NEW – September 19, 2022
In the first lines of my letter, I want to draw readers’ attention to the fact that I am not a military export [not a typo – SZ], so I do not make thoughtful diagnoses of the mental abilities of military leaders, do not search on topographic maps, and do not even tell you how armies, districts, and the military-industrial complex should behave at this particular historical stage.
Scraps and fragments of information seeping through the fog of war, the maximum that they allow is to try to understand why something happens the way it does and not otherwise. Today, when one part of the patriotic public calls for the retroactive resurrection of Stalin’s order No. 227 and, in accordance with it, to shoot all those responsible for the “Kharkov catastrophe” (note the quotation marks), and the second part offers to gather, push hard and send 100,500 North Koreans to the front, I offer you a point of view from the western camps, but not the part of it that overcomes Ukie social network groups, but the part that has not yet completely lost a grain of common sense and the ability to quantify risks.
Sun Tzu, whose Chinese pseudonym clearly reveals something Byzantine and Macedonian, said that war is a path of deception, and the art of generalship is the ability to pretend to be strong where you are weak, and weak where you are strong. Let’s remember this postulate and remember how it all began — with the ultimatum of the Russian president to the West to get to the borders of 1997.
That is, for Putin (and for Russia), the enemy is the combined forces of the NATO bloc, where Ukrainians are colonial troops, formations recruited from the population of the colonies for the war for the empire centre. Such were the Zouaves for France, the Gurkhas for Britain. Even the ancient Greek phalanxes drove representatives of colonised peoples in front of them, so that they would create a human shield for the more valuable hoplites with their bodies.
Russia is well aware that Ukie troops are a colonial militia, running ahead of the soldiers of the empire centre. Russian society agrees with the statement that Russia is fighting not against Ukraine, but against NATO on the territory of Ukraine, that is, the absorption, attachment, occupation or something else of Ukraine is considered exclusively as a tactical task in order to achieve the ultimate goal of the Russian Federation. If anyone has forgotten which one, read Putin’s statement from December 15th last year.
Now try to put yourself in the position of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, which has the task of dealing in its own way with the combined forces of the West, having incomparably smaller resources and a huge land border that smoulders in several directions at once. In these circumstances, sending an expeditionary force to push the borders of NATO to the west is suicide. Too many more powerful armies were smashed during this task.
The first loser in recent history was Napoleon, who realised the long-standing Western dream of “seeing Moscow and dying”. Anglo-French troops, who tried to bring all of Russia to its knees during the Crimean War, were the second to realise in time, but they suffered for a year near Sevastopol and understood that to go forward further deep into the vast country is like death. The Japanese miraculously rebounded, having exhausted their military potential by 1905. Only the persistence of the Anglo-Saxons, who broke Nikolay II over their knee, allowed them to jump out of the emerging catastrophe. Well, the most striking example is the capitulation of the Kaiser in the First World War, when there was not a single enemy soldier in Germany.
One can continue to pour out examples, but it is worth paying attention to a certain pattern – almost all wars are won by the one whose military logistics and economy are able to work at a lower cost than the enemy’s economy. It allows not to be afraid of prolonging the conflict, but on the contrary – it favours it, turning seemingly sluggish military actions into a noose around the enemy’s neck.
And now fast forward to the battlefield and evaluate the tactics of the General Staff of the Russian Federation from this point of view. And what do we see?
1. The distance of delivery of military cargo for the Russian army is from 50 to 300 km, unlike NATO troops, who move ammunition, weapons and even fuel and lubricants 1200 km only from the border of Poland to the line of contact.
2. All megacities of Ukraine will be supported by the collective west for the winter.
3. The advanced burnout of ukie reserves forces the NATO leadership to gradually replace them with regular parts of the metropolis.
I would like to elaborate on the third point in more detail.
Since the beginning of the conflict with Russia in Ukraine, the leadership of NATO as a whole, and each country separately, made disapproving eyes and violently shook their heads at any suggestion of participating in a clash against Russian troops. However, simultaneously with the vows of “Never!” and “Who do you take us for!” there were reckless political statements about the inadmissibility of Russia’s victory on the battlefield. Even then it became clear to thinking people – “the claws got bogged down – the whole bird is lost!”.
On April 16, I wrote an article titled “A military clash between NATO and the Russian Federation is inevitable”, justifying this by the internal problems of the alliance countries, namely, by devaluing the claim that the burghers live so badly because Russians and Ukrainians shoot at each other. By the heating season, for such a cheap “excuse” they will start hitting one in the face, which means a stronger shot in the arm is needed, for example: “What hot water and toilet paper could one need when Putin has ALREADY attacked US!”
During this time, the idea of a “small victorious war”, which is still relevant for solving the internal problems of the West, was supplemented by an equally dramatic development of military operations, behind which the hand of a cunning conductor is felt. I have already mentioned the advanced burnout of ukie reserves. But it is happening against the background of the “catastrophic defeat of the Russian Armed Forces near Kharkov”. Victorious messages come from Kiev to the metropolis like a full-flowing river, broadcast by all the handshakeable media and it seems – a little more, another battalion, one tank, and the Russians will panic, crumble and run to the Urals…
I repeat – this is the general mood of the entire Western Camarilla, and it would be foolish to assume that it does not have any influence on NATO generals. As a result, in an interview with the mayor of Lisichansk and reports from military correspondents, we read that when advancing on Balakleya and Izyum, Ukrainian speech on the airwaves is rapidly being replaced by English, we see videos on social networks where an American BLM representative is recklessly firing a machine gun from an American armoured personnel carrier. They believed and were drawn in.
More recently, the rhetorical exclamation “Russia is fighting in Ukraine against NATO!” was filled with quite specific data from objective verification. The Russian media in concert discussed in detail this topic. Military experts have not yet noted an epochal event — in Ukraine, not only colonial Ukrainian troops, but also NATO’s own human resources have begun to be ground up. Like the Wehrmacht on the Volga, the alliance has been drawn into its own personal Stalingrad in Donbass. And the General Staff of the Russian Federation is withdrawing its units to Belgorod, and the configuration of the front with military logic insistently suggests the need to cross the border.… The Russian border…
“If THEY attack Belgorod, the citizens of Russia will not forgive Putin for this” – I read such a remark of one exalted person the day before yesterday. I will not even try to understand the complex relations of the President of the Russian Federation with voters, I will ask the counter question: “Will they forgive NATO?” What changes will occur in Russian society if the newscaster announces in the morning that at such and such a time such a number of units, even mercenaries, although everyone understands what kind of “mercenaries” they are, crossed the border and attacked Russian villages and towns…
And what opportunities will open up for the top political leadership of the Russian Federation for some long-overdue changes in the economy and management system, which for some reason cannot be done in the usual mode… Do you think they will not take advantage of this chance? If so, why can’t they initiate this opportunity?
The General Staff of the Russian Federation today diligently depicts a lame duck. The blogosphere seethes with the words “critical situation!”, “everything is lost!”, “everything is lacking!” … and at the same time, the cameras of military correspondents pick out endless columns of tanks marching to the front line. Where do they all go? Ukie propagandists are forced to use shots from six months ago, instead of showing fields lined with just burned T-72s and roads with kilometre-long chassis of damaged equipment. There is no trace of all this. And NATO has a conflict with an extremely unfavourable military configuration, the most extended army logistics and reserves of the Russian Federation, which roam within walking distance – mysterious and frightening … The northern flank rests on the Belarusian “balcony”, the southern – in the Black Sea, where everything is so ambiguous, and fly until the last crumbs of neutrality remain.
The war for supremacy over Europe is entering a new phase.
Sergey Vasilyev
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