https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eih3AMjIX4

Russian Military's Shocking Transformation Revealed | Peter Zeihan

In the initial months of the war, a crucial decision was made by NATO to support Ukraine in order to prevent a direct conflict with NATO itself and to avoid the use of nuclear weapons. The key was ensuring that Ukraine could operate and maintain the weapon systems provided. This strategic choice was deemed more cost-effective than rebuilding Western cities post-conflict.

The war has seen significant evolution. Recently, Russia began deploying FAB-1500 bombs, which, despite their low accuracy, create massive blast radii due to their size. In contrast, Ukrainian forces have innovated with drones like the and the Shahed, targeting critical Russian infrastructure and refineries. The collapse of the Russian educational system in 1986 has left a severe skill gap, impacting their ability to maintain key facilities.

On the production side, Russia faces challenges with its infrastructure in permafrost regions, leading to high maintenance costs and potential disruptions. In contrast, the U.S. has robust shale fields, particularly in Texas and North Dakota, where natural gas is a significant byproduct. These fields contribute substantially to the U.S. energy supply, despite the need for further infrastructure to manage the gas output efficiently.

THIS IS PURE DECEITFUL BULLSHIT BY PETER ZEIHAN....

THE RUSSIAN GAS IS FOUR TIMES CHEAPER THAN THE SHALE GAS...

THE AMERICAN EMPIRE WANTS TO ACQUIRE (STEAL) THE RUSSIAN HEARTLAND...

THE AMERICAN EMPIRE VIA BORIS JOHNSON PREVENTED A DECENT DEAL FOR UKRAINE, IN MARCH/APRIL 2022...

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

READ FROM TOP

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

BY LARRY JOHNSON

A key task in any analysis is to identify your underlying assumptions about the activity or person you are assessing. If you indulge false assumptions, then your entire analytical narrative will be wrong. It is like looking through a pair of prescription glasses — you’re myopic — and prescription is hyperopic. Personally, I prefer to deal primarily with facts and shy away from conjecture. 

I want to focus on one recent article that illustrates this point. I thank Andrei Martyanov , who flagged this latest windbag puffery from the U.S. European Commander, Christopher Cavoli. Cavoli insists that, “Russia’s ongoing offensive in Ukraine doesn’t have the legs for a breakthrough.” 

“I know the Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough,” . . . .

“They don’t have the skill and the capability to do it, to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage,”

And his source of this insight? If you guessed, “The Ukrainians,” give yourself a gold star. Cavoli is dead wrong about the numbers, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Admiral Rob Bauer, a NATO dilettante, weighed in with this wowser — which I suspect is also courtesy of the Ukrainians.

He said Russia has managed to muster additional forces,“but the quality of the troops is lower than the troops they started the conflict with” due to the number of officers “that were killed in the beginning of the war” and so aren’t able to train newer soldiers.

Once again we are witnessing a display of projection — i.e., assigning to Russia what the Ukrainians are experiencing. Russia has been adding tens of thousands of troops per month since September 2022. Unlike Ukraine — which snatches guys off the street, shoves them into vans, hauls them to a military center, kits them out in uniforms, gives them a gun, and provides only cursory training — Russia is giving recruits at least six months of training and then placing those new soldiers in units with combat veterans. The ranks of the Ukrainian military are being depleted every single day, while Russia is building up its forces.

So let’s deal with some facts. Look at the numbers of soldiers in the Russian Army vs the supposedly invincible U.S. Army, and you will realize Cavoli’s buffoonery. (Yes, I am assuming these numbers are accurate, because they are provided by Western sources.)

As of 2024, the Russian Armed Forces have 3.57 million troops, with 1.32 million active military, 2 million reserve, and 250,000 paramilitary. This is the second increase in the size of the Russian military since 2018, with the previous increase of 137,000 troops in August 2022. 

And the United States?

As of July 31, 2023, the United States Army (USA) has 452,689 active duty personnel, 325,218 Army National Guard personnel, and 176,968 Army Reserve personnel, for a total of 1,073,200 uniformed personnel. 

Cavoli, a biology major, and Bauer, apparently are not very good at math. The Russian armed forces, now, are three times the size of that fielded by the United States, both in terms of active duty and reserve. But, the advantage for Russia is not just in terms of manpower. Consider this — Russia’s forces are located primarily in Russia (yes, there are a few in Syria) and Russia’s General Staff can bring the full might of 1.3 million soldiers to the frontlines far more quickly than the U.S. and NATO could mobilize and move. U.S. forces are scattered around the globe. If the United States decided to fight Russia, the Russians, as defenders, will have at least a three-to-one advantage over the United States.

Cavoli’s flawed assumption? He is looking at what the Russians have done over the past two years and assumes that Russia is operating at full tilt. It is not. He is assuming that because Russia has not committed a million plus soldiers to the battle, that the training is inadequate and the troops unskilled. And, worse of all, he believes the Ukrainians. I want to remind you that Colonel Alex Vershinin, writing at RUSI, provided a detailed account that totally rebuts Cavoli’s wishful thinking — The Attritional Art of War: Lessons from the Russian War on Ukraine.

Attritional wars require their own ‘Art of War’ and are fought with a ‘force-centric’ approach, unlike wars of manoeuvre which are ‘terrain-focused’. They are rooted in massive industrial capacity to enable the replacement of losses, geographical depth to absorb a series of defeats, and technological conditions that prevent rapid ground movement. In attritional wars, military operations are shaped by a state’s ability to replace losses and generate new formations, not tactical and operational manoeuvres. The side that accepts the attritional nature of war and focuses on destroying enemy forces rather than gaining terrain is most likely to win.

The West is not prepared for this kind of war. To most Western experts, attritional strategy is counterintuitive. Historically, the West preferred the short ‘winner takes all’ clash of professional armies. Recent war games such as CSIS’s war over Taiwan covered one month of fighting. The possibility that the war would go on never entered the discussion. This is a reflection of a common Western attitude. Wars of attrition are treated as exceptions, something to be avoided at all costs and generally products of leaders’ ineptitude. Unfortunately, wars between near-peer powers are likely to be attritional, thanks to a large pool of resources available to replace initial losses. The attritional nature of combat, including the erosion of professionalism due to casualties, levels the battlefield no matter which army started with better trained forces. As conflict drags on, the war is won by economies, not armies. States that grasp this and fight such a war via an attritional strategy aimed at exhausting enemy resources while preserving their own are more likely to win. The fastest way to lose a war of attrition is to focus on manoeuvre, expending valuable resources on near-term territorial objectives. Recognising that wars of attrition have their own art is vital to winning them without sustaining crippling losses.

Simplicius the Thinker, who writes at Substack, did a deep-dive on Vershinin’s analysis and explained what it means for Russia:

Not only do we have confirmation from Western think tanks, and the highest offices of Ukraine itself, that Russia abides by strict brigade staffing and restoration policies, rotating troops constantly and never letting brigades get critically depleted in the way the AFU is forced to do. But recall how Russia utilized experienced Wagner vets in precisely the fashion described above. They ‘distributed’ Wagner and other experienced fighting units throughout the entire formation, adding them to both the Akhmat forces, Rosgvardia, and others, even bringing them to train Belarusian troops.

In short, Russia is strictly adhering to the playbook for ideal husbanding of both forces and battlefield knowledge, wisdom, and experience—doing the utmost to make sure the utterly vital knowledge gained by the most experienced warriors is never squandered but always multiplied throughout and utilized to its fullest.

Cavoli is lost in some out-dated World War II fantasy. He expected the Russians to launch a blitzkrieg and, when they did not, assumed they were incapable of doing so because of poorly trained, ill-equipped soldiers. If history is any judge, Russian Generals are far superior to any the West has to offer. While the Americans were ousted from Vietnam and Afghanistan, the Russians have been chewing up Ukrainian forces and depleting NATO warehouses of critical weapon supplies. Russia has the means to do a breakthrough, but that is not its stated objective. Attrition! Russia is going to bleed Ukraine and its NATO allies white, rather than risk high-casualty maneuver assaults favored by the likes of Cavoli.

https://sonar21.com/western-generals-and-pundits-still-traffic-in-false-assumptions-about-russia/

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

READ FROM TOP

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....