For two weeks western mainstream media and military 'talking heads' have been saturating the airwaves with tales of the Russian military's failure in Ukraine. This has all been narrative without an ounce of substance. Where the US and allies would have carpet bombed Ukrainian cities, civil infrastructure, bridges, power-stations, government buildings, electrical substations and occasionally a military installation, Russia has followed a different path. Russia and Ukraine are neighbors. They have millennia of shared cultural history. The last decade of political antipathy cannot undo this shared heritage, regardless of western interference. When the operation is over, Russia and Ukraine need to live together as neighbors, in peace. Consequently, Russia's military action in Ukraine has been careful and considered. Damage to civil infrastructure is to be minimized. Civilian casualties avoided. Hostile military units are to be isolated, cut-off from their command structure and supplies and progressively degraded and demoralized. Surrendering soldiers are to be treated respectfully and escorted to the rear. The ideologues and neo-nazis will be weeded out and plowed into the soil. Ukrainian soldiers and officers will return home, safe and sound. These guys will form a new Ukrainian army, rebuilt with Russian assistance to protect the country from enemies foreign and domestic.
Phase one of the Russian military strategy is coming towards its close. Russian armed forces control the chessboard. The Ukrainian's cannot manouver. They are pinned in place and are now being ground into dust. The Azov brigade in Mariupol, despite seizing civilian hostages for protection, is being exterminated, unit by unit, cell by cell. Frantic calls by the Azov leadership and Zelensky for the Ukrainian army to relieve Mariupol highlight their desperation. There are no Ukrainian army units who can rescue them. Death or surrender are the only options. Grind, grind, collapse.
One resource that must be going down in price is scrap metal.
Around the country the story is the same. Ukrainian units trapped within the blockaded cities, such as Sumy, Kharkov, Nikolaev, are being ground down. It's notable that many nationalist and Ukrainian units have re-positioned themselves in hospitals and schools. Schools in Ukraine are on winter break, but patients within the hospitals have generally been expelled, which is fortunate. Any damage or destruction of these facilities is turned into anti-Russian propaganda. Here we again observe the idiocy of the modern 'marketing' mind, with the victims being played by attractive Ukrainian models and influencers. Selfies are never in short supply on Instagram so it's relatively easy to do an image search and locate the actors. Another tired old strategy lifted from the Syrian playbook.
It is interesting that Odessa has not been harassed, despite claims to the contrary in the mainstream media. The Russian navy appears regularly off the the coast of Odessa and occasionally launches a calibre missile or two at aggregations of military equipment around the city and then departs. There has been no amphibious assault. As the city is sandwiched between Nikolaev to the north-east and Transnistra to the west and blockaded by sea, it seems the Russians feel this is sufficient pressure on the Ukrainians. The city's military authorities continue to place panicked requests for reinforcements that no longer exist.
The above map is a western fantasy. They continue to convince themselves that this war is about holding ground. All of their future plans for Ukraine revolve around this idea. To 'hold Ukraine' they forecast 350,000 Russian troops would be required, allowing the west to ferment an insurgency in Russia's Ukrainian underbelly that will slowly bleed Russia white. It's a rinse and repeat of Brezinzki's Afghan strategy in the 1980s. Except that Ukraine and Afghanistan are nothing alike and this is not the 1980s.
The Russians know where the NATO weapons stockpiles are stored and have systematically destroyed them. They have also repeatedly warned that convoys supplying weapons to Ukraine would be interdicted and destroyed and, ultimately, there would be consequences for those attempting to inflame and extend the conflict. Several days ago the Russians sent a pointed warning to the US when it smashed the airbase at Vinnistra. https://stolzuntermenschen.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-ukrainian-de-nazification-operation_17.html On Sunday 13th March 2022, the Russians reinforced the message by destroying the NATO forward supply base at Yarovorksy, on the Ukrainian side of the border with Poland.
US and NATO have been operating a frantic airlift from US airbases in Italy to Poland. From there, arms and mercenaries are trucked across the border to the massive Yarovorksy military base. Here NATO trainers and officers provide training to Ukrainian soldiers and foreign mercenaries, which include ISIS and Al-Quada units. Being so close to the border and hosting NATO personnel, the US believed the Russians would not dare strike Yarovosksy - but once again they were wrong. The Russians had openly and clearly stated that weapons and mercenaris would be fair game.
The Russian strike was both surgical and devastating. Initial statements downplayed the strike as causing only minor casualties and little damage, but photos and video from the site quickly exposed this as a lie. Hundreds of mercenaries and the NATO trainers had been killed and the huge stockpiles of weapons went up in smoke. In Australia, the media reported the event as a Russian strike on refugee camp on the border with Poland.
The bravado of the mercenaries is somewhat blunted by the reality of modern peer-to-peer warefare.
In 1945 the German army was producing thousands of panzerfaust's a day. These simple to use, cheap to make and deadly anti-tank weapons were placed in the hands of Volkssturm, a people's militia. With little training, the Volkssturm were thrust into the defence of Berlin where they died or surrendered. The panzerfaust was a great weapon, but it made no difference to the outcome. Similarly, no amount of western weaponry will save Ukraine. This war is lost. It was idiocy to believe that there could even be a different outcome.
Russia has seized huge stockpiles of NATO weaponry. These will be handed over to the Republics for their defense. A lot of this material will inevitably reach the black-market as many of these weapons are either useless or will not fit with Russian military doctrine. The consequences will be felt far from Ukraine.
Even the dog knows.
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