Back in April/May/June we heard of brigade size formations leading counter-offensives against Russian allied, mostly militia and national guard units, forces. We also heard of whole Ukraine brigades being wiped out by Russian artillery and air units.
Back in July/August, perhaps even into September, we heard of battalion size formations leading counter-offensives against Russian allied, mostly militia and national guard units, forces. We also heard of whole Ukraine battalions being wiped out by Russian artillery and air units.
In all that time, Ukrainian soldiers would have been lucky to have even seen a Russian soldier – other than when they themselves were being treated for injury or confined as a captive of those forces.
Then came October, and the announcement of the Russian partial mobilisation, adding well over 300,000 mostly already proficient ex-soldiers to Russian forces, including a large contingent of new volunteers plus the newly incorporated militia units from the liberated territories. What effect could that be expected to have, both immediately and over time? There was also the threatened announcement of a massive Ukrainian attack or attacks at various places along the front lines, which led to the stepping back of Russian forces from the Kharkiv area to shorten and strengthen that line. A second step-back, similar to the one (in April I think, possibly March) from more northern regions, ostensibly for the same reasons – and with the same result – an easy recovery of large amounts of territory which gave the Ukrainians the false impression that beating Russia was going to be a cake-walk.
All the dates I am using here are a little fuzzy and may overlap some, but I don’t feel it necessary to provide more detailed accuracy – it was a sequence of events something like this.
We waited and waited during September/October for the much anticipated and loudly proclaimed large scale offensives by Ukraine (Million man army, Rah, Rah!) – but such attacks never came. There were never any more brigade size attacks and such easy success as Ukraine seemed to have, as Russia and her allies stepped back, was not achieved by victorious combat but by occupying undefended open land again by only battalion sized tactical groups (hastily organised from further conscription drives) while at the same time facing huge losses from air and artillery, due to not having prepared emplacements to shelter in. The few retaken small towns having already been razed to the ground (mostly by themselves) over previous years and months. This huge cull of Ukraine forces had such an effect that in recent weeks we have seen even smaller attacking units being employed by Ukraine. And it is increasingly difficult to keep describing company size attacks, accompanied by one tank and a few assorted support vehicles, as a major offensive. I think even the western media must be beginning to catch onto that now. Meanwhile the slaughter goes on and on. There are far fewer casualties reported but I suggest that is wholly due to there being fewer targets for Russians to aim at.
It has been admitted by both sides that Ukraine casualties over the past eight months of this conflict number more than 400,000, while Russian casualties are somewhere between one tenth or one eighth of that number. That is around 445,000 people who will no longer take part in their country’s future or who may not be able to live a full and normal life from now on. I suggest those numbers do not include any civilian casualties and also that the Ukraine casualties – because of the nature of the weapons causing them – would most likely be represented by a death rate of rather more than 80%. Perhaps even as high as 90%.
Whatever comes next? Will we see platoon sized major offensives? Can Ukraine still produce fresh conscripts when even foreign mercenary units are refusing to fight alongside Ukraine soldiers? And how are they to be supplied when Russia is continually disrupting power supplies, with devastating effect on movement of goods and people (civilian and military alike)?
There are threats, from across the Atlantic, of the insertion of NATO forces into the conflict, and even of the use of US Nukes if is deemed to become necessary. No such threat has been issued by Russia, at least not to be used in Ukraine (which leaves a lot of other possibilities open for speculation – should the need arise – it has to be said).
The picture then is one of growing Russian strength – having carefully preserved its committed forces from other than expected minimal casualty figures and never yet using its regular military conscript formations and with its missile and general munition stores still largely intact – facing an exhausted and numerically drained Ukraine, backed by rightfully intimidated US/NATO commands with noticeably bare storage of the means of making war (of any protracted nature) and never being capable of producing a standing army large enough, mean enough, or sufficiently equipped enough to achieve any kind of meaningful victory over them. The west should consider themselves lucky to have an enemy (so conceived only by themselves and their psychopathic leaders) which is only interested in making an agreement which would see them peacefully protected from aggression and oppression in their own lands, rather than any desire to conquer and pillage the world.
The fact that the west is known to be ‘agreement incapable’ is of no importance really. They are no longer in a position, though this is still largely unrecognised among them as yet, to impose any kind of imperialist dictate on any other part of the world – other, that is, than a few, simply ‘goofy’ states, who apparently like being mistreated and abused, but who may not have yet have understood the possibility of the changes taking place around them. That position of incapacity the west is now beginning to feel, is only set to grow as more nations awake to the promise and reality of a new world system based on peace, harmony and cooperation, spearheaded – actually I will withdraw that word, it has connotations more fitting for western ideology – let’s say ‘assembled and assured’ by Russia, China and a host of other countries, of now like mind, across most major continents of the world.
Returning to the subject of this writing, Ukraine, I don’t think Russia or the world would ever abandon those people, however much of their country remains (following completion of the demilitarisation and denazification process), but will welcome them as partners in the renewed world where perhaps, as John Lennon once prophetically sang – ‘War is Over’. For good.
Not Something Else 
Reblogged this on Unorthodox Truth.