HOW RUSSIA LOST THE WAR IN UKRAINE
NATO'S STRATEGY BECOMES CLEAR!
BUDAPEST September, 2023
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A yiddishism is the word CHUTZPAH. It means having nerve, audacity, courage; in Brit English, ‘cheek;’ in Latin (vulgar) “cujones.” There are four heads of state who fit the description: Israel’s, Hungary’s, pre-Boris Johnson’s UK, and Ukraine’s. All four braved the winds against the odds and prevailed. Here in Central Europe we know these facts:
UKRAINIAN FORCES HAVE GROUND DOWN, DEPLETED, AND DEGRADED THE RUSSIAN ARMAMENT INVENTORY AND PERSONNEL.
Russia has met neither its military nor political objectives.
BEFORE THE DISASTER BEGAN I WROTE: THE UKRAINE CRISIS? SOLVED!
The war could have been avoided. At this time the final result will still need to be negotiated more or less to fit the terms I had outlined at the link above. The only way NATO can lose is if the U.S. pulls the plug on it. What kind of American would want to benefit Russia that hs 2300 nukes pointed at America and the west, at the expense of global security?
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Here you’ll witness the inevitable: today’s condition of the Russian army, navy, and airforce, in chaos, logistical disarray and dysfunction, amassing a growing pile of blown up rust.
We’ve seen disorganization and internal rebellion on an epic scale: untrained soldiers throwing down their guns and running for cover, groups of Russians surrendering and even crossing over to fight for Ukraine.
Possibly a million Russian men have defected to Europe and Asia.
Russia has substantially lost almost half its generals and command staff assigned in the field, some assassinated by their own.
What about the frozen-in-mud 40 miles-long convoys, disoriented tank drivers shooting each other; or the 2300 square miles of territory Ukraine has recaptured?
Reportedly, Russia lost 4500 of its modern tanks (cannot confirm this number), a third of its armor and artillery, and are now cannibalizing WWII tanks for parts - taking armor out of mothballs, even museums.
Ukraine attacked the Kremlin’s naval base, Sevastopol, in the Crimea again. It destroyed a modern Russian sub costing billions, along with two warships, and a half billion dollar S-400 anti-aircraft battery. As I write this, Ukraine took out the navy’s headquarters, and, reportedly, killed the commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov and the entire Black Sea Fleet command.
Sevastopol, Russia’s crown in Ukraine, is burning.
Earlier Ukraine had sunk the Kremlin’s command ship in the Azov Sea.
Russia’s one and only diesel-driven aircraft carrier is in drydock most of the year. Many of its best jet fighters cannot find replacement parts, sabotaged by the sanctions. Meanwhile Ukraine is blowning up Russia’s airports and runways.
Ukraine’s forces have surrounded Bakhmut and have broken through major Russian resistance.
Lastly, the Kremlin’s supply lines now destroyed, Russia is unable to resupply its forces, rebuild blown up bridges, roads and rail, or refill its treasury. However, the Russians have not waved the white flag. Yet.
From Bakhmut to Mariupol, to the Crimean naval base from which Russia projected power and influence over Asia and Africa, one witnesses the preposterous fictions invented by the smug faces of Col. Doug MacGregor, Scott Ritter, and others.
MacGregor and his pal in arms, former nuclear inspector Scott Ritter, had predicted that “it’s all over for Ukraine” since the war began.
Their “pretend intelligence” reports were meant to alter policy developed over decades by America’s foreign policy mavens, people with access to genuine intelligence not the Seymour Hirsch variety.
A frequent guest at the Kremlin’s propaganda channel Russia Today, RT, and given his record, one might think Colonel Doug performed a similar role in an earlier war. The physical and political similarities (yes, Saddam was also a Russian client), are merely coincidental.
Or maybe not.
The unfailingly-pompous MacGregor asserted this month that Russia lost 40,000 at most, and Ukraine at least, 400,000 soldiers. In his alternate universe, kindergarteners might be convinced that a Russia, on the verge of financial and military ruin, has been killing Ukrainian ghosts.
The entirety of Ukraine’s armed forces constitutes 500,000 (at the highest estimate, 700,000). Of those about 20-30% are ancilliary support, transport, logistics, food and equipment warehousing and distribution, construction and office workers, SIGINT - cyber, communications, surveillance and intelligence, repairs, armorers, drone operators, kitchen and latrine duty, and medical staff.
Doubling down on revisionist Euclidean math, MacGregor keeps insisting Ukraine has run out of fighters.
Each year 470,000 Ukrainians reach military age. This allows the “Churchillian” Zelenskyy to furlough for fun weekends in Budapest, Rome, or Prague, the other 470,000 taking a needed break from gifting Putin with more widows, orphans, and the heads of Russian generals. (The compliment are not my words, but of four star general Iraq and Afghan commander David Patreaus, who, for some reason, failed to listen to a mere colonel’s reasoning.)
According to MacGregor Ukraine lost the war back in March 2022. That’s why Ukraine just took out Russia’s Crimean headquarters and its top staff.
Conditions for the Russian soldier have not become better since 160-270,000 of them (from different report estimates), are pushing up daisies. Another 350,000 or so were wounded. These arguably represent a third to more than half of Putin’s active forces after the decimated WAGNER GROUP had quit the battle.
How do we know this? We have OSINT, open source intelligence, satellite photos of new cemeteries, of retreating troops and material, especially in Ukrainian territory from which the Russians were dispossessed, SIGINT and communications intercepted in the public domain, and battlefield intelligence reports - much of it videotaped by the Russians themselves.
Nor have the Russians benefited from 19th century weapons technology. Take the 1891-produced Mosin rifles and the rusted Kalashnikov’s from the Korean and Afghan wars, with their frozen bolts and receivers, and splintered wood butts. In contrast, the Ukrainian forces possess the latest well-oiled weapons with thermal imaging, range finder scopes, used with effective personal armor and helmets, fresh out of the manufacturer’s cartons.
Ukraine has not only recaptured Kharkiv and Kherson, the major Russian base in the south fronting Crimea from which Ukraine hopes to recapture the peninsula to evict what’s left of the Russian navy, but also 2300 square miles of the territory overrun by Russia since its 2022 invasion.
WIKI: “From March to November 2022, the city was occupied by Russian forces during their invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces recaptured the city on 11 November 2022.”
Zelenskyy’s command, as the man himself, are organized. Ukraine’s troops are highly-motivated, confident and enthusiastic, and united. They have NATO backing them.
Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russia in maps
BEFORE THE RUSSIAN FORCES COLLAPSE, AND THEN CRUMBLE, YOU ARE BEING REDIRECTED TO GEOGRAPHICAL REALITY:
The problem is not Ukraine, but the Baltic, whereas NATO over-reach can escalate the conflict. With the crescent formed by the ascent of Finland and Sweden, along with Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, Poland and Germany, NATO has seized control of the entire Baltic and the borders surrounding Kaliningrad Oblast - the armed Russian enclave in Europe.
Ukraine cut off Russia’s southern flank too. Russia’s Sevastopol operation is literally sinking, following in the path of Kremlin’s command ship Moskva.
CREDIT - SCREEN CAPTURE
Moreover, NATO can blockade Russia’s Mumansk Naval Base near St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown - seen in the gap between Estonia and Finland.
For the whole story please see THIS.
NATO threatens Könegsburg, today known as Kaliningrad, the Kermlin’s outpost in the middle of Europe. Given the political realities in a region clamoring to join the EU, I’m optimistic. The oblast may soon be known as Könegsburg again.
Nations in the vicinity of Ukraine could handle the depleted Russian forces in the event Ukraine’s offensive failed. In fact Poland alone can prevail without Ukraine.
The 3.6 million force NATO with reserve estimates in the millions, can vastly overwhelm the depleted Russian army in the Baltic and elsewhere with personnel, material, armor, naval, air, intelligence and overall superior technology.
These are the details the former FOX host and his armchair general do not want you reading this to know.
The history is telling, as the following VLOG from Budapest details by day 26 of the war Col. MacGregor’s pipedreams. More than a year and a half later, it has not become any better for the smug-faced armchair general - or his employer at the Kremlin?
From Budapest:
At 19 minutes into the video McGregor’s fears of February 2022 have been realized by September 2023 as I write this.
Toward the VLOG’s finale, MacGregor appears to have entered Barnum & Bailey territory, as the litany of his failed predictions at FOX get lit.
Beginning with his gaslighing of America, on day 9 MacGregor asserted: “In another ten days it’ll be all over" and “Quite frankly, everything that comes out of Ukraine is a lie and will be debunked in 48 hours”…(also said by the Moskva’s captain as Putin’s command ship was sinking in the Black Sea.)
About Zelenskyy, ”I don’t see anything heroic about the man,” proclaimed the heroic MacGregor from his heroic armchair.
The same free-of-a-moral center, supercilious and pompous MacGregor, who’s never shed a tear for the millions displaced who lost their homes, their cities, their infrastructure, airports, rail, businesses, farms, families, friends, parents, children, and the tens of thousands of innocent women, men, and children maimed and butchered by the Kremlin strongman for whom Doug, Tucker, Buchanan, Greenwald, Gabbard, have been advocating.
After the sham Kremlin-driven referendums to secede the Donbas region from Ukraine proper, the 80% who escaped Putin’s Donbass paradise wrapped themselves in the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag and then voted “no!”
As for NATO’s strategy (other than its dangerous over-reach at Kaliningrad Oblast), NATO is prepared to fight Russia directly using conventional means.
“Retired British Army General Sir Richard Shirreff says NATO may eventually need to conduct operations against Russia if the war in Ukraine dragged on and became “a running sore” in Eastern Europe. The former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, also told DW that Western self-deterrence had prolonged the war and that the best way to end the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling was to build a credible conventional defense in NATO.”
The west must double down on supplying Ukraine with the most advanced conventional weapons. An overwhelming surge with western aid, is a far cheaper and more rational strategy, than inviting WWIII after Russia will have decided to lay waste to the next nation to its west.
Let Ukraine, rather than NATO (that would justify more Russian aggression), grind down, deplete, and degrade the Kremlin’s arsenal, manpower, and political stability.
After the astonishing collapse of the ruble to one half its value, this scenario is becoming a probability. Russia can neither replace its currency, nor its wrecked military assets. In retrospect do we remember Tucker gloating about the strong ruble?
The path to losing Ukraine (with severe consequences for East Europe), is to allow the momentum to slow, to allow pretense American patriots colluding with Russia to knock out the third leg of the global defense stool.
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PART II
SIDEBAR
NEW YORK POST: Ron DeSantis (and Vivek Ramaswamy) are flat out wrong on Ukraine and the role US should play
Here's What Would Happen If We Stopped Supporting Ukraine - Center for International Strategic Studies - CSIS
Top 5 Russian Myths About NATO Debunked
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RONALD REAGAN WON THE COLD WAR BY BANKRUPTING THE EVIL EMPIRE
Following Donald Trump’s precedent-setting example having supplied Ukraine first in 2017, and again in 2019, NATO will bankrupt the Russian Federation.
GENERAL DAVID PATREAUS, WHOM OBAMA FIRED FOR HIS TRUTHFULNESS, SPEAKS TO THE ANTI-AMERICAN-ANTI-UKRAINE CABAL:
The libertarian “Surrender Monkeys” never agreed with Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Frankin, John Adams, FDR and Harry Truman. They agree with the isolationist foreign policies of the extreme left, of Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore; and on the right, Nazi-fan Pat Buchanan, Jewhaters Walt & Mearsheimer, and Nazi-fan Charles Lindbergh. And now Tucker Carlson.
These people have parrotted falsehoods while wrapping themselves in the American flag: asserting the lie that the United States has no significant national security interest to justify intervention anywhere in the world for any reason.
Don’t be surprised when this cabal of naysayers propose the same “logic” to enemy forces invading the South China Seas, Vietnam, Japan and Taiwan, Panama, Central America and the Carribbean, the two poles, and the Golan in Israel.
They’ve been wrong on all counts: America has a huge national security interest in Europe. And the infrascructure to defend it.
The nattering nabobs of negativism (Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, MacGregor and Glenn Greenwald among others) provided America with a serious lack of seriousness coupled to historical ignorance and epic dishonesty.
The United States has built its prosperity and security on successful interventionist policy since the neocons Washington, Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson (see the links above). Only the historically and geopolitically unknowing can believe that the United States lost its wars. As if repetition of falsehoods make them true. The facts are:
The U.S. has not lost a single war.
It has abandoned its allies, the Kurds in Iraq, the South Vietnamese, freed Iraq and the Afghans in Kabul only after, and to its satisfaction, it hanged Saddam and crushed ISIS and al’Queda. It secured its then-military objectives.
Russia is collapsing politically, economically, and not having met its military objectives, has already lost the war.
The West will fund the mop up, and the rebuilding of Ukraine, a region that will have become a profitable and secure Euro-American trading partner.
Open-minded conservatives will re-educate themselves to understand the stakes, as well as the consequences of listening to conmen, rather than statesmen.
Russia’s military forces are becoming toast in Ukraine, and are handcuffed in the Baltic. The trend is your friend. Unless Russia ups its game, it’s over for them.
Putin’s days are numbered.
Reporting from Budapest.
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FURTHER READING: THE RELENTLESS REGULARITY OF IRREGULAR WARFARE
OUR WORLD IN DATA: ARMED FORCES AND MILITARY SPENDING AS PER SHARE OF THE POPULATION
PLEASE SUPPORT MY WORK AND POST THESE ESSAYS TO TWITTER, GETTR, MINDS, TRUTH, RUMBLE, FACEBOOK, GAB, AND OTHERS!
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© Andrew G. Benjamin is in finance, real estate and equities, a former advisor to New York City mayor ‘s office (Subcommittee on Taxation, Finance and the Budget). Benjamin wrote extensively about politics, transnational and domestic, intelligence and military affairs, security and strategy, economic issues, Mideast, terrorism, technology and high end audio.