Russia invaded Ukraine yesterday morning. I’m just now writing about it because I just didn’t have the heart. I did sincerely hope the Donbass war would end peacefully, and the Minsk agreements would finally be respected and implemented. But anyway, here’s my assessment.
Regarding cyber and hybrid warfare. Both Ukrainian and Russian gov websites are unavailable frequently. While in some cases this might be caused by an attack, it is much more common and likely that those agencies themselves restricted their platforms. Denying access to people from outside Russia/Ukraine is a basic (but not infallible) way to prevent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
The good news that as of last I heard, the combined military and civilian fatalities from all sides are less than 200 (or even 100 depending on who you believe). Most of the Ukrainian army was occupying Donbass, with large concentrations near the northern borders with Belarus and Russia. Large airborne and amphibious assaults do not work against effective resistance, even with a significant technological advantage and air superiority. It is not possible to make concrete conclusions this early, but the Russia MoD is claiming that most Ukrainian units are declining to fight, and this is probably the truth. If there was a lot of intense fighting, there would be many casualties. The Ukrainians have no rational motive for concealing civilian casualties, so the fact that those are very low too is also proof of little fighting. Unless something disastrous happens (which it could), the Western media’s claims that the planned Russian attack would cause 50,000 deaths are totally false. If there was effective resistance, how did Russian units take positions on the outskirts of Kyiv in barely 12 hours? Granted, there are new offensives today, so what I just said might no longer be true. It’s developing news.
If you think I’m being too generous with the Russians, here are some historic comparisons. Ukraine is the largest country in Europe besides Russia, and has roughly 35-37 million people. In 2003, Iraq had roughly 26 million people. The American invasion killed 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and 7,000 civilians. Iraq’s infrastructure was utterly destroyed and the whole country was thrown into anarchy, resulting in a further 400-450 thousand deaths. That’s a thousand dead Iraqis for every one dead Ukrainian (so far), and America’s other numerous invasions in the past 20 years don’t compare any better.
What, is that not a fair comparison? Ukraine is both geographically and demographically larger than Iraq. Ukraine’s military is also, unlike Iraq, trained and armed by NATO. One Ukrainian soldier should be able to kill hundreds of Russian untermensch, just like in the movies. Right?
Russia seems to be taking a Sun Tsu “win without fighting” approach, while American wars tend to follow Clauswitz’s idea of winning by destroying the enemy until there aren’t enough of them alive to resist. Let’s see which philosophy works better in the long run. But more than that, this is a show of force for the world to see, and frankly, we badly needed it.
A couple of weeks ago I watched the 2020 Amazon flick Without Remorse. It’s about a progressive urban black soldier and his empowered black lesbian commanding officer in the fight against Russia. Their team of five or six people destroy a whole Russian base in Syria, then sneak into Russia and blow up an apartment complex and defeat an entire Russian army. Of course that’s literally insane, but America is collectively divorced from reality, and being divorced from reality is dangerous. It’s one thing to make a calculated military decision knowing that it might lead to nuclear war. But that’s not what’s happening. We think Russia is too weak to harm us, when nothing could be further from the truth. We could be nuked tomorrow, and those nukes would be coming from a modern navy, air force, and hypersonic missiles that most Americans don’t even know exist. If Kyiv gets balled up even faster than Kabul did, then it is going to be immensely difficult for our regime propaganda outlets to pretend Russia’ military capabilities don’t exist.
Speaking of capabilities, next time you see an American soldier, ask him when was the last time he participated in a large-scale exercise at Fort Irwin, 29 Palms, or one of our other major training areas. Yes, we do a lot of training events, but I don’t mean a few hundred guys flying to the UK or Romania for a couple of weeks. I’m talking about 30 or 40 thousand soldiers all simultaneously participating in one coordinated real-life combined arms exercise. How many of our young Marines, soldiers, and airmen have done that? I genuinely don’t know, having been out of the loop for too long. But it is a known fact that in the past few years, just about every unit in the Russian army has rotated through such exercises in Belarus or the central district, and it is much easier to schedule training drills without having to also juggle a huge number of deployments all over the world.
Remember that both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars dwindled down years ago. The large majority of American combat veterans from those fights are out of the military and doing something else. Also, neither of those wars were conventional since 2003. A police action against irregular militias and guerrillas is not the same as a conventional war against a peer or near-peer opponent. Guess who just produced 100 thousand veterans of a real war against a near-peer opponent? Russia.
Here’s another example of being divorced from reality. Remember a few days ago when Putin dramatically recognized the separatist republics and the Russian army started moving into Donbass? Remember that weird hiccup in the Western news cycle? Journalists have been insisting to us that the Ukrainian and Russian armies were in stalemated fighting for the last eight years. Then, suddenly, the Russian army actually showed up, and journalists were in the awkward position of having to report the beginning of a Russian invasion, but without admitting that eight years of Russian invasions were all lies. How do you invade someone you already invaded? No wonder the poor bastards at CNN were confused.
That’s what an information war looks like when it’s actually done properly. Russia did this in sensational but ambiguous steps, with 24+ hour gaps in between. That’s a full 24 hours for the western propaganda machine to spin its wheels, repeatedly contradict itself, and yet still be totally unprepared for the following steps. I love how Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken with 20/20 hindsight are trying to play this off like they knew all along, when it’s perfectly obvious they had no fucking clue. Here’s what happened.
1) Ukraine bombs Donbass (or it’s Kremlin propaganda, whatever)
2) Donbass asks for recognition
3) Russia gives them recognition
4) Russian army moves into separatist-held areas
5) Donbass asks for military assistance
5) Donbass militias spearhead the early ground offensives
If Blinken or Ned Price ever offered iNtELLiGeNcE even remotely similar to that, someone please point it out to me. I’m quite confident that not even one person of any importance in the Pentagon saw this coming.
Morality is clearly not in the equation, we think it is okay to make movies about murdering people we aren’t even at war with, but we do have this weird sentimentalism that sort of sounds like morality, but isn’t. CNN runs propaganda photos of Ukrainians hiding in the metro, and uses this as a justification for Biden to escalate tensions with Russia. Oh no, poor Ukrainians looking at their cellphones in the metro, this is so sad please start World War III. Okay, but what about Americans? Shouldn’t we be building a shelter system and stockpiling supplies? No, of course not. Because it is more convenient for the regime to assure us that Russia is a gas station with nothing but rusty submarines from the 1970s. If Biden told us the truth, that Russia has spent the last 20 years building dozens of new ships and submarines, then Americans might not be so enthusiastic about constantly pissing them off.
One last word on casualties and war news in general. Beware of footage on the news and social media. Journalists are famous for running old b-roll and pretending it’s new. I’m not saying it’s all false, but take it with a grain of salt. I know this because I worked in media relations for 10 years. They’ll air footage of the wrong helicopter, or show pictures of US Army soldiers in a story about Marines. That’s because journalists have tight deadlines, and are usually pretty ignorant about the topics they’re reporting on. And that’s the best-case scenario. On a good day, we just have to deal with journalists who are lazy and stupid. In a politically contentious story like this one, we also have to deal with journalists who are being dishonest, and also lazy and stupid.
I feel sick and that’s all I feel like writing out for now. I have heard suggestions that China might occupy Taiwan, knowing that people in Taiwan aren’t going to die for vague American geopolitical interests, and Biden won’t do shit. Maybe they will, good for them. No more brother wars. Hopefully the so-called “domino theory” is true, and losing Ukraine does cause the eventual collapse of NATO. Maybe then, finally, our government will start paying attention to Americans’ basic needs, like healthcare, education, housing, and food, instead of spending trillions of dollars instigating stupid and horrible wars overseas.
Well, congratulations, Mr. Biden. You wanted to provoke the Russians and you succeeded. Happy now?
Ian Kummer
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You nailed it in this and the previous post. I've been following an Australian blogger named Caitlin Johnstone and her views are very close to yours.Here are two quotes from Caitlin. 1. "We live in a Narrative Matrix controlled by Plutocratic and Military Institutions who've created an illusion of democracy.". 2. "Who controls the Narrative controls the World."I feel you, my friend. My stomach is sunk.
Longtrail, Hey, thanks Longtrail. I do appreciate it. I just posted again, and am going to keep talking about it. I'll also take a look at Johnstone, thank you for pointing her out!
Tankie.