counteroffensive" (in Russian). So, I repeat--MoD gives KIAs of VSU. That is why it is absolutely justifiable to talk now about roughly 350,000 KIAs and around 700,000 to 900,000 wounded in VSU, which amounts to 1,000,000 + casualties. The Ukie counteroffensive, thus, resulted in roughly 41,000 KIAs and about 100,000 wounded from June 4 through today, July 21. In all, roughly 140,000+ casualties. In reality, the number will be much higher and they begin to feel the pinch in Washington.

As Bernhard astutely noticed today:

There is a war happening in Europe that is, interestingly, no longer mentioned on the first two screens of the front pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times. The failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive and its lack of any viable way to win the conflict seems to be sinking in.Who wants to write or read about the huge strategic mistake the Biden administration committed when it blackmailed Ukraine as well as its other vassals, especially when the beltway gang is strongly in favor of another Biden presidency. The alternative, another round of artificially Trump-ed up chaos, seems unbearable to them.

Do not forget, that once the REAL International War Crimes Tribunal for Ukraine starts there will be many NYT, WaPo, The Telegraph, MSNBC and CNN et al mediawhores who will be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity as propaganda enablers for deaths and destruction and no amount of maneuvering and manipulation will help them, as it didn't help Girkin and Gubarev.

Bernhard Did An Excellent Write-up.

On this whole situation with VSU's "victories" and how Western media are beginning to recognize a horrendous truth (for them) behind demolishing of VSU, which at this stage is literally being pummeled into utter submission. Bernhard discusses fighting doctrines of Russia and NATO and notes (correctly):

'Western' doctrine, which is essentially U.S. doctrine, is betting on air supremacy. The enemy's air defenses get destroyed in first few days of the war. After that enemy formations get wiped out by applying a huge amount of aerial bombing against them. Russian doctrine never has believed in air supremacy. Russia itself has excellent air defenses so it knows what it is talking about. To destroy enemy formations Russia applies artillery, lots of it.

He also compares combat organization of the main fighting units of Russian and US armies and, again correctly, arrives to the state-of-the-affairs for VSU. 

Unless the defending forces are fully under armor or extremely well dug in, as they had been for eight years at the Donetsk frontline, they have no hope to hold out against Russian artillery. Since the Russian army broke through the immediate frontline the Ukrainians have lost the protection of fortified dugouts and are on the run.  None of the above is new and it was the reason why I and other could easily predicted that the Ukrainian army would lose the war.

Read the whole thing, it is an excellent write up from Moon of Alabama. 

In related news, as was anticipated, the US decided not to play with fire and the danger of own annihilation and stopped any silly talks about sending HIMARS to 404 and it is all for the better. The US still wants to send some kind of MLRS (maybe even same HIMARS) but with much shorter range munitions. As Dmitry Medvedev noted today: 

«Разумно. Иначе при атаке на наши города Вооруженные силы России исполнили бы свою угрозу и нанесли удары по центрам принятия этих преступных решений. Часть из них находится совсем не в Киеве. Что дальше – объяснять не надо»

Translation: Makes sense. Otherwise, upon attacks on our cities, Russia's Armed Forces would have delivered on their threat to strike these criminal decision making centers. Part of those centers is located absolutely not in Kiev. What would follow--no explanation is needed. 

So, there you go. Meanwhile VSU continues to do what it was doing for the last 8 years--using civilians as human shield an shelling civilian areas of liberated cities and towns in Donbass. In other news, Denmark and Netherlands decided not to pay for Russian gas in Rubles. Sure, no problem.

The threat of cutting off gas supplies, if not being paid in Rubles, is taking another casualty. Russian gas giant Gazprom has announced that it will stop gas supplies to the Netherlands by Wednesday, in a reaction to the refusal by Dutch energy trader GasTerra to pay in rubles.

Evidently, the concept of money and paying for goods and services is still not developed in these two nations at this stage of their historic development, but, I think, in a few centuries they may figure this principle out and whatever will be left of them will join the family of civilized nations. Same goes for the present CIA big honcho William Burns (the US so called "diplomat"), who tries to wax Russia "insiderish" but fails miserably due to an extremely low professionalism of the current US "diplomacy" and "foreign service", so, he triers himself as Putinologist--a euphemism for ignorant US "diplomats" who, as it is normal now, know nothing about Russia. Even after being ambassador to Russia as Burns did.  So, he states:

Half of Washington, D.C., is in the business of analyzing Vladimir Putin’s every word and move these days. But when CIA Director William Burns speaks of the Russian leader, an autocrat waging a brutal war on Ukraine, his words carry unusual weight. Putin is the epitome of a “peculiarly Russian combination of qualities”: “cocky, cranky, aggrieved and insecure,” Burns has written. The Kremlin chief is “an apostle of payback,” Burns has declared.

But even this sophomoric "journalism" from Politico notes:

Burns may be a good Putinologist, but even he didn’t predict how much the Russian leader would scramble the Biden administration’s foreign policy agenda.

I have news for these US "diplomats" and "journos"--there are NO real "Putinologists", let alone good level specialists on Russia, anywhere in D.C. Because there is no US diplomacy as art and as noble profession in principle. Most what US foreign policy establishment, including its "elite" schools produces as its "diplomats" is a grey mass of under-educated ignoramuses who learn absolutely nothing about outside world and the same goes pretty much to any institution in D.C., including CIA. Burns is not an exception. 

It is the clock-work of the US "elite" education and selection mechanism which is completely broken and, as a result, produces people who are utterly unqualified to carry out any tasks related to any actual governance, be it in political, economic, diplomatic or military spheres. So, whenever the phrase such as "but even he" is used nowadays I always smile, "even they" in D.C. drove the United States to the precipice due to their corruption, careerism and lack of any professionalism. May be they should stop trying to be "Putinologists" and concentrate on their immediate professional responsibilities, instead of spewing PR BS through media which are as ignorant and amoral as they are. Nah, not gonna happen...

Liz Truss Makes Lavrov And Whole Russia Do This.

You know, this: 

Oh, boy. Now, of course, UK media which never had any class, which is expected from orgs staffed with the UK's higher "education" products, invented this non-story. I think they feel that Liz Truss' visit was an embarrassment for UK and as any uncultured brutes they decided to go on the attack.

The report that the meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his British counterpart Liz Truss in Moscow on Thursday ended with the Russian official unceremoniously walking away from their joint press conference is fake news, Russia’s UK embassy said, responding to reporting by a British broadcaster. Truss “received an icy reception from her Russian counterpart before he walked out of the press conference, leaving her behind at the podium,” the British outlet ITN reported on Thursday. ITN’s news editor Emma Burrows – formerly a CNN producer based in Russia – tweeted that Lavrov “just briskly walked off, leaving [Truss] on her own at the podium.” With Burrows's tweet raking up hundreds of likes, the Russian Embassy in London intervened, accusing the journalist of spreading fake news. “Lavrov did not ‘just briskly walk off’. The conference ended, both ministers got their things and walked to the doors, Lavrov was simply closer to them. In fact, he opened the doors to Mrs Truss and welcomed her in,” the embassy tweeted, urging Burrows to “please don't spread still frame fakes, not worth it.”

If you see British or US main-stream media "reporting", beware, in 9 cases out of 10 what they report will be a lie or its "finest" form--a completely made up shit. In related news, anyone who comes through these media are not journalists but whores both figuratively and directly speaking. Plus, being whores they do not understand what both human and professional class is, of which Sergei Lavrov has plenty. He is a consummate diplomat and a real gentleman--a concept which ceased to exist in the West long time ago. So, I had to talk about it a little bit today. 

Yes, this all would have been hilarious if it wouldn't have been so sad. Sadly, there is no such very loaded term as Habalka in English, but this is exactly the term which describes contemporary Western elites of both (or is it 125?) genders. Relatively new English term Karen does not quite do the job describing Western "elites" and media. Especially media. And, of course, UK is against Russia's sovereignty over Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh. How dare those Russians lay claims to these cities. Next thing you know, they will say that Moscow belongs to Russia. There are no limits to Russia's perfidy. 

Yes, folks, these are you Western "elites". They can not calculate, they do not know geography, they have no clue about real history of the world and, come to think about it, they do not know outside world itself. But they are entitled. I had a chance to communicate and interact with people of a fairly high status and who would otherwise be called intellectuals in the West in 1990s and early 2000s. Many of them were genuine articles, well-educated, with class oozing from them, intelligent, some with a great sense of humor. 22 years passed by--we are in a presence of zombies. It took only 20+ years for this precipitous decline. I have some ideas how it did happen. In related news, I will probably make a case for Dark Eagle weapon system and why I do not believe it is a viable weapon system yet (it will become at some point of time) and why this whole noise around it is primarily (at this stage) propaganda. 

On Average...

US (and Western in general) MSM journo is stupid and badly educated. Real journalism requires a very high level awareness and analytical type of mind and an extraordinary level of education in a broader, classical sense, which translates in class and integrity. But as any uncultured human he(she) thinks that he(she) is entitled to be taken seriously. Here, the President of Russia is dealing with the girl who has no concept of throwing rocks while living in a glass house thinking that her high school student news-paper-level "reporting" means anything. 

But then again, she is lucky that she is dealing with a former (not really, they never are former) intelligence professional who would eat her bosses for breakfast and will spit them out in a minute, but who is also very humane. Real intelligence professionals, unlike the BS portrayed in Hollywood, avoid "collateral damage" at all costs, their and others' lives depends on that.  Here is another example, now of the graduate of the Moscow Institute of International Relations, famed MGIMO, and a son of very high level KGB professional, the President of Azerbaijan wiping the floor with some psycho-bitch from BBC who had the audacity to think that she can compete in wits with people whose educational and cultural level dwarfs pretty much any cretin having positions nowadays in government  in both UK and US (well, in EU too) and pedophile-covering totalitarian British Broadcasting Corporation which is...a statutory corporation established by Her Majesty Government. 

Apart from not having any class, which is a first indicator of great education, honor and integrity, look at how this pompous idiot from BBC reacted physically when understood that she is being destroyed and being made an Exhibit A of a typical clown working for Western media. Her clutched hands in "house" close to her body speak volumes--a first involuntary defensive reaction. Ilham Aliev could have eaten her alive and humiliated her to the point of her being thrown out even from such a sewer as BBC for being utterly unprofessional. But he gave her a last second exit. Those who recall Vladimir Putin's interaction with bimbo Megyn Kelly and subtly humiliating her--I am not even sure that morons at NBC, BBC or CNN are even brought up above the level of high-schoolers in human, forget about professional, terms, to get it. 

All of them are so dumb, so conceited that they don't even understand that the jokes are on them, that they are a laughing stock around the world. And, of course, none of them, with the exception of such people like, say, Sanjay Gupta of CNN who is a bona fide and successful neurosurgeon in his own right and has all qualification for reporting on medical issues, are good for anything. Most of them, however, are the dregs of a degenerate US "humanities" education and wouldn't be allowed in normal society to run a 7-11 convenience store, let alone pretend that they know what they are talking about or pretend that they have real "sources". Russiagate and Steele Dossier anyone? If we talk about Russians, overwhelming majority of them is now keenly aware of what Western media are and it took opening Russia to the world to succeed immensely where no ideological department of Central Committee and Soviet Propaganda ever could--to convince Russians that Western MSM are nothing more than a crude lie-machine, stuffed at best with mediocrities, at worst-- mindless propaganda parrots who don't know shit from shinola. 

 

UPDATE: here is how "free" media operate in the US. 

 

Corruption top-bottom.

Expert Community?

I wrote about complete bankruptcy of the "western", so called, Russia expert community for years. Know Thy Enemy dictum by Sun Tzu is as relevant today as it was....forever. Yet, it is also ignored by Anglo-sphere (did I just write this?) consistently and so goes for its European off-springs brought up and taught by US Ivy League madrasas.  Western Russia experts, as well as their supposedly "genuine" Russian "experts" from Russia (mostly fringe freak-show ignoramuses), have one common trait--they are not professionals and..well..ignorant.  Here is an excellent piece by The Kremlin Stooge precisely dealing with this, rather huge, problem. 

The Weaponization of Ignorance: the West’s Go-To Experts 

I am always puzzled by the fact that so many who never served, who have no military background whatsoever, who never had any even remote understanding of war, think that they can have some opinion on the issues of warfare. For some reason, at least in the US, the bulk of this kind of people comes from humanities background and, what else, gaming community. Well, that plus overly zealous teenagers who didn't realize their sexual fantasies yet.  

P.S. I communicated recently (couple or so weeks ago) with one Ph.D. in Russian-American relations from Princeton. Nice guy, but, goodness gracious, the level of ignorance is appalling.  

Why Has America Stopped Winning Wars? #1

Why Has America Stopped Winning Wars? This is not me sitting here inventing topics for the next post--it is the title of the June 2 2015 article in The  Atlantic. 

Why Has America Stopped Winning Wars? 

It is a good question to ponder but the Atlantic's article, written by Associate Professor of Political Science (sigh, of course, what else) Dominic Tierny, who is also The Atlantic's contributing editor, while dismally failing to coherently answer the question it asks, does, in some bizarre way, by the virtue of what it doesn't talk about and by whom it is written,  answers it perfectly. Yes, paradox, I know. But, before I start discussing the issue, I want to forestall some inevitable protestations and point out, that the United States certainly does have a significant military history, some of which is glorious, some of which is without parallels in human history, considering the scale and scope of US Navy's Pacific War operations, which dwarfs anything in the history of naval warfare. US did produce some outstanding military leaders such as George C. Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Admirals Nimitz and Burke, to name a few. American soldier is a good soldier--he is smart, courageous and resourceful. But that, of course, doesn't answer main question, which Tierny tries, unsuccessfully, to answer and here is why.

Knowing history by itself, at least one of its versions, doesn't mean that much in itself, unless a proper apparatus is used in understanding why and how something is happening in relation to other things. Tierny's opening salvo in the article kills any possibility of any coherent competent answer. But when one doesn't know history at all, that is what one writes:

 Since 1945, the United States has experienced little except military stalemate and loss—precisely because it’s a superpower in a more peaceful world.(c)

This Tierny's statement is so absurd that it is even difficult to comment on it--it is akin to explaining to one of the oncological center's patients that he (or she) is dying because he or she is absolutely healthy and cancer free and nothing could be done about it. I don't remember any occasion on which any person died (other than of age or being killed) from being absolutely healthy. It is one of the two--either this person was killed and died a violent death, or this person wasn't healthy at all. When people die, while looking healthy, they die from, and you've guessed it, a serious health issue which wasn't diagnosed or was overlooked. If the United States, being a military superpower, can not win a single serious war since 1945 it means only two things--US is either NOT a military superpower or something is really-really wrong with the definition of military superpower itself.  No other explanation is possible here and I can not dwell on this for too long since the logic (rather lack thereof) behind this statement is incomprehensible and Tierny tries to rationalize this wowser of the strategic "wisdom" further in his article and comes up with yet another wowser:

Why does the United States struggle in war? How can it resolve a failing conflict? Can America return to victory? Today, these are critical questions because we live in an age of unwinnable conflicts, where decisive triumph has proved to be a pipe dream.(c)

Here, one has to ask a question--under what stone did Mr. Tierny spend last decade in order to come up with such sweeping and, I may add, totally ignorant conclusion. Obviously, for the associate professor of political "science" it may come as a surprise but military science, which is an actual, valid science, gives very clear and universal definition of the victory and loss. Any first year cadet of any military academy in the world, as well as serious military history aficionados, know that victory in the war is achieving its political objectives. Or, as good ole Clausewitz stated in his military charts topping hit Vom Kriege--it is "to compel the enemy to do our will"(c). Well, even the brief review of the warfare in the last 15 or so years shows that not only conflicts are winnable but many of them were won and some of them--decisively. Recalling the ill-fated adventure of the American stooge and psychopath Michel Saakashvilli into South Ossetia on 08-08-2008 comes to mind immediately. The conflict was basically over in 120 hours and it ended with Georgian Armed Forces' disintegration in a face of numerically inferior Russian units of the 58th Army, the ultimate rout of the remaining Georgian forces and final partition of Georgia herself. All political objectives of that war were achieved by Russia and those included preventing Saakashvilli from further killing of innocent Ossetian civilians, from ever attacking Russian peacekeepers there and, in the end, spelled doom to Saakashvili's regime itself, with petty former Georgian dictator currently serving as Odessa Region's governor in doomed Ukraine. Voila', here is a good example of winnable conflict. I can continue with this list for a long time but let me add here a very strange blast from the past.  In the words of the US Army's Lieutenant Colonel Lester Grau, the foremost US authority on the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan of 1979-1989, from Grau's US Army's Staff College in Fort Leavenworth's Treatise:

"There is a literature and a common perception that the Soviets were defeated and driven from Afghanistan. This is not true. When the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, they did so in a coordinated, deliberate, professional manner, leaving behind a functioning government, an improved military and an advisory and economic effort insuring the continued viability of the government. The withdrawal was based on a coordinated diplomatic, economic and military plan permitting Soviet forces to withdraw in good order and the Afghan government to survive. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA)managed to hold on despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Only then, with the loss of Soviet support and the increased efforts by the Mujahideen (holy warriors) and Pakistan, did the DRA slide toward defeat in April 1992. The Soviet effort to withdraw in good order was well executed and can serve as a model for other disengagements from similar nations."

Breaking contact without leaving chaos: the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Lester W. Grau.

Lester Grau, Foreign Military Studies Office at U.S. Army's Combined and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth

And while Grau is somewhat generous here, for obvious reasons, in the end, if not for the collapse of the Soviet Union, the likely outcome in Afghanistan would have been a more or less stable government, which Najibulla was able to maintain for three years after Russians left and we might not have heard about Al Qaeda that much and wouldn't have witnessed the tragedy of 9-11. I would also point out, since Tierny (wrongly) uses American Civil War as an example, a very successful Russian campaign in Chechnya which ended with comprehensive pacification of the restive region and, in fact, produced a serious bulwark against Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism in the South Caucasus. Call it whatever you want, but by all metrics it is called a successful resolution of the conflict. In fact, I am pretty sure that very many, if not the majority of Chechens, are quite happy with the arrangement and so is Russia.

Grozny in 2001

 

Grozny today

So, what are the bases for Tierny's generalizations is beyond me. But his article is a gift which keeps on giving, he goes on and makes another stunning "revelation":

 World War II ensured the survival of liberal democracy in Western Europe. For Americans, golden-age conflicts became the model of what war ought to look like.(c)

For a guy who uses Patton as a repository of the military wisdom such a ridiculous statement seems only natural. Obviously, Tierny is so ignorant that he never heard of the WW II as a war of annihilation, granted the nature of Nazi regime and of Japanese Imperialism, and, evidently, doesn't understand that this war was NOT about any liberal democracy (however lofty language of Atlantic Charter claimed this to be the case) but was in essence a conflict for survival of civilization, Western one too. It was about survival of humanity, which the staggering numbers of Nazi atrocities against Slavs, Jews and other minorities testify to. Tierny is obviously oblivious to the fate of millions of Chinese killed, raped, enslaved by Imperial Japan. The fact that the so called "liberal democracy" (an abused meme, a simulacra) was one of the reasons for the misery of the WW II, as well as is a reason for contemporary misery and chaos in Middle East, Ukraine and other numerous hot spots--courtesy of the "military theorists" from the "political science" field--doesn't seem to bother the author. And how could it, tens of millions dead, the carnage of European battlefields,  concentration camps, sadistic medical experiments, genocide on the industrial scale--I am sure soldiers at Stalingrad or in Kursk Battle were going on the attack not to annihilate the enemy who raped and pillaged their country, their nation, not to avenge deaths of their wives and children but for the "values" of "liberal democracy", me being sarcastic, of course. WW II ensured the annihilation of the worst evil in human history and for those who accomplished this task the "liberal democracy" was last in their thoughts. In fact, they fought for the values which contradict every single tenet of contemporary "liberal democracy" which resembles more and more totalitarian ideology, destroying every single tenet on which humanity was able to survive for thousands of years. My thinking here goes along the lines that Mr. Tierny should have concentrated more on the issues which his "political science" ilk are more prepared to discuss--how about Transgender studies or some East Coast elitist mambo jumbo. Survival of this "liberal democracy" was not "ensured"--it came as accidental benefit at the expense of those who didn't give a rat's ass about its survival.   They didn't fight at Kursk and Omaha Beach for this.

This is the face of "Liberal Democracy"

 

But I will continue later.........