Hello, everyone reading this.
This is one of the hardest things I have ever had to write, and if you think Putin is a genius or a 5D Chess Player or whatever, you might as well stop reading now.
In brief: The Russian Special Military Operation, or SMO, is over. It has failed, totally and absolutely.
We were lied to, it appears, from the beginning. We were lied to about Russian aims, Russian plans, and Russian abilities. And this is the result.
If you still believe this Kharkov Offensive is some kind of genius masterstroke by Putin, some enormously wonderfully constructed “trap”, you are either in need of a brain transplant or your name is The Faker or Andrei Martyanov.
Russia lost in Kharkov. It wasn’t the result of a “trap”, it wasn’t a “strategic retreat”, it was a rout, and the analogy in terms of the effect are not – as some people are comparing it to – the Battle Of The Bulge in WWII, but the Tet Offensive of 1968 in the Vietnam War.
What was the Tet Offensive? It was the mass attack all across South Vietnam by the Viet Cong, which suddenly and rapidly overwhelmed the defences of the South Vietnamese puppet regime and their American masters. The city of Hue was among the places liberated; a Viet Cong suicide squad even penetrated the American Embassy in what is now Ho Chi Minh City.
Now for three years the American Empire had been telling its subjects, as well as the rest of the world, that the Viet Cong had been defeated, that they were on the ropes, and yet here they were rampaging through South Vietnam and shooting up even the vaunted American Embassy.
So what happened? In the end the Viet Cong were pushed back with every single thing they had captured being taken back by the Americans and their puppets. The Viet Cong also suffered such devastating losses – 35000 guerrillas and main force regulars killed – that it never recovered. From 1968 to the end of the war in 1975, Viet Cong activity was low to nonexistent.
But so what? Behind the Viet Cong, ready to take over, was the North Vietnamese People’s Army. From 1968 on, the bulk of all the fighting was done by the NVPA; there was little to no VC activity.
And what happened? The world saw that the American Empire was clearly lying; the faith of the American people in their regime was irretrievably broken; and from that moment on the final defeat of American though still distant, was as clear as day.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Tet Offensive moment in Russia-Ukraine. From this moment on no sane person should believe a single thing the Russian Ministry of Defence has to say.
This is a defeat so overwhelming that at this point, and I will explain why, there are only two options before Russia:
1. Stop the conflict immediately, negotiate peace on any terms available – it will certainly involve throwing the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics under the blueyellow nazi bus and gigantic “reparations” payments – and withdraw from Ukranazistan. If the negotiations go very well, Russia might just be permitted to keep Crimea, though I doubt it.
Or:
2. To hell with the “special military operation”; stop the rubbish. This is a war, declared or undeclared; start fighting it like one. Turn Elensky and the rest of the nazi regime into a smoking hole in the ground. If that involves massive collateral damage, so be it.
What cannot be done is continue things as they are.
What has been happening over the last couple of months?
First, after the capture of Lisichansk, Russian advances practically stopped. Most of the Russian army, in fact, went home; there were only about 50000 regular soldiers left in Ukrainian territory. The advances, such as they were, depended entirely on the heroic fighting of Chechen volunteer units, the Wagner PMC, and the Russian Rosgvardia paramilitary.
The constant missile attacks on nazi ammunition and weapons depots in Lvov and other parts of western Ukranazistan, such a constant feature of the first three or so months of the conflict, dried up. Absolutely inexplicably – even gross incompetence cannot explain this – the bridges across the Dneiper river, and the railway networks that the nazi regime used to haul every bit of weaponry coming to the front haven’t been touched. Even a mindless clod knows to cut off the enemy supply routes, but the Russian High Command, assuming such a beast exists, did not do it.
Meanwhile the Lugansk and especially the Donetsk People’s Republics forces were virtually left to themselves to fight their way with excruciating slowness through the massive trench lines and fortifications the nazis had set up in the eight years since 2014 when Putin had thrown the Donbass under the nazi bus the first time round (see the book “85 Days In Slavyansk” for a full analysis of Putin’s betrayal if you aren’t already familiar with the details). Since the 16th of February, nazi artillery in Avdeevka and Mariinka have been shelling and anti personnel mining Donetsk City, yet the Russian aviation, which allegedly controls the skies over Ukranazistan, did nothing to destroy the emplacements. When we asked why not, we were told that the Nazis were hiding among civilians. Well, so what? Are the lives of Donetsk civilians worth less than the lives of the alleged civilians of Avdeevka? Nobody deigned to give us an answer.
There was also the deliberate myth created by the Russian side that it was only the Nazis that were targeting the Donetsk civilians, that regular Ukrainian forces were not involved. This was, as any number of LNR and DNR people pointed out, absurd; the Ukrainian military had never permitted the nazi units to acquire any heavier artillery than light mortars. It was the regular forces shelling the civilians, but the Russian military refused to admit that.
Pro-Russia channels on Telegram delighted in videos of DNR quadcopters dropping grenades on Ukrainian troops (impossible to tell whether they were nazis or not). Their accuracy, judging from the videos, was fairly impressive (of course they only posted videos of hits) but, and this was a problem those of us familiar with the tactics of the Syrian war instantly noticed, this is not something a regular military should have to resort to doing. This is what ISIS, and with considerably greater effect, using bigger drones and mortar bombs instead of hand grenades, did in the Battle of Mosul. Not only did the DNR have to slog through fortifications by itself, it had to resort to the tactics of a terrorist group to provide itself a modicum of air strike ability.
Not that Russia helped in other ways either; to this day, almost seven months since the conflict started, the Russian side has not set up a unified command for the “allies” (LNR and DNR) and itself. It’s as though D Day was fought as a number of separate landings, with the Brits, Canadians, and Americans doing their own, totally independent, thing. Can one imagine that to be a recipe for success?
Then, mutters began to come out about “negotiations” again; the negotiations that the Ukranazis had abandoned in March, reportedly at the instigation of Boorish Johnson. What were these “negotiations” supposed to be about?
Who knows?
What, in fact, was the Russian final plan for Ukranazistan? Denazification? Then why is Elensky still alive? Why has not one nazi in Ukranazistan, including rabid Hitler-saluting vermin like Oleg Tyagnybok, been eliminated? How do you denazify a nazi state without eliminating the regime?
(I might as well insert here the ludicrous replies I encountered when I asked this question. “Russia needs Elensky alive because he might be replaced by someone competent.” Oh yeah? Who? You also acknowledged that Ukranazistan is a NATO puppet. So the hypothetical ‘competent’ person won’t be a puppet like Elensky is? Or was it “Russia need Elensky alive to sign the surrender”? What surrender? Who would permit Elensky to sign a surrender, his NATO masters? Instead of making him a martyr by murdering him and blaming it on Russia, or at least spiriting him off to head a puppet regime in exile? Really?)
Or was it demilitarisation? Then how is it that the Ukranazis were permitted to build up a military so strong that, even without control of the air, it could launch two major offensives on two widely separated fronts of the very, very long frontline within days of each other? That one of the offensives was a predictable failure and the other might, like the Tet Offensive, still fail militarily in the long run makes no difference. Putin isn’t out to demilitarise anything.
Then what’s left? Preventing Ukranazistan from joining NATO? Elensky already admitted months ago that this was not going to happen; ironically it is now more than likely to happen if Russia is defeated.
Is it capture of Ukranazi territory? Then why did Russia unilaterally abandon the whole of north Ukranazistan – won in a couple of days back in February – in April?
Is it an “existential war” for Russia as some people are saying? Then why is it Ukranazistan that’s treating it as an existential war, while Russia isn’t treating it as a war at all? How does that make sense?
What is Russia then fighting for? I’m damned if I know, and, apparently, the Russian government doesn’t, either.
Anyway, back to this offensive on Kharkov; at the time of writing Russia abandoned territory it had captured in brutal battles over two months in 72 hours, abandoning the civilians to the tender mercies of the Nazis. These were the same civilians who had earlier appeared on videos profusely thanking Russia for liberating them, and more and more often openly demanding guarantees that they wouldn’t be abandoned. Well, they have been abandoned, and why should they trust Russia again?
Why should anyone trust Russia again?
And here we come to the comparison with the Tet Offensive again. Ukrainian army chief General Valery Zaluzhny – and I have been saying this for months on Telegram and Twitter (till they banned me again, which was a good thing in retrospect though it cost me more than 3600 followers because I couldn’t take the Putin cultism now) – General Zaluzhny, who isn’t a nazi, is a highly competent and utterly ruthless professional officer far more like a WWII Soviet general than like anyone on the Russian general staff, assuming such a thing exists. Zaluzhny is throwing conscripts and Kraken Battalion Nazis (the Kharkov franchise of the infamous Azov Regiment) into attack as shock troops, and holding back his regular forces to exploit the breakthroughs. In other words, he’s throwing away his Viet Cong, and when they’re gone he’ll still have his North Vietnamese People’s Army.
So what, exactly has Ukranazistan won?
Firstly it’s won the – even if terrified and coerced – allegiance of the people. If there are people in Odessa and Nikolayev waiting for liberation from Russia, they aren’t blind, deaf, and dumb; they can see clearly that even if their cities are occupied by Russia they will be abandoned the moment a nazi offensive shows up. Why then should they do anything but support Ukranazistan, just for self-preservation? Wouldn’t you?
Secondly, and you can’t overstate how important this is, it’s a major step towards winning the support of the neutral world. You know all the maps showing how no non white nation except American slaves Japan and South Korea had sanctioned Russia? Well, most of the rest were going with who they saw as winning. Earlier this year 143 countries at the UN General Assembly voted to condemn Russia; a week or so ago that number had dropped to 54. It only takes a nudge to turn the pendulum the other way again. I myself know Modi will change sides in a moment if he thinks it'll be good for him.
(I would say that in this the death of Lizardbreath von Saxe Coburg und Gotha was extremely fortuitous for Russia. The Ukranazis had more likely than not planned to splurge their victory all over the world media, but the media is obsessing over her death and the succession of Charlie von Saxe Coburg und Gotha to the British throne. Nobody has any attention left to spare for Ukranazistan.)
Now to get to the third thing the Ukranazis have won, I have to discuss the Putin cult’s “cope” to explain away the defeat:
(a)Russia is massacring the Ukranazis, they can’t fight on like this, they’re going to lose all their forces. That is, the exact same body count “argument” as made in Vietnam; it didn’t work then and it won’t work now. While 70 year old conscripts are getting sacrificed, the trained and battle hardened regulars and nazi groups are getting, if anything, more numerous. And that’s if we ignore the NATOstani troops “on holiday” or “discharged” who have come to Ukranazistan as “volunteers”. Those who have been reading me for a while know that I have been predicting for at least three years that Putin’s failure to denazify Ukraine in 2014 means that Russia will have to fight a major war in Ukraine at some point and then it will face NATO forces in Ukrainian uniform. Well, guess what.
Even the venerable Paul Craig Roberts, though mostly a ranting old loon these days, correctly stated in a recent article that NATO was emboldened by Putin’s failure to crush Ukranazistan in February, and it will cost Russia dear, including possible nuclear war. I don’t think Putin has the competence or guts to fight a nuclear war, not any longer; he’d fold like a wet biscuit and surrender Russia to western capital rather than fight for its existence. More importantly, now the west knows it, too.
(b)Putin is deliberately drawing this out to destroy the EU, whose citizens will revolt when they’re freezing and starving in the depths of winter. To which I say, poppycock. There isn’t even a guarantee that the winter will be cold, what with weather swings these days. It could even be a much warmer one than usual. But even if it’s a mini ice age, so what? Apart from France, how many Europistani countries do you know where people come out in the streets to rebel and riot? Oh, yes, they’ll march in “protests”, wave placards, and then go home; if the regime feels like it, it’ll imprison a few of them as an example to keep the rest in line. Nothing more will happen. As for France, the Macron regime has weathered years of Yellow Vest protests. It knows how to deal with them.
But will there even be protests? Protests are only going to happen if the people see that Russia is clearly and demonstrably winning. Then they might logically ask why they are told to freeze and starve for a losing side. But if Russia is seen to be quagmire or losing – and it is now clearly seen to be losing – then the people will tell themselves that they can grit their teeth and bear it somehow for the winning cause. Haven’t you seen this kind of thing for two years of Covid? Would you be surprised at all?
The fourth and final thing the Nazis have won is the full and continuing support of the NATOstanis. So far we’ve been hearing how NATO weapons depots are bare, they’re running out of things to supply; but now they’re demonstrably backing a winning side, so why should they stop? In their place, would you?
What does the Putin Cult have to offer in return? Ludicrous claims of massive and brilliantly planned pincer movements that will trap the Ukranazis. Yes, and Steiner will come to Hitler’s rescue in the bunker.
I’ve put my non-working life on hold since February for this conflict. I’ve put my novel on ice at 75% written. I went back to Twitter after a three year hiatus, fighting for Russia against blueyellow Ukranazis. I’ve painted and drawn comic strips as fast as I could until I gave myself tendinitis. And all with a fractured foot which I got in June.
Now I’m asking myself, why the hell should I care, if Russia doesn’t?
Either way, Russia has a choice. Fight a real war, or surrender on the least humiliating terms it can get.
The SMO is done.
