If you’re reading this, you’re probably already beginning to doubt the official narrative the entire western media has been pounding into our heads, and you’re completely correct. This is a terrible tragedy and Ukraine was the primary victim. The Russians didn’t do this to her, we did.
Just because a statement is a lie doesn’t mean the opposite statement is true. The Russian intervention into Ukraine is not the worst thing that ever happened. So yes, the West’s narrative is wrong. This intervention is not literally like the Holocaust like the professional Russia hater Julia Ioffe claimed (It’s a little gross for a Jewish person to casually throw around Holocaust comparisons, especially while condemning anyone else who does it). However, the opposite statement is not automatically true. Sending tanks into Ukraine was not a good thing. But I have not seen or heard even one Russian claim that this was anything less than horrible. They all know this is horrible, but continuing to do nothing would be worse. And this isn’t a statement of reason or logic on their part. It’s a moral statement.
Do you think I’m a Putinist troll? Why do I have to automatically take Russia’s side? Well, I could ask you the same question. Why automatically be against them? Anglo-Saxons and Eastern Slavs are not neighbors. Why do we compulsively travel to the other side of the world to pick fights with Russia? And when Russians get into a fight of their own, why do we always take the other side?
Here’s the cold, hard truth. We don’t care about Ukraine. That country doesn’t even cross our minds except when it involves Russia somehow. If you go on Google with an American IP address, “Russia news today” and “Ukraine news today” will get you exactly the same top news stories, which is really pathetic when you think about it.
We don’t care about Ukraine, but Russians do. They love Ukraine, and this is a very easy feeling to pick up. It’s just the simple fact that Americans don’t talk about Ukraine at all, but Russians talk about her constantly. Ukraine’s people, politics, culture, history, and celebrity gossip are all a big deal in Russia.
If a Ukrainian actor gets arrested for drunk driving or cheats on his wife, do you think American news outlets would report it? Of course not. But Russian news outlets would. They would all know who he is and gossip to each other about it for days or weeks. Maybe an embarrassing photo from his mishap would also hit the internet, like his wife throwing all of his things outside. It would become a meme that Russians, and Ukrainians, would poke fun at and instantly recognize, even years later.
That’s because Ukrainians and Russians watch and star in the same movies. Movies that we don’t even know exist, and wouldn’t care enough to watch even if we did know about them. They’re the same people. This idea of Ukrainians and Russians being totally separate and antagonistic ethnic groups is not their idea and never was. It’s an American idea, and we have spent a huge amount of time and money convincing them of it. It’s just as absurd as telling people in Nevada they’re a completely different race than people in California. It’s an absurd, vile, and malicious thing to do, and it was entirely deliberate on our part.
If Americans created the idea of Ukrainian nationalism, how are we totally unaware of our role in it? That’s because we are completely and irredeemably divorced from reality. Just look at what our news cycle has been like for the past weeks, months, and years. We are obsessed with the idea of an overwhelming, powerful enemy that, at the same time, is very easy to defeat. Our adversary must be simultaneously weak and strong, and we must have evidence of that, even if we have to invent it ourselves. Every major news development from this war, every single one, was fake. The 13 Spartans of Serpent Island, the sunflower seeds babushka, the evil Russian tankers running over people for no reason, evil Russian missiles blowing up nuclear plants for no reason, all fake, and really stupid to believe in the first place.
Over the weekend, they got absolutely hysterical and deranged. Entire Russian armored columns running out of gas (all at the same time, apparently), Russians running away, morale destroyed… once it became clear that we would believe literally anything, the stories went to the moon. The casualty reports were cartoonish. Along the way, the American government had to step in and start giving numbers that were at least remotely plausible. The Ukrainians basically just decided they could claim to destroy the Russian army every day several times over, so that’s what they’ve been doing ever since.
The internet was flooded with war porn, all of it most obviously made up. Lengthy texts filled with buzz words and jargon strung together, often with weirdly sexual connotations. I’m going to paraphrase because all of these made-up stories said basically the same thing and I don’t want to waste any more of my time reading them.
Light probing attacks were repulsed. What? Are “probing attacks” even a thing anymore? Even a militia can get their hands on a $200 drone.
Despite numerous large assaults across all fronts, all beaten back with heavy losses, the Russians made no significant strategic gains. How do you know if someone made a strategic gain or not if you don’t know his strategy, or what he’s trying to gain? Gaining territory is a type of strategic gain, but it’s not the only one and it’s really embarrassing that thousands or tens of thousands of American “experts” believe it is. This is actually a really important point because it shows that Americans have literally no idea how to win a war. The Russian army is not even close to large enough to occupy every square inch of Ukraine and that is obviously not what they’re trying to do.
All attacks showed poor planning, lack of coordination, and massive logistical failures. They brought together 150-175 thousand troops, thousands of heavy vehicles, artillery, aircraft, missile batteries, and supply stockpiles across thousands of miles of some of the harshest terrain on earth, so I’m fairly confident they didn’t suddenly forget all those things a few hours later.
Russian communication networks are very primitive, a mix of obsolete military and even civilian equipment They amassed a huge army right under your noses and still took you completely by surprise, so I don’t think their communication is poor either. And yes, they did achieve total surprise, illustrated by the bulk of Ukrainian forces allowing themselves to be encircled, and the West’s bizarre response suggests they were all astonished too. It’s amazing, really. Biden has been predicting a Russian invasion every day for a year, then one actually happened and no one was prepared for it.
The Russians mistimed their attack. The Spring thaw has set in, trapping many of their tanks in mud. It’s profoundly stupid to even suggest that Russians wouldn’t be familiar with Ukrainian geography and weather patterns. Like… are you people serious? Aside from that, one or two photos of vehicles stuck in mud aren’t evidence of this being a rampant problem, assuming these photos are even real, which I am at least fairly sure are not. Even if true, so what? Environmental factors like mud affect both sides, and I am amazed that I actually have to explain that. Right now, the Ukrainian army is trapped in the East, if mud would slow them down and keep them bottled up, then perhaps that was deliberate.
Putin is going crazy, that’s why he’s acting irrationally. Yes, if all of these things were true, that would be evidence that he’s crazy. But all of your evidence for him being crazy are obviously fake statements that you yourself made up. Are you sure he’s the one who’s gone crazy?
We’ve been reading too many silly books like Hammer’s Slammers, Falkenberg’s Legion, and Clancy’s Jack Ryan stories. We think it’s actually possible to be a tactical Sherlock Holmes and we can all do it. We can make huge, sweeping generalizations about the adversary, extrapolated from tiny fragments of information that might be fake, and probably are fake.
When information is contradicting known facts about an adversary, we have to strongly consider the possibility that the information might be fake. The Russian units in Ukraine are all volunteers, well trained and equipped, and have high morale. These are known, indisputable facts, and even the shills at NATO think tanks like the Atlantic Council begrudgingly admitted it, or at least they did up until a week ago.
The problem with letting ideology and vapid sentimentality dictate all of your analysis is that it will always be wrong. Very often, it’ll be the exact opposite of the truth, like a broken compass. We endlessly masturbated to stories of “repulsed” Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, and we kept masturbating long after it should have been extremely obvious to anyone who isn’t an idiot that the Russians were just encircling and bypassing cities. I have been told by a reliable source that this is a technique they’ve put a huge amount of thought into, and have been practicing in Syria. If so, that’s really embarrassing because we’ve been sitting in Syria with them this whole time.
Here’s another obvious pattern that we watched and drew a conclusion that was the opposite of the truth. These stories of “repeatedly repulsed attacks.” Even just retreating repeatedly is impressive. An army that is able to advance and retreat multiple times, suffering losses along the way of course, while still maintaining order and fire discipline is a sign of high training, coordination, and morale, not low. But we were only seeing what we wanted to, so we saw the opposite. Let’s be honest, we don’t have this fire discipline. When American units come under fire, we tend to always shoot back, even if we don’t know exactly what we’re aiming at, and the wrong people get hit.
It’s so stupid. They don’t need to be repulsed. They have overwhelming firepower. They can win wherever and whenever they want. Why don’t they? The last time I checked, the UN’s estimate for civilian fatalities in the entire war were under 150. That’s impressive to the point of being almost unheard of.
I’m not going to drop his name, because we’re *friends* on Facebook, but a certain American general involved in our Ukraine partnership program claimed that the Russians are doing human wave attacks on Ukrainian positions. Apparently that’s what the Ukrainians told him in a video conference or something, and he completely believed it even though that might just be the single dumbest thing any one person said (so far) in this mess, and there has been a lot of competition for that title.
Nothing that the Ukrainian military or government said should be considered even remotely reliable, and this is not new. A while ago, I tried to figure out the veracity of a video showing Ukrainian border guards shooting a group of refugees (read it here). I never came to a solid conclusion, and probably never will. Their social media and web presence is a total train wreck. I don’t think I have ever seen even one Ukrainian military page that felt like it was written by a normal person. They all sound like neo-nazis or literally retarded. Usually both.
There’s a related problem. I could not find any sign of organization or oversight, and I’m not sure there is any. There are entire formations of hundreds or thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and it’s not clear who they belong to. Are they official government organizations, paramilitary groups… do they even exist at all? It’s impossible to ever know for sure. Note that all of these pages are verified, and American social media companies are generally responsive to inquiries about (NATO-friendly) organizations. If some of them are indeed fake, that makes the situation worse, not better. Reporting fake pages isn’t difficult, but apparently no one is even trying to do that.
Some of these pages might be Russian disinformation, but I honestly don’t think so. Ukrainian army leaders already sound like stupid, ignorant, and irrationally violent skinheads and don’t need any help with that.
Why do I know this, and not the general running our training partnership with Ukraine? Or does he know and is lying? Drinking too much cool-aid, or knowingly saying not-true things. Which is worse?
If you think I’m exaggerating, look at these photos of the diplomatic talks in Belarus. I’ve mostly only seen these in Russian and Chinese media, and that’s not surprising. They’re not the kind of thing we really want to show to Western audiences. It’s sad and embarrassing. The Russians are wearing suit jackets and ties, like you should at a high level meeting, and their Ukrainian counterparts are in hoodies and baseball caps. These guys don’t look like they’re in charge of anything, which suggests they probably aren’t.
The head of the Russian delegation is Vladimir Medinsky, an expert in Banderist neo-nazis who was born and raised in (surprise) Ukraine.
After wave after wave of fake news and cartoonish casualty reports, the real Russian casualty reports did come out. They were high, higher than what ours would have been, and we sneer at them for it. But something had gone wrong. They did have serious setbacks in the opening several days of their intervention into Ukraine. Soldiers were caught in scattered, unsupported positions. Soft targets, and people, were caught and ambushed in the rear echelons. What happened?
There’s no way to guess, but I think I know the root cause of it. Watch this video of the “invasion.” The most polite invasion ever that follows local traffic laws.
Don’t you find it interesting how everyone in our society tries to assign cynical reasons to Russia using such velvet glove tactics on Ukraine? Has it occurred to any of us that they’re doing this for moral reasons? They didn’t “soften up” Ukraine with months of bombing campaigns on her civilian infrastructure like we do in our wars. Russians just don’t like killing people. Is that so hard for us to believe?
Everything fell into place perfectly. Russia’s leader gave a suitably dramatic speech (which he had reportedly written himself without the help of three or four aides) and the attack began soon after. A little over a hundred strikes on parked planes, vehicles, warehouses, and facilities in the early hours of the morning when it was very unlikely for any people to be around. Then Russian forces brazenly attacked from all directions. The whole idea depended on the Ukrainian armed forces being so astonished they would just break and run, and that’s apparently what happened.
Official Russian accounts were all euphoric in their initial posts, and I think they were truthful. The Russians did actually succeed in causing a total rout. In hindsight, it probably would have been smarter to keep quiet but they just couldn’t help themselves.
Then there was a clear and very obvious pause in their operations. Putin declared his respect for the Ukrainian armed forces, and that he would rather negotiate with them rather than some “drug addicts and neo-nazis” in Kiev.
All things considered, this was an extraordinarily generous offer. Ukrainians and Russians could negotiate a demilitarization and reconstruction of the country, and do it as equals. And it’s not as if the Ukrainians weren’t participating in their own liberation. The Russians weren’t overthrowing Zelensky and his neo-nazis. The Ukrainians were. There was no humiliation, but there was an unspoken truth as well. This was the only option. There was no alternative. Resisting at this point would be suicide and there was no other word for it. It would be insane and pointless to fight now.
Then the West stepped in. I stand with Ukraine. We stand with Ukraine. We all stand with Ukraine. The whole world stands with Ukraine. Remember who you are and what you’re fighting for. You’re Aryans. You’re the master race. You’re European Christians. You’re the defender of Europe against the Asiatic Russian rapist hordes. I love how American journalists “accidentally” said a bunch of racist things. NBC is a workplace where you can be fired on the spot for complimenting a girl’s hair. I’m supposed to believe they “accidentally” brought up Ukrainians being European Christians, and did it more than once?
See, now the Ukrainians had a problem. They were in danger of becoming the next Afghanistan, and by the way, that was a real fear the Ukrainians had when Kabul fell. I’ve seen more than one Ukrainian express that fear on social media, and what’s particularly interesting is that they weren’t blaming the USA for possibly abandoning them in the future. They were questioning themselves, fearing they wouldn’t be sufficiently loyal allies. They insisted that no, there was no need to worry about that. They wouldn’t be like Afghanistan. When the moment came, they would come through for us.
At the time, I didn’t find those sentiments significant. I just kept scrolling. But now, looking back, I should have found that significant.
Now, with every vapid moron in the collective west had a Ukrainian flag on his Facebook and Twitter profiles. These vapid morons had all of the hashtags. #istandwithukraine #slavaukraina #fuckrussia (nice), and a bunch of other ones.
Like I said, resisting at this point was insane. Literal suicide, and everyone knew it. America was prepared to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian, and that’s apparently still the plan.
Maybe the saddest aspect of all this is that apparently Russia’s own experts said this plan would almost certainly not work. Neo-nazis are ignorant, brainwashed fanatics under the thumb of the USA. Worse still, their command structure is, at best, murky. Even if the central government was successfully toppled, it was unlikely that the various gangs and militias all over the country would all lay down arms. Violence really is the only language these people understand or respect. Nothing less than that could ever work. But the Russians tried reason anyway. That’s just how they are. And they paid for it.
Russian media reports – which are getting increasingly tough to navigate to now with Biden’s iron curtain in place – did openly admit that insufficiently protected Russian convoys fell victim to ambushes and sneak attacks. When was the last time the American leaders and media ever acknowledged a defeat, or even a minor setback, without inventing a bunch of excuses, or denying it happened at all?
Didn’t we just lose in Afghanistan, and in just about the most embarrassing way possible? Oh no, see, that was deliberate. We spent thousands of lives, 20 years, and $2 trillion setting up a puppet government that we knew was going to fail immediately. Because that makes it better. We cheer and high-five each other because a Russian general was killed in the fighting this week. Well, say what you will, but when was the last time an American general was killed on the front lines?
Now Russians are not being so nice anymore. Ukrainian “freedom fighters” aren’t given pleasantly long windows to surrender, and definitely aren’t given free reign to shoot at Russians with no one firing back at them. Militants are just vaporized from afar now. I just want everyone to know that the blame for this catastrophe is entirely our fault, and our stupid, mindless social media bandwagons directly contributed to people being killed.
It is interesting how Russians put so much effort into weaving vibrant moral messages and they are all completely lost on us. Like bringing Chechens with them. It would seem that Russians aren’t upset with Chechens, despite all the years of pointless, brutal warfare. Chechens aren’t bad people. They didn’t wake up one day and decide to be terrorists. An exceptional outside force provoked and manipulated them, apparently.
But now, all of that is in the past, and Chechens and Russians are friends. Chechnya is by all accounts a prosperous place. Can the same be said for the Muslims that we go out of our way to “help”? I find it hilarious that western experts spent years predicting that economic investments in Chechnya would weaken and maybe break Russia’s economy. Have any of these people looked at a map and seen the size of Chechnya compared to Russia? Do they even know where Chechnya is? What’s not so funny is how journalists who spent the last 20 years lecturing against Islamophobia then threw every Islamophobic stereotype in the book at the Chechens.
After Chechnya predictions all turned out to be ridiculous, our experts have spent the last eight years loudly predicting Crimean investment weakening the Russian economy, which is even more absurd. Now we think doing a magical banking hat trick, kicking Russia out of SWIFT, will destroy them. I’m astonished Biden’s cronies are insane enough to think that’s going to work. SWIFT is just some lines of code on a computer screen that anyone could replicate and have replicated numerous times. We’re going to cancel Russia and break her grain, fertilizer, precious metal, oil, gas, weapon, and technology exports by blocking Putin on Twitter, and I’m not even exaggerating.
Being this divorced from reality is dangerous, maybe suicidal. Our leaders loudly proclaim they’re sending military aid to Ukraine. But how? Even if we somehow got some boxes of guns across Ukraine’s open western border, that doesn’t accomplish anything. Their army is encircled and being destroyed in detail at the eastern end of the country. Weapons on the western end do nothing. If an American or European convoy seriously tried to go into Ukraine, I can’t imagine the Russians would respond in any way except destroy it, and that would be a war.
Our entire news industry is just publishing vapid appeals to emotion. We claim we’re sending weapons, but refuse to even hint at a sensible way they could make a difference. Just the fact that people are rambling about sending Ukraine aircraft shows we have exactly zero clue what’s happening in there right now. It’s too late to send Ukraine modern weapons. They cannot be trained with them. The weapons couldn’t even be deployed to a battlefield. They would just be destroyed, and everyone around those weapons would also be destroyed. It’s insane to be talking like this, and doing it so openly.
I can’t get a clear idea of what Ukraine actually looks like right now, but I think it is believable that there’s a constant flow of small arms and ammunition that will cause death and chaos there, and everywhere else, for decades. Even if a single new weapon hasn’t arrived in Ukraine, Biden did hell of a job saturating the whole country with them over the past few months.
Even worse is all of this noise about sending mercenaries to Ukraine, which even the western news is openly boasting about. Send thugs and criminals to Ukraine, who have no personal interest in this and no regard for the people living there? And we are proud of this? What kind of human being would want to do this? The type of guy who fantasizes about the zombie apocalypse and the end times. He just wants an excuse to kill without getting in trouble. But here’s the thing, they will get in trouble. The Russian Defense Ministry has already said that any foreign mercenaries caught in Ukraine will not be granted prisoner of war status. They will be killed, and are being killed.
About refugees. Well, there are stories, and the western media is being mysteriously vague. What I’m hearing from both sides of the border is very interesting. Apparently, the Ukrainian “refugees” are just like the refugees from Afghanistan and Syria. Aggressive young men who don’t want to fight. They just want to tap into the EU’s lavish welfare systems and never work again. They’re extremely entitled, rude, and violent. That’s what I’m hearing and I’m hearing it from everyone. It is almost certainly true. It’s not even surprising. But this time it’s also different.
The regimes of the West really painted themselves into a corner this time. They’re getting millions of these guys all at once and their own propaganda about “Ukrainian European Christians” is working against them. This could cause a huge economic crisis in Europe, and that’s not factoring in the fallout from the sanctions war.
Now I’m not implying that there aren’t normal families who want to get away from the fighting. There are. The Russians have left open corridors and are encouraging people to use them. But reportedly, the neo-nazis and criminals controlling Ukraine’s cities right now are refusing let anyone leave and kill people who try.
Look at our cultural moral fiber, and imagine American mercenaries who grew up reading Hammer’s Slammers. Some of them are in Ukrainian cities right now, and have been there for a while. What do you think they’re doing? Do you think they would allow people to leave either? Or would they imagine themselves as characters in a Hammer’s Slammers story? We have to defeat the bad Russians, so we have to use the local population as shields. “It’s sad, but necessary,” we nod to each other. These men also know their enemies’ weaknesses. They know that if they mine Odessa’s churches and cultural icons, Russian soldiers will go to fairly extraordinary lengths to not damage them. We’ve had a weird fetish for mercenaries for a long time, now we are seeing the consequences of mercenary culture on full display.
Russians are very forgiving people, but everybody has limits. Are they going to forgive us for doing this? After the adrenaline and propaganda wears off, are Ukrainians going to forgive us?
SITREP in Ukraine March 4. Image source: The Saker
Ian Kummer
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great article! thanks!
Kerrankin rehellistä analyysiä.
Thank you for your perspective, which, as an American who has just spent time in Ukr and Poland at the border, I found fascinating. I walked across the border from Medyka into Ukraine, and toward the train station where hundreds for Ukrainians had just arrived from Kharkiv after an 18-hour journey. The crossing from Pol to Ukr took 15 minutes. The process from Ukr to Pol took 8.5 hours. Of the thousands of people in the line with me, I would approximate that 5% were men between the ages of 18-60 (fighting age). All the rest were women with children, and old people. I’m not a reporter; I’m a writer simply trying to capture first-hand accounts from folks on the ground.
Cheers,
Kyle
Hi Kyle,
Yes, and from the information I have gathered from people like yourself – the refugee situation is much different than what I originally pictured it to be. My original imagining of this was wrong, and also overly optimistic.
Good analysis. As Kyle above me said, he observed a very small number of males among the masses of Ukrainian refugees heading west. This would seem to support my comment on the other piece regarding the pairing of (at least in one picture) Black male African refugees with female Ukrainian refugees of roughly the same age. I still share your question, however, about where are the French kids in this strange little program?