They Wanted War.

They surely got one now: 

In a nationwide address on Wednesday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization. He explained that the Defense Ministry has recommended drawing military reservists into active service, as the country faces a protracted conflict in Ukraine and Donbass. The measure is sensible and necessary under the circumstances, Putin stated, adding that he has already signed an order for the call-up to start immediately. The Armed Forces will draw on military reservists only, and those who have completed national service, the president added. He promised that they will be provided with additional training along with all the benefits due to people involved in active duty.

It is, of course, a planned action preceding referenda of four oblast (regions) of former Ukraine to join Russia, which they will join most likely by the 1st of October and will need troops stationed at the new borders of Russian Federation while the further roll towards Nikolaev and Odessa commences. Kharkov could be the target too.

For those who still drink Kiev regime Kool Aid, Shoigu today went on record and stated the number of KIAs of Russian forces since the start of SMO (in Russian)--it is 5, 937 KIAs. Shoigu also stated that number of VSU KIAs is counted as 61,207 per Russian (usually very conservative) estimates. It was also confirmed that Kremlin refused to speak to Macron after his call to Moscow today (in Russian)--there is nothing to talk about with Europe. I am sure they are preparing new "package" of sanctions, like... like... not buying Russian... beer or something. To give a bit of a context to all that:

All eyes are on the Federal Reserve as the central bank kicks off a two-day policy meeting Tuesday, as officials are widely expected to raise short-term interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point at the conclusion of their meeting Wednesday. In the face of stubborn inflation, officials are expected to raise the central bank’s benchmark interest rate — the federal funds rate — to a new range of 3.0% to 3.25% from a current range of 2.25 to 2.50%. This would mark the third-straight 75-basis-point rate hike since June, bringing rates to their highest level since 2008.

They cannot stop inflation, because they don't know how. Because they don't know how real economy works, but sense where it is all going--not a very good destination, to put it mildly.

You May Not Know This...

 ... but Moscow held yet another festival of military orchestras Spasskaya Bashnya (Spasso Tower) two weeks ago and, boy, did Egyptians kill it.  

Amazing! Yet, to understand what it meant for Russians even 6 years ago, when Russians march in a front of the VOICE of France who is a mark of this festival, immortal Mireille Mathieau, one begins to understand the tectonic shift...

So much changed. But then again, Mireille's voice never dies. Unlike France...

From Different Corners.

As one Russian commenter succinctly noted--these were Americans who "aestheticized" modern war by means of Hollywood and counter-culture. Many people would be surprised how many Soviets have been influenced by this imagery. I am not saying it is bad or good, I am saying that this aesthetics survived and then spread. Here is how it fits perfectly.  He even called it--Good Morning, Vietnam!

In related news, the newest report from Russian stores (in this particular case famous huge Russian retail chain Lenta). See for yourself how Russians are suffering from sanctions and isolation. Report from 4 days ago. Horrible, horrible empty shelves.

And don't get me started on commercial aerospace industry. But then again, Michael Hudson IS on record--they don't teach real economics in Western universities.

Something on Referenda.

From me today. This is how the strategy (not just military strategy) is implemented on the national level. 

Military ramifications are huge. Recall Putin--we haven't started anything yet (c). He never lies about his intentions.

About Obvious.

Now, that the hysteria with "losing" Balakleya and Izyum (quotation marks are deliberate) due to this famous VSU "offensive" has subsided, and once the issue of the Kherson catastrophe for VSU is considered, we may confidently state that the whole thing was very deliberate on Russian side. Fast backward to the start of SMO--this is for those who already forgot--and recall what was the main issue then? Right, if you recall--it was the question of how Russian Army will be "taking" urban centers, such as Kiev or Kharkov. This was also the issue of both Pentagon planners and Western propaganda which was build prior to SMO on the assumptions (wrong ones) that Russians will go for jugular and start taking down regime by means of taking its main cities. Naive (and incompetent) people, what can one say. They thought that prodding Russia to get into the cities where they prepared (for Pentagon and British General Staff it means hiding behind civilians) "defenses" Russians would bleed and provide a copious amount of propaganda fodder. 

There was one issue with that--Neither US nor UK ever fought real defensive battles on a strategic level, Russians wrote a book on them. They didn't read this book in D.C. and in London. Apart from inevitable peeling off VSU "defenses" in Donbass, with all those towns and hamlets turned into one huge fortified area (укрепрайон) where VSU could and did hide behind the backs of civilians, Russian Army never went INTO any large urban center as Western planners hoped for using a primitive cliche thinking that if Russians took Grozny, Russians and SAA took Aleppo, Russians took Crimea, then they surely would take Kharkov, Kiev etc. So, for Pentagon "thinkers" who do think in cliches, the fact that every Soviet and Russian officer was and is taught to apply historic military lessons CREATIVELY (творчески применять уроки военной истории к современной войне) to the modern war, was and is unknown. After all, the image of Russian automatons with arithmometers who cannot think beyond the framework of instructions... 

...is what has been imprinted in the American military mind for ages by, ironically, right... Germans. Namely former Wehrmacht and SS military leaders who were forced by the US military to write their memoirs on how they won... pardon... lost to Russians in WW II. And don't you dare to think that Red Army defeated the best of Europe in 1941-45. Ah yes, those studies. They did warn, though:

This study was prepared for the Historical Division, European Command, by a group of former German generals and general staff officers. The names of the contributors are not announced at this time. The principal author, who by the end of the war had attained the rank of full general (Generaloberst), served on the Eastern Front throughout the Russian campaign and the subsequent retreat into the northern plains of Germany. He was successively commander of an infantry brigade, of a panzer division from November 1941 to February 1943, and of two different corps in the battles for Kharkov and Belgorod during 1943. Appointed commander of a panzer army on 1 December 1943, he participated in the withdrawal in the south until the Germans reached the Carpathians. In August 1944 he was transferred to Army Group Center, and his last assignment was with Army Group Weichsel. During this final phase of his military career he played an important part in the retreat from Lithuania, East Prussia, and Pomerania.

The reader is reminded that all publications in the GERMAN REPORT SERIES were written by Germans from the German point of view and that the procedures of the German Army differed considerably from those of the United States Army. Authorized German tables of organization and equipment, official German combat doctrine, or standard German staff methods form the basis for improvisations throughout this study. As prepared by the authors, this study consisted of a collection of 157 examples of improvisations which were screened by the editors for pertinence, clarity, and interest to the American reader. Moreover, an attempt was made to establish common denominators for the great variety of examples. Although the manuscript was completely reorganized during this editorial process, every effort was made to retain the point of view, the expressions, and even the prejudices of the authors.

But who heeds those warnings? The idol of the US armored force, General George S. Patton was considered by Germans themselves to be the most "German" American general, not to speak, of course, about Patton's attitude towards Russians as untermensch. So, no matter how one plays it, the US Army was mightily influenced by Germans not only in a shape of the US Army helmets which look very much as good ol' Stahl Helmets of Wehrmacht but, most importantly, what was UNDER those helmets and those are brains. Obviously the truism of learning from the best does not apply to modern US ground forces and, as the result, the whole plan for Ukraine went belly up first when Russian allied forces managed to wipe out  the initial army of several hundred thousands of VSU and their Nazi formations, and are now in the phase of annihilating the second iteration of VSU, which, finally, was lured out into the open first at around Kherson starting from August 27, and now with this "famed" VSU "offensive" drowned in blood and largely extinguished around Kharkov--all in the OPEN terrain, mind you. They were lured out of their safe havens behind civilians in urban centers. 

Now, elaborations start on if those suicidal offensives were done for the internal PR purposes in the US, for the benefit of the DNC, or was it a perfectly timed bait by Russians? Here is something to consider. Larry notes today:

Did You Know that Ukrainian soldiers are “routing Russian forces and collapsing Russia’s northern Donbas axis?” Nope, I did not know that. But thank God we have retired General Dave Petraeus to clue us in.

After that he proceeds to demolish the whole "establishment" narrative (a euphemism for BS) and he starts with a phrase because of which I had to wipe my monitors after me spewing my coffee. 

Turns out that General Dave experienced premature military orgasm.

LOL. But apart from obvious slavery to narrative, can we state that most of those retired and serving US generals who "consulted", a euphemism for Command and Control, VSU on those offensives got caught or, rather, bought the strategic "picture" constructed by Russians hook, line and sinker? I say, all signs in favor of this conclusion are there. I reiterate: the US doesn't have real operational experience with strategic, theater wide, defensive operations at all. Mind you, the length of the front in Ukraine is around 1,200 kilometers. After that, ask yourself a question why Russians are content with physical annihilation of the different iterations of VSU and scores of foreign "mercenaries", many of who are merely cadre NATO personnel with a shallow undercover "legend" of a volunteer. 

They are learning about real war with the peer on the job, those who survive. But, as I already stated, the US simply has NO experience since 1950 of developing a national strategy which is fully integrated with political, economic and military aims of the state (nation) globally. And here is the reason: not only we can observe a dramatic decline in competence and expertise of the America's top brass, but US political system prevents this in the most radical way by both sacrificing everything at the altar of partizan politics and sheer incompetence and corruption of America's political "elites" who are in the pockets of different interest groups. Moreover, no American military leader ever fought a peer, who, incidentally, if someone decides to do the unthinkable, can psychically annihilate a combination of enemies by wiping their countries off the map. Nor, as empirical evidence shows, did the United States produce a serious geopolitical and military thinker in ages, resorting to promoting sophomoric geopolitical and military BS as some serious scholarly achievement in "strategy". Laughable, who are those "strategists"? Fukuyama? Brzezinski? Kissinger? Petraeus? Ben Hodges? Seriously? What, did they ever win anything?

As the events of the last three + weeks demonstrated so well, US military exists primarily for laundering huge budgets and in the state of a perpetual self-praise against the background of its best ever peer which is not only ran by NATO but now also is manned with NATO personnel, being obliterated on the scale which NO NATO military can take without disintegrating. It is the issue of REAL operations and of REAL strategy as executed militarily for the benefit of a national strategy as defined by political top which is working for the benefit of the nation, the notion which is unknown for the United States in the last 60 years, because in the end the United States failed to coalesce into the real nation and I wrote three books on that. Everything starts from there. But then again, what do I know? 

In related news:

China is entirely capable of imposing a naval blockade on Taiwan, commander of the US Seventh Fleet, Vice Admiral Karl Thomas, acknowledged in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Monday. “They have a very large navy, and if they want to bully and put ships around Taiwan, they very much can do that,” the admiral said. China has already created a large and modern navy, Thomas stated, with the number of military vessels at Beijing’s disposal continuing to grow rapidly. The admiral said that he did not, however, know whether China is seeking to take any actual action against Taiwan, which Beijing regards as an integral part of its territory, whether through an all-out invasion or a naval blockade. “Clearly, if they do something that’s non-kinetic, which, you know, a blockade is less kinetic, then that allows the international community to weigh in and to work together on how we’re going to solve that challenge,” he explained.

I am telling you, there are still a few competent and realist people in the US and if one would expect the place where they are, that surely has to be the US Navy and nobody questions its pedigree, for all its problems. So, this is your primer for late Monday. My root canal went really easy, especially comparing to one a few months ago.

It Has Been An Emotional Experince...

...  especially this.  22,000 people packed Tacoma Dome to listen to a living legend. 

Boy, how many memories from my teen years through a much more mature age all this brought.  The stage and the sound were outstanding. A powerful experience. 

This.

Yet Another BS From WSJ.

No, really. The bunch of the so called "journalists" from this tabloid rag are at it again. 

Now, here is the guy who knows about it more than all US MSM and so called "Intel" community combined.

САМАРКАНД, 16 сен - РИА Новости. У России нет проблем с беспилотниками, они лучшие и их достаточно, заявил директор Федеральной службы по военно-техническому сотрудничеству Дмитрий Шугаев."У нас нет проблем с беспилотниками. У нас лучшие беспилотники. У нас самые замечательные беспилотники", - сказал он журналистам. На вопрос, достаточно ли их, Шугаев сказал, что "у нас всего достаточно". Ранее некоторые СМИ и Telegram-каналы распространили неподтвержденную информацию о том, что в зоне проведения спецоперации России на Украине якобы были найдены фрагменты беспилотника, внешне схожего с иранским дроном-камикадзе. Комментируя эти сообщения, Шугаев призывал верить только заявлениям по линии министерства обороны.

Translation: SAMARKAND, September 16 - RIA Novosti. Russia has no problems with drones, they are the best and there are enough of them, said Dmitry Shugaev, director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation. "We have no problems with drones. We have the best drones. We have the most wonderful drones," he told reporters. When asked if there were enough of them, Shugaev said that "we have enough of everything." Earlier, some media outlets and Telegram channels disseminated unconfirmed information that fragments of a drone, outwardly similar to an Iranian kamikaze drone, were allegedly found in the Russian special operation zone in Ukraine. Commenting on these reports, Shugaev urged to believe only statements from the Ministry of Defense.

 

But you can sense butt-hurt miles away from all kinds of Western media and "military" outlets. Pathetic. Only sore losers spread fakes and Western media and most "analysts" take a crown here. Larry wrote a superb piece on that:

Politicized intelligence is not a new phenomena. It happened during the War in Vietnam as President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara pressured CIA analysts, George Allen and Sam Adams (those are real names) to change their conclusion that the Viet Cong had not been decimated by U.S. and South Vietnamese military operations. George, who trained me as a new analyst, wrote an amazing but largely unknown book, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam Hardcover – August 28, 2001. Allen tells you in detail how politics played a major role in that intelligence failure. Well worth your time.

I saw politicization as an analyst responsible for Honduras during the U.S. backed Contra war against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. I recall one occasion where I puzzled over a CIA field report about a Contra attack on a Sandinista target but there was no corroborating intelligence. Because I had friends on the operations side of the house working on the Central American Task Force, I was able to make some quiet inquiries. I was stunned to learn that the guy in charge of the military ops in that task force–a guy who graduated from West Point in 68 but missed the war in Vietnam–was drafting the operations orders for missions he wanted the Contras to carry out and then published those orders as intel about the success of those operations. Only one little problem–the operations never took place.

I plan to speak about this tomorrow, especially in a view of a shitload of fakes spread by... Russian TG channels in the last week, all which have been utterly debunked by both Kremlin, MoD and real (REAL) military professionals. It is especially poignant against a terrifying data on many thousands of KIAs of VSU and foreign mercenaries (many of them are regulars with "legend") near Kharkov and annihilation of VSU forces around Kherson.