Russia. Is. At. War.

The EU is going to be forced to confront the Ukrainian nightmare it has created with the US

Published: 2024-03-24

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The title of an article from Bernard at Moon of Alabama will put a smile on the face of the Christian fascists in the US Senate. It should also scare the hell out of any military personnel from any nation who are located in Ukraine.

Russia. Is. At. War.

The terrorist attack on the evening of Friday 2024-03-22 at a musical event, predominantly for young people, in Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk (Moscow oblast) has nothing to do with this.

It occurred approximately a day after Russia's new posture in Ukraine became clear. Both the scale of the Russian attacks, and the planning for the terrorist attack are likely to have overlapped, being independent events, though connected by the war.

All the terrorism will do is further galvanize a Russian population behind the most tactically adroit leader they have had in living memory.

The fact that US National Security Council spokesman Admiral Kirby chose to state that "There is no indication at this time that Ukraine, or Ukrainians, were involved in the shooting" indicates his level of political and forensic ineptitude. Somebody could mention to Kirby that naming a country and people with a history of running terrorist attacks on Russia is not going to help hide their likely involvement. I mean, just how stupid does one wish to portray oneself?

Putin's "grip on power tightens" as he "basks" in winning a "rigged", "undemocratic" election which broke Russia's record for participation

The Yuri Levada Analytical Center publishes methodical, reliable, statistical summaries of Russian opinion. It is respected in the west, and has been funded (though accepting that funding may not have been so wise) by the US' National Endowment for Democracy. It's margin of error on Vladimir Putin's re-election victory was 1%. Levada predicted the result, incredibly accurately.

But, the Official Imperial Echo Chamber just kept printing their propaganda.

[click to enlarge.]

With this mammoth vote of confidence, Russia's executive are empowered to implement whatever policies they see fit. In foreign policy towards the war against them, provoked by the US and supported by NATO in Ukraine, the executive's immediate response were a sequence of very complex attacks on various facilities in Ukraine, in the capital Kiev, and elsewhere.

From MoA (see the brilliant article for source references and the rest of its well organized information):

Yesterday's Russian MoD report said:

“Last night, the Russian Aerospace Forces delivered a strike by long-range precision weaponry including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles at AFU decision-making centres, logistic bases, temporary deployment areas of special operations forces and foreign mercenaries.

The goal of the strike has been achieved. All the targets have been engaged.”

Such Russian strikes are complex. Drones are send first to reveal Ukrainian air defense systems. Then follows a wave of attacks against those system. A third strike is then launched against the real targets of the attack. In this case those were a drone factory in Kiev as well as a headquarter of the military intelligence service GUR.

[An official graphic displaying some of the complexity of the attacks, again, from the MoA article.]

Another large scale strike followed today. The primary targets were elements of the electricity infrastructure:

“Large areas of Ukraine are suffering blackouts after Russian missiles targeted energy infrastructure.

There is no electricity in the second-largest city of Kharkiv, says regional head Oleg Synehubov.

...”

Russia's executive have informed the West of their response to Macron and other panicked European politicians trying to club together a coalition of the petrified to further intervene in the war.

The message is loud and clear. Your soldiers will die.

NATO has no effective defense against these types of attacks. Ukraine's air defenses are degraded and being further degraded by the day. [On 2024-03-27 Alex Christoforou reported that on the day previous Russia destroyed not only an SBU building in Kiev with Zircon missile(s) but also two Patriot air defense systems at an airport near Kiev thus making Kiev even more vulnerable to missile attack.] The air defense systems locations are determined by drone waves. Those are identified and avoided [or destroyed]. Hypersonic missiles destroy the selected targets. There is no other way to read this. Every military planner in NATO, with access to the data, knows this.

In Ray McGovern's comments on Judging Freedom regarding Russia's response to the terrorist attack he expressed both the likelihood, and hope, that Russia's response will be calculated and precise, as its responses have been. As he stated "Russia is playing with all of the high cards". Being provoked into responding wildly would undermine that position of strength. The Russian government's response will most likely include a full-scale (to use that fine phrase) forensic investigation of the crime scene and suspects, an internal investigation to identify how improvements in internal threat warnings can be made, and, if ties to Ukraine and/or the West can be found, declaring those at the UN.

While this attack is a tragedy for 60+ families of the murdered and 100+ of the wounded in Russia, it has no military impact on the war whatsoever. What it signifies is an entry into a new phase by the US. This has been signaled from various players (Nuland & Budanov) and commentators (Bryen), as this newsletter has been conveying.

Asymmetry: the GUR/SBU lead

US advice to their puppet regime in Kiev has taken a very interesting turn.

The new "point man" on Ukraine is obviously Jake Sullivan who recently made a "surprise" visit to Kiev. This product of the Brooking Institution's Strobe Talbot has been instructed to adjust Zelenskiy's expectations, again quoting MoA:

On Wednesday Jake Sullivan, the U.S. National Security Advisor, had visited Kiev. He was noticed for what he did not say:

Jake Sullivan, US National Security Adviser, has said that Ukraine will win if it comes out of the war as a sovereign, democratic and free country. At the same time, he did not mention restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity among the conditions of victory.

The Adams Family reject regurgitated various platitudes about funding delivery while those prospects are locked up in Congress as the US national political machine moves into Presidential selection mode. Nothing is going to happen before Easter or a fortnight thereafter, obviously. The exception would be the US executive continuing to lie under oath or do various other end-runs around the Congressional purse to slip small packages into the corrupt Ukrainian cesspit.

As for the shift to the asymmetric terror war, in "Fearing Spike in Oil Prices, US Tells Ukraine To Halt Attacks on Russian Energy" Kyle Anzalone from Antiwar informs us that:

According to the Financial Times, “The White House had grown increasingly frustrated by brazen Ukrainian drone attacks that have struck oil refineries, terminals, depots, and storage facilities across western Russia, hurting its oil production capacity,” adding that US officials are concerned with “driving up global oil prices and provoking retaliation.”

Which is further confirmation of the US moving into "selection mode": it's the economy, baby.

The merger of these instructions shows us that, yes, Project Ukraine is moving into asymmetric warfare. This is a no brainer. They have no other choice. Russia has forced NATO's hand in the conventional war into an attritional mode which Russia has been dominating since the northern Autumn of 2022. By a year later, Russia had integrated their logistics and adapted tactics into a flexible force against which the Armed Forces of Ukraine, even with their NATO wunderweapons, intelligence, commanders and advisers stands no chance. They are missing everything which informed commentators have been telling us and the Official Imperial Echo Chamber refuses to report.

Ukrainian funding will dribble in here and there with the EU branch of NATO being able to fund the Ukrainian Kleptocracy for a while longer. First will be their soon to be provided €5 billion and soon enough thereafter the next €5 billion stolen from the interest on the Russian Central Bank's foreign reserves impounded in Belgium-based financial services company Euroclear.

As every informed commentator has been yelling for months, none of this matters. Ukraine cannot print men. Their forceful frogmarching of recruits off to a losing war is generating extreme resentment in the villages where, if they are lucky, a few men remain. Meanwhile Russia is receiving thousands of volunteers a week as it has been for well over a year. That pipeline of trained, well armed, supplied and lead Russian units is unstoppable without the use of nuclear weaponry. All of this is on top of a AFU:Russian casualty ratio of 6:1. or worse. The military result is a known fait accompli.

Zooming Out

The US has, by executing its change of management, admitted military defeat in its proxy war against Russia. Its arms complex has certainly profited, as intended. It is withdrawing into US Presidential selection silly season. The outcome of this is entirely unpredictable. Neither candidate is electable by an informed electorate. Happily for both of them, in foreign policy, most of the electorate is not. This dominante component of US citizenry has the Echo Chamber to thank for this. Given the candidates on offer, if the rate of participation in the US presidential election reaches half of that in Russia I will be flabberghasted.

The US' conversion of Project Ukraine to an intelligence agency driven insurgency and terror operation leaves the stinking mess in the hands of its European vassals. They deserve every piece of political pain which they suffer from this. If they would like some counsel on the reliability of their mercurial, Machiavellian ally, they should speak with their colleagues in Tehran, Beijing or Moscow.

There is one and only one sane choice for Europe, which is an instant negotiation to find a workable settlement. The European political leadership cannot allow themselves to see this, due to their ideological blindness, the amounts of money which are still sloshing around their Peace Fund to arm the war, and the size of the siphoned monies which sit on records in the kleptocratic capital, Kiev.

The sooner they realize the scale of the geopolitical problem which they exacerbated the better. Russia is not isolated. Europe is. So is the US.

The US' withdrawal will also isolate them from each other. This is potentially the most cataclysmic geopolitical fuck up of all time. Neither the US nor the EU can be trusted morally due to their ongoing support of the genocide which Israel's Occupation Force is exacting on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank (aka the Occupied Territories). Add to this that the EU's political leadership is about to cause their financial institutions to commit harakiri again, by again ignoring advice to the contrary from those institutions. The US' dominance in global trade is continuing to fall, though will maintain itself for a while.

Russia has just begun its year of the rotating presidency of BRICS+. Their work on establishing new international trade mechanisms via banking institutions, a potential new currency and bi-lateral trade agreements in national currencies is continuing. Analysts can expect developments to be announced at the upcoming trade conference in St. Petersburg and later in the year at the BRICS+ conference.

There is nothing that the US or the EU can do to stop this. They are being frozen out of influence by their own moral corruption. The rest of the world desires to no longer have the West's lying, thieving, immoral boot on their neck.

Sayonara, Hegemon and vassals. Come back and see us when you have reasonable policies to discuss. How desperate you will be when you return depends on how quickly you see the doom towards which you are heading.

Update: Some Further Analysis with a Sprinkling of Speculation

The targets of the initial strikes on Ukraine were, primarily it seems, the GUR military intelligence and the electrical power systems.

The first class of targets were the "decision making" centers of the new leadership of their adversary. Russia well understands the US' shift in management.

The second is Ukraine's electrical power infrastructure. The purpose here is to minimize the effectiveness of Ukraine's logistics; to fix forces in place, to give Russia the upper hand in applying pressure where they choose. There is a clear secondary goal. To demonstrate to the AFU and its Kiev leadership that Russia can destroy their energy infrastructure and fix their forces in place whenever it wishes.

Both of these target selections, and the manner in which they were targeted, indicate an escalation and likely imminent targets. There are two areas of Ukrainian territory in which Russia has expressed interest, based on their historical narrative. They are Kharkov and Odessa.

As expressed in the recent podcast, the temptation to capture these cities must be immense. Many Russian soldiers will die to achieve either objective. A degree of megalomania may be setting in, however justified by historical narrative.

One can also understand a counter narrative, that failure to do so will be to abandon these dominantly Russian cities and their populations to being governed by a Kiev government, which however friendly, will probably join the EU and be awash with NGO propaganda institutions and continue to subjugate Russian culture.

Counter to this is the fact that right now Russia can overwhelm the AFU. The opportunity to take these cities this "easily" will almost certainly not reappear for generations. Herein lies the tension.

Russia has difficult political decisions to make. It can be challenging for a political leadership which has been cautious, and made mistakes with that caution, to hold down a military leadership which sees opportunity for stunning victories staring them in the face.

My crystal ball hints that Kharkov is the first objective. Odessa will follow unless Europe's NATO arm shows serious leadership by rejecting the US lead, taking control of their own region, uniting behind peace and sitting down with Russia to end this war in the very near future.

Russia has been willing to negotiate from day one of this conflict. There is no indication that this has changed. Solutions to the conflict can be found. The existing change in territory from Ukraine to Russia is not negotiable. It is what remains of Ukraine's northeast, east and south which is.

The fighting season on the steppes of Ukraine has just begun. It lasts until mid October.

Coalition of the Terrified and the Sneaky BND, YesXorNo, 2024-03-19

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Sources

Russia. Is. At. War., b., Moon Of Alabama, 2024-03-22

Terrorist attack in Crocus: over 60 deaths, more than 100 wounded, TASS, 2023-03-23

Intel agencies detain 11 people involved in Crocus City Hall attack — FSB, TASS, 2024-03-23

Kremlin Says Russia Is in a 'State of War' in Ukraine Due to West's Involvement, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar, 2024-03-24 [added after publication of this article]

US sees no link between Ukraine and Moscow concert hall shooting, says White House, Euheniia Martyniuk, EuroMaidan Press, 2024-03-23

Putin’s victory is a geopolitical reality, M.K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, 2024-03-22

Late-Imperial Duplicities, Patrick Lawrence, Scheerpost, 2024-03-22

Getting The Math Right... , Andrei Martyanov, Reminiscence of the Future..., 2024-03-19

Biden Administration Doubling Down on Losing in Ukraine - Seymour Hersh's Latest, Seymour Hersh (an excerpt), Natylie's Place: Understanding Russia, 2024-03-22

• Yep, Russia wants Kharkiv, as this newsletter has been stating for months

Krokus-City Hall..., Andrei Martyanov, Reminiscence of the Future ..., 2024-03-22

Fearing Spike in Oil Prices, US Tells Ukraine To Halt Attacks on Russian Energy, Kyle Anzalone, Antiwar, 2024-03-22

[US] NATO v Russia: 2014 - 2024, YesXorNo, 2024-03-09

NATO is Isolating Itself, YesXorNo, 2024-03-09

The Ukraine War is an Era Defining Event, YesXorNo, 2023-08-22

INTEL Roundtable w⧸ Johnson & McGovern： Roundup on Ukraine and Gaza, Napolitano interviews the McGovern & Johnson, Judging Freedom, 2024-03-22

The Bloom ｜ Russia'\''s Devastating Blows ｜ A Huge Operation Has Begun ｜ Russia Is At War. MS 2024.3.22, Dima, Military Summary, 2024-03-22

FAB-3000. Russia begins war. Macron, Ukraine will collapse, Mercouris and Christoforou, The Duran, 2024-03-22

$1.2T spending bill. FAB-3000 mass production. Scholz; $50B Freedom Bonds. Ursula, EU war President, Alex Christoforou, 2024-03-23

Culture

The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, uploaded by losing your grip on 2015-02-16

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