Some Business To Be Addressed...

1. I'll start with that and will only stress that these are horrifying warriors because their motivation is higher than that of berserkers. Judge for yourself: 

One-tenth of the men in Russia volunteering for the conflict with Ukraine are doing so to escape their henpecking wives, the mayor of the coal-mining town of Vorkuta, Yaroslav Shaposhnikov, has claimed. “Around 10% of volunteers who go to the frontline are going there because their wives probably became accustomed to a decent life… and are nagging, nagging, and nagging,” Shaposhnikov said during an online panel discussion – ‘Open Vorkuta’. The official urged Russian women to provide a solid “rear” for their husbands and support them instead. Shaposhnikov, however, did not elaborate on what his 10% estimate was based on.

You don't want to meet those people on the battlefield because they are afraid of nothing, including death. I assume Russia assembles and trains those men into special crack formations which will deal with the remnants of VSU come the end of the year. Beware! LOL. 

Now to a more serious matter:

2. Somebody posted here the link to Alexander Rogers' superbly acerbic piece on this Liman affair. Here is the link, sadly Google Translate will not completely convey Roger's traditional sarcastic tone but still--worth reading. 

     Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimaaaaaaaan (in Russian)

Try to run it through translator. All Rogers' points are valid. 

3. Where would we have been without the military "expertise" of The National Interest. I am being sarcastic, of course. But this one is worth paying attention to because it may, in the end, reflect both desperation and delusions on part of America's military class. In the piece titled A Ceasefire Can Ensure Ukrainian Independence, David Pyne concludes: 

After the rigged referendums conducted by Kremlin-appointed leaders this week indicated that an overwhelming majority supported unification with Russia, Putin hosted a ceremony at the Kremlin this morning declaring all four Ukrainian oblasts a part of Russia. Annexing these territories will increase Russia’s population by approximately 6 million people and effectively mark the end of Russia’s so-called “special military operation,” which has been a war fought for limited objectives and with a fraction of its armed forces. But the start of a full-scale war against Ukraine after mobilization is likely to be even more destructive and could potentially include some of Russia’s powerful but not yet utilized unconventional weapons, with the objective being the total capitulation of Ukraine.

Ah, yes, of course referenda were "rigged"--by VSU indiscriminate shelling of civilians, atrocities committed by Ukie Nazis and their NATO "instructors" against women, children, old people. Right, it was "rigged" from the git go by effectively committing crimes against humanity against Russophone population in Ukraine but, due to Payne's having M.S in "national security studies" and being a former H.Q. staff officer, he doesn't bother himself with facts and consequences. Moreover, he comes up with this wowser:

Reports indicate that Putin’s partial mobilization will not be limited to 300,000 troops, as the Russian government has misleadingly claimed, but rather 1.2 million military reservists that will be used to overrun Ukraine in a planned winter offensive that could bring an end to the country’s independence by early next year.    

Of course, he merely gives the link, without elaboration on what those "reports" are, because they are directly from... Ukrainskaya Pravda, a tabloid propaganda rag of Kiev Regime, but Payne, following his "education" from the military system which loses all its wars, doesn't mind spreading obvious propaganda BS without even bothering himself with checking the reality, forget about getting acquainted with those mobilization plans of Russia which are openly available (much of them are, of course, classified) to conclude that "1.2 million" IS NOT a partial mobilization. In fact, if Payne has his "degree" in whatever security "studies" he could have, at least, educated himself with basic mobilization documents of Russian Federation such as: 

Федеральный закон от 26.02.1997 N 31-ФЗ (ред. от 14.07.2022) "О мобилизационной подготовке и мобилизации в Российской Федерации"

Translation:  Federal Law No. 31-FZ of February 26, 1997 (as amended on July 14, 2022) "On mobilization training and mobilization in the Russian Federation". 

And mind you, I am not even talking about simple mathematical fact that mobilization of 1.2 million people in Russia would have manifested itself on a scale much much larger (no, not 1.2 mil. divided by 300 thousand= 4 times, no) than what is happening right now, because mobilizing 1.2 million soldiers as opposed to 300,000 IS NOT 4 times larger, it is a different type and scale of mobilization, including what amounts to enlisted personnel in existing Armed Forces. But Payne, obviously, never studied those things for his degree and while serving in whatever the H.Q. he served in. 

After that, he describes "conditions" which may "preserve" 404 not understanding that we all long ago left the world of wishful thinking and PR and are into serious business of dismantling Pax America in which Ukraine is but one of the fronts of this titanic struggle and it is all about demolishing existing combined West whose elites, quoting Vladimir Putin, are satanic. Kiev regime is a homicidal Nazi org, supported by the US and US military, and now the US will have the stamp of enablers of Neo-Nazism and let it live with it. After all, main US Army "hero" and allegedly "tank genius" General Patton considered Russians to be subhumans and, I think, this tradition is being preserved. Frankly, I don't know why this rag by Dmitri Simes even exists--it is an Exhibit A of a complete intellectual collapse of whatever passes in the US for geopolitical views and it is a sorry spectacle. 

But I wanted to make you aware of that, and, judging by the other wave of Ukie bots spreading fake news and exhibiting their ever increasing butt-hurt, they should. Because today Constitutional Court of Russia approved signed documents on four obalsts joining Russia and in this teeny-weeny piece of news that all four oblasts will join Russia within administrative borders which existed since the moment of their creation--you know, in USSR (in Russian). But that is just legalistic mambo-jumbo. Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimaaaaaaan.   

They Still Cannot Resign Themselves...

... to a simple fact that UK is not a player in modern geopolitics. It is a small island nation with acutely manifested phantom pains of imperial greatness which disappeared completely after WW II and has been gone now for more than 75 years. Militarily United Kingdom is a midget with semi-autonomous "control" of her nuclear arsenal which in effect are the crumbs from the American nuclear weapons' table. Royal Navy, despite operating a couple of useless aircraft carriers, has only a very few nuclear subs as a real factor in any serious conflict. But the state of the British ground forces is altogether something out of a Benny Hill show, because for all intents and purposes those ground forces do not exist as a viable fighting force. Most importantly, UK doesn't have resources to build anything serious in terms of modern land war. But this is not how British military establishment views it. 

The new head of the British Army has issued a rallying cry to troops - telling them they need to be ready to face Russia on the battlefield.

Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, who started the job last week, addressed all ranks and civil servants in an internal message on 16 June, seen by the BBC.Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows the need "to protect the UK and be ready to fight and win wars on land", he says. He adds the Army and allies must now be "capable of...defeating Russia".A defence source told the BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Beale the tone of the message - issued on the Ministry of Defence's internal intranet - was unsurprising.They said all armies train to fight, but the threat has clearly changed. Gen Sir Patrick noted in the message that he was the first Chief of the General Staff "since 1941 to take command of the Army in the shadow of a land war in Europe involving a major continental power".

To fight and win a modern combined arms war against Russia one needs a helluva more resources than UK has or will ever have. But even before one begins to factor in a rather pathetic state of British economy and military technological development, one has to consider a fighting doctrine issue. For starters, Russia is not going to attack UK, unless headless chickenhawks from NATO decide to commit suicide. But then it wouldn't matter anyway--Russia will rearrange stones in London and nothing UK (or, in broader terms, NATO) can do about it. But the issue is even larger, it is this ever present Barnett's 14 points paradigm in which UK is simply non-present with the exception of the financial factor, while the United States is already losing its share in those 14 points with increasing speed. But, in the end, the country which elects BoJo (or, rather, Bozo) as its PM can hardly hope to get itself out of an economic hole which it dug for itself and without it there is very little UK can do for "fighting Russia" other than to continue to buy overpriced and dubiously effective US arms. 

This also brings us to the issue of SMO and not just material resources but issues of C4ISR in which only two countries are competing against each-other and you already guessed it--these are Russia and the US. UK does not even count in matters of combat control, netcentric warfare, full ISR complex, including its space-based assets. So, that reduces any UK military force from today into the future to mere a cannon fodder addition to NATO (read US) military adventurism and I am on record--read my lips: the United States lost the arms race to Russia and the gap only grows. The demonstration of a superb ISR of Russia happened today (in some parts yesterday):

Russian warships have destroyed a Ukrainian command center with Kalibr cruise missiles, killing dozens officers, Moscow's Defense Ministry reported on Sunday. “More than 50 generals and officers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were killed,” the statement outlined. The strike took place near the village of Shirokaya Dacha in Dnepropetrovsk Region. It hit a compound where commanders of several Ukrainian units had gathered for a meeting, according to Moscow. The ministry added that Kalibr missiles were also used to destroy 10 M777 howitzers and up to 20 armored vehicles that were recently delivered from the West, and had been stored inside a factory building in the southern city of Nikolayev.

Russian Duma already responded to these wet dreams of this British military "leader". 

«Вместо того, чтобы попытаться усадить Зеленского за стол переговоров, видные военачальники Британии начинают предаваться мечтам о создании необычайно мощной армии. Они уже грезят о походах и войне на европейском континенте. Но это не способствует улучшению ситуации ни на Украине, ни в Европе, ни в мире», – сказал Герой Российской Федерации, первый заместитель председателя комитета Госдумы по обороне Андрей Красов.«Сейчас весь Запад нацелен только на то, чтобы, как они говорят, «ослабить мощь России». Но эти амбиции неосуществимы. Дело в том, что наши Вооруженные силы обладают всем необходимым для того, чтобы выполнять поставленные перед ними задачи. И ярким тому примером служит специальная военная операция на Украине», – подчеркнул собеседник. Сами же намерения Патрика Сандерса «можно лишь охарактеризовать фразой «надежды юношей питают», отметил Красов. Он также указал на тот факт, что «Великобритании будет довольно сложно превзойти военную мощь России». 

Translation: “Instead of trying to bring Zelensky to the negotiating table, Britain's top military leaders are beginning to dream of building an extraordinarily powerful army. They are already dreaming of campaigns and war on the European continent. But this does not help improve the situation either in Ukraine, or in Europe, or in the world,” said Andrey Krasov, Hero of the Russian Federation, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee. “Now the whole West is aimed only at, as they say, "weaken the power of Russia." But these ambitions are not feasible. The fact is that our Armed Forces have everything necessary to carry out the tasks assigned to them. And a vivid example of this is the special military operation in Ukraine,” the interlocutor stressed. The very intentions of Patrick Sanders “can only be characterized by the phrase “the hopes of young men are nourished,” Krasov noted. He also pointed to the fact that "It will be quite difficult for the UK to surpass the military power of Russia."

Krasov (in Russian) knows what he is talking about, he has a very rich combat (combined arms) experience as paratroop regiment CO, later as Deputy CO of Pskov (76th) air assault division. It is not like he has a degree in marketing. The fate of the West, especially Europe is already decided, and it is not pretty. So, Sir Sanders can dream whatever he wants but UK IS NOT a serious military power and without the US, which itself declines militarily dramatically, is a non-entity which would not sustain serious scale combined arms war for any duration of time. But, it seems, the only war Western generals are good at is the one in publicity and PR. The real combat record, however, is somewhat lacking, to put it mildly, and that should be kept in mind, whenever one hears from the America's lapdogs.

Here is London today:

And this is just the start. Things will get much worse, but I am sure Great Britain's General Staff already made a proper forecast, right? After all, this is what general staffs do--they provide strategic forecasts. In between planning for tolerance and discovery of new genders, and figuring out what people of UK will eat and how they will heat their houses. Other than that--it is all double plus good. Carry on, Sir. 

IngSoc was never closer than it is today.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures, Eh? Again.

Daniel Goure has Ph.D. in some BS "science". He is also a neocon's neocon, with roots in Russia, which automatically translates into military incompetence. As most neocons he makes money by masturbating to American military porn (a normal practice for his type--he "served" in Pentagon as a consulting guy for something) and concocting a precisely the type of BS on Russia which helped to bankrupt the United States and expose it militarily as a power stuck in early 2000s with no prospects "to fight and win of "multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" as PNAC warmongers (and war-criminals) suggested and to which Goure belonged. How's this worked out for you, morons? 

But never mind, there is a new media outlet--a collection of "experts"--where they continue to masturbate to largely obsolete American arsenal and CONOPS and this Goure Ph.D. dude finally found the solution to restrain those nasty Russkies--he came up with a wonderful idea only US "International Relations" degree dumbed-down operationally and especially technologically ignorant person can come up with. Get a load of that:

How To Ensure Russia Can’t Beat NATO in a War: Forward Deploy the US Army.

You see, folks, this is the guy who taught at the US Naval War College and at some other US higher military learning outlets, so don't ask then why Afghanistans and Vietnams happen all the time. Apart from sheer geopolitical imbecility of such a plan, it is this plan's military dimension which is absolutely hilarious. Here is Goure's rationale. 

There are several reasons why forward deploying U.S. forces in Eastern Europe makes sense. First, they are the only forces that will be relevant. Russia has designed its conventional force posture, backed up by large numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles and integrated air and missile defense, to achieve a massive superiority at the beginning of a conflict and to deny the U.S. and its allies the ability to deploy reinforcements forward. They hope that this will produce a swift victory and reduce the chance of a larger conflict. 

Behold, this is the level of the US "military expert".  Actually, what Russia builds is to achieve a massive superiority throughout a whole duration of the conflict (how, Goure is not aware) and yes, moving U.S. forces closer to Russia is a perfect way to ensure that the United States Army sustains catastrophic losses in the first 48 to 72 hours. Not to mention this teeny-weeny fact that unlike Taliban (which still manged to defeat the U.S. forces) Russia can "turn off" pretty much most of key US (and NATO) C4ISR infrastructure and can make first week a bloodiest one in the US military history. But Goure doesn't stop here:

Third, many of the new capabilities the Army is pursuing as part of its modernization initiatives would be most effective if they are forward-deployed when a conflict opens. Long-range fire systems such as the Precision Strike Missile, Medium-Range Missile, and Extended Range Cannon Artillery, can threaten high-value targets deep in Russian territory from the opening movements of a conflict. The same is true for the Future Vertical Lift platforms, the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), and Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA).  

Is this guy for real? He is, his is the type primarily finding employment in D.C. and making sure that Vietnams and Afghanistans continue to pile up in US military records, which, frankly, is not that great. I'll give some hint--the best "Extended Range Cannon Artillery" is a cruise or tactical ballistic missiles which also happen to have highly selective multi-channel active seekers which are capable of self correcting and operating in a highly dense EW environment. They also carry between 300 and 700 kilograms of high explosives which render everything inoperable  in a huge radius. Not so with this "extended range" artillery, which will require constant flow of targeting info which is doubtful in the theater of operations saturated with such things as S-300V4, S-400 and S-500 (among many others) and RuAf operating such technology as R-77M. Good luck providing reliable data under such conditions for 155-mm rocket augmented shell. And here is a purely military-strategic issue. Forget about all this general pep-talk BS, like this: 

The best strategic deterrent the United States can deploy is a robust, forward deployed Army. By forward deploying active-duty units, particularly heavy formations with their associated enablers, the U.S. will be sending an unambiguous message to Moscow. In the event hostilities do occur, these forces will increase the ability of the U.S. to mount an effective defense and engage in early operations to penetrate, degrade, and destroy high-value targets and formations from the outset of conflict. The effectiveness of many of the new capabilities being pursued by the U.S. under its current modernization effort will be enhanced by their forward deployment. 

Can Mr. Goure give us at least a sensible number of U.S. forces required to be "forward-deployed" to "ensure Russia can't beat NATO in a war". I am just curious. I know for sure that Russia is not going to attack unless attacked and her red lines are crossed. So, the question--how many? What REAL, not PR BS, "capabilities" will NATO deploy? I remember Mr. Ochamnek calculated 28 fighter and 7 bomber squadrons to beat those pesky Russians to bloody pulp in 2017. He then abruptly changed his tune in 2019 and admitted that most of this NATO force will not even get off the ground in case of real war with Russia. But at least Ochmanek had the guts, which is surprising for the guy with the background in political pseudo-science and tenure in RAND. But I do have a question if Goure even has an understanding of the process of targeting, what it is and how it is done. Does he understand that for all intents and purpose US infantry has no viable air defense. I doubt he does.

But that is not the end of it, Goure fails to identify one key operational factor in all his "strategic" sophomoric writing--no matter where the U.S. forces are deployed in case the first shots fired--Mr. Goure will have first hand experience of trying to take a shelter in Washington D.C. which is absolutely not defended against not perspective but already deployed Russian weapons. This is the fact which most neocons and warmongers in the US miss and cannot wrap their brains around it. But there is no denial, there is a whiff of desperation in Goure's writing, which is done also in an attempt to self-assure that this time the U.S. forces can win.... something. 

The United States, starting from 1990s had its military "doctrines" written by military ignoramuses who wouldn't know the difference between shit and shinola, and who led the United States on the primrose path of mythical US "military dominance" which was never there on the ground after WW II and is now evaporating on the surface of the sea. This corrupt blob of sycophants of American greatness and Israel-firsters ensured that the US blows its treasure and blood onto unwinnable military adventures against third rate opponents who the US still didn't manage to win anyway. I am on record--it is impossible to teach US "think-tankdom" anything, they lack the learning ability, they are there not for learning anyway, and we see it today with the NATO establishment going bananas. They have a reason, they have been issued an ultimatum for the first time and 404 and its NATO membership is a red line no matter how many forces NATO decides to move "closer" to Russia's border. 

Evidently not everyone is Goure-alike in NATO. 

The new government of Norway, a NATO member state, has said that it won't allow movement of the US-led military bloc’s forces near its borders with neighboring Russia. “It’s very important for Norway to have a military presence in nearby regions,” Anniken Huitfeldt, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, told local outlet VG on Friday. “But in our opinion, directly next to the Russian border it’s better for us to handle it ourselves – with the help of Norwegian planes and ships.”

But in the end, does Washington even have required forces? I can tell you upfront--it does not, and that pretty much spells the doom for Goure's wet dreams.