UPDATE
I no longer have a source with access to Putin’s inner circle. I did not pretend to understand the astonishing episode of the Wagner march on Moscow at the time, and plainly it was impossible, if the Russian and Belarussian official narrative were remotely true, that Prigozhin could be allowed to carry on living.
Well, at least I got that right. But I still am no closer to understanding the entire dynamic. Unless Prigozhin has been effectively a prisoner these last few months, it seems incomprehensible that he did not flee.
To move from something I do not understand to something I do.
In comments below the line here, and even more so in replies to the post of this article on twitter, I am intensely irritated by the sheer stupidity of the lines trotted out by the Putin cult.
Ukraine has not lost 400,000 dead. That is half of British Empire casualties in World War 1 – in one year? It is 80% of the size of the Ukrainian armed forces in 2021. To try to give a meaningful comparison, those units of the Iraqi Republican Guard destroyed in the initial 2003 onslaught by vastly superior forces using massive firepower, lost about 20% dead in the most extreme cases. They had broken long before that many were killed in flight.
There would be evidence of fields piled up with thousands of bodies if 400,000 were dead. In all the drone and headcam footage we have seen, there is nothing remotely like that. It is simply a quite extraordinary example of the Big Lie technique. Ukrainian casualties have been serious, but nothing like on that scale.
I wrote below in the original article that ludicrous casualty figures have been claimed by both sides. I really do not need idiots doing so here.
The “Putin is perfect” narrative claims that Russia has failed to entirely subdue Ukraine because a) it never intended to b) Ukraine had an immensely powerful army at the start of the conflict.
Both claims are utter nonsense. Russia sent a column of its finest troops and armour to Kiev from the North at the start of this stage of invasion. It also sent special forces ahead into Kiev with the object of decapitating the Ukrainian command structure. The ground had been prepared by very large sums of money paid to key Ukrainian officials and generals.
The aim was regime change.
The whole was based on very faulty intelligence that there would be little resistance and the Ukrainian people would welcome regime change. Much of the money to have been laid out in bribes had in fact been stolen within the Russian FSB (something, I would add from personal experience, MI6 is not immune from either).
The initial Russian assault on Kiev was a costly failure, with many of Russia’s best forces very badly damaged. The attempt to deny this is pathetic. We all saw it.
Elsewhere the Russian advance meant much better. This is largely because:
It is nonsense to state that Ukraine had very powerful armed forces. In 2021 the Ukrainian army was equipped almost entirely with largely outdated ex-Soviet hardware. There were huge problems in supply chains caused by quite astonishing levels of Ukrainian corruption (though this was true of both sides). A Ukrainian command structure riddled by co-option of large, supply favoured, units of Nazis, which ran on bragadaccio, was hardly efficient either.
The Russian invasion of its far smaller, weaker and corruption-riddled neighbour has been a demonstration of Russian weakness.
Of course Russia will ultimately win – Russia is a lot bigger and it is taking on a smaller, underdeveloped and scarcely functional mafia state.
But that this is all an example of Putin’s genius, and casualty rates favour Russia by ten to one, are claims so divorced from reality they can only come from those who are utterly delusional – or paid to put them out.
END OF UPDATE
For well over a decade, we were used to nightly shots on our television news of British and US forces, in heavy combat gear, storming across desert landscapes in cloud of dust or firing heavy machine guns over the top of mud walls.
These shots were provided by “embedded journalists” with the UK and US forces, swaggering around in the same kind of body armour and helmets as the troops, often distinguishable only by a blue bib with “press” written on it.
Thankfully, we see almost no such screen footage of the proxy war NATO is fighting against Russia in Ukraine. War porn has almost disappeared from our screens. We saw a lot of it when the failed Russian column to Kiev was destroyed in the early part of the war, but since then, very little.
The answer is of course not hard to find. The ratio of Iraqi dead to American dead in the second Iraq war was about 200 to 1, and in the “triumphant” early advance was still higher than that. The embedded journalists travelling as part of US or UK armed forces in their armoured vehicles were posing as heroes, but in little real danger at that stage.
The US forces were a real danger to non-embedded journalists. 16 journalists and 6 other media workers were acknowledged as killed by US forces in Iraq, while scores of other Iraqi journalists disappeared with no certainty as to who killed them. By contrast 2 “embedded” journalists were killed.
The “embedded journalists” were of course not real journalists at all, they were simply functioning as actors, presenting images of the exhilarating triumph of colonial massacre of a technologically inferior people, to a home audience that lapped it up.
By contrast, being in the front line with Ukrainian troops now would be very dangerous indeed. The very tiny number of journalists who have done it are indeed worthy of the name. Streaming along as a passenger in a glamourised turkey shoot in Iraq is much more congenial than being embedded with troops in Ukraine who are fighting where the kill ratio is somewhere close to even.
(There are utterly ludicrous enemy casualty claims by both Ukraine and Russia, which should be treated with equal contempt).
The territorial gain in the vaunted Ukrainian counter-offensive is of the same order as that in the notoriously futile Battle of the Somme. It doesn’t make for glorious television.
You may have noted a repeated Western propaganda meme, that very often when a Russian missile strikes hundreds of miles from the frontline, it is frequently said to have landed close to a hotel, bar or cafe used by western journalists.
I am not sure this is the propaganda win they think this is.
The Ukraine war is going extremely well for those who are making billions from the arms sales and increases to western defence budgets that have resulted. It is going extremely badly for ordinary people all over the world, who have suffered the inflationary and other consequences of the disruption of trade and production and the population flows.
Our rulers would love it to go on like this for years – in fact a quick Ukrainian victory would be a disaster for the profiteers.
This war is going nowhere on the ground. I do not expect a Russian winter offensive will be significantly more successful than the Ukrainian spring offensive. It would be impossible to display frontline coverage that did not demonstrate both abject horror and utter futility. Which is why there is almost none.
I am grateful we are seeing so little war porn on our screens. But I know why.
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Warmongers here and in the US are now damning the Ukrainians for being “casualty averse”. Few people in history are more deserving than these chickenhawks of being press ganged into service on the frontline.
Totally agree with the article. There is a level of brazen cynicism in this operation that beggars belief.
Interesting that Julian Assange’s supporter, aristocrat Vaughan Smith was embedded with the British army in Afghanistan as well as owning the Frontline Club for journalists in London. What a great chap !
‘The ancestral home of Captain Vaughan Smith, the former British Army officer and journalist who is a key supporter of the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/house-arrest-on-an-estate-so-big-his-tag-may-not-work-2162641.html
Embedded with British troops in Helmand
Video journalist Vaughan Smith has spent a month with the British army in Afghanistan ahead of Operation Moshtarak.
https://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/embedded+with+british+troops+in+helmand/3539237.html
I don’t think Russia is pushing for a Winter offensive, but just to hold what they have, the Ukrainian counter-offensive has failed and failed miserably, even with the aid of embedded Nato troops, and the madmen at the Pentagon won’t risk outright conflict with the RF. A new Spring offensive has been touted for the Ukrainian forces.
The selling of weapons is the goal along with testing new weapons and the Ukrainians and whatever proxy battalions of fighters that are loyal to the USA or Nato are the cannon fodder to try these weapons out on.
It is we in the West that are paying heavy price so that the MIC and their corporate buddies and backhanded politicians can make huge profits form this manufactured conflict, and all the while we are being propagandised by the Western media that we MUST defend Ukraine, a country that many nations pre-conflict saw as corrupted morally and financially.
Please take into account, that all claims of “Russian Winter Offensive” was done by western sources.
Actually, Russian General Staff or Russian official spokesmens never talk about military plans, including dates or plans of operations.
Personally, I do not think that “winter offensive” will be performed.
Winters in this region is usually short, rainy and dirty, in last 10 years – extremly dirty.
No reall cold weather good for tanks.
Even if you have one week of cold weather and frozen soil, it can become dirt very quick. In the middle of offensive – it’s suicide.
Wasn’t Operation Uranus in 1942-3 a very successful Russian winter offensive?
Yes, but not Operation Mars.
Its hit and miss.
I think the Russians are perfectly happy to let the Ukrainians bleed themselves to death. There are 300,000 Russian troops waiting. The question is whether they will go for Kharkov and Odessa. Craig hasn’t really been following the war correctly. Theres plenty of footage of the fighting. You don’t need journalists when you have the drones to show you what is happening. Craig doesn’t, for eg, understand that the Russians withdrew from Kiev as part if the peace memorandum which Zelensky reneged on. Nor does he understand battle statistics. The Ukrainians are losing badly.
Mars preceded Uranus by a few months, it failed and Zhukov with Stalins agreement shut it down. After Mars I don’t recall any more failed offensives, winter or summer. The Red Army was learning fast and carried on learning all the way to Berlin.
In 1942-5 the tank could still be mistress of the battlefield under favourable circumstances. That the enemy should not have air superiority, for a start. That the tanks are available in great numbers: German soldiers often referred (and not necessarily contemptuously) to Russian tanks “scuttling like rats over the battlefield”. That they are accompanied by plenty of brave, well-trained, suitably armed infantry – the T34s are often shown covered with “desants”, infantry who rode the tanks before jumping off to neutralize enemy infantry and anti-tank guns. And the enemy does not possess adequate powerful anti-tank weapons; in WW2 the German 88 mm guns wrought terrible havoc, and the crack Waffen-SS and Heer units with their Tigers, Panthers, tank-killers and 88s sometimes smashed huge Russian attacks. In the end this no longer helped, as the Russian tanks just went round such islands of resistance.
Today things are completely different. Even in Ukraine where the Russians have almost complete air supremacy, their tanks, helicopters, and even occasionally fixed-wing aircraft get destroyed by missiles. The entire theatre and even Russia itself are overlooked in minute detail by US military satellites and aircraft, which convey up-to-the-minute intelligence to the Ukrainians in real time. Weapons unknown in 1945, such as guided antitank missiles operated by infantrymen, powerful artillery and multiple rocket launchers with almost perfect spotting and instant feedback, make it extremely danerous to be in a tank or armoured vehicle. And of course there are the drones – numerous, ubiquitous, hard to spot and harder to shoot down, but some of them able to destroy a tank by striking it from above. Thus even the Russians use tanks in penny packets, inching forward from cover to fire two or three rounds before rapidly reversing back behind a house or other place of relative safety.
The massed tank attack was already impossible for the Germans in Normandy in 1944. The OKW ordered Rommel to launch a massed tank attack and throw the invaders back into the sea; he replied that such an attempt would just allow the allies to wipe out the Panzer divisions from the air. Today such conditions apply universally.
Of course things are far, far worse for the Ukrainians.
I tend to agree but air power in Normandy was far less effective than the RAF and USAAF claimed.
Montgomery’s Scientists: Operational Research in Northwest Europe: Operational Research in Northwest Europe – The Work of No. 2 Operational Research Section with 21 Amy Group June 1944 to July 1945 by Terry Copp (2001)
The Ukrainian offensive appears to be petering out.
Reliable information regarding developments on the ground are increasingly hard to find.
Southfront site has been particularly difficult to access for the last few days.
Rest assured, if the Ukrainian offensive was going well the BBC (conduit for MI6, MoD, F&CWO propaganda) would be pumping this “news” into our living rooms 24/7.
“Southfront site has been particularly difficult to access for the last few days.”
There’s a reason for that, Vivian. The southfront.org site was removed without warning by the “independent” “international” domain registrar.
You can now find the site at southfront.press:
https://southfront.press/save-southfront/
> You can now find the site at southfront.press
You can find out more about the site here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthFront
southfront.org has been registered through a Russian internet registrar REG.RU. The serverHold domain status, visible in WHOIS, can only be set by the registrar and indicates that it was the registrar who has removed the delegation. If it was the FBI, the domain would have been blocked at ICANN level.
Yes,
Its back up. I think Ritter show is gone so something is afoot.
The Russians are waiting for Ukrainian regime to collapse. The Americans cant prop it up indefinitely no matter how invested Blackrock is.
I see people in alt media circles reacting to MSM output, but it always begs the question; why are people still exposing themselves to this pap?
I know we’re supposed to ‘stay informed’ but is there anything useful to be gleaned from the MSM these days?
if anything it’s the things they omit that are the most interesting subjects,
over the last 15-20 yrs I’ve progressively decoupled from broadcast tv, newspapers, magazines, radio, any kind of advertising or marketing, these days I’m completely decoupled from contemporary orthodox culture and social mores,
after looking at the work of Edward Bernays, listening to Noam Chomsky on the subject of manufacturing consent, reading up on Operation Mockingbird, stumbling upon William Caseys comment that ” we’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false” I’ve come to the conclusion that the MSM as we know it today is effectively the only parts of the MK Ultra mind control research that genuinely worked,
I look at the MSM as being in toto the PR and marketing division of BAU, consumerism and the status quo,
have you noticed how newspaper readership has plummeted, that the BBC broadcasts to a largely absent audience, that people skip commercial breaks and ignore adverts, that they use adblockers online to the extent that browsers have started building the adblockers into their product,
I’d love to see some academic research into the current funding of the MSM, my impression is that it’s almost entirely from large corporations that are in turn largely owned by shadow banking giants like Vanguard and Blackrock,
the advertising isn’t so much to shift products, it’s to maintain the belief that you ought to covet and aspire to them, even if you can no longer afford them, it’s selling values,
you’re encouraged to use their online platforms or react to their output so that they can harvest data, mine it and try to head off any deviation from the status quo that the public might entertain,
I’ve completely decoupled, I neither allow them insight into my private thoughts, nor fall under their anxiety inducing spell, my mind is free to roam entirely outside of their envelope and imagine the possibilities beyond this current dystopia,
I think the MSM is a dead man walking, propped up by corporate money which will vanish in the next financial crisis, the bursting of the everything bubble which will never be reinflated,
Trump got into the White House by circumventing the MSM entirely, perversely the MSM’s fury towards him served as free 24/7 coverage!
RFK jr has stated that he can get no MSM access and is looking to use the alt. media as his platform for a presidential run,
former etablishment names and personalities who have been ostracised from the MSM for ‘wrongthink’ are adopting the alt. media in increasing numbers,
Seymour Hersh, Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, John Pilger, Chas Freeman, etc. I’ve even seen Theodore Postol on alt. media,
I see the human enterprise as a self organising complex system, it regulates itself through feedback loops both positive and negative, it’s rather like Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’
authoritarian regimes attempt to control and direct the self organising complex system by obstructing feedback they dislike and trying to insert false feedback of their own creation,
this will never succeed because the system is so complex and so infinitely capable of self organising it’s like trying to herd kittens, new and unexpected feedback loops will emerge to circumvent the obstructions created,
ultimately a government can only lead the people where they want to go and to discover that it’s necessary to listen to them,
this is exactly the opposite of what the UK establishment does, it fights against it tooth and nail and clings on for dear life.
I see the internet today as a modern day version of pamphleteering, I think Thomas Paine serves as an example of how influential that can be,
top tip: switch off your tv and go down the pub and talk to people, that’s where the news is.
or come to the Headstrong Club in Lewes, there’s a bar downstairs!
Establishment disinfo operations have been blindingly successful both here and in the USA. What most people believe today is indeed a lie. We are living in a psyopcy.
You’ll never get far, Carl, flogging dead horses, and they leave you thoroughly knackered, and as likely as not nowadays, also both stranded and surrounded in hostile witness type enemy territory all alone.
That’s not a good and healthy space/place to be.
Might fully agree with you though that what most people believe today is indeed a lie [but they don’t realise it] and we are living in a psyop. …… and thus is reality a remotely manufactured state of virtual invention and media application.
And that makes it extremely vulnerable and catastrophically prone to rapid monumental wholesale failure and systemic collapse whenever even one of the smallest of cornerstone realities, never mind a whole host of major ones, are demonstrated to no longer be valid and viable as a convenient and conventional means of mass ignorant population, and mass popular, more educated and enlightening dissent, command and control …… subversive coercive brainwashing ……. misleading disinformation …. which appears to be where you think we is presently at. And aint that the gospel truth.
Hey Matt, excellent post because this is my experience too 😉
Craig must be good to have such a high level of commentary as everyone gathered here today
Exactly so, Matt. I am puzzled by people who complain about some blatant lie they have seen or heard from the MSM. The Pope is still a Catholic (of sorts), bears still go to the toilet in sylvan areas, and the MSM lie full-time. It’s what they do. It’s what they are for.
Don’t blame you, I gave up on The Inderelictependent in the early 2000s and stopped buying the TLS at the same time because it was crap. I haven’t watched TV news except for Russia Today for twenty years (and RT is a shadow of what it was).
1. A “quick Ukrainian win” is hypothetical claptrap – they are losing desperately. With the decades of media scepticism Craig has, he should know this.
“This war is going nowhere on the ground. I do not expect a Russian winter offensive will be significantly more successful than the Ukrainian spring offensive. ”
Craig you should know this – the fight to the last Ukrainian is almost over. That is there are very very few Ukrainians left (in Ukraine) to fight. It is pretty much over. What happens next depends on how long it takes for Zelensky to admit defeat and whether nato still wants to arm Nazis who shell Russian speakers in order to provoke Russia from behind the Dnieper.
Roughly 350k Ukrainian dead, 50-70k Russian and allied dead.
2. There are no western journalists embedded in Ukraine’s forces. There are a few Ukrainian ones allowed to film some events, but htey are very heavily censored and only positive stories emerge. What is shown is curated film that has gone through several levels of Ukrainian control before being published in western media (to be fair much of this is turned down by Western media – hence the limited news flow).
3. Even Social media of Russian missiles are illegal in Ukraine. No one, western media included, is allowed to report on them. There are no western photos of missile damage even when western journalists are reportedly in the building.
There is of course curated kiev product that gets copied into the west.
So we read about “On 19 August, 2023 Russian military forces launched an Iskander-M ballistic missile at the Taras Shevchenko Theater in downtown Chernihiv, Ukraine.”
Nobody reports that the theatre was the site of a Drone exhibition where Ukrainians were comparing designs for attacks on Russian forces. But it is openly known.
4. The newsflow is not about reporting great Russian evil events. It is about denying massive Ukrainian defeats. A pizza house being blown up with civilians is actually the hotel full of mercenaries (not journalists) destroyed. Yes the numbers of civilians directly hit is remarkably small for a typical war, but that is not the story – it is about covering up what is really happening.
Well someone’s bought into the propaganda even if it’s not the Western version.
As neither side has released reliable casualty figures I’d be interested to know where your numbers come from.
If you start with the casualty figures from the US National Guardsman, Jack Teixeria, who leaked classified US documents, you can start to gauge the true figures for casualties.
I have tried to find the details again without success, but from memory they where either 5-1, or 7-1. They showed that the press figures here did not match up with what we were being told, but aligned ‘more’ with Russian claims.
We should all know what the first casualty of war is…_
It seems like some clarification on the figures from the Texeira disclosure is required here:
“The documents also contain intelligence on casualties on both sides. Russia has sustained significantly more casualties than Ukraine, with an estimated 189,500-223,000 fighters killed or wounded in action. On Ukraine’s side, losses are estimated to be between 124,500-131,000.” (CBS News, Leaked Pentagon documents takeaways: Here are details on what they reveal, 17/04/2023)
Please keep up the hunt for the “alternative facts” on which you based your ratios, so we can evaluate the source.
Someone earlier in the comments correctly stated that the tank was no longer the mistress of the battlefield. This is true, it has been supplanted by air superiority and artillery dominance, both of these are very heavily in Russia’s favour. Indeed, a Ukrainian commander remarked that “we fire one shell and the Russians fire 10 back. This comment alone makes a nonsense of your figures.
Rubbish, Steve. You can’t calculate battlefield casualties from counting up the different types of military machinery and then playing little war games in your head. There are myriad other factors involved: training, tactics, defensive equipment, intel, cyber, preparation, morale, etc. Of course, you don’t even need military training to know that – a smidgen of common sense would do.
And those figures are not my personal estimates: the quotation comes from CBS News’s summary of the US intel documents leaked by Texeira.
So we start with some doctored estimates and then add in some wild guesses.
“Whoever doctored them put the estimated killed-in-action figure for Ukraine, 16,000-17,500 — in the Russian field, which originally gave 35,500–43,500 killed in action. It also transposed the digits for the Ukrainian assessment, changing 16,000-17,500 to 61,000-71,500.”
Have you got your source for that PM, it rings a bell.
@Dawg, I’ve come up zilch looking back for confirmation of details in Texeiras documents leaked, I’ll have to walk back on that one, unless anyone knows better. I seem to remember a montage of all the documents…_
DiggerUK did you check Larry Johnson at sonar21? I thought he had them up on his site, maybe.
At a guess, I would say that neither side has produced reliable casualty figures because neither side wants their people to know how many have been killed. To take Michael Droy’s figures above, 50-70K Russian dead may look impressive when compared to 350K Ukranian dead, but that’s still 50-70K dead Russians and probably twice that number of grieving relatives. Keep quiet about the casualty figures and you can always dismiss any figures that are produced as propaganda.
Putin declared Russian casualty figures a state secret, making publication of them illegal, back in 2015. For obvious reasons neither side is going to want to make their losses known.
Especially when those who are most interested in them are on the other side.
Well the BBC along with their dubius partners in Mediazone have some figures that are close to the Russian numbers I gave. They counted all the recorded deaths or funerals in Russia and then wave their hands and double the figures and still get less than my number.
For Ukraine it is quite simple. They started with 700k troops, dragged many hundreds of thousands of conscripts off the streets and now have some 150-200k troops.
Then you can look for videos of Ukrainean graveyards – massive, just staggering WW2 sizes.
Wake up 350k is about right – why do you think media have been so tight lipped about estimates to date?? Because it is a Ukrainian nightmare.
From what I have been able to glean recently, the population of Ukraine is now down to about 20 million. (In other words, it’s less than half what it was before 2014). Only a fraction of a million from military losses – although they are probably of the order of half a million or even more). But many millions have left the country – and most of them have no intention of ever returning. It’s a bit like the Baltics, but speeded up by the war.
Maybe 5 million have moved to Russia – and I don’t mean legally, when the new regions joined Russia, but physically left the territory of Ukraine as it was in 2014. To escape from the incessant Ukrainian bombardment of their cities, towns, and villages. Probably 10 million and more have gone to Europe, where some of them have already made themselves extremely unpopular. (You can even read about that in the MSM, which speaks volumes). Almost every man of military age who was able to has fled the press gangs, which would round them up, possibly give them a good kicking, then hand them a rifle and tell them to attack the Russian defences. With Azov, Kraken or some other bunch of Nazified goons ready to shoot them if they try to escape.
I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations on slightly dodgy figures and got about 18–20 million in territory still under Kiev’s control. This argees with your estimate and a couple of others have seen.
Well I’ve only read the comments as far as Michael’s comment – and the replies to it – so apologies if someone mentioned it further on in the comments, but the 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed figure was something Col. Douglas Macgregor mentioned in a recently posted interview on youtube, and said that his source was reliable, so I just don’t know (given what Craig says). Macgregor along with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern and Jeffrey Sachs and a number of other people are regularly doing interviews about Ukraine (posted on youtube).
I think it may have been in the following interview, but I’m not certain (but if not, it was in an interview shortly before):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLOd2pOqy0
PS A recent Jeffrey Sachs interview on youtube entitled ‘Jeffrey Sachs Interview – A Large-scale Destruction is Currently Unfolding’ is well worth checking out.
Spot on Craig.
The MSM only sing when they’re winning.
The MSM have moved on. We’re back to masks and variants.
I just want to know when RT News channel will be ‘allowed’ back on our UK TV screens again. Yes, it’s biased too but provides balance to all the other BBC / MSM spin.
I’d be ok if RT was banned from our screens forever, just as long as that also applied to the BBC News channel.
Reassuring to know that we have such capable UK politicians deciding what is ‘unsuitable’ for the UK electorate to watch on TV…! 🙁
Although RT and sputnik were banned by OFCOM and the EU they are still accessible through some platforms. I can still access both (EE) and Bitchute still carries them, otherwise use a VPN.
Jeez oh your rigid defence of the West in your comments points firmly to Denison, or Hubble road Cheltenham, I’m sure Turner or Keast-Butler will be very pleased with your desperate attempts to play down that the West controls this western constructed conflict on the Ukrainian side.
Tell me what do you make of Facebook and Instagram calling for the deaths of Russians, or the assaults on, and ostracising of Russians around Europe. Before this conflict most of Europe knew fine well that Ukraine had a serious problem with neo-Nazism, now the West lauds Ukraine a country who has as its national hero Stephan Bandera, a Nazi enabler and sympathiser.
Actually I find that RT does tend to be slightly biased – but, surprisingly, in favour of Western narratives.
That “Russian propaganda” has been appalling has been a theme going back many years. There are two ways of seeing this.
1. The Russians are hopelessly incompetent at “PR”, or simply don’t care about it. That is a dreadful mistake on their part, as PR wins wars.
2. The Russians incline to honesty unless there are really good reasons for lying. Perhaps for moral reasons – because lying revolts them. Or perhaps just because they couldn’t be bothered. Russia told one story about Mariupol and Artemovsk; the West told a completely different one. But both towns are now in Russian hands, and a hell of a lot more Ukrainians than Russians are dead. No amount of lying will conceal those facts for ever.
“1. The Russians are hopelessly incompetent at “PR”, or simply don’t care about it. That is a dreadful mistake on their part, as PR wins wars.”
Why would PR win wars? What would the Russians hope to achieve with propaganda, convince the West of the rightness of their actions? The Russians don’t give a rat’s fart about what we in the West think. They know our rulers hate them and that what the people think doesn’t matter one way or the other. There is only one thing that matters in a war, which way the front line is moving and that is not an easy thing to hide these days. All the rest is, like this blog, just so much airing of opinions and purveying of unreliable “information”.
I completely agree, Bayard. I offered option (1) for completeness, and because it is the theory usually endorsed by the MSM.
It’s quite obvious by now that the government of the UK, and almost all of its political class and civil service, are bent on the destruction of the UK and the immiseration of its people. Once you accept that, everything starts to make sense.
I’d be interested to know the sources of your view that “the kill ratio is somewhere close to even”. Although I agree that reliable information is hard to come by, the people I’d usually consider reliable tend to estimate that the AFU are suffering at least five times the casualties of the Russians.
Also, although the war may seem “to be going nowhere on the ground”, could that be because the Russians are content to sit behind their defensive lines and destroy whatever soldiers and equipment the Ukrainians can throw at them? I suspect the progress of the war is more consistent with (the Russian) plan than you estimate . . .
The Russian plan was to have this all done and dusted within a couple of weeks not to be forced into defensive positions by a much smaller adversary. If the Russians are going to accomplish their twin goals of ‘de-nazifying’ and ‘de-militarising’ the whole of Ukraine, a country they no longer recognise as a sovereign state, they are going to have to get out of their trenches and move forward.
Actually, they are moving forward in the north, towards Kupyansk.
”The Russian plan was to have this all done and dusted within a couple of weeks not to be forced into defensive positions by a much smaller adversary.”
Assuming you do not have a mole inside the Kremlin, what is the source for this claim? The Ukrainian military was, at the start of the conflict, the second largest in Europe and bristling with NATO technology. Much of that manpower and technology has since been destroyed.
Casualty figures are unreliable but Van der Leyen and Mossad (via a Turkish source) stated casualty numbers in line with the leaked documents which estimated a 5:1 casualty rate of Ukraine to Russia. I think Van der Leyen’s claim was pulled fairly swiftly but Mossad has so far as I know never offered a disclaimer.
The Russian plan was working right up to the point where Boris Johnson was sent to stop the Ukranians negotiating for peace a month after the start of the war. I suppose that the Russians hadn’t realised that the West would see the war as the glorious opportunity for the MIC to make oodles of money that it has turned out to be and actually be interested in peace and a Russian withdrawal. IIRC, the Crimean War started in roughly the same way.
So having already conquered a large swathe of the country, taken casualties but not achieved its stated objectives Russia was ready to talk peace? Yeah right.
“but not achieved its stated objectives Russia was ready to talk peace”
What stated objectives were those?
Bayard, may I offer a small addition to your words?
“The Russian plan ‘A’ was working right up to the point where Boris Johnson was sent to stop the Ukranians negotiating for peace a month after the start of the war”.
So they smoothly switched to plan ‘B’, with others ready to be put into action as and when needed.
Mossad has flat out denied that they issued any such report or that they make any comment at all on the Ukraine war. The Turkish source is notoriously unreliable. Van der Leyen made a couple of slip ups, ‘deaths’ instead of ‘casualties’ and ‘officers’ instead of ‘troops’ which have predictably been seized upon in certain quarters.
At the start of this war Ukraine was still predominantly armed with ex-Soviet kit. Captured battle plans and advance intelligence revealed that the Russians were expecting a short war with little or no resistance.
‘Captured battle plans and advance intelligence revealed that the Russians were expecting a short war with little or no resistance.’
So that’s the same source used by Russia to anticipate an imminent invasion of the Donbas by Ukrainian forces? Have any of these ‘captured battle plans’ been released for public scrutiny?
” Have any of these ‘captured battle plans’ been released for public scrutiny? ”
Yes; which is more than can be said of any fantasy Ukrainian plan to assault Russia.
this is the source for saying Russia anticipated a short war.
You can see a similar report on the Reuters and Sky websites.
Rusi is funded by subscription. It is always possible that they have direct govt.funding but I don’t know of any evidence. RUSI has been critical of aspects of Uk and NATO policy. If they were just a mouth piece for government , it would soon credibility.
https://rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/ukraine-war-captured-russian-documents-reveal-moscows-10-day-plan-take-over-country-and-kill-its
Further evidence is the make up and deployment of forces used in the invasion.
Paratroopers were sent to seize an airfield near Kyiv. They are elite troops but their assault was not supported in any meaningful way. They lacked heavy weapons or logistic backup.
The column from Belarus – up to 60Km long as I recall – did not deploy forces to protect their flanks from counter attack. So the Ukrainians – mainly territorial troops could take out vehicles at the head and rear of parts of the column, more or less trapping them. They ran out of fuel, food and water. Eventually as the scale of resistance became obvious, they withdrew claiming it was only a feint. It was a shambolic retreat.
Part of the column comprised Rosgvardiya troops, who are internal security troops as one would use for ‘de-Nazifying’ an occupied state.
Both indicate no significant resistance was expected. How could they get it so wrong? I think it is the nature of Putin’s rule. He has been in power for over 20 years (including his time as Prime Minister). Dissent is suppressed by censorship, criminalising journalism and a propensity of opponents to fall out of windows.
On 22 Feb 2022 Russia recognised the DPR and LPR and Naryshkin, Head of the Intelligence Service, went off script and his public rebuke really illustrated the centralised nature of the regime.
Probably rulers who don’t have to contend with internal opposition over a long period, tend to get out of touch and confident in their omniscience.
In the past 30 years Ukrainians have been able to travel freely in the west and they have the internet to observe the rest of the world. Their election results show a preference for links with the West, in particular the EU and reject Putin’s well publicised opinion Ukraine is not a proper country but a region of historic Russia.
The Royal United Services Institute?
I think the clue is in the name – MIC appendage
Naftali Bennett has confirmed that there were advanced peace talks between Russia and Ukraine which were sabotaged by Boris Johnson and the US.
Why would the Israeli PM lie about this?
Putin has since released the documents pertaining to this agreement and stated that the only details left to agree on were the number of forces Ukraine would be allowed to keep.
This tallies with the statement from the Israeli PM.
The immediate goal of Russia is a neutral, de-militarised Ukraine that is not, and cannot become, a member of NATO. Which is precisely what these talks would have achieved.
I don’t doubt that the Russians would have accepted a decisive defeat of the US-Ukronazi putsch regime had it fallen into their hands but they wouldn’t have banked on it. It was always going to be a Russia-US empire war and the Russians put their schwerpunkt in the centre not the flanks, hence them attacking there when retiring on the flanks. Like Falkenhayn at Verdun and Montgomery in Normandy, the first Russian offensive makes more sense as a catalyst for US-Ukronazi counter-attacks to be destroyed by firepower.
I think it’s a mistake to think in terms of “the Russian plan”, as if there had ever been only one. In war there is always a huge amount of uncertainty, so sensible people like the Russian General Staff create sheafs of plans. Rather like a chess player: “He’ll probably play …e5, but these other four or five moves might take his fancy. Or he could play some crass blunder. I will use my time to work out responses to all of those possible moves in as much detail as I can”.
At the start of the SMO the Russians will have been inclined to pessimism (just look at almost any photo of General Gerasimov, whose expression seems to say, “If you force us to, we will kill you all, but I shan’t enjoy it”). But they had to consider the possibility that the Kiev junta would fold or panic, or that ordinary decent Ukrainians would rise up and kick the fascists out. The feint at Kiev went as far towards encouraging Ukrainians to take such action as the Russians could go without taking excessive risks. As it was, a lot of brave soldiers got killed in order to give the “fraternal enemy” a chance to surrender and limit casualties.
It turned out that an uprising was not on the cards, so the encirclement was briskly withdrawn. It soon became apparent why the Ukrainians would not surrender: rather than the Kiev junta, Russia was effectively at war with NATO. That’s a rather different kettle of fish. Yet it was one the General Staff has planned for; perhaps the scenario they thought most likely all along. That’s why they have never commited much of their forces to Ukraine; the great majority was kept in reserve in case NATO launched a sneak attack.
Tom, I was reading Consortium News in 2021 and 2022. Scott Ritter, on 4th Feb 2022 ( see CN archives)
1 Russia would not invade
2 NATO and the EU would be shown to be powerless
3 Russian forces were more than a match for NATO forces.
Ritter wrote The goal of Russia is not to destroy Ukraine—this could be accomplished at any time. Rather, the goal of Russia is to destroy NATO.
This will not be accomplished through the direct use of military force, but rather the indirect threat of military action which forces NATO to react in a way which exposes the impotence of an organization which long ago lost its raison d-etre, collective defense, and instead flounders under the weight of a mission—the containment of Russia—it cannot achieve, and which its membership is not united in pursuing.
Here are a few statements of fact—the Russian military would defeat any force NATO can assemble in a stand-up conventional fight.”
I admit I didn’t expect a Russian invasion but they did.
NATO and the EU rallied and supported Ukraine.
Russian forces performed poorly.
Ritter wrote later in Feb 2022 that Ukraine would be ‘crushed like a bug’ if it came to war.. In the 4/2 /2022 article he added Nato had pased its high water mark-like Picket’s charge at Gettysburg was his analogy.
This war has surprised lots of people which indicates that many of the assumptions were flawed.
II very much doubt Russia expected a sneak attack. I looked up the order of battle of NATO last year and was surprised how small the forces were. They lacked the logistic capacity to sustain an advance into Russia and we know the stockpiles of shells were inadequate. Even sneak attacks on a scale to take on a major adversary require massive planning and keeping that quiet in a multi-lateral alliance would be impossible.
I think it is fairly certain Putin expected a quick victory. When he didn’t have it, he couldn’t back down. In a normal democracy a war which has cost , at least tens of thousands of casualties, and involved attack the cities of a country where many of its people have family links, would have opposition parties on the streets. The fact that they don’t but young men leave the country is droves to avoid conscription, tells us something of the nature of the regime.
The Russians did win quickly, until the Seppoes overruled the peace deal.
PS what’s a normal democracy, I’d like to live in one.
As far as my fairly extensive 60-year-long study of history reveals, there are two main types:
1. Fake “democracies” masking functional oligarchies and plutocracies.
2. Actual democracies. Athens, Syracuse… can’t think of any more.
There may be a third category of democracies that actually work. Switzerland?
The Delian League wasn’t democratic. Athens had slavery and no women’s suffrage.
I am old enough to remember the protests in the US about the Vietnam war. Democracies are far from perfect but look at Russia today and you will see the difference.
There was no real peace deal – if you mean reports from the meeting in Turkey. The Ukrainians were looking for a way to salvage something. The Russians were only suggesting withdrawing to the start lines of 24/2/2022.
Ukrainian Pravda described it as ‘surrender terms’. But by then the EU and NATO had had meetings and decided to back Ukraine. Also they had seen what happened in Bucha and decided to fight. If they had wanted to agree, they could have. Of course, some will claim Bucha is just propaganda. It takes some believing that is the case.
I trust that readers understand that Russia is not pursuing nor attending winter to pursue is invasion by usa / Otan / Thé west.
I believe that teevee-viewers must indeed see the insane carnage of battle before they are moved by conscience and gut to demand that the plutocrats and oligarchs stop this warring.
Criminalization of education [viz. Florida] and Wikileaks — the same as you are NOT seeing on teevee — allows such conflicts and slaughter to continue.
“I believe that teevee-viewers must indeed see the insane carnage of battle before they are moved by conscience and gut to demand that the plutocrats and oligarchs stop this warring”.
They can demand until they are black in the face; it will have absolutely no effect. In the UK, they can write to their MPs, who will (mostly) send back polite boilerplate letters explaining the government’s policy. If they could persuade an MP to take up their cause, that MP would be ostracised, ignored, and soon become an ex-MP. If by some miracle they could persuade the entire Cabinet, why there is a reserve party – Labour – just straining at the bit to get into power, and you can be sure they would immediately revert to the current policy.
It’s a serious delusion that the UK, the USA, or the other NATO countries have anything resembling democracy. They just don’t. The government is wholly owned by the rich and powerful (who prudently keep their heads well down); MPs are basically decorative; Parliament is a sham. Mutatis mutandis, the same applies elsewhere. (In some countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada – oh, and Germany and the Netherlands – the pretence of democracy has been dropped almost completely).
From a leafy Kiev park self-described war reporter John Sweeney (one of Aunty’s finest) says Ukraine is winning the artillery war. There is no need whatsoever for John to be embedded anywhere near the frontline, he just knows.
https://twitter.com/johnsweeneyroar/status/1693962633483788540
Similarly he decrees from Kiev that Lucy Letby is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. So that, too, is that.
https://twitter.com/johnsweeneyroar/status/1692546702706639274
There is plenty of war porn out there, just not on legacy media. It’s not pretty.
The MSM is however changing its tune slightly, there is an amount of honesty creeping in to its presentation. It’s hard to cover up that this NATO proxy force can not be provisioned with enough military kit to succeed, it’s much vaunted Spring Counteroffensive is a dud which is hard to hide.
The dereliction of command in Kyiev means that a bunker mentality is condemning Ukrainian forces to slaughter, they are lions led by donkeys. It’s disgusting.
When all hope of prevailing is gone, it is beholden of an honourable command to sue for peace. There must be a ceasefire followed by peace negotiations now…_
“There must be a ceasefire followed by peace negotiations now…_”
What, and stop the billions of dollars flowing from the US government to their MIC, sorry, to Ukraine?
OK, my call for peace has a flaw in the plan.
But there is an election in the US coming up, and we don’t know if it will be a mild winter in Europe again.
I’m also hoping for wise heads to open back doors to such negotiations.
My hopes such moves are being made were raised when Jens Stoltenberg’s deputy made his ‘gaffe’ about Ukrainian concessions of land to Russia for NATO membership. The ‘gaffe’ in my opinion was planned. I also think it was a bollocks proposal. But what do I know…_
N.B., Prighozins’ plane has been shot down by Russian air defence, claims are that he was on board. Let’s see, might be maskirovka…_
“The MSM is however changing its tune slightly, there is an amount of honesty creeping in to its presentation”.
As you say, DiggerUK, they can see that the lies cannot be kept up indefinitely. Looking ahead two or three years, one can anticipate that the truth will be available to most people. So the trick now is gracefully to converge towards the truth, so that the media themselves aren’t too obviously caught lying.
It’s a big help to them that a week is still a long time in politics, and most of the voters have the attention span of gnats.
important to stress the “embedded” issue.
One reason I personally never entered into this field of journalism very early on in my ife was the fear.
Of course adrenalin can kick in and make the most fearful the most daring if you still choose that path.
But I have never heard of a serious war reporter who did not leave the job without inner scars.
A few weeks ago, Sabine Schiffer, one of the few known decent German media analysts made this fateful comment:
“Being embedded on the road is a necessity for surviving in war zones. It would behoove the editors to classify the findings correctly – which sometimes even happens. Compared to earlier wars, it is often reported that information cannot be independently verified.”
She obviously has never been in the field. At least I know of no serious war reporter who ever described “embeddedness” as a necessity.
They used to mock those who were embedded. What makes Mrs. Schiffer´s comment so puzzling, her media criticism apart from that makes sense.
She recommended this Swedish academic study from 2002 about the media in the Kosovo War, from 2002:
“The Kosovo War in the Media – Analysis of a Global Discursive Order
by Birgitta Höijer, Stig Arne Nohrstedt, Rune Ottosen
https://regener-online.de/journalcco/2002_2/pdf_2002_2/hoijer.pdf
“The aim was to study how the media and the audience handled and interpreted this global event. The studies were conducted in Sweden (a non-NATO country) and Norway (a NATO country). A British study of news production was also included. The journalistic
process was studied via interviews with reporting journalists, the media coverage of the war was studied by textual analysis, and audience reception was studied by focus groups.”
p.s. I remember an Austrian journalist´s joke from the Iraq War 1991:
“The most US casualties were caused by traffic accidents by US forces in Iraq namely in a war fought over preserving US traffic.”
Craig, if the west invading Iraq on spurious grounds, lying about the reasons, spouting bullshit about the enemy, causing untold death and suffering to entirely undeserving innocent civilians, committing war crimes and covering it up… If all this is wrong, why isn’t it wrong for Russia to be doing exactly the same in Ukraine?
(Of course the usual suspects are now going to respond by telling me how bad the West is, what a thug Zelensky is, etc etc, anything to avoid answering my question.)
It’s not the same at all though, is it? What provocation was there for the invasion of Iraq, a nation 8,000 miles from the USA?
None; just the same as there was no provocation for Russia to invade Ukraine. The reason was the same in both cases; regime change and thus illegal under the UN charter.
^ “ No provocation “ ??
LOL.
The Seppoes overthrew two Ukrainian governments, once in 2004-5 and then in 2014. The civil war is between the Donbas loyalists and the US-Ukronazi putsch regime.
Yes completely unprovoked. No NATO encroachment; no US coup regime cleansing ethnic Russians on its border for 8 years; no Minsk deception. Just a completely unprovoked invasion.
Greg, did Putin ever reveal to the UN his evidence proving that Zelensky is a genocidal Nazi?
No?
Wonder why.
“NATO encroachment.”
Could it be that countries like Finland and Sweden seeking to join NATO are nervous for good reason?
Hmm, what could it be?
Or could it be that the rulers of those countries have been co-opted by the MIC? For such an important political change, would not consultation with the citizens be expected. My knowledge of those places is poor but I think there are some complaints,
AFTER 18 MONTHS YOU HAVE LEARNED NOTHING?
“why isn’t it wrong for Russia to be doing exactly the same in Ukraine?”
Perhaps Russia isn’t doing exactly the same.
“Perhaps Russia isn’t doing exactly the same.”
You think?
I don’t know about Russian or Ukrainian claims about casualties, but I do trust figures like Col. Douglas Macgregor, Scott Ritter et al. They put the ratio at a more realistic 7 or 8 to one.
I haven’t a clue where you get your so-called realistic ratio from, but I assume it is pure guesswork.
What is happening at the front is a “meat grinder” with Russian lines of defence yet to be breached.
Please stop paying attention to the BBC and Guardian – both proven liars.
This carnage (sic) should stop immediately and Zelensky and his nazi friends should be on trial as war criminals.
Why do you trust Macgregor and Ritter? Their figures are mere guesswork too. Where do you imagine they get their information from? Have they direct lines to ministries in Kyiv and Moscow? I don’t think so. You only think their numbers are more realistic because it’s what you want to believe.
“Zelensky and his nazi friends”
LOL
Here he is with his friend Biletsky. In 2018, the Guardian described Biletsky as an “ultranationalist MP” who declared in 2010 that the mission of Ukrainians was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”
https://mronline.org/2023/08/21/zelensky-holds-court-with-ukraines-most-notorious-neo-nazi/
Johnny Conspiranoid, apt name.
Do you think you have cleansed Biletsky or Zelensky by typing that? I wonder if any other readers think you have.
The reason we see very little of the war in Ukraine recently is because the Ukrainian forces and their western weapons are being destroyed in a terrible war of attrition. Given the massive advantage Russia has in artillery, air power and guided missiles, attrition cannot be even. Like all western adventures that go wrong, we will only hear about it after the fact. This terrible war has to stop.
“Like all western adventures that go wrong…”
Is that your entry for best joke of the fringe?
“This terrible war has to stop”
Yes, most Ukrainians would agree with that. How about the Russians? You know, those ones who crossed an international border and are now far from home?
It is unclear what you regard as amusing. To mention there is heavy western involvement/ responsibility? Or that the west’s foreign policy adventures invariably go wrong?
“Far from home”? That would be the Western mercenaries and NATO officers in Ukraine. The Russian soldiers are fighting within the borders of Russia – so they can’t be that far from home.
“Russian soldiers are fighting within the borders of Russia”
Ah, so it was Ukraine who invaded Russia.
Thanks for clearing that up
Actually, in a way, yes. Ukraine was occupying, in NovoRussia, Russian territory. This land never had a ethnic “Ukrainian” majority. This is very unlike the central Asian stans which were primarily composed of Turkic peoples. The Russians came in afterwards. The border of Ukraine is entirely artificial. It was merely an administrative border of the USSR politcally arranged by, first Lenin, and then Kruschev.
The fact is that most of southern and eastern Russia probably ought to have reverted to Russia at the dissolution of the USSR. This could have been done peacefully as the breakup of Czechoslovakia did. Instead, it is costing hundreds of thousands of lives and the destruction of Ukraine proper itself. Not to mention some financial difficulties for the rest of the world.
The war have turned into a quagmire, Ukraine is fundamentally too weak to, ever, achieve their aims, Russia on the other hand is still weak enough to achive their own respective goals. Both sides fight horrendously bad by making bad strategic judgments constantly.
And just today Evgeny Prigozhin is killed in what looks like an apparent sabotage on the plane he was travelling on. The problems just keep adding up for Russia. I will bet media will focus 100% on Prigozhin death now since they have no other “positive” news from the front on Ukraine…
And as far as media goes they still brainwash the westerner without a problem. Just take this:
Video, Photos of Zelensky visiting Ukrainian Neo-Nazi leader (VIDEO)
Ukraine’s president met with nazi party founder Biletsky in a bunker somewhere in Donbass
https://swentr.site/russia/581278-zelensky-azov-neo-nazi-biletsky/
Note also that this is not some lazy knee-jerk nazi label by RT, this guy actually started the first nazi party/organisation in Ukraine. He is like a veteran in this sphere in Ukraine.
So much for there-are-no-nazis-in-ukraine-meme but of course not 1 single western MSM reported this big news!
Westerners have become so entrenched in their own propaganda, luckily the global south are more aware of what is going on.
Banning Russian media created news gap on Ukraine conflict – South African official
Reports from Western outlets like CNN and BBC are one-sided, Welile Nhlapo told RT
https://swentr.site/africa/581635-south-african-diplomat-russian-media-closures-comment/
“Prigozhin is killed in what looks like an apparent sabotage”
You don’t say
RIP Yevgeny Prigozhin
Someone isn’t overly worried about the optics
Terrible sad.
Must have been the UA…
But at least the Kremlin is ruled by wise and peaceful men.
I’d say so anyway…
Apparently a witness who filmed the plane, before the airplane crashed, said she heard explosions in mid air.
Not a fan of war nor Wagner but taking the position from a Russian interest/point of view, they really threw the Wagner leader and his mercenaries under the bus in Ukraine.
I wonder what will happen with Wagner now. Certainly Russia will not be strengthened by this, nor will Wagner.
> they really threw the Wagner leader and his mercenaries under the bus
You seriously think that the Russian leadership turned on their own?
Prigozhin is a longtime ally of Putin. After the mutiny, Putin agreed to exile him to Belarus. What did Prigizhin do? He flew home to St. Ptersburg (in Russia), to collect his suitcases of cash. Then he flies to Moscow. Then he flies to Minsk. Then back to St. Petersburg. Maybe a quick visit to Niger, maybe not; the evidence is thin. Funny sort of exile! All the while, he goes on slagging off Shoigu and Gerasimov.
For my money, his plane was shot down on the orders of Shoigu, without consultation with Putin.
Jimmeh
Exactly, I do not believe Putin/government did this but I would not rule out involvement by elements in the russian military as one likely culprit, either them or the ukrainians did “this”.
Wrong predictions are mostly based on wrong assumptions.
I was totally wrong when I predicted there will be no war because I falsely assumed that Putin and his top brass will gather at least 2.5-3 times more troops than 175,000 reported by Western intelligence. I based these numbers on coalition forces against Iraq in 1991 and 2003. It never occurred to me that Putin was dumb enough to expect the Ukrainians outside of Donbass to greet Russians with flowers.
Your prediction that “a Russian winter offensive will [not] be significantly more successful than the Ukrainian spring offensive” may be equally wrong because of false assumptions. One such false assumption might be that Ukrainians will be able to master as formidable defense as the Russians display now. And since you’ve drawn an analogy with the Battle of Somme, I need to clarify some aspects of WW1 warfare that are often misunderstood.
The importance of the “positional warfare” in WW1 is grossly exaggerated in people’s minds because most writers on WW1 participated in such warfare. However, positional warfare was limited only to the Western Front in 1915-7 and to the Dardanelles. If any stagnation took place in the East or in the Balkans, this had happened not because the opposing sides could not advance, but because they did not intend to. Consequently, only about 1/4 of all WW1 casualties are attributed to the static positional warfare while 3/4 of all KIA died in the war of maneuver. The record losses suffered by any one army in WW1 on a single day were taken by the French on August 21, 1914, when their 5 armies lost 27,000 KIA combined, and this was the war of maneuver, not static warfare. And the fact that the British and/or the French could not advance on Somme did not mean that the Germans could not do this either. In the Spring of 1918 the Germans used new tactics and found weak spots in the French defenses, so they advanced very well until the arrival of the American troops stopped them and broke their morale.
So the fact that Ukrainians can’t move forward does not mean that the Russians will not be able to do it. We will see.
Yuri, all the armies on the Western Front learned better ways to fight the siege war that they were saddled with and obtained better equipment.
See Bellis, M. (1996) [1916]. Instructions for the Training of Divisions for Offensive Action (repr. ed.). London: Military Press International. ISBN 978-0-85420-195-2
and
Corkerry, Shaun (2001), Instructions for the Training of Divisions for Offensive Action 1916, Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action 1917, Buckinghamshire: Military Press, ISBN 978-0-85420-250-8
The Germans “used new tactics” that the French introduced in 1916 and the British in 1917. The Germans managed to gain territory in 1918 where it did them no good and left them without the protection of prepared defences. It was the British Army that did most to defeat the Germans in the hundred days (August to November 1918). The US army did a lot to help the British and French but were not as significant as the Entente armies.
Squeeth, I do not have these books, however, I can’t see any fruits of such British and French improvements. The much overhyped tank attack at Cambrai, for example, had no results because in the following week the Germans quietly took back the whole area they’d lost, and they did not use any tanks. As for the role of American troops, I’ll quote from Britannica, a very British source of knowledge: “The entry of the United States was the turning point of the war, because it made the eventual defeat of Germany possible.”
Both sides at Ypres in 1917 had about half of the casualties that they suffered on the Somme. At Arras in the spring of 1917, the Third Army took the world record for an advance on the first day, that had been set on 1 July 1916 by the French Sixth Army.
How old is that Britannica article? It’s commonplace now to read that the Americans were a big boost to the Entente’s morale but not as much in material terms in 1918. Had the war gone into 1919 the Americans would have been a tidal wave.
The Great War forced all the armies to resort to fire-power and short advances, ready to defeat counter-attacks, adopt reverse-slope defences, delegation of authority forward and the invention of modern siege warfare machines. If you look at SS 143, partly British and inspired by French precedent it lays out a version of what became German storm troop tactics, taught to the whole army, not just specialist units. In 1918 the British war machine, improvised since 1914, unlike the mass conscript armies of the continentals, matured into an all-arms organisation that was unstoppable, unlike the Westheer. Young conscripts, hurriedly trained but bathed in fire-power, air-power and mechanical contrivances beat the Germans and took nearly as many prisoners as the French, American and Belgian armies combined.
Squeeth, you can enjoy the article here https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/The-U-S-entry-into-the-war
Britannica has been an American property since 1911.
https://www.youtube.com/@MILITARYTUBETODAY/videos carries the sort of stuff you’re talking about, albeit it’s from a pro Russia perspective.
Its stuff doesn’t reconcile with Western MSM accounts. Indeed, on numerous occasions Mark Urban’s reports on Newsnight have talked up Ukrainian success, using maps, only for this daily footage to make a mockery of his reports by showing Ukrainian armed forces demonstrably getting obliterated in said areas. Who to believe?
Ukraine’s big problem is undoubtedly the lack of meaningful air cover against Russian Ka-52 attack helicopters while moving through heavily mined fields; facing seemingly endless lancet drones and of course ever dangerous and highly accurate artillery fire.
BBC Newsnight tonight going 100% on Prigozhin’s end being an orchestrated Putin hit, based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
If it was foul play? because as of tonight even that’s not ascertained. Ask, who backed Prigozhin’s bizarre, aborted mutiny? Could it be a case of him being no longer ‘useful’ to western intel?
As Newsnight’s presenter, Kirsty Wark, acknowledged, Wagner mercenaries are proving a nuisance for western colonial powers attempting to prop up their favoured corrupt leaders across Africa. As the head of that group, Western intel would be highly incentivised to take Prigozhin out. Mark Urban, Christopher Steele and other assorted ‘experts’, all pointing the finger at Putin, is enough to make anyone question whether something is off and that explanation is a little too obvious.
Bug Prig’s plane was shot down outside Moscow. Your claim that it was shot down by the West assumes the West has that reach, and also that it had the requisite intel. It’s pretty far-fetched.
Obviously Putin or SVR RF? Could be, who knows?
We’ve got everyone from Christopher Steele to Joe Biden going ‘all in’, all claiming it’s an obvious Putin/SVR hit. This narrative suits the West in multiple ways.
But why would Putin blow his plane up over Russian territory, when Prigozhin travels the world? The plane – a Brazilian-made Embraer Legacy 600 – was heavily associated with the Wagner group and its leader. Are we saying it’s beyond the capability of well resourced Western intel agencies to have planted such a device?
It’s reported the plane had a “sudden, precipitous drop” as it maneuvered to land. This suggests some sort of AAD altitude triggered device like those found in automatic deploying parachutes.
If it was Putin wot done it, why a spectacular and not an unfortunate heart attack near a hospital? Perhaps a nerve agent taking effect next to the most senior nurse in the British (er, Russian) army?
> Are we saying it’s beyond the capability of well resourced Western intel agencies to have planted such a device?
I honestly don’t think any Western government had a motive to shoot down the Wagner plane. Prig was not a threat to the West; he was a threat to democracy in Africa, but that’s never been something important to the West. He was, however, a disrupting factor in Russia. Arguably he was a Western asset, from that point of view.
I don’t think it was a bomb. I think it was shot down by an air-defence missile. I mean, it could have been a bomb; it was on the landing strip (apparently) for a couple of weeks before this trip.
Putin doesn’t trust his military commanders. He keeps sacking them, and then re-hiring them to head some new unit. Prig was never slammed by Putin for his acid remarks about Shoigu and Gerasimov. And despite being “exiled”, Prig was taking off in jets from airports in Russia, like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Funny sort of exile.
Shoigu was trying to do a takeover of Wagner, wholesale. Prig wasn’t having it. I think Shoigu shot him down.
We heard that his name and a few of his henchmen were on the passenger list, that does not mean he must have been on the plane.
They could have taken him off, without anybody realising.
But the result of his alleged demise suits Vladimir as it causes division and rancor amongst the Wagner group.
I cant believe that they traveled unarmed. what if that was an accident?
or a booby trapped toilet door?
One handgrenade wired to the bog would have been as effective as a surface to air missile, and thousands cheaper.
Shoigu must be having a sly party soon, he was in Prig’s eyesight for a while.
If he used an expensive missile, he has proved that he is useless at organizing a Barmizvah in a prepschool and should be sacked.
Wagner Christie … another whodunnit?
Mark Urban, I think he is ex-army, tank regiment. Served with Pablo Miller, Skripal’s case officer. I have read several claims that he has links to Military Intelligence.
He don’t need telling, as Chomsky said to Andrew Marr (paraphrasing). You are only where you are because you ask the right questions. As historians of Nazi Germany might say, “fully coordinated “
Gleichschaltung a-go-go.
Well said Craig.
Spectacle, Reality, Resistance: Confronting a culture of militarism
David Gee, 2014, published by ForcesWatch
https://www.forceswatch.net/resources/spectacle-reality-resistance-confronting-a-culture-of-militarism/
Some military analysis on Simplicius blog.
He is not infallible, and I disagree in some fundamental political points, but I have learned a few things over the months:
“SITREP 8/20/23: F-16s Paper Over 500k Losses Report ”
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-82023-f-16s-paper-over-500k
A long West Point study on the history of RU military strategy:
“The Russian Way of War in Ukraine: A Military Approach Nine Decades in the Making”
https://mwi.usma.edu/the-russian-way-of-war-in-ukraine-a-military-approach-nine-decades-in-the-making/
If we base assumptions on data that is uncontested, like troop numbers on the eve of the war it makes no sense to assume a blitzkrieg-like plan from Russian side. They were outnumbered. And they were faced with what some called the strongest Armed Forces in Europe besides the Turkish Army.
Additionally ask any military person whether it makes sense to occupy Kiev with 40.000 troops.
(I still know of no source on this theory independent from said report floated by British intelligence last summer.)
With these unfavourable numbers it made sense for the Russians to “enforce” a negotiation.
Had the spring 2022 talks been not thwarted by third parties events might have confirmed RU actions. Even Geoffrey Roberts admitted.
I think the RUs had immense in-fights over this. As I said before: This is not some far-away Arab country for US Marine Corps boys who have no idea and no interest of who they are bombing. They go there and then leave again. Just like Afghanistan, just like Vietnam, like Syria, Libya, and.so.on.
For RU UKR will not just “go away”.
The last war on US soil besides the Civil War was the one against Mexico 1846. Since however thanks to the Monroe/Truman Doctrins the entire planet is regarded potentially as US territory.
Which is ridiculous obviously. And questions the entire idea of the UN Charter and the discussion over §51. And violations of it by other countries.
Just as a reminder:
Aghanistan War was not sanctioned by the UN. There were 2 peaceful resolutions (1373 & 1378). Mandate came only after the fact in Dec. when Bush had already bombed the country and the war was well under way.
In Afghanistan and in Iraq both governments (whether dictatorial or not doesn´t matter) offered peace talks to avoid the war. The US ignored these offers. Even though NATO charter demands peaceful solutions.
In contrast now it was the aggressive party, Russia, offering peace negotiations. First contacts to this happened allegedly already 48 hours into the war.
Putin did not contest Ukraine sovereignty before this war. He did contest their membership in a hostile alliance.
What he wrote about history is a matter for historians and him to discuss. But as Mearsheimer correctly said: Regarding manifest political decisions there is no evidence whatsoever that the Russian had in mind of „wiping Ukraine off the map“.
What will happen in the future is a different matter. But the Russians will still go to lengths to avoid the worst. The air however is thinner now.
Last links for today, Moon of Alabama demanding peace:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/08/the-sunk-cost-fallacy-and-ukraine.html#more
The Duran suggesting it will become worse:
beginning at about TC 19:00 I think.
https://theduran.com/biden-white-house-wants-armistice-in-ukraine/
‘Putin did not contest Ukraine sovereignty before this war.’
Yes he did; and it was nothing new.
https://time.com/6150046/ukraine-statehood-russia-history-putin/
^ time.com??
LOL
Yes go for the man rather than the ball. So much easier.
‘Ukraine a creation of the old soviet union – shaped ….. from the land of historical Russia.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
About half way down.
“Yes go for the man rather than the ball. So much easier”.
Pears, are you seriously suggesting that we should accept everything a source claims, regardless of its obvious partisan interests and long track record of lies and distortion?
Ever since its creation, “TIME” has been a cheerleader for US government policy.
“Play the man not the ball”
But what if that man is Adolf Hitler, Time magazines man of the year in 1938? I don’t recall any mea culpa but I might have missed it. I feel the same towards British media that relentlessly boosted “Herr Hitler” in 1930’s – an incurable suspicion. coupled with a lifelong repulsion.
Recognising Donetsk and Luhansk is not the same as not recognising Ukraine statehood.
” ask any military person whether it makes sense to occupy Kiev with 40.000 troops.’
The US captured Baghdad with 30,000. Baghdad has a population of 8 million compared to pre-invasion Kyiv 3 million. Russia wasn’t expecting much if any resistance, Putin fell for his own propaganda and thought the Ukrainians would either welcome his forces as liberators or not care too much. It was also intended to fly in reinforcements via Hostomel Airport but the Ukrainians sabotaged it so effectively as they withdrew that it was unusable.
@ Pears
“The US captured Baghdad with 30,000.”
How many did it take to hold it?
Interestingly US POTUS Biden has given around £3000 dollars in aid to Ukraine for every man woman and child, in contrast in the recent fire in Hawaii that devastated much of the Lahaina, a city on Maui, Hawaii, with some 12,700 inhabitants. Thousands of homes were destroyed. At least 115 people died, some 850 are still missing. It was the deadliest fire in the U.S. in more than a century, the US government under Biden has offered a measly $700 dollars in aid to very household.
If I were an American affected by this tragic fire I’d be insulted knowing this, and it would affect who I voted for at the next election.
Meanwhile, apparently the Russian Wagner boss who led a failed coup against Putin and Co, has died in an plane crash (a private jet) in Russia.
Interesting point. In addition, that $3000 of ‘aid’ was in the form of very expensive missiles and so on. Aid to the Hawaiians is in the form of boring stuff like food, medical supplies, building grants – nothing that keeps the military contractors fat and happy. So no wonder the amount was so little in comparison!
(Not to mention the vastly smaller population in Maui makes the total sum, particularly given it’s per household and not even per person, an almost trivial payout by the US government)
Hawaii, which the USA illegally occupied and annexed 130 years ago, has been fully open to exploitation and looting by US corporations since 1900.
Ukraine, in contrast, has some of the most fertile arable soil in the world, and used to have – before Donbass seceded – the USSR’s greatest concentration of heavy industry as well as valuable mineral resources. Many of its assets are now technically owned by Western corporations – although I wish them luck enforcing their claims.
Which is the US government going to find more attractive?
‘News reports of how Hawaiians greeted Biden’s motorcade in Maui on August 21 with middle fingers and shouts of “F_ _ _ You!” “F_ _ _ You!” was especially appropriate – if not a century or so too late – in light of the history of how Hawaii became a U.S. government possession…
‘…A Judge Sanford Dole, whose family had long Puritan/Yankee roots in the state of Maine, was put in place as the new head of government. A paramilitary organization known as the Honolulu Rifles forced the Hawaiian king at gunpoint with the threat of being stabbed to death with bayonets to sign off on a new constitution that came to be known as the “bayonet constitution”…
‘…Greg Jones writes of how, two years later Teddy Roosevelt, the biggest blowhard politician in American history, informed a cheering Boston audience that “I feel it was a crime . . . against the white race that we did not annex Hawaii three years ago”’
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/08/thomas-dilorenzo/hawaiis-bayonet-constitution/
It can all be seen on http://thedreizinreport.com/ . He calculates that approx 25% of kit given to Ukraine is no longer functioning. Plenty of war porn with analysis for those that want it.
A valuable side effect has been that the Russians have gained a lot of experience dealing with some of the latest and greatest Western weapons systems. Some of these pose real threats, so it’s best to learn how to defeat them now rather than later. Many of them have turned out to be pathetic frauds – the Patriot system comes to mind here. On its debut in Kiev it fired off all its missiles – over $1 million worth – in a few minutes, hitting nothing, before being obliterated by a precise Russian strike.
The exhibition of captured Western weapons in Moscow is particularly amusing. Needless to say, everything on display has been or is being taken apart and studied in depth by Russian experts.
https://cont.ws/@vbhnfyrjd2402051955/2617296
For those who don’t speak Russian, auto-translate is your friend.
> A valuable side effect has been that the Russians have gained a lot of experience dealing with some of the latest and greatest Western weapons systems.
The West hasn’t sent its “latest and greatest”, it’s supplied nothing newer than 20 years old. The West is dragging it’s heels about supplying F-16s, which date from the 1980s, and lack stealth.
footnotes from The Duran again (sry):
1) Apparently “Whitehall” has instructed to not use the term “hostile power” in reference to Russia in internal memos.
TC: 30:30
https://theduran.com/rus-kupyansk-ukr-setback-rabotino-rus-brics-chair-2024-erdogan-moscow-neocon-article-edited-hiding-us-ukr-war-discussion-august-2021/
2) Mercouris points at the invisible editing of an article that appeared in Augst 2021 in “The National Interest” about war with Russia, by Wess Mitchell, frm Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, which originated with a report drafted for the Pentagon in 2020.
Two versions of the same text seem to exist.
this one is online:
“A Strategy for Avoiding Two-Front War”, August 21st 2021
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/strategy-avoiding-two-front-war-192137?page=0%2C3
However another one with the date of August 22nd seems to exist in the magazine´s archive which has a paragraph explicitly suggesting to inflict a defeat on Russia via Ukraine which has been deleted for the now public version.
For more detailed account by (clumsy) Mercouris see beginning 48:00 in above top link.
He is exaggerating this matter considering the info available from the various RAND reports but it is noteworthy nonetheless.
p.s. BRICS plans on their own “Olympics”.
This all resembles more and more the Sci-Fi serial “Counterpart”:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4643084/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_counterpart
Ironically, this development transpired shortly after the Russians began referring to the NATO countries as “hostile nations”. Even the ultra-tactful Chinese are edging towards such quite unprecedented frankness.
p.s. tonight “The Duran” corrected its report from yesterday on “The National Interest” altering the article by Mr. Mitchell. (see my post above)
There apparently has always been only one version all along.
For the subject matter however it makes no major difference.
https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/versions
Fill yer boots
US Colonel Douglas Macgregor talked to Tucker Carlson recently. Russia is winning and the US media and military are pushing propaganda nonsense. This war should have been shut down years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMUAaWK79Vc
Here’s a pretty thorough and impartial examination of what MacGregor said in that interview:
Where is Col MacGregor coming up with his casualty figures? (Hot Air.com, 22/08/2023) – link
“At this point, I suppose you could conclude MacGregor has inside information while the reports all over the media for the past year are just propaganda. But at that point you’re sliding into conspiracy theory territory. It would be nice to see someone challenge MacGregor on his numbers but he’s not going to get that from Tucker Carlson.”
MacGregor knows far more than the MSM’s absurd and laughable propaganda.
Macgregor dismissed the idea of a Russian invasion only days before it happened (not the way Putin works) and since then has predicted that Ukraine is ‘on the point of collapse’ more times than I can remember.
Pears
“Macgregor dismissed the idea of a Russian invasion only days before”
Where? I googled that claim and found nothing. You made it up? Even if he did…what is the point? I assume majority of the world population did not believe there would be a war.
Here is one guy that dismissed it though….
28 january 2022: Zelensky rebukes Western ‘panic’ over Russia invasion fear after Biden call
https://nypost.com/2022/01/28/zelensky-rebukes-western-panic-over-russia-invasion-fear-after-biden-call/
Jack, it’s just the old fallacy “if he’s wrong about one thing, he must be wrong about everything” beloved of those who like to put forward what they want to be true as if it was actually true.
So did I.
Recognising Donetsk and Luhansk is not the same as not recognising Ukraine statehood.
” But at that point you’re sliding into conspiracy theory territory.”
Have people stopped conspiring?
A conspiracy is not the same thing as a conspiracy theory.
Traditionally, the police attempt to detect and prosecute conspiracies. Surely they must have to do some theorising before declaring their belief a conspiracy has or is taking place? That would make them the original conspiracy theorists.
i’m not sure about it being an unresolved stalemate. it looks a lot like the west has thrown everything at this (except its own soldiers) and has lost again.
that seems to be accepted even by hard shell neocons, which is why all they’re offering now is “Russia didn’t achieve its aims, nur!” people should be tolerant with them at another painful time.
It never fails to surprise me to see such clarity on issues such as Scottish independence, Julian Assange, and maritime rights combined with such myopia on other equally important issues.
First, Les Temps (France) wrote an article just yesterday explaining how journalists are FORBIDDEN by Ukraine to be “embedded” on the front lines, and there have been plenty of other Western MSM outlets saying the same. Even Ukrainian journalists are rarely allowed anywhere near the front. So THAT IS WHY you don’t see any “war porn” on your screens.
On the other hand, Russia has PLENTY of journalists embedded on the front lines, and they even welcome independent journalists such as Patrick Lancaster (American) to do the same. And Russian TV viewers are seeing PLENTY of “war porn” on their newscasts.
Want to take a guess as to why this is? Hint: it’s not because kill rates are “close to even” for both sides LOL But go ahead and comfort yourself with whatever fantasy keeps you warm at night, eh.
“It never fails to surprise me to see such clarity on issues such as Scottish independence, Julian Assange, and maritime rights combined with such myopia on other equally important issues”.
Yes, it is surprising. But it is par for the course; even the cleverest and best-informed people almost always have blind spots. Perhaps Mr Murray doesn’t quite understand what is going on in Ukraine because he has not used the best sources to inform himself.
Much as I dislike repeating myself, you can take the man out of the Foreign Service, but it’s a lot harder to scrub all traces of Foreign Service thinking out of the man.
Come to think of it, even I may be wrong about something.
What is also surprising is that Craig should use such weak dualistic arguments as suggesting that anyone who challenges his narrative is a member of the “cult of Putin” or thinks “Putin is perfect”, as if that was the only other option.
@ Tom Welsh
Perish the thought ;O)
If : the Russians are firing approximately 20,000 shells per day and the Ukrainians firing about 6,000 rounds per day, the Russians have a vast amount of ballistic missiles and the Ukrainians very few and the Russians have a vast airforce and the Ukrainians very few. I would like to know how the KIA plus WIA are in parity between the Russians and Ukrainians?
American claims….
Russia’s military casualties, the officials said, are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. The Russian numbers dwarf the Ukrainian figures, which the officials put at close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html
I do not doubt a whole lof of russians have been killed/wounded, what I do not understand is this: if Russia is losing more than 100% than the ukrainians are losing, how come the russians are the ones holding the ground? How come Ukraine have not won yet if the deaths/wounded are so much higher on the russian side? Something do not add up.
It’s very simple: the Americans are lying in their teeth. Often they just repeat whatever lies the Kiev people have issued; and, incredible as it may seem, Kiev is even more dishonest than Washington.
To my mind the most disheartening aspect of the matter is that the Americans have probably estimated quite accurately the amount of falsehood that Western citizens will unthinkingly accept. It’s an art which they have been perfecting since the heyday of Edward Bernays a century ago. (Recall that Dr Goebbels freely attributed his expertise in propaganda to what he had learned from Bernays and his colleagues in New York. Goebbels had a complete set of Bernays’ works prominently displayed in his study).
> how come the russians are the ones holding the ground?
Because they had a year to build the densest defensive lines Europe has seen since WWII.
When Russia withdrew from Kharkiv and Kherson, Ukraine could have driven Russia out completely, had it not been fighting with bows and arrows (Cold War-era Soviet weapons). The time for a counteroffensive is just as the enemy assault culminates – but Ukraine wasn’t in a position to capitalize on the Russian collapse, and had to wait a whole year. Now they have to pick their way through minefields – apparently up to a dozen mines per square metre, mixed antipersonnel and antitank, and “complex” – which I take to mean that they’re wired together and booby-trapped.
These minefields are supposedly several kilometers deep, and covered by artillery; it doesn’t matter how many tanks and armoured personnel carriers you have, you can’t just drive across several kilometers of minefields at 50Kmph. First, you have to de-mine.
Still Ukraine managed to advance in Zaporozhy past couple of days even though the area was mined… it is very weird, if ukrainian troops, vehicles manage to push through a mine felt, well why are not Russia targetining them? Quite often it seems like the russian army is playing hooky day in and day out. One wonder if they want to win at all, sleepwalking oldies like Shoigu and Gerasimov seems unable to do anything right.
Russia has always had a lot of artillery shells; their doctrine depends on huge artillery barrages. Most of the damage they’ve done to Ukraine has been done with shells. They don’t have a “huge” stockpile of ballistic missiles; they’ve been using S-300s (anti-aircraft missiles) to bombard land targets.
They seem to have lots of Shahed drones, which they use to overwhelm air defences, so that their few ballistics have an improved chance of getting through. The drones might as well be unarmed duds; but what the hell, might as well put half a pound of RX on the front.