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The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won - Foreign Affairs - Nairaland

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The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Kayser1: 10:48pm On Aug 22, 2023
It might drag on for a few more months, perhaps even another year, but this is now over. There comes a point during every major war when the strategic and tactical initiative shifts, irreversibly, to one side, a moment of inflection, of decision, where one of the protagonists exhausts itself so comprehensively, so completely, that an off ramp from the trajectory of defeat becomes so implausible that to continue actively considering it suggests not so much a tangent off the train of rational thought than a total departure from it.

There will be the invariable lag between the carefully constructed, cheerily delivered western narratives on the inevitability of Ukrainian victory; the talk shows will still host the confident corporate talking heads picking through the dying embers of Ukraine’s resistance desperately searching for flickers of hope. And that might come, a local breakthrough here, a Russian retreat there. The Ukrainian army has shown no shortage of courage and resilience over the last 17 months but any spark of life left will be the dying throes of a lost struggle. The German army reached this point after its crushing defeat in the Battle of the Kursk salient in the summer of 1943 in Russia. It would still go on to inflict major tactical defeats on the Russian and allied forces, but like the final violent flickers of a dying candle it served only to illuminate its defeat not stave it off.

Closer home in Nigeria, Emeka Ojukwu lost a Biafran war he probably should have won when he attacked the yoruba speaking south west and its heartland in the commercial powerhouse of Lagos, uniting the entire country against him in a struggle which before this strategic blunder, the Biafran army had not lost and did not look like losing a single major city. Enugu the Biafran capital fell weeks later. The Biafrans would fight heroically on for another two years but they had lost the strategic initiative, forever. Defeat could be postponed but not prevented

Collapse of the touted Counter offensive….

Ukraine’s much touted ‘counter offensive’, hyped for months by the mainstream western media and establishment politicians, which started on the 4th of June and is still sputtering on nearly 3 months later, has been a calamity. A deliberate misreading of Ukraine’s overhyped victories in Kharkiv and Kherson last year by the western commentariat set the scene for the current fiasco. Russia, which on false assumptions of a quick capitulation of Ukraine invaded in February 2022 with too few troops for a full scale war, had barely any forces in Kharkiv in the fall of last year when the Ukrainian army swept through its thinned out lines in the region. The Russian army was not tactically defeated in Kherson; it made the militarily sound decision to retreat in good order across the Dnieper river when its supply routes across it, over the Antonivska Road bridge were threatened by Kiev’s newly western supplied precision guided Himars missiles.
What was lost in the subsequent euphoria was that at no time in this war, not once has the Ukrainian army been able to inflict a comprehensive battlefield defeat on a prepared, fully resourced and equipped Russian force. Not once. The reason of course is not a mystery. Wars are not won by hope, wishful thinking or the supposed ‘justness’ of an army’s cause. The metrics of victory are measured in concrete, not the clouds. Structure, resources, organisation, the sustainability and security of supplies and logistics, weapons, numbers, training and leadership. On each of these counts the gap between the Ukrainian army and the Russian military is not a gulf, it is a chasm. But such is the hatred for Moscow and the historic fear of its army in the west that rational thought was unceremoniously parked and wishful thinking took over the motorways where once lucid thinking had flowed . A monster could be made less frightening if we convinced ourselves that it was not really that frightening. The Russian army, the juggernaut that won the greatest conflict in human history, the second world war virtually on its own was apparently a joke. Make believe took over while reality went on gardening leave.

Military logic set on its head....
The subsequent subversion of all military logic and sense has led to the current insanity of an army without air cover, advanced reconnaissance abilities or sufficient long range strike systems hurling itself against some of the most complex and sophisticated fortifications ever built on a battlefield, manned by an army that outguns them at least ten to one in every conceivable major modern armament including air power, drones and of course rocket, missile and artillery systems, which, not armoured tanks, rule today’s battlefield. In order to diminish the success of Russia’s brutally effective defence, and deny its detested leaders credit the western media has attributed Ukraine’s halted offensive to the dense network of mines the Russian army has laid in front of its elaborate defences. But this is nonsense. Mines on their own have little use on a battlefield as these stationary munitions can be cleared. But that is the point, you cannot remove them and move at the same time, meaning the advancing forces they hold up can then be obliterated by long range systems which now GPS precision guided, have never been more precise or more lethal on the battlefield. The end result has been a mass slaughter of the attacking Ukrainian forces across all sections of the front, particularly on the southern Zaporizhzhia front lines.

A common refrain across the western media since the war started has been the supposed strategic and tactical incompetence of Russia’s military leadership, its ‘poorly trained’ troops and the ‘tactical inflexibility’ of its ‘soviet trained’ mid level officers. But these derogatory labels are actually borne out on the field far more by the Ukrainian army than its adversaries.

Wagner was a mousetrap and the Ukrainians took the bait...

The case of Bakhmut is probably the most salutary example. From December 2022, Kiev poured tens of thousands of its best troops into a city of dubious strategic value to confront the Wagner group who contrary to the western myth were not Russia’s best troops. They were actually regarded by Moscow as average to inferior and dispensable formations designed to bleed Ukraine’s army in a ‘meat grinder’. Having walked right into a trap, the Ukrainians then doubled down on stupid and kept feeding troops into the Russian inferno. They would lose tens of thousands of their most effective soldiers.
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At a point almost 70,000 Ukrainian troops were in and around Bakhmut. As these formations containing Kiev’s most experienced, and more importantly most motivated soldiers were slowly ground down and methodically decimated by Moscow’s second string army, the Russian army’s best formations were training, resting, recuperating and preparing for the main show, the ‘counter offensive’ which Kiev had proclaimed was coming. The result has been Ukraine lost its best soldiers before the main event, while Russia kept theirs. The myth of Wagner being Moscow’s best force, fed by Russian intelligence and eagerly lapped up be a credulous western media obsessed with ‘special forces’ has been exposed by the far superior performance of the Russian army since the counter offensive started in June. For example the ease with which the professional Russian military has swept through Ukrainian defences in days in its relentless advance in the north on Kupiansk compared to the ponderous and clumsy advance on Bakhmut by Wagner which took months. And now a depleted Ukrainian army has hurtled against a replenished, trained and fully equipped Russian military behind some of the most formidable defences every constructed.

Russia has a military strategy, Zelensky has a PR strategy....

The Russians have been busy fighting a war on the field, Zelensky has been busy fighting a war on CNN. Every decision in Kiev is designed not to match the military needs on the ground, but fulfil a new PR campaign in the west. Not yielding a centimetre of ground plays well in a west unable to move away from the shade of Winston Churchill’s shadow while always looking for the next person to drape in his halo. Ukraine lost tens of thousands of its most seasoned soldiers in a senseless struggle in Bakhmut, the result has been a green, untested force been sent into battle in the counter offensive against main defences which in 3 months of fighting they have not yet reached let alone breached.

The Russian army has always worked on a doctrine of echeloned defense in depth with multi layers of defensive belts, in some across a depth of anything between 20 to 30 miles with interlocking trenches, anti tank ditches and fire points all protected by dense fields of mines designed to fix attacking forces in place where they can be picked off by precision guided long range systems. But crucially, in front of these belts lies ‘gray or crumple’ zones of mobile forces defending these areas, acting as forward observation posts to direct artillery and air attack. Their aim is not defend the crumple zone to the death but to act as a shock absorber for the main defensive belts which lie to the rear. For the last 3 months the Ukrainian’s have been stuck in this gray zone. They are yet to reach the first Russian line of defense and there are about 5 of them.

The Nato planners who trained the attacking forces are fighting yesterday’s war on today’s battlefield. Charging tanks can’t work when they can be spotted from outer space by satellites’ which then radio their exact position and coordinates to rocket and artillery systems firing GPS guided missiles to a margin of error measured in fractions. This is not war, it is slaughter. And that as terrible as it sounds is the Russian strategy.

Why hasn’t the Russian army overran Ukraine if they are that powerful…

Many wonder why if the Russian army is so superior they have not overrun all of Ukraine. Again raising the point of fighting yesteryears war in today’s battle space. The Russian strategy is to de-militarise Ukraine while reducing its own casualties by avoiding big arrow or sweeping offensives. De-militarisation in this sense means destroying Ukraine’s military by killing as many of its soldiers as possible. And they are succeeding as anywhere between 300,000 and 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the last 17 months of war and it is estimated that almost 75% of these casualties have been inflicted by long range artillery, missile and rocket systems. Ukraine obliges them by either fixing them in place in trenches or sends them with a hope and a prayer against fortified Russian lines.

This casualties are staggering are bringing Ukraine to the brink of collapse. When the war started the Ukrainian recruitment centres could not cope with the surge of potential recruits. Now the armed gangs prowl the streets kidnapping thousands to fight and die. No one wants to die any longer in a lost cause. The training is brief and rudimentary before they are sent to near certain death against a professional army. The idea that this madness can be kept up indefinitely is fanciful.

How will the end play out...

The Ukrainian counter offensive might drag on for a while with no military logic beyond allowing Kiev, Brussels, Washington and London enough time to think up what next political stratagem will follow and conceal the latest disaster. There is of course the small matter of the American election season starting next year. The ferocity of the current attacks on the isolationist right winger Donald Trump is a sign of the gathering panic in Washington, the growing alarm that he could sweep to power in next year’s presidential election on a wave of the type of anti war fatigue that propelled Barrack Obama to the white house in 2008 after the collapse in support for George Bush’s Iraq adventure. But as the old adage says, the enemy also gets a vote. The Russians, now on the up are also making their own calculations. At some point, once they are convinced Ukraine has exhausted all its reserves they are likely to go on the attack.

They will probably not go for a major sweeping offensive. They will drag this out to inflict maximum damage on Ukraine and its western backers. Industrially the west is not set up for a war like this. They did not anticipate anything like the scale of the current conflict and have had significant problems supplying Ukraine. So the chances of a sudden surge in material support for Kiev in the short or even medium term to change the course of events is ruled out. The Russian army is likely to move slowly but methodically west continuing its degrading of the Ukrainian military.

But Moscow will most likely time the final blows to inflict devastating political punishment on its main adversary, the White House of Joe Biden. For instance an encirclement or siege of Kiev during the high point of the American electioneering campaign next year. A slow moving ‘Saigon moment’ collapse in Ukraine will be the biggest military humiliation the west has suffered since the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. This is not hyperbole. The sacking of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the great rising empire of the east, the Islamic Ottoman’s, marked at the time the ‘end of history’ for a world reared for centuries on the glories of western Christian Rome. The impact was seismic. The context today is not too dissimilar. A declining and overstretched western power riven by bitter political divisions at home, facing a humiliating military setback across a backdrop of a world increasingly resonating to the claims of powerful emerging eastern nations and a world glancing obliquely to them for leadership.

Crisis of leadership as the west declines….

At no point in time in recent history has the west’s leadership been so poor, so outmatched by the demands of the age, so exposed by the exigencies of the hour. The sheer strategic stupidity of Joe Biden’s presidency has been staggering in its scope. At a stroke one of the great achievements of American power the last half a century has unravelled in his hands. The separation of Chinese and Russian power, achieved through careful and clever diplomacy by Kissinger and Nixon in the 70’s has been turned on its head with the two great eastern powers never more firmly aligned at any point in the last 70 years. So cack handed and clumsy has Biden’s geo political manoeuvring been it has been unable to exploit the natural rivalry and quiet hostility between China and India the two Asian heavy weights who between them account for almost half of humanity. In a startling diplomatic coup, Moscow close to both countries has kept both aligned on Ukraine throughout the war with both nations refusing to isolate Russia and offering it a much needed economic life line which has helped it shred the western sanctions imposed with such fanfare in the spring of 2022.

Washington’s weak hand is revealed in its public attitude to China over its sanction busting relationship with Russia. While Beijing has gone out of its way, made a public show of not supporting Moscow militarily the idea that it has not provided Moscow with massive military aid, which the US has stated in public, is for the birds. The supplies of microchips and advanced electronics Russia needs for its precision guided munitions and devastating drones will not be possible without Chinese cooperation. Acknowledging this publicly would mean the US would have to extend sanctions on Beijing, impossibility with the dreadful state of the west’s economy. So both powers pretend everything is fine to avoid a conflict by admitting the truth that it is not.

An empire in decline produces leadership to match the moment. An Augustus during an era of social and economic progress is succeeded by a Caligula or a Nero during the phase of decay. That the choice in the world’s most powerful nation next year is between a semi senile, doddering octogenarian and a raving, semi unhinged right wing rabble rouser says everything that needs to be said about the state of western leadership and this is replicated across the hemisphere, from Berlin where the worst and most unpopular German leader since the war Olaf Schultz oversees the deconstruction and de-industrialisation of the economic powerhouse of Europe to Paris with the hapless Macron facing revolt at home and unprecedented humiliation abroad and in London where the meltdown of the west’s’ oldest and grandest political party has produced a politically stunted school boy Prime Minister. Rishi spreadsheet Sunak who holds fort till the grown ups come home.
The wests is aware of the danger looming in Ukraine as the country gradually falls apart and with nothing left to militarily halt the Russian army the scope for miscalculation is high. A clear possibility will be the insertion of Nato forces into Ukraine to prevent its collapse. This will be an extremely high risk gamble, not so much in that it can lead to nuclear war, but what could force a nuclear exchange – the very high likelihood that Nato would be defeated if it intervenes in Ukraine.

This goes against the grain of conventional assumptions in the west, of the invincibility of NATO. But what constitutes the Nato alliance is untested in the type of high end conflict now taking place in eastern Europe. The armies of the major European powers, Germany, France and Britain are a joke. The British army has less operational tanks than Nigeria. Turkey possesses the second most formidable army in Nato and a battle hardened one, but there is more chance of the Pope relocating to Istanbul than the Turks entering Ukraine to confront the Russian army. The US, Nato’s hyper power has about 40,000 troops in Europe. Russia currently has almost 1 million men under arms. The Americans still posses the world’s most powerful air force, but that advantage will be largely nullified by Russia operating the most advanced air defence system in the world, far more sophisticated and lethal than anything the Americans have ever faced.

This of course leaves the increasingly touted ‘new power’ on the block. The Poles. There is an increasing feeling that Poland probably supported by the Baltic States could enter western Ukraine to stave off the political collapse of the Kiev regime. The Polish army looks good on parade. It has always fought well when defending Poland. There is no guarantee that it will do so if ordered by an increasingly unpopular political class into Ukraine. If this does happen it might be a Polish invasion of western Ukraine and the de facto partition of the country. Whether this leads to a cessation of hostilities will depend largely on Vladimir Putin and the willingness of China to assert itself on Moscow. A full scale Russian invasion of western Ukraine where Russians are widely reviled might be a bridge too far for Russia and Beijing. Putin might be content with integrating the Russian speaking east and large part of the south into Russia and leaving the west of Ukraine to its fate. A key bargaining chip might be the fate of Odessa which Russia could cede to Ukraine, ensuring it is not landlocked in exchange for Ukraine not joining Nato.

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Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by aboystar: 10:55pm On Aug 22, 2023
Its a lie! The war is far from over

1 Like 1 Share

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by ElSudani: 10:58pm On Aug 22, 2023
All this long write up just to tell a simple white lie.

4 Likes

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by richeeyo(m): 11:05pm On Aug 22, 2023
You are a fool, even Russia media houses are confirming they are loosing previously captured territories, even yesterday deep inside Russia Ukrain bomb one of its Tu 22
After changing their location deeper it was targeted again.
Moscow is been bomb every nite
Follow the Ukrainian side on telegram
And follow the Russian side
This is the most transparent war in history
Only a fool like you would follow Russian propaganda
Follow Denys Davydov on telegram
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by NDIOGAH(m): 11:12pm On Aug 22, 2023
Good international analysis

1 Like 1 Share

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by ojobek: 11:18pm On Aug 22, 2023
Apt
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Parachoko: 11:30pm On Aug 22, 2023
Will One be paid for reading this undecided


The War is not Ending anytime Soon


They will likely fight beyond 2030 at this pace they are both going. The West will keep on funding Ukraine, so far Ukrainians are ready to fight

3 Likes

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by kettykin: 11:36pm On Aug 22, 2023
Closer home in Nigeria, Emeka Ojukwu lost a Biafran war he probably should have won when he attacked the yoruba speaking south west and its heartland in the commercial powerhouse of Lagos, uniting the entire country against him in a struggle which before this strategic blunder, the Biafran army had not lost and did not look like losing a single major city. Enugu the Biafran capital fell weeks later. The Biafrans would fight heroically on for another two years but they had lost the strategic initiative, forever. Defeat could be postponed but not prevented



If there was any iota of truth in this , then why did yorubas allow their heartland and commercial headquarters Lagos to be used as the battle command headquarters by the Nigeria military when a more military fortified city like kaduna existed.
This is like justifying attacks and plans to surround and capture kyiv capital of Ukraine and crying foul when Ukraine attacks Moscow capital of Russia how chronically hypocritical and devoid of sound wisdom can this line of thought be.

That apart , Russia fought a pure military battle against Ukraine while the Nigeria military depended on blockade of food and medical supplies by red cross, sabotage of farm lands . More Biafrans died from starvation than of bullets.
More Biafran civilians died than Biafran soldiers this is in contrast to the Russia Ukraine war were there is more casualties on the military side than on the Civilian population.

2 Likes

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by ThorOdinson: 11:48pm On Aug 22, 2023
all i know is that the ukrainian and russia war is not yet over

skooodos brother
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Northernblood8(m): 12:06am On Aug 23, 2023
Nice write up. I stopped supporting either of the party after seeing the witch hunt on Donald Trump( who does not support the war). I knew that West is just testing something out in Ukraine.

West that preached freedom but see what they are doing to kids in the name of LGBT. Ndi iberibe. Ukraine should better shine eye
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Alusiizizi(m): 12:22am On Aug 23, 2023
Probably the most sincere analysis of the war that I have come across to date.
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Alusiizizi(m): 12:28am On Aug 23, 2023
kettykin:




If there was any iota of truth in this , then why did yorubas allow their heartland and commercial headquarters Lagos to be used as the battle command headquarters by the Nigeria military when a more military fortified city like kaduna existed.
This is like justifying attacks and plans to surround and capture kyiv capital of Ukraine and crying foul when Ukraine attacks Moscow capital of Russia how chronically hypocritical and devoid of sound wisdom can this line of thought be.




Because the SouthWest needed the help of the north, thus uniting the rest of Nigeria against Biafra, and also because you can't help a friend kill rats in his house while relaxing in your bedroom. Got it now?


kettykin:


That apart , Russia fought a pure military battle against Ukraine while the Nigeria military depended on blockade of food and medical supplies by red cross, sabotage of farm lands . More Biafrans died from starvation than of bullets.
More Biafran civilians died than Biafran soldiers this is in contrast to the Russia Ukraine war were there is more casualties on the military side than on the Civilian population.

Probably true. But for the unity of the rest of Nigeria against Biafra as well as foreign support of Nigeria against the Biafrans, we would have won the civil war.
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Brandiebird: 3:06am On Aug 23, 2023
Just because 😏

Kayser1:
It might drag on for a few more months, perhaps even another year, but this is now over. There comes a point during every major war when the strategic and tactical initiative shifts, irreversibly, to one side, a moment of inflection, of decision, where one of the protagonists exhausts itself so comprehensively, so completely, that an off ramp from the trajectory of defeat becomes so implausible that to continue actively considering it suggests not so much a tangent off the train of rational thought than a total departure from it.

There will be the invariable lag between the carefully constructed, cheerily delivered western narratives on the inevitability of Ukrainian victory; the talk shows will still host the confident corporate talking heads picking through the dying embers of Ukraine’s resistance desperately searching for flickers of hope. And that might come, a local breakthrough here, a Russian retreat there. The Ukrainian army has shown no shortage of courage and resilience over the last 17 months but any spark of life left will be the dying throes of a lost struggle. The German army reached this point after its crushing defeat in the Battle of the Kursk salient in the summer of 1943 in Russia. It would still go on to inflict major tactical defeats on the Russian and allied forces, but like the final violent flickers of a dying candle it served only to illuminate its defeat not stave it off.

Closer home in Nigeria, Emeka Ojukwu lost a Biafran war he probably should have won when he attacked the yoruba speaking south west and its heartland in the commercial powerhouse of Lagos, uniting the entire country against him in a struggle which before this strategic blunder, the Biafran army had not lost and did not look like losing a single major city. Enugu the Biafran capital fell weeks later. The Biafrans would fight heroically on for another two years but they had lost the strategic initiative, forever. Defeat could be postponed but not prevented

Collapse of the touted Counter offensive….

Ukraine’s much touted ‘counter offensive’, hyped for months by the mainstream western media and establishment politicians, which started on the 4th of June and is still sputtering on nearly 3 months later, has been a calamity. A deliberate misreading of Ukraine’s overhyped victories in Kharkiv and Kherson last year by the western commentariat set the scene for the current fiasco. Russia, which on false assumptions of a quick capitulation of Ukraine invaded in February 2022 with too few troops for a full scale war, had barely any forces in Kharkiv in the fall of last year when the Ukrainian army swept through its thinned out lines in the region. The Russian army was not tactically defeated in Kherson; it made the militarily sound decision to retreat in good order across the Dnieper river when its supply routes across it, over the Antonivska Road bridge were threatened by Kiev’s newly western supplied precision guided Himars missiles.
What was lost in the subsequent euphoria was that at no time in this war, not once has the Ukrainian army been able to inflict a comprehensive battlefield defeat on a prepared, fully resourced and equipped Russian force. Not once. The reason of course is not a mystery. Wars are not won by hope, wishful thinking or the supposed ‘justness’ of an army’s cause. The metrics of victory are measured in concrete, not the clouds. Structure, resources, organisation, the sustainability and security of supplies and logistics, weapons, numbers, training and leadership. On each of these counts the gap between the Ukrainian army and the Russian military is not a gulf, it is a chasm. But such is the hatred for Moscow and the historic fear of its army in the west that rational thought was unceremoniously parked and wishful thinking took over the motorways where once lucid thinking had flowed . A monster could be made less frightening if we convinced ourselves that it was not really that frightening. The Russian army, the juggernaut that won the greatest conflict in human history, the second world war virtually on its own was apparently a joke. Make believe took over while reality went on gardening leave.

Military logic set on its head....
The subsequent subversion of all military logic and sense has led to the current insanity of an army without air cover, advanced reconnaissance abilities or sufficient long range strike systems hurling itself against some of the most complex and sophisticated fortifications ever built on a battlefield, manned by an army that outguns them at least ten to one in every conceivable major modern armament including air power, drones and of course rocket, missile and artillery systems, which, not armoured tanks, rule today’s battlefield. In order to diminish the success of Russia’s brutally effective defence, and deny its detested leaders credit the western media has attributed Ukraine’s halted offensive to the dense network of mines the Russian army has laid in front of its elaborate defences. But this is nonsense. Mines on their own have little use on a battlefield as these stationary munitions can be cleared. But that is the point, you cannot remove them and move at the same time, meaning the advancing forces they hold up can then be obliterated by long range systems which now GPS precision guided, have never been more precise or more lethal on the battlefield. The end result has been a mass slaughter of the attacking Ukrainian forces across all sections of the front, particularly on the southern Zaporizhzhia front lines.

A common refrain across the western media since the war started has been the supposed strategic and tactical incompetence of Russia’s military leadership, its ‘poorly trained’ troops and the ‘tactical inflexibility’ of its ‘soviet trained’ mid level officers. But these derogatory labels are actually borne out on the field far more by the Ukrainian army than its adversaries.

Wagner was a mousetrap and the Ukrainians took the bait...

The case of Bakhmut is probably the most salutary example. From December 2022, Kiev poured tens of thousands of its best troops into a city of dubious strategic value to confront the Wagner group who contrary to the western myth were not Russia’s best troops. They were actually regarded by Moscow as average to inferior and dispensable formations designed to bleed Ukraine’s army in a ‘meat grinder’. Having walked right into a trap, the Ukrainians then doubled down on stupid and kept feeding troops into the Russian inferno. They would lose tens of thousands of their most effective soldiers.
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At a point almost 70,000 Ukrainian troops were in and around Bakhmut. As these formations containing Kiev’s most experienced, and more importantly most motivated soldiers were slowly ground down and methodically decimated by Moscow’s second string army, the Russian army’s best formations were training, resting, recuperating and preparing for the main show, the ‘counter offensive’ which Kiev had proclaimed was coming. The result has been Ukraine lost its best soldiers before the main event, while Russia kept theirs. The myth of Wagner being Moscow’s best force, fed by Russian intelligence and eagerly lapped up be a credulous western media obsessed with ‘special forces’ has been exposed by the far superior performance of the Russian army since the counter offensive started in June. For example the ease with which the professional Russian military has swept through Ukrainian defences in days in its relentless advance in the north on Kupiansk compared to the ponderous and clumsy advance on Bakhmut by Wagner which took months. And now a depleted Ukrainian army has hurtled against a replenished, trained and fully equipped Russian military behind some of the most formidable defences every constructed.

Russia has a military strategy, Zelensky has a PR strategy....

The Russians have been busy fighting a war on the field, Zelensky has been busy fighting a war on CNN. Every decision in Kiev is designed not to match the military needs on the ground, but fulfil a new PR campaign in the west. Not yielding a centimetre of ground plays well in a west unable to move away from the shade of Winston Churchill’s shadow while always looking for the next person to drape in his halo. Ukraine lost tens of thousands of its most seasoned soldiers in a senseless struggle in Bakhmut, the result has been a green, untested force been sent into battle in the counter offensive against main defences which in 3 months of fighting they have not yet reached let alone breached.

The Russian army has always worked on a doctrine of echeloned defense in depth with multi layers of defensive belts, in some across a depth of anything between 20 to 30 miles with interlocking trenches, anti tank ditches and fire points all protected by dense fields of mines designed to fix attacking forces in place where they can be picked off by precision guided long range systems. But crucially, in front of these belts lies ‘gray or crumple’ zones of mobile forces defending these areas, acting as forward observation posts to direct artillery and air attack. Their aim is not defend the crumple zone to the death but to act as a shock absorber for the main defensive belts which lie to the rear. For the last 3 months the Ukrainian’s have been stuck in this gray zone. They are yet to reach the first Russian line of defense and there are about 5 of them.

The Nato planners who trained the attacking forces are fighting yesterday’s war on today’s battlefield. Charging tanks can’t work when they can be spotted from outer space by satellites’ which then radio their exact position and coordinates to rocket and artillery systems firing GPS guided missiles to a margin of error measured in fractions. This is not war, it is slaughter. And that as terrible as it sounds is the Russian strategy.

Why hasn’t the Russian army overran Ukraine if they are that powerful…

Many wonder why if the Russian army is so superior they have not overrun all of Ukraine. Again raising the point of fighting yesteryears war in today’s battle space. The Russian strategy is to de-militarise Ukraine while reducing its own casualties by avoiding big arrow or sweeping offensives. De-militarisation in this sense means destroying Ukraine’s military by killing as many of its soldiers as possible. And they are succeeding as anywhere between 300,000 and 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the last 17 months of war and it is estimated that almost 75% of these casualties have been inflicted by long range artillery, missile and rocket systems. Ukraine obliges them by either fixing them in place in trenches or sends them with a hope and a prayer against fortified Russian lines.

This casualties are staggering are bringing Ukraine to the brink of collapse. When the war started the Ukrainian recruitment centres could not cope with the surge of potential recruits. Now the armed gangs prowl the streets kidnapping thousands to fight and die. No one wants to die any longer in a lost cause. The training is brief and rudimentary before they are sent to near certain death against a professional army. The idea that this madness can be kept up indefinitely is fanciful.

How will the end play out...

The Ukrainian counter offensive might drag on for a while with no military logic beyond allowing Kiev, Brussels, Washington and London enough time to think up what next political stratagem will follow and conceal the latest disaster. There is of course the small matter of the American election season starting next year. The ferocity of the current attacks on the isolationist right winger Donald Trump is a sign of the gathering panic in Washington, the growing alarm that he could sweep to power in next year’s presidential election on a wave of the type of anti war fatigue that propelled Barrack Obama to the white house in 2008 after the collapse in support for George Bush’s Iraq adventure. But as the old adage says, the enemy also gets a vote. The Russians, now on the up are also making their own calculations. At some point, once they are convinced Ukraine has exhausted all its reserves they are likely to go on the attack.

They will probably not go for a major sweeping offensive. They will drag this out to inflict maximum damage on Ukraine and its western backers. Industrially the west is not set up for a war like this. They did not anticipate anything like the scale of the current conflict and have had significant problems supplying Ukraine. So the chances of a sudden surge in material support for Kiev in the short or even medium term to change the course of events is ruled out. The Russian army is likely to move slowly but methodically west continuing its degrading of the Ukrainian military.

But Moscow will most likely time the final blows to inflict devastating political punishment on its main adversary, the White House of Joe Biden. For instance an encirclement or siege of Kiev during the high point of the American electioneering campaign next year. A slow moving ‘Saigon moment’ collapse in Ukraine will be the biggest military humiliation the west has suffered since the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. This is not hyperbole. The sacking of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the great rising empire of the east, the Islamic Ottoman’s, marked at the time the ‘end of history’ for a world reared for centuries on the glories of western Christian Rome. The impact was seismic. The context today is not too dissimilar. A declining and overstretched western power riven by bitter political divisions at home, facing a humiliating military setback across a backdrop of a world increasingly resonating to the claims of powerful emerging eastern nations and a world glancing obliquely to them for leadership.

Crisis of leadership as the west declines….

At no point in time in recent history has the west’s leadership been so poor, so outmatched by the demands of the age, so exposed by the exigencies of the hour. The sheer strategic stupidity of Joe Biden’s presidency has been staggering in its scope. At a stroke one of the great achievements of American power the last half a century has unravelled in his hands. The separation of Chinese and Russian power, achieved through careful and clever diplomacy by Kissinger and Nixon in the 70’s has been turned on its head with the two great eastern powers never more firmly aligned at any point in the last 70 years. So cack handed and clumsy has Biden’s geo political manoeuvring been it has been unable to exploit the natural rivalry and quiet hostility between China and India the two Asian heavy weights who between them account for almost half of humanity. In a startling diplomatic coup, Moscow close to both countries has kept both aligned on Ukraine throughout the war with both nations refusing to isolate Russia and offering it a much needed economic life line which has helped it shred the western sanctions imposed with such fanfare in the spring of 2022.

Washington’s weak hand is revealed in its public attitude to China over its sanction busting relationship with Russia. While Beijing has gone out of its way, made a public show of not supporting Moscow militarily the idea that it has not provided Moscow with massive military aid, which the US has stated in public, is for the birds. The supplies of microchips and advanced electronics Russia needs for its precision guided munitions and devastating drones will not be possible without Chinese cooperation. Acknowledging this publicly would mean the US would have to extend sanctions on Beijing, impossibility with the dreadful state of the west’s economy. So both powers pretend everything is fine to avoid a conflict by admitting the truth that it is not.

An empire in decline produces leadership to match the moment. An Augustus during an era of social and economic progress is succeeded by a Caligula or a Nero during the phase of decay. That the choice in the world’s most powerful nation next year is between a semi senile, doddering octogenarian and a raving, semi unhinged right wing rabble rouser says everything that needs to be said about the state of western leadership and this is replicated across the hemisphere, from Berlin where the worst and most unpopular German leader since the war Olaf Schultz oversees the deconstruction and de-industrialisation of the economic powerhouse of Europe to Paris with the hapless Macron facing revolt at home and unprecedented humiliation abroad and in London where the meltdown of the west’s’ oldest and grandest political party has produced a politically stunted school boy Prime Minister. Rishi spreadsheet Sunak who holds fort till the grown ups come home.
The wests is aware of the danger looming in Ukraine as the country gradually falls apart and with nothing left to militarily halt the Russian army the scope for miscalculation is high. A clear possibility will be the insertion of Nato forces into Ukraine to prevent its collapse. This will be an extremely high risk gamble, not so much in that it can lead to nuclear war, but what could force a nuclear exchange – the very high likelihood that Nato would be defeated if it intervenes in Ukraine.

This goes against the grain of conventional assumptions in the west, of the invincibility of NATO. But what constitutes the Nato alliance is untested in the type of high end conflict now taking place in eastern Europe. The armies of the major European powers, Germany, France and Britain are a joke. The British army has less operational tanks than Nigeria. Turkey possesses the second most formidable army in Nato and a battle hardened one, but there is more chance of the Pope relocating to Istanbul than the Turks entering Ukraine to confront the Russian army. The US, Nato’s hyper power has about 40,000 troops in Europe. Russia currently has almost 1 million men under arms. The Americans still posses the world’s most powerful air force, but that advantage will be largely nullified by Russia operating the most advanced air defence system in the world, far more sophisticated and lethal than anything the Americans have ever faced.

This of course leaves the increasingly touted ‘new power’ on the block. The Poles. There is an increasing feeling that Poland probably supported by the Baltic States could enter western Ukraine to stave off the political collapse of the Kiev regime. The Polish army looks good on parade. It has always fought well when defending Poland. There is no guarantee that it will do so if ordered by an increasingly unpopular political class into Ukraine. If this does happen it might be a Polish invasion of western Ukraine and the de facto partition of the country. Whether this leads to a cessation of hostilities will depend largely on Vladimir Putin and the willingness of China to assert itself on Moscow. A full scale Russian invasion of western Ukraine where Russians are widely reviled might be a bridge too far for Russia and Beijing. Putin might be content with integrating the Russian speaking east and large part of the south into Russia and leaving the west of Ukraine to its fate. A key bargaining chip might be the fate of Odessa which Russia could cede to Ukraine, ensuring it is not landlocked in exchange for Ukraine not joining Nato.
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Nobody: 3:09am On Aug 23, 2023
Ukrainian drone just attacked Moscow and they're getting 42 F-16. Ukraine now has one of the largest military in Europe and this one is writing epistle. USA annually budget 800bn for their military and don't know what to do with it. Spending just 100bn on Ukraine will take Ukrainian military spending almost double of Russian military budget. The war is just starting. Russia will have a hostile, bloodthirsty neighbor for the rest of their lives.
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Alusiizizi(m): 3:24am On Aug 23, 2023
Spirit04:
Ukrainian drone just attacked Moscow and they're getting 42 F-16. Ukraine now has one of the largest military in Europe and this one is writing epistle. USA annually budget 800bn for their military and don't know what to do with it. Spending just 100bn on Ukraine will take Ukrainian military spending almost double of Russian military budget. The war is just starting. Russia will have a hostile, bloodthirsty neighbor for the rest of their lives.

Ukraine sacrificed their capital city just to throw toys at Moscow? That's the problem with you guys isn't it? A most complete analysis of the war has been given to you, free of charge, and yet you ignore it in favor of the packaged soundbites that CNN feeds out on a daily basis.

1 Like

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Nobody: 3:26am On Aug 23, 2023
Alusiizizi:


Ukraine sacrificed their capital city just to throw toys at Moscow? That's the problem with you guys isn't it? A most complete analysis of the war has been given to you, free of charge, and yet you ignore it in favor of the packaged soundbites that CNN feeds out on a daily basis.
what's this one talking about? Last time Russians tried to go anywhere near Ukrainian capital they were humiliated to the point that farmers were towing Russian tanks away with tractors. Which capital did they sacrifice? Abi na your papa be president for Ukraine now?
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by PureFace1(m): 7:32am On Aug 23, 2023
Alusiizizi:




Because the SouthWest needed the help of the north, thus uniting the rest of Nigeria against Biafra, and also because you can't help a friend kill rats in his house while relaxing in your bedroom. Got it now?





Probably true. But for the unity of the rest of Nigeria against Biafra as well as foreign support of Nigeria against the Biafrans, we would have won the civil war.

You Igbo talk about the Civil War like it was some sort of game with rules and regulations you must follow.

There is no rules in War, your weapons, allies and backing etc are also part of your power that can determine victory in war. You think you guys would have lasted that long without help from France ?

Russia would think twice before attacking any Nato Country but individually Russia wouldn't give a damn like against Ukraine, through out History the suport you can get is also part of your power in war , just blame Ojukwu for not being strategic enough instead of throwing useless excuses for your defeat.

It is like Falcon players using not knowing how to play penalty as excuse for their defeat against England, totally shameful.

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Wannabenz: 9:05am On Aug 23, 2023
richeeyo:
You are a fool, even Russia media houses are confirming they are loosing previously captured territories, even yesterday deep inside Russia Ukrain bomb one of its Tu 22
After changing their location deeper it was targeted again.
Moscow is been bomb every nite
Follow the Ukrainian side on telegram
And follow the Russian side
This is the most transparent war in history
Only a fool like you would follow Russian propaganda
Follow Denys Davydov on telegram
There's no need calling him names. The counter offensive stuff na disaster and there's no significant gain from it.

2 Likes

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by fortunez1(m): 9:16am On Aug 23, 2023
You took your time to type jargons , saying shits on war you know nothing of. Abi are you based in Russia ni

1 Like

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Kingsnairaland(m): 10:28am On Aug 23, 2023
aboystar:
Its a lie! The war is far from over

F 16 going to face humiliation and then F35, F45, F65 all will be turned out to chicken 65.

They will burn just the same as the Leopards 2, Bradley, patriot system......

1 Like

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Obrigardo: 10:33am On Aug 23, 2023
ElSudani:
All this long write up just to tell a simple white lie.

It's quite pathetic. I didn't even get past the first sentence.
These hateful bigots are horrible considering the fact he is not being paid by killer putin.
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by THEGALADIMA(m): 11:14am On Aug 23, 2023
What I find out about this article is just an individual who is hungry to show that he is well informed about history and global happenings.
There are too many loopholes in this article, too many to mention.
The writer is still stuck in a cold war mindset that Russia is an important global player.
Russia is an aging, dead and gone empire.
I'll highlight my strong disagreements in my next post.
Please oga writer, next time you want to write something this elaborate kindly take opinions from experts and stakeholders from all sides.
Its not enough to solely rely upon your knowledge okay......
But by the way, the article is really well written and the sprinkles of historical facts is well intended. Kudos💪🙏

1 Like

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by richeeyo(m): 11:54am On Aug 23, 2023
Wannabenz:

There's no need calling him names. The counter offensive stuff na disaster and there's no significant gain from it.
Please don't argue what you don't know
Please
Please
Russia is the king of false narrative
Go get your fact right
You definitely stocked in the start of the counter
The game as changed
As i speak the only medium and long range
S300 and 400
Have been blown off about 5hrs ago with drone footage
When Ukraine is loosing its always been said
But now bro
I can bet my life on it
Bakhmut is retaken, what Wagner wasted 25k men to get
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Jane74(f): 1:48pm On Aug 23, 2023
richeeyo:


I can bet my life on it
Bakhmut is retaken, what Wagner wasted 25k men to get
do you have something to shoot yourself with? although a rope with soap will also work.

I accept your bet-your own life. The fact that Ukraine will take Bakhmut before the onset of autumn.

If this does not happen, you will commit suicide, do I understand you correctly?
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by richeeyo(m): 1:50pm On Aug 23, 2023
Jane74:

do you have something to shoot yourself with? although a rope with soap will also work.

I accept your bet-your own life. The fact that Ukraine will take Bakhmut before the onset of autumn.

If this does not happen, you will commit suicide, do I understand you correctly?
Yee sir
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Jane74(f): 2:05pm On Aug 23, 2023
richeeyo:

Yee sir
Great. On September 1, I will remind you that it's time to soap the rope
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Jane74(f): 2:10pm On Aug 23, 2023
THEGALADIMA:

The writer is still stuck in a cold war mindset that Russia is an important global player.
Russia is an aging, dead and gone empire.

is this your kind of psychotherapy? did the doctor order you to say the mantra "Russia is an aging, dead and gone empire" every morning?
Maybe it's better to take haloperidol after all?

PS. By the way, the article says just that the West is stupid, taking wishful thinking for reality..
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Jane74(f): 2:19pm On Aug 23, 2023
richeeyo:
You are a fool, even Russia media houses are confirming they are loosing previously captured territories, even yesterday deep inside Russia Ukrain bomb one of its Tu 22
After changing their location deeper it was targeted again.
Moscow is been bomb every nite
Follow the Ukrainian side on telegram
And follow the Russian side
This is the most transparent war in history
Only a fool like you would follow Russian propaganda
Follow Denys Davydov on telegram

>Moscow is been bomb every nite

Are you talking about how the Ukrainians broke the windows in Moscow City again?

Do you know what Moscow City is?
look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NH_c2lLpDSE?feature=share

and what are the results of the "bombing" of Moscow?
two windows were knocked out in one of the towers of Moscow City..

It's okay, the glass industry works great in Russia, new glasses can be inserted every day.


And by the way, I'm embarrassed to ask, is the round-the-clock (day and night) bombing and rocket attacks on the entire territory of Ukraine by the Russians not a sign that Ukraine has lost?

Denys Davydov in telegram - this is probably a Bandera slowpoke, right?
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Jane74(f): 2:30pm On Aug 23, 2023
aboystar:
Its a lie! The war is far from over

After Stalingrad, the whole world realized that Germany had lost the war. Including the Germans themselves.

But the surrender was signed only two years later, yes.

It took the Russians two more years to clean up the Nazi dirt from their territory and from Europe.

But Ukrainians are not Germans of that time. And Russia does not have a goal to walk with its feet to Berlin.

So everything will end faster.

1 Like

Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by richeeyo(m): 2:57pm On Aug 23, 2023
Jane74:


>Moscow is been bomb every nite

Are you talking about how the Ukrainians broke the windows in Moscow City again?

Do you know what Moscow City is?
look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NH_c2lLpDSE?feature=share

and what are the results of the "bombing" of Moscow?
two windows were knocked out in one of the towers of Moscow City..

It's okay, the glass industry works great in Russia, new glasses can be inserted every day.


And by the way, I'm embarrassed to ask, is the round-the-clock (day and night) bombing and rocket attacks on the entire territory of Ukraine by the Russians not a sign that Ukraine has lost?

Denys Davydov in telegram - this is probably a Bandera slowpoke, right?
Please YouTube videos is nonsense please
Re: The Ukraine War Is Over, Russia Has Won by Wannabenz: 3:47pm On Aug 23, 2023
richeeyo:

Please don't argue what you don't know
Please
Please
Russia is the king of false narrative
Go get your fact right
You definitely stocked in the start of the counter
The game as changed
As i speak the only medium and long range
S300 and 400
Have been blown off about 5hrs ago with drone footage
When Ukraine is loosing its always been said
But now bro
I can bet my life on it
Bakhmut is retaken, what Wagner wasted 25k men to get
Lol please don't bet your life bro.
Ukraine is yet to enter bakhmut or please attach the link where bakhmut was retaken.

1 Like

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