Posted on 01/13/2023 8:31:03 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
In spite of "news" that seem to show that Russia is losing and Putin is about to die and be overthrown (maybe they'll dig him up and execute him), are you prepared for "Oceania has always been at war with EastAsia", that is, to hear, amazingly, that Russia won?
A news source continually pricking the soap bubble that Zelinskiyy is winning, is the British based Alexander Mercouris, whose vlog entries are extremely long, but who is only reporting open news sources which, however, are not censored U.S. "news".
Alexander forgot to open with “Good Day” yesterday...
Charles, is there a link to “the rest of the story”?
So what's the basis for claiming Russia has won?
Here is a link to Alexander Mercouris’ video from yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dePpzr5Hc9E
I don’t advise any of the repetitive warmongers who’ve made a permanent nest on FR to watch it.
We have always been at war with Russia..... those Godless Communists.
We have always been at war with Russia..... those racist Christian nationalists.
>So what’s the basis for claiming Russia has won?
The Ukrainians are getting ground up. The Russian military isn’t really even engaged on the front. It’s all wagner and their group of former prisoners.
Russia will not lose.
They’ll nuke the planet first.
Ukraine is the Globalists Cash Cow.
Alexander Mercouris is one of a very few commentators who understands the conflict and is willing to report objectively.
The main problem I see is that the idiotic, cowardly policy of dribbling equipment to the Ukrainians is giving the Russians time to raise more troops and adapt.
Every war that Russia has fought in the last few centuries has been an utter disaster for them in the first year. After that, they adapt. That, plus numbers, and sometimes General Winter, usually end up winning the war for them. Not because they’re better on a qualitative basis, just because they stubbornly outlast the enemy.
The problem that the Russians face now is that they no longer have the seemingly unlimited pools of manpower that they used to have. Between two world wars, famine, purposeful mass murder by Stalin and losing half of their population when the USSR broke up, they have completely given up their biggest advantage, and they now face a demographic disaster in the next 30 to 50 years. This is really their last chance to fight a war and regain certain strategic chokepoints that will guarantee their territorial integrity. What they are going to do several decades from now, when they don’t have very much manpower, even if they retake those choke points, is anyone’s guess. The Russians have made many enemies over the centuries, and now they are increasingly vulnerable to all of those ethnic minorities in neighboring nations taking back what they think is rightfully theirs. It may well be that the ethnic Russian state is doomed within the lifetimes of many now alive. Time will tell.
They can adapt slowly, although Putin's need to tolerate massive corruption in Russian military procurement and in the army in exchange for political support limits his ability to bolster his military.
If the Ukrainians are forced to settle along current lines, Russia will continue building its forces and will try again soon, which is why it must be defeated and at least forced back to its Feb 22 positions.
What makes it a Russian victory?
The fact that taking Soledar after months of a war of attrition opens the path to neutralizing Bakhmut and then basically driving the UKA out of artillery range of Donetsk
The fact that the Ukes have thrown about 25% of their fighting forces in this sector (est 60k forces) including elite units trained in the West to NATO standards….and Bankova continues to order more reinforcements sent into the Russian cauldrons
The fact that in Soledar, 10K Wagner PMC with Russian para support on the final city assault, has chewed up an estimated 25K casualties in Soledar and are now moving slowly but relentlessly to completing the encirclement of Bakhmut and neutralizing another 30K UKA troops that will die or retreat westward where even their next line of defense is already operationally under threat.
The fact that Zelensky refuses to accept this and is still ordering his generals to draw more troops to Bakhmut from the north and south. Giving Russian artillery more UKA to kill. A place which is least favorable for the Ukes to switch from defense to offense to try to rescue their encircled army given Russian artillery and experience in urban street fight. As long as the Ukes continue to feed the Bakhmut meat grinder, Wagner shows no urgency to actually take the city, just keep killing UKA. Meanwhile biding time for the Russian forces to prep the next phase of their offensive,
Which nobody knows the details and actual analysis has been pretty damn weak and politically driven
Meanwhils Zelensky’s ordered deployments render Kharkov, Kherson, Zaporozhye, and even Odessa and Kiev weaker in the face of the next Russian offensives….When and if they choose
While Kiev begs for weapons and the West dithers on sending them a couple dozen more tanks and 2 Patriot batteries…
The fact that RU announced a restructure of its war command on the day Soledar fell. Which is now only belatedly being assessed by competent analysts as a sign the Russian offensive is entering its next much bigger phase, with this objective being assured
A thoughtful analysis
https://bmanalysis.substack.com/p/war-update-03f?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The current fight resembles very closely the battles last summer when Russia made some grindingly slow advances in Donbas. As far as any advance on Kiev from the north, that's almost impossible now as Kiev is far, far better defended than when Russia attacked last year and Putin has fewer troops and equipment. Any advance to the West is still blocked by the Pripet marshes.
Putin is simply trying a Verdun strategy to raise the costs of the war to the point that Ukraine sues for peace, but I seriously doubt that will happen.
Yeah but Ukraine may have up to one million dead. A couple of million will have relocated permanently in the West. Ukraine’s demographics will destroy the nation in the next generation and Russia will try again to conquer Ukraine.
People make the assumption Russia is re-fighting WW2 or Afghanistan, or Chechnya. Or That they are still Stalin’s Red Army.
If countries always refight their last war, Actually the last war Russia fought was/ is in Syria, also a proxy war, and no one talks much about how they learned and adapted. Maybe because they did and are doing well.
The last 4 US presidencies tried regime change in Syria…whose leader, with Russian support, is still standing? And heading to a final diplomatic solution with Turkey brokered by Russia?
Compare current Syria to the aftermath of NATO’s war on current Libya.
Too much differences of opinion there to unpack so…we’ll see.
In a war of attrition, if that is what the US and London choose this to be ( using the Ukrainian people) then the winner will be the guy left with the most fighters..
Yes, that’s definitely an advantage, except that Russia seems to have wasted a lot of equipment in the early stages of the war and doesn’t seem to be very good at logistics either. The bigger problem I see for Russia is just a general lack of strategic acumen. The successes they manage to achieve seem solely due to brute force, at great cost, which is tremendously wasteful in a long conflict compared to making gains by pitting your strengths against the opponent’s weaknesses, which is what Ukraine started doing and what brought them most of their recent gains.
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