The Political Correctness Haters' Club

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4 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

 

I can understand Poland, Czech Republic, Baltic countries (basically all Eastern European countries) whose nightmare is the USSR. Russia has always remained a threat for them.

 

But for Western European countries, I'm unsure of what the threat is. NATO is a "vassalage contract" where the lord (the US) protects us but asks big favours in return (restriction of freedom). Is this contract fair for us? Can the US protect us against "asymmetric warfare" like terrorism?

 

He did? I didn't remember that. That's funny, maybe he wanted to enter it to make it explode.

When was that?

 

What kind of restriction/favors does the US ask france?  I know a major aspect is the use of similar ammunition 5.56 NATO and equipment, shared technologies and training/information.

 

Putin was interested in getting Russia join to join NATO during the beginning of his presidency and the Clinton years.  He was also interested in improving relations between Russia and the west for years but the Crimea crisis turned him into Darth Vader.

 

 

 

 

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7/5

 

 

With the Luhansk Oblast fallen, the Russian frontline straightened.  The effected frontline has decreased from 123 KM to 55KM, meaning a savings of 68 KM.  So previously 25 combat battalions held this frontline and now they need only 11 if they want to maintain the same 5-6 KM per BTG ratio.  That means that they have 14 combat battalions freed up for other deployment.

 

https://militaryland.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/day_130_Siverskyi-Donets.png

mayor of Sloyvansk reported that the Russians are just 7 KM away from the city.  

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Putin decorated General Lapin "Hero of the Russian Federation", the highest military award for the conquest of the LRP.  He also announced a 'rest' to refit/refresh units that fought in the LRP and a consolidation of gains.  Russian forces have halted in front of the Seversk defense line.  Putin has done this before at Mariupol, when he publicly ordered Russian troops to stand down in front of the encircled Azov Stal.  In reality they continued attacking the position.  I think this is just cover for the Russians to relocate freed up forces (up to 14 combat battalions) to other areas.  

 

day_130_South-Eastern-Front.png (2150×1375) (militaryland.net)

 

According to the Ukr General staff, the Sivesk defense line is now piled up with a mass of retreated Ukrainian formations, the most concentrated sector in the Ukraine.  They really did use up their reserves, the mass of formations that were located in the Southern theater are now in the Donbass.

 

In order to persecute the battle for Sloyansk-Kramatorsk, the Russians need to repeat what they did in the LPR.  

 

The Toresk-Niu York-Aviika defense line has not been breached in the South, and it looks like the Russians will try to enter the cities through the Izyum salient first.  But for certain they need to breach this area with a breakout operation like in Popasna, by outflanking the defense line.  If they breakout, then they can approach the twin cities from the South.

 

Given the high density of Ukr forces behind Sivesk, the only way to reduce these forces is to breakout from the South, to force them to relocate and thin the Sivesk line.  Either that or the Russians could spend another month performing artillery/airpower/missile attrition on them and move the snail again.

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7/6 NASA thermal imaging of the Sevesk defense line- this is where the strongest concentration of Ukrainian forces are.  The Red dots are fires.  The Red portion is Russian territory.  

 

The Red dots in "green" territory are caused by the Russians.  The ones in the Red were either caused by the Ukr or the Russians firing at Ukr as they advanced.  This image demonstrates the disparity in firepower between the two sides.

 

 

Green sector: 59 fires

 

Red sector: 18 fires

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IISS (2021) Ukraine: ARTILLERY 1,818 (of these SP 607+. MRL 354. TOWED 515+. MOR 120mm 340)

 

Minus heavy mortars it is 1,478 guns/MLRS

 

Remaining Ukrainian artillery forces:  6/12- 600  guns,  200 MLRS.  If I recall the Ukr land forces logistics General gave in the region of 700 artillery pieces left around this time. Last time I checked NATO/former Warsaw pact countries gave Ukraine 600 more so it should be at 2100.

 

So Ukr losses are 1,400 Guns/MLRS as of June 2022

 

Russian MOD kill claim for the war up to  7/6:

 

artillery pieces plus mortars:  720 combat vehicles of the multiple launch rocket system, 3096 field artillery guns and mortars

 

This makes things complicated as the Russians, just like in WW2 merge guns and mortars together.  Usually mortars far outnumber guns by many times.

 

The Russian MLRS claim seems to be too high.  The claimed losses of Ukr guns and mortars seems more realistic though.

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UR-77 firing, a monster of a weapon

 

 

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NASA fire information:

 

Fire Map - NASA | LANCE | FIRMS

 

The bulk of Russian fires appear to be from the East (Siversk axis) and Southeast (Bakhmut Axis) over the past 24 hrs.  Not so much from the North despite yesterday's activity there.

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A rather interesting drama has popped up, with the US, British MOD, and Ukr having different public announcements/views/propaganda about where the Russians will launch a breakthrough next.  This is in-line with Russian deception doctrine, as they like to confuse their enemies, just like they did with the Popasna breakout.

 

7/7 weird Russian MOD announcement.  This is either deception or a legit announcement.  If it is legit than it is a bombshell, as the 79th Airborne brigade holds an extended front northwest of the Sivesk defense line.  A breakthrough in this sector would allow the Russians to roll up the flanks of the defense line and force a mass retreat westwards.  The 79th brigade is an elite unit and has taken enormous losses.  To the west is the 503rd Marine Brigade.  This unit has also taken enormous losses.  It was destroyed at Mariupol and the survivors/convalescent wounded regrouped and reestablished the formation with reinforcements.  There is no way these two elite units are anywhere as good as they used to be, probably only a thin strip of professionals with the bulk of the new meat being reservists.

 

24th Brigade holds the line south, around Soledar.  So this announcement is claiming conditions for a pincer attack.

 

"As a result of strikes with high-precision weapons of the Russian Aerospace Forces on the combat positions of Ukrainian troops in the Soledar direction, the total losses of the 24th mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine already number about 2.5 thousand people, which is 60 percent of its number. The 79th Airborne Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was almost completely destroyed - its losses exceeded 80 percent of the number of personnel."

 

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Ukrainians pulled (over?) 21 combat battalions off the line due losses, have only 60 vs 108 Russian combat battalions as a 6/26.  Their situation must be worse on 7/8 due to the strategic defeat.

 

After yesterday's firestorm, Wagner PMC and LRP militias advanced into the Bakmut axis.

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7/9  NASA thermal, Russian fires Northwest of the twin cities

 

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7/9, Russians advancing towards the Sevesk-Soledar-Bahkmut defense line (North, Center, South), literally a couple KM from each of the key towns.

 

 

 

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7/10: Russians halted and open fired with artillery across the front.   I believe the Russian goal is to chop off the Sevesk defense line with concentric attacks and roll up the defense from the North, East, and South.

 

  After they defeat this line, the Ukr forces will retreat to the 'last bastion', the twin cities' line and the final battle for the Donbass will begin.  They will do something similar in this battle, too.

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A count of remaining Ukr units claimed by Ukr general staff, day 136 of the war:

 

Invasion Day 136 – Summary - MilitaryLand.net

 

Kharkiv' axis

 

Brigades/regiments (3-2 combat battalions each): 10

 

Battalions: 9

 

Donbass Front

 

Brigades/regiments (3-2 combat battalions each): 22

 

Battalions: 10

 

Southern Front

 

 

Brigades/regiments (3-2 combat battalions each): 25

 

Battalions: 11

 

Total:

 

Brigades/regiments (3-2 combat battalions each): 57

 

Battalions: 30

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Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster — Jeffrey D. Sachs (jeffsachs.org)

 

Jeffrey Sachs - Wikipedia

 

The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement.  The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons.  As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle. If Europe has any insight, it will separate itself from these US foreign policy debacles. 

The neocon movement emerged in the 1970s around a group of public intellectuals, several of whom were influenced by University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss and Yale University classicist Donald Kagan.  Neocon leaders included Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan (son of Donald), Frederick Kagan (son of Donald), Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert), Elliott Cohen, Elliott Abrams, and Kimberley Allen Kagan (wife of Frederick).  

The main message of the neocons is that the US must predominate in military power in every region of the world, and must confront rising regional powers that could someday challenge US global or regional dominance, most important Russia and China.  For this purpose, US military force should be pre-positioned in hundreds of military bases around the world and the US should be prepared to lead wars of choice as necessary.  The United Nations is to be used by the US only when useful for US purposes. 

This approach was spelled out first by Paul Wolfowitz in his draft Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) written for the Department of Defense in 2002.  The draft called for extending the US-led security network to the Central and Eastern Europe despite the explicit promise by German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 1990 that German unification would not be followed by NATO’s eastward enlargement.  Wolfowitz also made the case for American wars of choice, defending America’s right to act independently, even alone, in response to crises of concern to the US.  According to General Wesley Clark, Wolfowitz already made clear to Clark in May 1991 that the US would lead regime-change operations in Iraq, Syria, and other former Soviet allies. 

The neocons championed NATO enlargement to Ukraine even before that became official US policy under George W. Bush, Jr. in 2008.  They viewed Ukraine’s NATO membership as key to US regional and global dominance.  Robert Kagan spelled out the neocon case for NATO enlargement in April 2006:

[T]he Russians and Chinese see nothing natural in [the “color revolutions” of the former Soviet Union], only Western-backed coups designed to advance Western influence in strategically vital parts of the world.  Are they so wrong? Might not the successful liberalization of Ukraine, urged and supported by the Western democracies, be but the prelude to the incorporation of that nation into NATO and the European Union — in short, the expansion of Western liberal hegemony?

Kagan acknowledged the dire implication of NATO enlargement.  He quotes one expert as saying, “the Kremlin is getting ready for the ‘battle for Ukraine’ in all seriousness.”  The neocons sought this battle. After the fall of the Soviet Union, both the US and Russia should have sought a neutral Ukraine, as a prudent buffer and safety valve.  Instead, the neocons wanted US “hegemony” while the Russians took up the battle partly in defense and partly out of their own imperial pretentions as well.  Shades of the Crimean War (1853-6), when Britain and France sought to weaken Russia in the Black Sea following Russian pressures on the Ottoman empire. 

Kagan penned the article as a private citizen while his wife Victoria Nuland was the US Ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush, Jr.  Nuland has been the neocon operative par excellence.  In addition to serving as Bush’s Ambassador to NATO, Nuland was Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs during 2013-17, where she participated in the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, and now serves as Biden’s Undersecretary of State guiding US policy vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine. 

The neocon outlook is based on an overriding false premise: that the US military, financial, technological, and economic superiority enables it to dictate terms in all regions of the world.  It is a position of both remarkable hubris and remarkable disdain of evidence.  Since the 1950s, the US has been stymied or defeated in nearly every regional conflict in which it has participated.  Yet in the “battle for Ukraine,” the neocons were ready to provoke a military confrontation with Russia by expanding NATO over Russia’s vehement objections because they fervently believe that Russia will be defeated by US financial sanctions and NATO weaponry. 

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a neocon think-tank led by Kimberley Allen Kagan (and backed by a who’s who of defense contractors such as General Dynamics and Raytheon), continues to promise a Ukrainian victory.  Regarding Russia’s advances, the ISW offered a typical comment: “[R]egardless of which side holds the city [of Sievierodonetsk], the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will probably have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back.” 

The facts on the ground, however, suggest otherwise.  The West’s economic sanctions have had little adverse impact on Russia, while their “boomerang” effect on the rest of the world has been large.  Moreover, the US capacity to resupply Ukraine with ammunition and weaponry is seriously hamstrung by America’s limited production capacity and broken supply chains. Russia’s industrial capacity of course dwarfs that of Ukraine’s.  Russia’s GDP was roughly 10X that of Ukraine before war, and Ukraine has now lost much of its industrial capacity in the war. 

The most likely outcome of the current fighting is that Russia will conquer a large swath of Ukraine, perhaps leaving Ukraine landlocked or nearly so.  Frustration will rise in Europe and the US with the military losses and the stagflationary consequences of war and sanctions.  The knock-on effects could be devastating, if a right-wing demagogue in the US rises to power (or in the case of Trump, returns to power) promising to restore America’s faded military glory through dangerous escalation. 

Instead of risking this disaster, the real solution is to end the neocon fantasies of the past 30 years and for Ukraine and Russia to return to the negotiating table, with NATO committing to end its commitment to the eastward enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia in return for a viable peace that respects and protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. 

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7/12

 

Russian axis of advance towards the twin cities, from the Northwest.  The terrain is not favorable to the attacker.

 

[SympathysSilhouette]

18 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster — Jeffrey D. Sachs (jeffsachs.org)

 

Jeffrey Sachs - Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

What exactly do they expect the west to do? The Russians are committing war crimes in all of the occupied territories.

Supposedly what they have already done in Kherson will make Bucha pale in comparison. (There are increasingly high number of mass graves in that area)

So they should just allow Russia to capture even more of Ukraine? I'm sure that will go great for Ukrainian civilians.

 

On the subject of Russian missile supplies, reports of them increasingly using air-to-air missiles to attack ground targets. Which is weird. And doesn't exactly suggest plentiful stockpiles of all missile types.

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2 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

 

What exactly do they expect the west to do?

 

End the war by negotiating (US/NATO) with Russia, rather than waging a losing proxy and propaganda war.  

 

This is what should have been done in March 2022.  

 

It is funny that Democrats are now war mongers due to the propaganda here in the US.

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The Russians have three security concerns 1. Ukraine war 2. Border policing 3. The potential "war" against NATO.

 

The resources put into Ukraine are not their full capability.   In particular the Russian air force is mostly not used.  NATO forces are mobilizing and massing in Poland now.

 

Precision guided ammunition (shells, rockets, and missiles) are very expensive.  I have seen the prices of the Soviet/Russian Krasnopol laser guided round as being under $28,000.  US Excalibur rounds under $68,000 each.  The US heavy howitzers given to the Ukrainians were missing important targeting computers and supplies of the guided rounds. 

 

In particular the missile launches are used for strategic targets, why they are called "Russian Strategic Rocket" services.   Perhaps this is a US advantage (higher volume of guided munitions vs the Russians).  I have learned to take all reports with a grain of salt these days.  The Russians, being a space power also use their satellites for missile and artillery targeting. 

 

For the past few days the Russians have been executing heavy artillery and missile attacks on the Sevesk defense line, in particular yesterday they dropped a lot of firepower on Bakhmut.  

 

 

[SympathysSilhouette]

8 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

 

End the war by negotiating (US/NATO) with Russia, rather than waging a losing proxy and propaganda war.  

 

This is what should have been done in March 2022.  

 

It is funny that Democrats are now war mongers due to the propaganda here in the US.

 

1. Russia's territorial ambitions do not end with Ukraine. Putin has even admitted this publicly.

2. The Ukrainians under Russian rule are being treated terribly. So I don't get the argument how they would be better off just giving up entirely on those people.