Ritter 'The American people respect Russia...They are not losing(Russia)-in fact they are winning'
Posted on 10/05/2022 2:09:19 PM PDT by Cathi
This was a live stream so the link takes you to the last couple mins. You need to pull the minute mark line back to the beginning of the stream. Ritter is on immediately and his participation ends at the 48min. mark
Many of the pro-russia sources being posted are straight-up communist/socialist propaganda. The veil is off and it’s becoming clear who the putinistas truly are. The vast majority of the anti-ukraine posters who claimed “there is no good guy” or “I hate both” are now solidly in the pro-Putin camp, as if they were ever “neutral”. Some are going as far as posting propaganda portraying America as the “evil bad guy” since WW2.
War between Prigozhin and Putin has started. Grab some popcorn.
Here’s the short version:
Bellowing has-been tries to speak confidently about topics he knows ZERO about, but expects you to believe otherwise.
Ritter is just a washed-up, know-nothing blowhard with a criminal record who has been wrong since Day One of this immoral war.
There- perfect summary.
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/politics-by-other-means
Putin and those around him conceived of the Russo-Ukrainian War in existential terms from the very beginning. It is unlikely, however, that most Russians understood this. Instead, they likely viewed the war the same way Americans viewed the war in Iraq and Ukraine - as a justified military enterprise that was nevertheless merely a technocratic task for the professional military; hardly a matter of life and death for the nation. I highly doubt that any American ever believed that the fate of the nation hinged on the war in Afghanistan (Americans have not fought an existential war since 1865), and judging by the recruitment crisis plaguing the American military, it does not seem like anyone perceives a genuine foreign existential threat.
What has happened in the months since February 24 is rather remarkable. The existential war for the Russian nation has been incarnated and made real for Russian citizens. Sanctions and anti-Russian propaganda - demonizing the entire nation as “orcs” - has rallied even initially skeptical Russians behind the war, and Putin’s approval rating has soared. A core western assumption, that Russians would turn on the government, has reversed. Videos showing the torture of Russian POWs by frothing Ukrainians, of Ukrainian soldiers calling Russian mothers to mockingly tell them their sons are dead, of Russian children killed by shelling in Donetsk, have served to validate Putin’s implicit claim that Ukraine is a demon possessed state that must be exorcised with high explosives. Amidst all of this - helpfully, from the perspective of Alexander Dugin and his neophytes - American pseudo-intellectual “Blue Checks” have publicly drooled over the prospect of “decolonizing and demilitarizing” Russia, which plainly entails the dismemberment of the Russian state and the partitioning of its territory. The government of Ukraine (in now deleted tweets) publicly claimed that Russians are prone to barbarism because they are a mongrel race with Asiatic blood mixing.
Simultaneously, Putin has moved towards - and ultimately achieved - his project of formal annexation of Ukraine’s old eastern rim. This has also legally transformed the war into an existential struggle. Further Ukrainian advances in the east are now, in the eyes of the Russian state, an assault on sovereign Russian territory and an attempt to destroy the integrity of the Russian state. Recent polling shows that a supermajority of Russians support defending these new territories at any cost.
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A political consensus for higher mobilization and greater intensity has been achieved. Now all that remains is the implementation of this consensus in the material world of fist and boot, bullet and shell, blood and iron.
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Putin, very simply, could not have conducted a large scale mobilization at the onset of the war. He possessed neither a coercive mechanism nor the manifest threat to generate mass political support. Few Russians would have believed that there was some existential threat lurking in the shadow - they needed to be shown, and the west has not disappointed. Likewise, few Russians would likely have supported the obliteration of Ukrainian infrastructure and urban utilities in the opening days of the war. But now, the only vocal criticism of Putin within Russia is on the side of further escalation. The problem with Putin, from the Russian perspective, is that he has not gone far enough. In other words - mass politics have already moved ahead of the government, making mobilization and escalation politically trivial. Above all, we must remember that Clausewitz’s maxim remains true. The military situation is merely a subset of the political situation, and military mobilization is also political mobilization - a manifestation of society’s political participation in the state.
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The other is the interpretation that I have advocated, that Russia is massing for a winter escalation and offensive, and is currently engaged in a calculated trade wherein they give up space in exchange for time and Ukrainian casualties. Russia continues to retreat where positions are either operationally compromised or faced with overwhelming Ukrainian numbers, but they are very careful to extract forces out of operational danger. In Lyman, where Ukraine threatened to encircle the garrison, Russia committed mobile reserves to unblock the village and secure the withdrawal of the garrison. Ukraine’s “encirclement” evaporated, and the Ukrainian interior ministry was bizarrely compelled to tweet (and then delete) video of destroyed civilian vehicles as “proof” that the Russian forces had been annihilated.
Russia will likely continue to pull back over the coming weeks, withdrawing units intact under their artillery and air umbrella, grinding down Ukrainian heavy equipment stocks and wearing away their manpower. Meanwhile, new equipment continues to congregate in Belgorod, Zaporizhia, and Crimea. My expectation remains the same: episodic Russian withdrawal until the front stabilizes roughly at the end of October, followed by an operational pause until the ground freezes, followed by escalation and a winter offensive by Russia once they have finished amassing sufficient units.
Ukraine war will end in 2 days if US stops borrowing money to send to the most corrupt country in Western world.
Winter will decimate both armies, and kill thousands of civilians too.
Will we never learn from the past?
“Ritter is just a washed-up, know-nothing blowhard with a criminal record who has been wrong since Day One of this immoral war.
****
His analysis is outstanding. I have not heard anyone explain as well the nuts and bolts behind the kinetic front of the war.
I always find it odd how whenever he is mentioned there are a handful of people who jump all over him, attacking him personally, and never address anything specific that he says.
Odd. It’s odd.
“I believe that Russia is achieving its stated operational objectives on the battlefield in Donbass, inclusive of the potential of encircling tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces.”
- Scott Ritter, May 24, 2022
The man is an idiot.
Yes, I have read some of his work, his analysis is excellent. He makes a good point that others haven’t considered. Until the United States decided to escalate and openly turn this into a NATO vs. Russia war Putin would not have had the necessary internal support for anything beyond a temporary Donbass support effort and Ukrainian neutrality.
I agree completely with his description of what the current Russia plan is; maintain a defensive position and retreat carefully when overwhelmed by superior numbers thus protecting your troops and then hit the Ukrainians heavy with artillery, air, etc. now that they have exposed themselves by coming out of their defensive positions. And it has worked surprisingly well...in just 3 days of this there were over 2,000 Ukrainian casualties. If that’s “winning” Ukraine will not be able to afford to keep “winning.”
Russia is supplementing those gains by taking advantage of Ukraine’s “all in” multiple attack fronts offensive. One Ukrainian Telegram Channel remarked that the only reason Russia was able to conduct such damaging drone attacks all the way up in Kiev last night was that Ukraine had pulled out all their air defense and moved it into Kharkov and Liman for their attacks.
Russia has just recently brought in 7 strategic bombers and are clearly planning for a strong offensive once all the pieces are in place.
Thanks. I was looking for Ritter’s latest comments
- Scott Ritter, May 24, 2022
The man is an idiot.
An idiot doesn't always make the same mistakes in one direction.
Ritter is a Russian apologist.
Getting digs on Macgregor is a bonus.
It was “just a mop up operation” 7+ months ago in its final phases per this guy. Wrong about everything from the start, not to mention all of the other baggage he carries. If Russia ends up making some gains in one of its offensives, he’ll of course claim to have been “right all along.”
“Left” Lens, indeed.
There has been a power struggle ongoing in Ukraine for some time.
The President in 2014, Yanukovych fled Ukraine to Russia, The Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him, because he "had effectively resigned". Yes, it is clear the US, under the Obama regime, was involved.
How much Yanukovych was under the control of Russia is debated.
Yes, Ukraine is famously corrupt, but I doubt it is less corrupt than Russia.
From my limited contacts (I have a friend who travels to Ukraine often) it appears the people of Ukraine understand the government is corrupt, and wish to rectify the situation.
Ritter is;
Sitting on a park bench
Eyeing little girls with bad inten
Is snot running down his nose?
Yes, that's also what you said about Putin's communist rant attacking Western Civilization as evil from its inception, lies stating it started the slave trade, etc.
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