Day 39, Phase 2
The Peace of Westphalia?
Night vision gadgets, longer-range weapons like armed drones, howitzers, antiaircraft systems, anti-ship missiles, armored trucks, personnel carriers and tanks will all feature prominently in Phase 3 of the war, which kicks off a week from today on May 9.
Much foreign military assistance has arrived or is still arriving, but it will take weeks, maybe months, to deploy, configure and use effectively, except the nvgs/nods, which don’t weigh much and are easy to operate.
Russia was defeated in Phase 1 of its invasion and in Phase 2 was unable to achieve its stated objectives (occupying Luhansk and Donetsk regions). Phase 3 — uprooting and vaporizing entrenched Russian soldiers — could take months, maybe years. Foreign legionnaires should all be speaking fluent Ukrainian by the end of the op.
About that greasy clown that is Andriy Yermak, head of the President’s Office…
My eyes glazed over reading Yermak’s 2,500-word scream for attention featured in Time Magazine.
Perhaps you share my reaction to self-aggrandizing bullshit: as soon as I see it, a filmy layer of distrust and seething hatred gets in the way, and I can’t think of anything other than some unshaven doucherocket receiving accolades for being ‘visionary’ and subsequently feeling on top of the world because he gnarled whatever wit and narrative grace his speechwriter could muster into the successful injection of the Ukraine brand into a media ecosystem that, milliseconds later, does not care.
This kind of jibberish is an ad for metal prongy things to hold up paper rolls. However, the above paragraph has just enough diy dorkiness, and a complete absence of the sort of knowing, winking, preening aspirational slumming with which doucherockets brush their teeth, so: enjoy!
I fixed the Washington Post’s map, which the newspaper got from Fred. There are no “Russian-held” or “separatist-controlled areas” in Ukraine, just Russia-occupied areas. Rinse, repeat.
Maybe replace the Crimea portion of the map w/ this:
London-based philosopher Volodymyr Pastukhov has this to say:
Putin’s regime has entered the stage of agony. This was the result of a fatal military-political mistake made by the "collective Putin," which I’m starting to think wasn’t actually planning for a war, but for a special operation. But it got into a war, and not with Ukraine, but with NATO. The fact that NATO is fighting remotely only exacerbates the situation.
The calculation was precisely based on the fact that there would be no real war. Russia wanted to scare the NATO hedgehog with a naked army, in principle, but they were not ready for a long war. It turned out differently than the planners expected. The Europeans, who had been pretending to be a dead cat for twenty years, suddenly showed bared its fangs and unsheathed its claws. Now every extra month of the war works against Russia, as the number of weapons supplied to Ukraine is growing exponentially, increasing the combat capability of the Ukrainian army, while Russian resources are only decreasing.
The mousetrap has slammed shut. Russia got into a war that is neither practically nor theoretically possible to win. The hysteria in the Kremlin and the media controlled by it cannot essentially change anything. History does not forgive such mistakes, but puts them in a corner. Russia’s “collective Putin” has three ways out:
1) Start a nuclear war and commit suicide, taking with it the lives of most of humanity.
2) Continue a conventional war until exhaustion, obvious defeat and rebellion in the rear.
3) Stop the war with a fairly quick, but shameful and dubious peace (getting nothing for its pains), which Russia’s propaganda machine will try to present as a victory and achievement of all the goals of the special operation.
In the latter case (which seems to be the most probable) the agony will continue for some time — from several months to several years (say up to three) — after which the regime will end. The elites will not forgive Putin's fright and will take revenge for the fear they experienced.
In any case, Russia is entering a zone of turbulence, from which it cannot fly out intact. Fasten your seat belts…