You’re not losing interest, are you? Because that is how this works. They make you pick a favorite, and then they change the rules. Leaving you cheering for your champion, and by the time you wake up from your stupor, you discover you actually picked the wrong side altogether. A little late for ‘Das Haben Wir Nicht Gewusst’, but you can always try. The German foreign minster now saying the silent thing out loud, that her ‘side’ is at war with Russia, must be somewhat of a surprise to the more traditional ‘leftie’ in Germany. You know, the people who voted for a ‘Left Wing’ party exactly because they didn’t want to go there again. But there you are. Done it again!
On these pages I’ve presented my honest perception of what the Russians intended to do in Ukraine when they kicked off their ‘Special Military Operation’. And how they never intended to take all of Ukraine, while NATO expected they would. How NATO’s strategy relied on Russia taking all of Ukraine, and getting bogged down in the country, trying to manage it, while ‘Stay Behind’ Ukrainian Special Forces would strike hard at troop formations and civil authorities put in place by the Russians. In that scenario Zelensky would have been provided a voice as ‘Government in Exile’ in a fancy palace somewhere safe. Meanwhile, the well prepared ‘Sanctions from Hell’ would ravage the Russian economy, and together with the body bags returning from Ukraine, as a result of ‘storming operations’ to take the heavily fortified areas NATO prepared for eight full years after Merkel and Hollande cheated the ‘Rebels’ and the Russians into signing this bogus ‘Minsk Accord’, was certain to result in ‘Regime Change’ in Russia.
Moscow miscalculated where they expected there was a fair chance that ‘Kiev’, urged by Germany and France, in accordance with their signatures under this ‘Minsk Accord’, would be impressed by troops on their doorstep in Kiev, which would then result in this ‘Minsk Accord’ being reinvigorated, and peace would rule again in a prosperous Europe, with a neutralized, ‘whole’ Ukraine (minus Crimea) with a federalized structure. They miscalculated because Germany and (to a lesser extent) France understood that this ‘Minsk Accord’ was nothing but a ‘Peace in our time’ piece of paper, meant to give NATO time to build Ukraine up militarily. I have no clue whatsoever about Zelensky’s role, but it appears to me that he was not informed about the ‘finer points’ of this strategy, given the fact that he had his moments of stubbornness. He was reluctant to leave Kiev to set up a ‘Government in Exile’, as his ‘friends’ in NATO told him the Russians would need less than one week to take all of Ukraine. He also came close to signing a deal with Russia in Istanbul, while his ‘friends’ needed him to stay in the fight. And rumor has it that his ‘friends’ feel strongly that he should have left Bakhmut ‘ages’ ago, and save men and precious equipment to fight another day.
The difference between Russia and NATO, is that Russia and its friends are on the same page, reading from the same script. While NATO is, at best, improvising after its strategy collapsed. The ‘Sanctions from Hell’ didn’t do what they were designed to do, and since the Russians refused to take all of Ukraine, NATO was in a pickle. All of a sudden they found themselves obliged to send Ukraine weapons which had not been envisioned for this conflict. As long as Ukraine was not occupied entirely, it would need traditional military equipment and ammunition. Artillery and tanks, which were in short supply throughout NATO. Moreover, numerous problems arose from fighting that kind of battle on non-NATO soil. Logistical problems, maintenance, lack of trained soldiers knowing how to operate all the stuff sent to them, after all the former Warsaw-Pact stuff had gone up in smoke.
Now, I’m watching developments along the frontlines, and I understand the ‘War of Attrition’-concept Russia adopted, which is not about conquering large swaths of terrain, but about ‘grinding’ the Ukrainian forces down. Steadily killing Ukrainian soldiers, and destroying military hardware, using artillery, drones and precision missiles, while preserving your own manpower and making sure you won’t run out of ammunition and the stuff needed to launch it at the enemy. Until the Ukrainians are exhausted. And it is my understanding that NATO generals, but not necessarily the politicians as well, understand that the tanks we’re going to send to Ukraine will be destroyed as well, with nothing to show for it. And that if Zelensky insists on pushing large volumes of men and equipment into the ‘Meat Grinder’, this process will disarm NATO too. Already a country like Estonia has rendered itself defenseless by offering everything it had to Ukraine. And one after the other European ‘friends’ are doing the same.
Though it is my understanding too that NATO will run out of stuff, and mercenaries, with well over one hundred thousand killed on the side of Ukraine according most independent estimates, while the ‘Moscow Times’, published in the Netherlands and vehemently anti Putin, as well as the BBC, estimates the number of killed Russians to be around 10-12 thousand, Russia is fearing the next move. A spokesman for Zelensky, one Mikhail Podolyak said in an interview: ‘The internal escalation of the war in the Russian Federation is inevitable. Attacks will be made on different targets. Including such cities that are pampered, lazy, like Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, etc., will be subject to blows’. But he didn’t say who would deliver such blows. In Russia generals and leading politicians underscore that they understand they are not (or, no longer) fighting Ukraine, but all of NATO, as confirmed by Baerbock, the German minister of foreign policy. If things blow up in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, or wherever on Russians soil, while making Ukraine pay the price is no longer possible, because the country is in ruins already, there is a fair chance that Rotterdam, Hamburg, Seattle, or the Sea Port Oil Terminal off the coast of Freeport will have their own ‘accidents’.
That is what a non-nuclear Third World War would look like. Drones, laser-weapons, sabotage groups, ‘everything cyber’, with no other purpose than to terrorize the population until a country will wave the white flag. Ukraine is showing us how much resilience is actually required as a ‘Gold Standard’. As Podolyak states, ‘pampered, lazy’ citizens will be taught a lesson, all over the world. Why? Because we can. Don’t ask for any moral, religious, ideological or intelligent justification. Zelensky was promoting his country to ‘business leaders’ via yet another ‘Zoom Link’, in the middle of a disastrous war, with the entire country in shambles. He did thank ‘Blackrock’, the largest asset management company in the world, with no Ukrainian assets worth a damn still standing, ‘Westinghouse’, the firm which is huge in ‘everything electrical’, with the entire grid in shambles, and the ‘investment banks’ of ‘J.P. Morgan’ and ‘Goldman Sachs’, which profit handsomely from this war as well. ‘War is a racket’. It is all about the money. But you are not on the list of beneficiaries. If you are lucky, they may give you a shovel, so you can dig your own grave, next to this shiny new tank bogged down because one of the crew members threw the wrong switch at the wrong moment even before it was able to fire a single shot, and this maintenance technician is in Poland, one thousand kilometers from where you are, while you’ve just been spotted by this Russian drone. You’d better start digging……….