FM Lavrov: The goal of sanctions is more strategic than just Ukraine. It is quintessence of West’s strategic course to marginalise, contain Russia, stop our development & reduce Russia to zero role in world politics, economy and trade, world sports, art, science and education.
Day 22 – where do we go from here? Two decisions | The Vineyard of the Saker
18 MARCH 2022 - 43666 Views - 360 Comments
Dear friend
I think that three weeks into this special military operation we can take a few moments to pause and think about where we are and where we go from here.
My first observation is this: there are, roughly, two main groups of people out there, those who “get it” and those who don’t. In practical terms, this is what this means for me: when I write I am either “preaching to the choir” or I am trying to reach folks who are “unreachable” (being polite here).
For the past three weeks, I have tried
to debunk the US PSYOP narrative, alongside folks like ANDREI MARTYANOV at
Reminiscences of the Future and Bernhard at
MOON OF ALABAMA. My health does not allow me to sustain such a crazy tempo and I need to enter something of a “temporary rest mode” if I want to avoid being forced into rest by my body.
Yet I still get a daily deluge of questions from those who did not “get it” and, frankly, I am exhausted trying to debunk the same stuff over and over and over again.
So, one last time:
IN PURELY MILITARY TERMS, the picture we see now is simple:
the Ukie military as a strategic instrument basically died in the first 24 hours. Then the Russians used a small force to bypass and block main cities. With some very notable exceptions (Mariupol) they did not try to enter them. WHY? For 3 crucial reasons:
1) they did not have the manpower needed (in Mariupol the force correlation is about 1:1 when it should really be 3-5:1 in favor of the attacker)
2) they wanted to kill as few Ukrainians as possible and
3) they did not want to flatten cities only to have to pay for their reconstruction.
So WHERE ARE THE REST of the Russian forces and WHAT ARE THEY DOING?
They are mostly in their permanent deployment bases and THEY ARE READY FOR A WAR AGAINST THE US+NATO.
And if you are the type of believes that “the Russians are running out of manpower” ask yourself why the BLACK SEA FLEET did not use its elite Naval Infantry, amphibious landing capability or its firepower (I remind you that all the huge damage done to the NATO BASE IN WESTERN UKRAINE was just a single salvo from one single small vessel (what the Russian call a “small missile ship”), probably with one (land or air based) Iskander to add some specific “punch” where needed. If the Russian were running out of manpower, would she not use the Black Sea Fleet to the max? Instead, she is keeping it NEAR ODESSA, ready to strike if/when needed, not only at the Ukraine, but at NATO too (ditto for the group of Russian ships in the eastern Mediterranean).
This is why Putin refers to this operation as a “SPECIAL MILITARY OPERATION” and NOT AS A “WAR” or a “combined arms operation”.
Again, you either “get it” or you don’t. It’s that simple, really.
...
However, I think that
most people in Russia are stunned by what is a full-scale “hate war” on Russia which we can call the
“Cancel Russia war“. In essence, the
West did throw everything it had at Russia short of a overt military aggression and knowing the geniuses in power in the US+UK+PL
I would not even put it past them to try to fight Russia directly.
So what began as a special military operation to denazify and disarm Banderastan in a preemptive war turned into a global “CANCEL RUSSIA” world war.
How could I blame folks in Russia for not being able to imagine the utter suicidal depravity of the western ruling classes when I, who was born in the heart of Europe and lived all my life in the West could not imagine
these ruling classes to be so absolutely out of touch with reality?
Again, to be clear, Russians were not “naive” to “trust” the West about anything, but THEY INDEED ASSUMED that the ruling class of the USA WOULD NOT DECIDE TO BLOW UP THE PLANET economically and even possibly militarily because it would hurt the interests of the US ruling class. So if anybody is “dumbshit stupid” it is hardly the Russians, but rather the folks who rule over the USA (and, therefore, over the EU too).
There is also this Russian expression: “
you should count your chicks in the Fall”. Let’s see by year’s end who was really dumbshit stupid and who will have prevailed.
Now I think that it is time for all of us, myself included, TO LET GO OF THE THOUGHT
“no, they can’t possibly by THAT delusional” and
ASSUME THAT YES, they are really THAT delusional.
(...)
Read the remaining substantial part and more intense one at the website, it's something related to US + UK + PL intention.
