Morning music
On this day a year ago
Ukraine
“As a former senior British military intelligence officer and Nato planner, I spent 26 years preparing to counter Soviet-style manoeuvres during the Cold War. I’m all too aware that whether Ukraine survives as an independent nation will depend on how each side copes with multiple factors.
One of these, as anyone with rudimentary knowledge of European history knows, is the weather on the Eastern Front.
Russia’s much-anticipated ‘spring offensive’ this year has failed. The calculations behind it were flawed. The frozen ground has thawed quickly, turning large tracts of the country into a quagmire. We saw last year what happened when tanks try to advance over Ukraine’s mud. Despite their caterpillar tracks, the weight of Russia’s 45-ton T-72s meant many were quickly bogged down and had to be abandoned. Ukrainian farmers gleefully looted the wreckages.
This means Russian tanks are, for the moment, largely confined to tracks and roads, making them easy targets for ambush. But the same restrictions apply to Western tanks, which are even heavier.
[by June 2023], ordnance supplied by the West will be pouring into the battle zones. President Zelensky asked for 300 tanks: it is estimated his allies, including other former Soviet states, will provide 700 or more.
Already 350 infantry fighting vehicles and more than 1,000 armoured personnel carriers have been promised, as well as at least 320 self-propelled guns, most of them 155mm artillery.
Training to use this disparate kit will prove time consuming. In peacetime, the Army reckons to spend two years readying a tank brigade for combat. The Ukrainian crews are attempting to learn everything in just a few months.
It’s a mammoth undertaking and that applies to every aspect of the war. After its rapid advances following the invasion last year, Russia held 51,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory.
Since the counter-attack began last summer, the Ukrainians have recaptured about 11,300 square miles — pushing the enemy out of Kyiv, Kherson and Kharkiv. Some parts of the operation were relatively straightforward: for example, trapping the Russians on the western side of the Dnipro river, which cut off their retreat.
But Russia still holds 40,000 square miles (17 per cent) of Ukrainian territory, including the 10,425 square miles of Crimea, which Ukrainian naval commander Vice-Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa this week vowed to retake.
Liberating Crimea [“Liberating”?] might be possible in the long term, but it would require a massive amphibious assault on the scale of D-Day. Even if a bridgehead could be established, the Ukrainian army would have to win back the peninsula mile by mile — and many of the inhabitants are pro-Russian.
Crimea was regarded as Ukrainian territory only after Stalin’s death in 1953 and it has been under Russian control again for nearly a decade. Victory would never be guaranteed, even if that gigantic campaign could ever be mounted.
Yet even that prospect is dwarfed by the scale of conflict on the mainland. The battlefront in eastern Ukraine is over 700 miles long, the distance from London to Barcelona. Moscow has committed virtually the whole of the Russian army to the invasion.
Its forces are organised into battalion tactical groups [BTGs], which consist of up to 40 tanks with artillery, armoured vehicles and engineering support. In total, Putin has 168 BTGs, each one a self-contained fighting force with full autonomy — and 115 of them are now in Ukraine.
Latest figures show the Russians have 1,330,900 men on the ground, compared with just half a million Ukrainians. They have 4,182 aircraft, including 1,531 helicopters and 773 fighter jets; Ukraine is far behind, with 312 aircraft, including 113 helicopters and 69 fighters.
Russia has 12,566 tanks, 151,641 armoured vehicles, 6,575 self-propelled guns and 3,887 mobile rocket launchers. In every case, that’s at least four times as many as Ukraine possesses and sometimes six.
Against a smaller but highly motivated army intent on repelling invasion, all the Russians can do is try to hang on to occupied territory. The Ukrainian forces will try to punch holes in the front line, but unless they can sever the supply chains, it’s unlikely their enemy will be routed. Putin will not permit his forces to pull out, however much punishment is inflicted.
Instead, he is playing for time, waiting for elections in the U.S. and Britain next year…“
[Colonel (retired) Philip Ingram, in the Daily Mail].
See also: https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/colonel-i-pointed-pistol-myself-then-my-dad-came-my-head-1012698.
Russia is certainly not about to “lose” this war, but cannot now win it (however “victory” be defined) without a gamechanging event or tactic coming into play.
The Kiev-regime soldiers and civilians are, at present, more motivated than the Russian side. Like Antaeus, they draw strength from being on their native soil.
In the absence of any coherent ideology, even the flawed past ideology of Sovietism and/or Marxism-Leninism, the Russian government has fallen back on WW2 motifs and on the ludicrous assertion that the corrupt Jew-Zionist dictatorship in Kiev is “Nazi“. Few believe that, even among the ranks of the self-describing “Left” “useful idiots” in Western Europe, the UK, or beyond.
That ideological lack on the Russian side means that it has nothing with which to stiffen morale.
The Daily Mail assessment mentions the upcoming elections in USA and UK. The US Presidential one is the important event. Without American arms and money, Zelensky’s troops must stop fighting.
Looking at that map, the areas in green are those where the Kiev-regime has regained ground over the past months. However, my guess is that much of Eastern Ukraine (east of the Dnieper) is almost open territory. If the Russians are stretched to the limit, so are the Ukrainians. If the Kiev-regime line were to be breached seriously, or if Russia were able to score a decisive victory in the Bakhmut/Artyomovsk pocket, there might be little to prevent most of Eastern Ukraine falling to Russian forces.
More from the newspapers
“A militant transgender activist who has quickly become one of the most high-profile ‘faces’ of the radical movement is a former soldier and Antifa member, it has been claimed.
Kayla Denker, who runs a YouTube site with videos dedicated to explaining Marxism and guns, posted a video of herself with an assault rifle after the Nashville school shooting.
The Nashville attacker, Audrey Hale, 28, was described by police as transgender.”
[Daily Mail]
Time to end all the (connected) lunacy…
How can any country advance to a higher form of society when it has millions of almost Stone Age “people” of that sort in it?
“Starmer then said; “If I am privileged enough to get into government at the next election I will work with CST and others to tackle it (hate) head on, with all of you.”
The dinner, which took place at a central London hotel was also attended by Ed Balls and wife Yvette Cooper, Dayan Gelley, Lord John Mann and JLC chair Keith Black.”
[Jewish News]
Starmer— a complete puppet of the Jewish lobby. Yvette Cooper no different.
Of course, when the puppet talks of “hate“, he means any criticism of Jews and their behaviour.
Tweets seen
Where has Farage been for the past ~60 years?
We must have that weapon, and before China has it.
Late tweets
Energy security— yes, OK, but (in the meantime) Russia would offer the UK cost-price fuel (gas especially) if the UK were to trade unrestrictedly with Russia and, also, stop funnelling arms, ammunition and money to the regime of the Jew dictator, Zelensky, in Kiev.
There are still quite a few scared sheep around, though:
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 