Pepe Escobar
Another word from our friend Zornkrieger, who reminds us of what we all need to remember:
The Russians attrited the Ukrainian military for 6 months straight. Relentless artillery on the frontlines and relentless missile attacks in the rear left a Ukrainian force that took 6 entire months to buildup and prepare for an offensive. An offensive that in the end is a hybridized mixture of what’s left of the Ukrainian pre-invasion equipment and rapidly dwindling NATO stockpiles. This bastardization of a military force, while benefitting from a massive manpower advantage, keeps finding itself gasping under relentless artillery, air, and drone strikes as the Russians simply pick up and leave for the next defensive line anytime the Ukrainians get a slight positional advantage. The Ukrainians shockingly enter town after town, failing to encircle and destroy a single Russian garrison, while being decimated in the open.
This exhausting defense is happening, while on the sidelines, the Russians prepare to almost triple their forces in Ukraine in preparation for a deep, final offensive. Russian command once again proves they are masters of the battlefield, denying the Ukrainians this defensive strategy in the first 6 months of the war by crawling from position to position, eliminating any attempts by the Ukrainians to conduct a mobile defense. While the Ukrainians attempt big arrow movements, they fail to do anything but die on their captured ground that the Russians will later encircle a few months from now.
Of course the West and their puppets get to keep their PR and perception victory for now, and sure they infect even some of the Russian people with decreased morale, but in the end, none of it matters. Russian victory was never a doubt, except for in the heads of those giving in to the propaganda.
Zorn’s Channel:
Telegram (https://t.me/Zornkrieger)
Zornkrieger
“There are really only two ways to interpret what is happening. One is the western spin: the Russian army is defeated and depleted and is being driven from the field. Putin is deranged, his commanders are incompetent, and Russia’s only card left to play is to throw drunk, untrained conscripts into the meat grinder.
The other is the interpretation that I have advocated, that Russia is massing for a winter escalation and offensive, and is currently engaged in a calculated trade wherein they give up space in exchange for time and Ukrainian casualties. Russia continues to retreat where positions are either operationally compromised or faced with overwhelming Ukrainian numbers, but they are very careful to extract forces out of operational danger. In Lyman, where Ukraine threatened to encircle the garrison, Russia committed mobile reserves to unblock the village and secure the withdrawal of the garrison. Ukraine’s “encirclement” evaporated, and the Ukrainian interior ministry was bizarrely compelled to tweet (and then delete) video of destroyed civilian vehicles as “proof” that the Russian forces had been annihilated.
Russia will likely continue to pull back over the coming weeks, withdrawing units intact under their artillery and air umbrella, grinding down Ukrainian heavy equipment stocks and wearing away their manpower. Meanwhile, new equipment continues to congregate in Belgorod, Zaporizhia, and Crimea. My expectation remains the same: episodic Russian withdrawal until the front stabilizes roughly at the end of October, followed by an operational pause until the ground freezes, followed by escalation and a winter offensive by Russia once they have finished amassing sufficient units.
There is an eerie calm radiating from the Kremlin. “
“Politics By Other Means”
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/politics-by-other-means
“I hope that at some point there will be an end to the crisis, which will bring peace to Europe and, hopefully, will return some of the Russian gas to support Europe. If you look at the situation, it will be very difficult for Europe to withstand zero supplies of Russian gas for more than two winters. Many countries and companies have approached us, and I have consistently said the same thing: “Europe has always depended on Russia as the main supplier through pipelines”... There will be some LNG coming from the US and from other places… But, in the end, this is a small volume compared to the huge volume that comes from Russia,” Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi said.
Most of the blame for high energy prices and the complete destruction of the European green policy lies with the governments of the EU countries, Europe cannot do without gas from Russia,” insists Saad al-Kaabi.