The Slaughter of Vugledar: Ukraine and NATO's Fate
A lost citadel and an empty stage in Ramstein
Published: 2024-10-09
Updated 2024-10-10: Zelensky’s cancellation of his second summit was added to the changing political winds.
Leaderless in Ramstein
Just as the mighty Wurlitzer was warming up to hail the most significant meeting of the NATO donors to their Ukrainian proxy, US President Biden has denied himself the leading role at the heads of state meeting by canceling his attendance. This will leave Macron (France), Sir Starmer (UK), Scholz (Germany) and their puppet (Zelensky) lost, leaderless.
The meeting would have been the first “contact group” attended by heads of state for its coordination of man made instruments of war to be rained down on US/NATO's perennial enemy Russia. Biden cited the natural death and destruction being rained down on the southeastern United States as his reason for revoking his participation. Differing communities may ascribe this turn of events to divine intervention or that the NATO alliance is the largest consumer of fossil fuels globally. Is it the poetic justice of the heathen Gods of old at play, or just warmongering and corruption?
Political winds are following the ill fortunes of NATO's proxy forces in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Martial Law President Zelensky canceled his second, ambitiously named ‘Peace’ Summit. In Donetsk, Ukraine’s haphazard and costly retreat from Vugledar has given Russia's military campaign a major tactical victory.
Vugledar
Simplicius' account of the fall of Vugledar cites many Ukrainian soldiers' descriptions of the different failings which lead to the disaster. In them we read the exact consequences of the foundational weaknesses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) described by informed commentators for many months: namely, very low recruiting numbers, poor training, stressed logistics and a lack of air defense. The fall of Vugledar would have been a route, but there was no effective way out. It was a slaughter.
The AFU's loss of Vugledar was partially caused by reduced logistics and the AFU's constant lack of some munitions, particularly artillery rounds. Close to the collapse, it was troop numbers and moral. In the episode "Replacements" from the dramatization of accounts of WWII soldiers, "Band of Brothers", the tension between the experienced soldiers and new recruits is explored. Those new recruits were well trained and equipped. In Ukraine, there are insufficient numbers, and they are neither well trained nor equipped. This can lead to extreme tension between units.
Reports of this distrust between "veteran" and new units began to emerge about 4 months ago. The reports largely dried up until those cited by Simplicius in his account of the slaughter of Vugledar. However, reports of the use of "territorial" brigades, of low moral and little training, have appeared in many of Ukraine's recent reversals. The collapse of its western front in the suicidal invasion of Russia in Kursk was one example.
Local Assessments
Former Ukrainian Presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych recently summarised his view of the future of the conflict:
In two to three months, well, three to four, the front, which is currently crumbling in two directions, and slowly retreating in three, will begin to crumble in six or seven. This flow will become uncontrollable. This means a collapse of the front.
[...]
Moreover, motivation is lacking due to internal politics, where every day new proposals are put forward by the powerful to limit citizens' rights: from cultural and language bans to economic restrictions. Almost every day, new corruption scandals emerge, and the chaos in the management of the army and the state intensifies.
[...]
Now the only way out is to sober up, stop the war, and begin a complete reorganization of the state system.
— from Simplicius’ article
The Fronts
The AFU is under pressure across all of the wide west to east front in Zaporozhye, in all of Donetsk, in the north and south of Kupiansk, and again in Vovchansk (north of Kharkiv). There is no effective retreat in Donetsk's west and south because there are no defensive works to fall back into. It is obvious that southern Donetsk cannot be effectively defended.
The AFRF have just captured a huge territory to the northeast of Kurakhove (southeast of Pokrovsk). The remaining AFU forces in the area are caught in two towns with one small road out which is under constant FPV drone observation and attack. Another significant number of AFU soldiers will be killed, significantly wounded or captured as the AFRF completes the capture of this cauldron.
[An annotated frame from Military Summary, 2024-10-08 (see sources).]
It was the AFRF's victory in Avdiivka in February 2024 which enabled the push towards Pokrovsk and Kurakhove, and over time through the pressure created, the capture of Vugledar. In the fighting season of 2023, the AFU lost thousands of armored vehicles and men during its failed "counter offensive". In 2024, Russia has achieved many tactical victories. These are a result of overall strategy rather than any particular tactical brilliance.
It was Jacques Baud who alerted the West in April 2024 via the independent media to Russia's strategic approach. It not military, per se, but a whole of nation approach. It is economic, military production, and judicious tactical engagements; a war of attrition.
By 2024 Russia having bypassed the sanctions efforts of the US and EU due to its own international relations augmented by BRICS, the EurAsian Economic Union and its collaboration with China via the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Russia had exceeded the whole of NATO in useful armament production. It is humorous that the Wests' media keep issuing articles claiming that little North Korea is at fault for this. They cannot admit that it is Russia with some assistance from other nations, in just the same way they will not mention that NATO has begged for millions of shells from South Korea or Israel and scoured the black market. Ukraine's lack of air defence and artillery is not because its NATO backers don't want to provide them. There are none.
Russia is not fielding small numbers of poorly motivated, aged and insufficiently trained soldiers, sourced from its rural areas, man-handled into vans . Russia's young volunteer soldiers arrive to veteran units which have had any poor commanders replaced. None of them have been stuck on the front line for months, or years, on end. Russia's re-awakened military production has provisioned the AFRF. One of the many lessons Russia will have learned from this war is the importance of colossal armament reserves. It was those which served while production was re-established. The USA does not have them now, to the considerable alarm of its military.
Russia, since the northern autumn of 2022 has dominated the conflict in the statistic which matters in a war of attrition: the ratio of soldiers wounded or killed. All of Ukraine's terrorist attacks and counter-offensives have failed to weaken the AFRF, Russia's production or its political leadership. Two Russian tactical withdrawals from 2022 are all that the AFU and its NATO backers have to show. Russia has four new oblasts with their mineral and industrial resources, and populations who are pleased to be free of oppression from the US installed Ukrainian nationalist government.
Their resistance to that oppression in Donbas prompted the Ukrainian government to instigate a civil war under the flag of a counter-terrorist operation. The Ukrainian government installed by the US is the cause of all of this, kept on track by the US instructed scuttling of the Minsk II Accords and its undermining of peace talks.
Against a desperate military backdrop the AFU was ordered to invade Kursk. In recent days they have launched a few small counter offensives, to some success. This plays into Russia's hands. There are no Russian civilians there. Occupied Kursk is pure battlefield. Suggestions that this occupied territory will be a bargaining chip for Ukraine with Russia are utterly ludicrous.
Imagine a fictitious war between Canada and the United States. The US has captured half of British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Canada's armed forces are under half capacity and have limited supply. Its economy it utterly destroyed, being propped up by some foreign donor. Canada invades New Hampshire and captures the top half.
Would the US even consider allowing Canada to use half of New Hampshire as a bargaining chip? Hell no!! The same with Russia and Ukraine and Kursk.
Instead, returning to Russia/Ukraine, Ukraine is sustaining its invasion force in Kursk even though it is contained, instead of reinforcing its defenses in the east. It is sacrificing soldiers for corrupt, political maneuvering while losing territory.
Land for NATO Membership
There is no escape for NATO's proxy. It cannot change its location.
Departed NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg’s recently suggested 'West German model' of '[Ukrainian] Land for Nato membership' is as inept as the Kursk offensive. NATO is militarily defeated. Admitting a destroyed Ukraine would merely accelerate NATO's demise.
Should that Biden-free meeting in Ramstein go ahead, France and Germany's leadership might take the opportunity to plan a more believable exit strategy from Project Ukraine. Starmer's strategy will be to continue to obsequiously grovel at the USA's feet.
Macron and Scholz could lay the path for their successors to deal with the economic disaster which their participation in Project Ukraine has wrought on the Europe's economy and peoples. Or they may not. It matters little. They are as defeated as Ukraine, and they know it.
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Sources
SITREP 10/5/24: Post-Ugledar Landscape Unfurls into Dark Ukrainian Future, Simplicius, Simplicius, 2024-10-06
Ramstein meeting on Ukraine up in air after Biden cancels trip to Germany, Jeff Mason, Jarrett Renshaw & Sabine Siebold, Reuters, 2024-10-08
Zelensky cancels November ‘peace summit’, RT, 2024-10-08
Scholz to Host Biden, Starmer, Macron for Ukraine Talks Oct. 12, Michael Nienaber, Bloomberg, 2024-10-08
Hurricane Season Rips Into US War-Spending, Elizabeth Vos, Consortium News, 2024-10-09
Former Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg: ‘So far, we have called Putin’s bluff’, Henry Foy, Financial Times, 2024-10-04 [https://www.ft.com/content/5b63bdc1-9e74-4464-92df-a5aa83c5b221]
Ukraine, Nato membership and the West Germany model, Ben Hall, Financial Times, 2024-10-05 [https://www.ft.com/content/b70972d6-3e7f-4a87-8bc5-ac0699f6e7fc]
The Rout of [the AFU in] Avdiivka, YesXorNo, 2024-02-23
Jacques Baud on the Russian Art of War, YesXorNo, 2024-04-03
📽️ Elensky cancels PEACE summit. Biden⧸Blinken CANCEL Germany trip. Denmark, Nord Stream BOMBSHELL [v5ft5f1], Alex Christoforou, 2024-10-09
Harvest Time🔥 Zoriane Has Fallen⚔️ First Real Cauldron🎖 Biden Cancels Trip To Ramstein🌏 MS 2024.10.8, Dima, Military Summary, 2024-10-08
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