Media attention has really been fading over Ukraine. Li’l Zelenskyy is a caricature scampering around Europe and America like an organ grinder’s monkey begging for handouts.
Once haughty anonymous internet armchair military experts who proclaimed Vodka Man Bad was about to fall any second now have gone silent. The facts are painfully clear to the ruling class: no amount of aid will change the eventual outcome of the war absent direct U.S. involvement. I doubt that would change the outcome either but it would certainly make the already abhorrent human cost skyrocket. Of course, Ukraine “winning” was never the point.
Last week the Ukrainian holdout of Avdiivka finally fell after it was slowly throttled by the Russians. I am not any sort of expert on Ukraine but from my understanding Avdiivka is within the former Donetsk People’s Republic and is now claimed to be part of Russia via annexation. It has been called one of the most fortified cities in the world, and was the source of open fighting long before the Russian invasion including attacks from Ukrainian forces on the nearby city of Donetsk. Most people, especially those with Ukraine flag pins in their profile, have no idea about the American sponsored coup and that fighting has been going on over there for a decade.
The battle to me as a neophyte military observer seemed a lot like Bakhmut to the north, a slow strangling encirclement of the city that saw Ukraine continuing to dump men and resources into the defense of a city they had already lost because Zelenskyy didn’t want to lose face and more importantly didn’t want to lose the money he was siphoning from continuing military aid. In general that seems to be the pattern, Russia watches Ukraine throw men into a meatgrinder where they systematically slaughter them until the Ukrainians finally retreat. It isn’t the fastest way to advance but it sure degrades the ability of Ukraine to continue to fight.
Spring is just around the corner and Ukraine is in a bad spot having expended a bunch of manpower and munitions in a futile attempt to hold on to a symbolic city. What happens next is uncertain but what is certain is that it will be bad for the Ukrainians who are being fed into this meatgrinder. From Mikael Valtersson writing on Twitter:
There is now a growing expectation for an all out offensive from the Russian side, all along the different frontlines. The meager reserves Ukraine has, must be husbanded well for such an eventuality. There is already a strong Russian push at the Kreminna, Bakhmut and South Donetsk fronts.
Large Russian forces are amassed at the Belgorod, Kupyansk and Zaporizhia fronts. All in all at least 150 000, maybe even 200 000, soldiers with lot of equipment. An activation of these frontlines would press Ukrainian defence forces to the uttermost. No wonder Ukraine must make territorial sacrifices to keep as many units combat worthy for the coming storm.
https://twitter.com/MikaelValterss1/status/1758995235789512894
150,000 to 200,000? Yikes. I looked at a map of those three areas mentioned, you can’t see Kupyansk but the middle arrow on the right is pointing to it…
From my limited understanding, Ukraine isn’t in a position to stop an assault from any one of those three spots and if all three go at once? It is about a six hour drive from Kharkiv to Kiev. Of course the Russians can’t just hop on the M03 and drive to Kiev but 479 km is less than 300 miles or about the distance between Boston and Philadelphia.
If I were Li’l Volodymyr Zelenskyy I would have my go-bag packed and a jet on standby to take me to one of my vacation homes, assuming he ever takes a break from hustling for shekels in America and actually steps foot back in Ukraine again. I suspect he is way ahead of me, knowing that if the Russians don’t get him, his own people might.
Ukraine has already lost around 20% of it’s territory, much of it rich in natural resources like coal. The last fortified spot in Avdiivka was a coke plant….
The Russians have basically gained most of what they wanted…..
…including the land-bridge to Crimea with a “blue water” port access to the Black Sea and then the Mediterranean via the Bosporus Straits and Atlantic. It is worth noting that also gives Russia access to the Middle East far more readily than sending ships all the way around Western Europe….
….something to consider as Russia solidifies her hold on the captured territories with the endless flashpoints in the Middle East thanks to Our Greatest Ally.
They are still trying to squeeze every last dime in loot out of this war before it reaches it’s inevitable conclusion but the end is nigh….
The fall of Avdiivka came a day after President Biden tried using the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny to pressure Congress into throwing billions more dollars into the war in Ukraine. “History is watching the House of Representatives,” said Biden. “The failure to support Ukraine at this moment will never be forgotten…The clock is ticking, and this has to happen, we have to help now.”
Then again, maybe it’s time to stop promoting the fiction that Ukraine has any hope of ejecting Russia from the approximately 20% of the country it has captured — and time to start earnestly pursuing a settlement that restores peace and ends a proxy war that has cost countless lives while only benefitting the military-industrial complex.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/major-victory-russian-army-ukraine-forces-flee-eastern-city
It would be outrageous in a real country that our “President” is bitching about political prisoners in Russia while American political prisoners from January 6th to Derek Chauvin languish and are mistreated in American gulags but of course we don’t live in a real country. We barely qualify as a banana republic at this point.
Ukraine will likely never recover, demographically, culturally or economically, from this artificially prolonged war. The future Ukraine is going to be even worse than the corrupt nation that existed before the war started. What all of those billions “accomplished” was enriching the corrupt oligarchs of Ukraine and the Western military-industrial complex while slaughtering hundreds of thousands of White Slavic men. It has also exposed the U.S. as a paper tiger with cool whiz-bang military gear that is great for slaughtering fleeing Iraqis but ineffective in a near-peer conflict or even to dislodge goat humpers with rusty AKs in Afghanistan.
We are entering a period of seismic shifts in geopolitics and while the scholar in me is fascinated, the early 50s real life me is deeply concerned about what this will mean for my remaining few decade and for my posterity.
“Once haughty anonymous internet armchair military experts who proclaimed Vodka Man Bad was about to fall any second now have gone silent.”
There’s one who isn’t silent about his incorrect stance; he just changes the goalposts constantly so he keeps being “right.”
Of course I’m speaking of a short, fat, bald nurse who is incapable of any humility ever.
“Once haughty anonymous internet armchair military experts who proclaimed Vodka Man Bad was about to fall any second now have gone silent.”
There’s one who isn’t silent about his incorrect stance; he just changes the goalposts constantly so he keeps being “right.”
Of course I’m speaking of a short, fat, bald nurse who is incapable of any humility ever.
I was talking about him but I haven’t darkened his door in a long time, I am not surprised he refuses to admit he was wrong.
Thing is he would be a lot more respected if he could admit he is wrong…No one is perfect but if you can admit when you are wrong then it speaks well of your character…
Exactly. He’s a smart guy. He’s also an asshole.
Smart? Marginally so at best. Certainly riddled with personality disorder at a minimum. It used to be fun to laugh at him, last time I checked it was simply childish and nauseating. Seems more c/w controlled opo than anything else.
His latest claim is that the firebombing of Dresden, killing tens of thousand of civilians and their children, was OK because somebody voted for Hitler sometime….Horrific…
I stopped reading his blog when he suddenly adopted that megalomaniacal majestic plural “we” voice in all of his opinion pieces. He was so dead wrong about Ebola as the end of life on the planet, only to follow that one up with dire, definitive pronouncements about coronavirus effects in the early-early days that never materialized. His track record on informed predictions is about as successful as Jim Cramer’s.
“Of course I’m speaking of a short, fat, bald nurse who is incapable of any humility ever.”
Could it be….Satan? I mean, Aesop? His “superior” medical knowledge has been on display since before COVID. He got that completely wrong and still pretends he was right. He was pimping Ebola as the “end of the world” organism before COVID. He would be overjoyed if a microorganism ended life on this planet because that could be his “I told you so” moment. His armchair military experience (?) has been just as wrong. I quit visiting his site in 2020 because of his egocentric need to not admit he made a mistake.
Man, first try!!!
I still feel sorry for him…
I gotta ask….Why? Aesop’s vanity and his need to attack those that disagree with him is constantly on display. He makes Vox Day look like a humble man. At least he recognized he was wrong about Trump and Q. I save my feeling sorry for someone that is not responsible for the mess that he finds himself in and has some redeeming qualities. Of course, Aesop is never wrong, so he never finds himself in any mess.
Because I’ve met him in person Brother…
I mean, why do you feel sorry for him? Sure, friendship can give you some insight into the person, but, when they are responsible for their situation by engaging in repeated behavior, you can hope they’ll wake-up but you realize they made their own bed and have to lie in it.
Ahh just for him as a whole Brother…You can be sorry even for the people who act like assholes to people…
Asshole is practically a term of endearment. I have a few friends who are assholes. He is something else. I prefer to assume mental illness; so, I have a great sympathy for him but see him as an AIDS vector to our side. Everywhere he shows up turns ghey and then the discourse dies. Net negative. Time is too short.
I avoid both of them like the plague, I don’t need any guys who spend most of their time attacking other White people because their tender egos are bruised.
Yea never good to attack the only people who could be an ally to you…
I’m with Lineman on this. And I’ve broken bread with Aesop too. I feel bad for/about him because it’s a fucking WASTE.
He’s a very intelligent guy, and he has genuinely clever ideas sometimes. He could be a real asset to Our Side but instead he’s pissing people off For No Reason At All (TM*).
I stopped visiting his site a few years back so I don’t know about the Dresden post. I have the feeling it’d piss me the fuck off, so no reason to go check, I guess.
* “for no reason at all” is a Special Phrase and one that I purely hate for its narcissistic arrogance. Whenever I use it I’m being sarcastic.
Ja, he put up a post the other day that was illustrative, a celebration of the fire bombing of Dresden, a city of little strategic value, but a cultural jewel, and jam packed full of refugees:
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2024/02/fify.html?m=1
From the sentiments expressed therein, I guess you could extrapolate his views on the situation in Gaza. Pretty much this line from the song Head Like A Hole by Nine Inch Nails, “Let’s go dancing on the backs of the bruised…”.
Yeah, that’s the spirit.
His Dresden post was simply beyond the pale.
Is he Jewish or jurt bloodthirsty?
The only guy I know who likes his “work” is a bombastic boomer also short on humility and tact, who has a tiny hat in the family and has thus taken up arms against most on our side who dares raise the JQ or other anti-smititisms.
Everything is personal. So odds on there is something close to home. Similar to other bloggers that can’t shake the myopia of their personal ethnic’s history or future, in the case of the mixed-race marriages/grandkids.
Absolutely correct! The guy is a piece of shit. Anyone following him can be considered ‘a sap for Aesop’. Even his moniker reeks with pomposity.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Anyone celebrating the firebombing murder of White women and children is a piece of shit and not on /ourside/.
Yep, he’s not on anyone’s side except maybe Netanyahoo’s…
I archived and saved the image from that post. POS
The number of comments on his site are a big indicator of the lack of support he has for his positions. He used to get hundreds of comments; since so many people write in opposition to him now he’ll allow maybe 6 posts.
Unless of course you PoAsT yOuR rEaL nAmE aNd PhOtO!!!
Couple of points that I think most people in the West have not realized, because not very many are talking about it:
1) Navalny was not merely “political opposition,” they have him on video plotting a color revolution with an MI6 agent. This video is available on the internet if you go looking for it. He was guilty of sedition at best and treason by almost any definition and the Russians would have been entirely justified in standing him against a wall in front of a firing squad. If Putin was the man the press in the West pretends he is, that is exactly what would have happened.
If you have ever read Martin Armstrong’s tale of what went down with the Clintons in the 90’s, attempting to blackmail Yeltsin into installing a puppet, you will know that Clown World has tried at least twice that we know of to foment political leadership change in their favor in Russia. This behavior is why Putin is in power, why he remains in power, and why he does not trust Clown World.
2) The Russians tried the “shock and awe” style campaign early on in an attempt to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table before things got really out of hand, and they succeeded in surrounding Kiev and starting negotiations. Clown World sent Boris Johnson to derail it. Once the Russians saw there would be no reasonableness (“not agreement capable”) the strategy had to change since they declined to do to Kiev what the Israelis are doing to Gaza. That strategy became capturing the territory necessary to resolve the situation, creating the necessary borders de facto rather than de jure.
98% or more of what hits the Western press about Russia and the Ukraine conflict is propaganda. The more this happens the more visible the Matrix becomes.
I am not a military expert but the fact that Russia hasn’t leveled Kiev when they clearly could tells me this war is not at all what we are being told it is by the media, and of course I don’t trust anything the (((media))) says anyway. If anything the campaign has been restrained, especially compared to the genocide being carried out by God’s Chosen People.
I got totally bored and learned nothing of any value at Roc and eventually quit reading it. Was cleaning up my bookmarks the other day and deleted it.
This site, Big Country and Identity Dixie are on my daily must reads. Funny, it would appear they have plenty of back channel comms, which makes sense.
I can’t remember which commenter said a while back, “I come for the story and stay for the comments”.
Thanks for the content.
The comments are mostly better than my content.
Anyway, the Unkraine operation is coming to a close…probably cascading failure on all fronts…Draft kidnappers apparently running into public opposition, and Zelensky’s government on life support…
I suspect the few survivors of Zelensky’s genocide will eventually hunt him down and kill him like the dog he is.
Excellent post! An accurate prognosis in a nutshell.