If you push for answers when you have time on your hands, you will have time when the pressure is on, if you acted on those answers so as to come prepared. Provided you made the correct assumptions for the situation you find yourself in. To anticipate on likely developments was essential in my profession. With horrible consequences if you didn’t, and allowed yourself to be surprised. You simply couldn’t afford to wait and see. There was some room to make arrangements beforehand to provide you with some extra time for deliberations, but that came at a significant operational and commercial cost, and was therefore unprofessional. Whether you built in some extra safety beforehand, or not, could turn a profitable undertaking into a significant loss.
It is my assessment that both Russia and NATO planned ahead, after Putin revealed that further NATO-expansion into Ukraine and Georgia, in particular, would eventually lead to an armed conflict. That was in 2007, the Munich ‘Security Conference’. Or rather, Russia concluded that NATO wanted war with Russia when it promptly invited both countries to join NATO in 2008, as an answer to Putin’s warning. All indications are that Russia began to look into the matter, since it was in no shape to resist NATO conventionally, how an armed conflict might develop, so as to come prepared. Though Russia had no trouble to defeat Saakashvilli’s immediate attempt to provoke war with Russia on the heels of that invitation to his tiny country to join NATO, confirming that NATO had no ambition to come to the rescue of their adspirant vassals, that informed the Russian leadership of how things would develop.
They got further confirmation in 2014, when NATO regime-changed Ukraine, and gave it plenty of assistance in the subsequent civil war, unleashed by Porochenko, the oligarch who got the ‘nod’ from NATO after sham elections, designed to silence the ‘culturally Russian’ part of the population, which had already left (Crimea, absorbed by Russia), or resisted (the Donbas and elsewhere). NATO was not holding back on providing Ukraine whatever it needed to defeat the ‘Rebels’ in the ‘Donbas’, supported by Russia, but Ukraine got its ass whipped nevertheless. Both Russia and NATO started to prepare for a more serious encounter, even as Russia pulled out the stops to prevent war. Putin went public well ahead of the launch of the ‘SMO’ with the revelation that the country developed several extremely modern weapon systems not in the inventory of any NATO country, and I cannot think of any other reason than making NATO reconsider its plans to expand further, and absorb both Ukraine and Georgia anyway. It was an appeal to the European public, rather than the political/military/administrative leadership. But it failed to reach the public, or it actually encouraged true Russia-haters to seek a confrontation. Same thing when Russia issued a final warning in 2021, with ‘Minsk’ stalled deliberately, as we know now, and Ukraine being built up militarily, while it continued shelling the Donbas. That warning was in the form of a proposal to sit down and design a lasting peace architecture for Europe. NATO didn’t even respond.
NATO itself had been preparing for war, just like Russia did. But it was another type of war altogether. One in which Russia would be teased to take the lead one way or the other, allowing NATO to claim Russia was the agressor, which would unleash economic warfare to bring down Putin, and regime-change Russia. While the 2014 Ukraine regime-change operation was supposed to be sufficient at first, part of the ‘Color Revolution’ masterplan using NGO’s and willing American and European politicians to wreck havoc in target countries, and create a domino-effect, the 2019 plan designed by the Rand Corp to ‘Overextend and Unbalance Russia from Advantageous Ground’ revealed exactly how NAVO was planning to go about it. The only question remaining, really, was whether Ukraine would be leading the charge, or Russia. If Ukraine would attack the Donbas again, NATO would have offered support from the get-go, claiming ‘Kiev’ had every right to regain control over that territory, and Russia would have been left to respond. Which it would have done, with reference to the ‘Minsk Accords’, approved in the UN Security Council, and therefore international law, trumping any claim related to restoring sovereignty. Legally correct, but fat chance that anyone in NATO would have recognized the argument as valid.
By taking the lead, launching a military operation under the somewhat accepted practice of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P), previously used by NATO countries themselves, Putin was hoping to illustrate to Zelensky that his NATO friends would only use Ukraine as its proxy, and that his only option to save his country from destruction was to return to the ‘Minsk Accord’. As we know, it almost worked. But then it didn’t. Zelensky allowed himself to be convinced by Boris ‘Brexit’ Johnson, though we still need to speculate how Boris pulled it off. Clearly he dangled this offer of NATO support ‘for as long as it would take’ in front of his nose, and no doubt he told Zelensky that Russia had only weeks left before it would come crashing down as a result of the ‘Sanctions from Hell’ imposed on it. And then there was the allegedly false flag Bucha operation to put pressure on Zelensky. But who knows? There could have been ‘Kompromat’ at play, and/or a threat to his life. All we know is that Zelensky shredded the ‘Istanbul Accord’, and Putin’s play to pressure Zelensky into saving his country, his people, and himself, went up in smoke.
This is where I say the Russians were not pushed back by the Ukrainians, but they *retreated*, because that was what the prepared plan called for. I do not mean to say that Ukrainian soldiers didn’t put up a fight, or that they were not fighting heroically in places, but while the Russians were prepared to fight a War of Attrition, Ukraine wasn’t. Nor was NATO, which honestly believed that an economic and social/political collapse of Russia was assured. They had additional tools prepared, which included handing Syria to Al Qaeda, and call it a triumph for democracy. In September there will be ‘elections’ somewhat like those in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, in which the present ruler, with a ten million Dollar bounty on his head, will nominate thirty percent of the representatives, controlling ‘parliament’, while the sectarian violence NATO unleashed by putting him in power continues unabated. Anyway, I insist that Russia was never embarrassed from the start, and that this war is still within their ‘script’. Even though they would have *loved* to prevent it, *loved* to end it quickly through a return to the ‘Minsk Format’, and they wouldn’t mind signing a peace deal now, *if* Ukraine comes clean, and accepts that Zelensky gambled, and lost. Which would carry a serious price tag. But what is the alternative?
According to some staunch Ukraine supporters the country is *not* losing, but winning. I, and people like me, have it all wrong, they claim. They acknowledge that the war today is a ‘War of Attrition’, but that it is Russia which is getting attrited. HERE a video where Willy OAM, a Ukraine supporter from the early days of the war, counters that narrative. And I feel strongly he is *way* too kind for that commentator, but I second the effort to avoid calling people names, or denouncing them as stupid, and to ignoring them altogether. The only possibility to avoid a cataclysm for Ukraine, and NATO, Europe in particular, is a return to realism. Europe just signed a ‘deal’ with the US which underlines the desire of ‘Brussels’ to be a ‘Good Girl’, giving away everything, and receiving nothing, to please Daddy Trump. Ukraine proceeded ‘Brussels’ along that path. Again, if this is the reflection of hope that the Rand Corp plan will deliver in the end, and that this hardship imposed on both Ukraine and Europe will be rewarded in the end as the Russian economy implodes, and Russia will have to give up, we *urgently* need different leaders. Just open your eyes, and take a good hard look at what is happening in Ukraine and in Europe, and resist the pressure to resort to terrorism to force Russia’s hand, using long range missiles and other means to strike at random Russian targets to score PR-Victories, because that is not going to save us from facing the music. That Rand Corp plan was ill conceived, reckless, and based on ‘intelligence’ which was a total fabrication. We once were more intelligent within the ‘Collective West’ as a people, even if our leaders took us to Vietnam and elsewhere, killing millions of people for no real reason as we reflect on those wars which came and went. Let this war go away too, and stop this madness, before we come to regret it in ways which surpass shame.