Morning music
On this day a year ago
Tweets seen
Complete idiots on the roads of Jamaica. Who would have thought it?…
Russia is going to win this war, come what may. Any adventurers, freebooters, and would-be contract soldiers, from the UK, USA etc may well find themselves prisoners of war —but not treated according to the Geneva Convention(s)— in a prison camp, somewhere like Siberia, or (more likely) Mordovia (central Russia). That’s if they do not get a bullet in the head in the field.
Sadiq Khan is an idiot.
Ukraine
Russian forces are almost stalled; stagnating. My impression though, is that (despite the Daily Mail take), they still (just about) hold the initiative. If Russia can energize itself to take and hold the territory between Donetsk and Kharkov, and then lay siege to, or at least encircle, Zaporozhye and then Dnipro (former Dnepropetrovsk), a general approach, east of the Dnieper river, on Kiev (from east and southeast) will be possible.
As I blogged right from the start, even before the start of the invasion, the Russian strategy should be to secure the Black Sea and Sea of Azov shores/littoral (to maybe 50-100 miles inland), to secure the entire territory of Ukraine east of the river Dnieper, and to take and hold Kiev. The rest of Ukraine can then be left.
On that basis, the Russians would control almost all the major cities of Ukraine, most of its industry, a significant amount of its agriculture, much of its electricity generation, and all of its sea-ports and Dnieper river-ports.
It appears that that is more or less what the Russians are doing, but very slowly.
It may be that Putin is going to have to commit greater forces to the war. Russia and its ally, Belarus, abut about two-thirds of Ukrainian territory. It must be possible to bring in more of everything in order to start the campaign moving again.
My sense is that Putin is not going to withdraw all forces to Russia proper. He will not back down or be seen to “lose”. I do not think that simply holding on to the Donbass regions alone will be seen by Putin or the Russian public as anything akin to a victory. There has to be more. To control the entire south and east (everywhere east of the Dnieper) would do it. That really means taking and holding Kiev as well.
Is Kiev essential to a Russian victory? I think that it probably is.
More music
Latest from Ukraine
If it is true that around Kiev, and possibly elsewhere, Russian forces are being pushed back, then Putin has either to bring in fresh reserves from Russia, or he has to use missiles and air power to flatten the Kiev-regime forces and/or the cities which are as yet holding out, the most important of which is Kiev itself.
We are told that the Russian air force has been held back by reason of the ground-to-air missiles supplied to Zelensky’s forces by the USA and UK. If that is so, and if the Russian ground forces cannot overrun the Ukrainian positions and prevent use of such Western weaponry, then the only logical way for Russia to regain the initiative will be to use long-range missiles which cannot easily be shot down, and which would be able to change the battlefield, depending on what kind of warhead is used.
If this continues much longer, I can see Kiev and other major cities of the Ukraine being all but razed to the ground.
I note that Russian forces are (said to be) taking up defensive positions as far as 20 miles outside Kiev; away from any danger of being within any circle of destruction from the air, perhaps. Does this betoken a massive onslaught by missiles and planes? We may not have to wait long to find out.
Late tweets
Once again, sinister clown Boris-idiot plays the Poundland Churchill. Amateur dramatics. Today’s role? “The Great War Leader and Statesman”. Benny Hill could have done it better, just like that other sinister clown, Zelensky.
So the UK, which has never been allied to Ukraine, never had anything much to do with it, is suddenly going to have hundreds of millions of pounds wasted on arms sent to prolong and make worse (for civilians) a horrible near-civil war, at a time when British people can, many of them, scarcely make ends meet.
…which is why Enoch Powell, for all his great intelligence, knowledge, education, resilience, and courage, ended up as a political joke, incapable of leading even a reformist tendency, let alone a national-revolutionary movement.
That pathetic sack of ****, Linehan, was extremely insolent to me on Twitter more than once, and I seem to recall that he loved the fact that a pack of malicious Jews had instigated my (in fact not only unwarranted but unlawful) disbarment in 2016 (my “crime” was tweeting five completely true and accurate tweets about society and a few politicians): see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/ for detail on that.
So Linehan kicked me when (he thought) I was down. Now look at him! A snivelling wreck, because the often crazed and degenerate “trans” lobby (and the wider “woke” lobby) has had him “cancelled”. Ironically, I happen to hold views not far distant from what I understand to be his on that one topic: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.
He needs to stop snivelling, stand up, load up, and fight the enemies of civilization.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 