RUSSIA CANCELS MORE UKRAINIAN AIR DEFENSES WHILE THE U.S. ADMITS THE ECONOMY IS STALLING

Russia continues to pummel Ukrainian positions throughout the country and Ukraine continues to insist that it is shooting down Russian missiles and that the Russian attacks are inconsequential. Well, as Chris Berman of ESPN was fond of saying, “let’s go to the video tape.” The following video provides clear evidence that Ukraine’s air defense system is not working (you can see the launches from Patriot or IRIS batteries) and that Russia is blasting the Ukrainian air defense system into smithereens. Focus on the lower left hand quadrant of the video.

Ukraine launched a few missiles and they disappeared into the night. At the .17 second mark you will see the first massive explosion on a position that had been launching missiles. Given the size of the explosion the Ukrainian units at a minimum suffered significant damage. Take a look at the 1:39 mark on the video. Ukraine apparently tried to launch a missile that failed to intercept and fell back into the city of Kiev and exploded.

Ukraine does not have the weapon systems capable of doing the same thing to Russia. All Ukraine can do is fire artillery rounds at civilian targets along the border. Killing Russian civilians reinforces the Kremlin’s view that Ukraine is no long operating as a conventional military and must be treated as a terrorist threat. That means we can expect Russia to expand its attacks on “decision making” centers in Ukraine, which means targeting Ukrainian leadership responsible for military and intelligence activities. I am sure the West will howl with outrage but there is little it can do to compel a change in Russia’s strategy.

The ability of the West to continue its open ended support for Ukraine is being eroded by a string of negative economic news. The European Union as a whole is slipping into recession. Philip Pilkington reports:

Last week Germany announced that, after the government statistics agency revised its recent GDP figures, it was clear that the country was in recession. In recent history it has tended to hold up well as the global economy softened relative to some of Europe’s weaker economies. But this time it seems that Germany is leading the pack into recession.

This is because the recession that is currently looming over Europe is fundamentally different from previous iterations. The coming recession is no simple turning of the business cycle. Instead, it could be the beginning of the deindustrialisation of the European economy, which no longer has access to cheap Russian energy. The United States also is showing signs of weakness. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revised previous optimistic reports with a more gloomy assessment:

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 2.1 percent in the first quarter of 2023, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, as output increased 0.5 percent and hours worked increased 2.6 percent. (All quarterly percent changes in this release are seasonally adjusted annual rates.) Labor productivity was revised up 0.6 percentage point, the combined effect of a 0.3-percentage point upward revision to output and a 0.4-percentage point downward revision to hours worked. From the same quarter a year ago, nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased 0.8 percent, reflecting a 1.4-percent increase in output and a 2.2-percent increase in hours worked. (See table A1.) The 0.8-percent productivity decline is the first time the four-quarter change series has remained negative for five consecutive quarters; this series begins in the first quarter of 1948.

A moment of reckoning looms on the horizon. The United States and Europe will not be able to sustain its financial and military support to Ukraine regardless of what Ukraine achieves in its highly anticipated offensive. The United States has made a fatal mistake by assuming it could conduct or encourage military operations as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan without creating a war economy. Washington’s support of terrorist attacks inside Russia is hardening Moscow’s position towards the West and makes it more unlikely that there can or will be a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukraine-ready-launch-long-awaited-counteroffensive-zelenskyy-says?intcmp=tw_fnc

How many men do they have left? I’ll let others argue about it, but if the ‘leaks’ by that Air Force kid are even remotely true, Ukraine is getting decimated. If they’re KIA/WIA by a ratio of 10:1 in favor of the Russians(IIRC), where are they getting the guys to carry a rifle?

McDonald’s reopens in Ukraine amid ongoing Russian invasion .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krzm_ZgCD1M

I was in Baghdad from ‘07 to ‘12 .... that city didn’t look like that. Must be a different kind of war going on in Ukraine.

This is laughable. The notion that Europe and the United States will be economically unable to sustain the war Russia launched against the Ukraine doesn’t pass the is-this-a-joke test. Russia has several advantages, but economic strength isn’t one of them. The loss of trade between Western Europe and Russia is hurting both sides, as trade disruptions invariably do. Western Europe, being far stronger economically, is suffering less, but feeling it more. One consequence of Russia’s invasion, is that much of Western Europe is turning away from Russian energy supplies. Adaptation in such cases is slow, but Europe is shifting away from reliance on natural gas from the East.

One advantage Russia has, is the totalitarian’s willingness to inflict suffering on her subjects, in support of imperial conquest. Western Europe is more likely than Russia to back off because of the suffering that the war is inflicting on her people, even though that suffering is less. But the notion that the West will be unable to sustain the economic commitment of the war, cannot be taken seriously. The question of whether we’ll be willing to, is more of a question.

This war seems to be existential for both sides. It is not existential for Russia, but Russia is not a side. President Putin is a side. If Russia is seen to fail, it may well lead to President Putin’s fall. If he fears that it will, then he is unlikely to give up, no matter how much suffering he inflicts on Russia.

Fighting the Russian invasion would seem to be an existential matter for the Ukraine. If Ukraine accepts that Russia can take a slice of Ukrainian territory whenever she wishes, given President Putin’s proclaimed objective of conquering the territories that made up the Soviet Union, Ukraine cannot expect to survive.

The war is not existential for the West, but, without Western support, Ukraine cannot sustain resistance against Russia. This tends to make the West the weak link.

To speak of Ukrainian terrorist attacks on Russians, without mentioning Russian terrorist attacks on Ukrainians, implies that the whole article is a fake. I do remember that when Ukraine (quite legitimately) blew up a bridge that Russia was using to supply her forces, President Putin called that a terrorist act (which was a lie), and retaliated by blowing up civilian dwellings (which was specifically a terrorist attack). Russia has been the terrorist power since almost the beginning of the invasion. Russia, and her sycophants, have always claimed that Ukraine has been employing terrorism. These claims have always turned out to be false, when I’ve been able to get the data to find out.

I, at least, have had trouble getting good information on this war, so I’m largely in the dark. I have to assume that essentially all the things Russia says are lies, most of the things Ukraine says are lies, most the the things the Biden administration says are lies, and most of the things the institutional press says are lies. It’s hard to get anything solid. I tend to believe reports of where fighting is taking place, more than I believe reports on how the fighting is going.

I generally assume that any claims about upcoming operations, are misdirections. In war, it is not business to inform the enemy about what you are planning to do. Both sides have to know that the other reads the papers. Therefore, everyone knows that any press releases about planned upcoming operations, will be known to the enemy. I don’t think either side is foolish enough to announce, in detail, what they are actually planning to do.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.