What was the point of the Belgorod Raid? And was the USA behind it?

On Monday morning, a saboteur group allegedly made up of Russian nationals attacked several Russian border towns Belgorod. The Russians, obviously, responded with overwhelming force, and after about six hours of fighting, the saboteur group was defeated. Vehicle crews retreated back toward the border and abandoned their infantry to be killed or captured. I think this was an American-planned operation, and I’ll explain why.

From RT:

The incursion has also been confirmed by Ukraine, with a spokesman for Ukraine’s Directorate of Intelligence, Andrey Yusov, claiming it was staged exclusively by Russian collaborationist units fighting for Kiev, namely the so-called legion ‘Freedom of Russia’ and the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK).

The raid appears to resemble a similar incursion into Russia’s Bryansk Region in early March. The attack left two Russian civilians dead, and the RDK claimed responsibility for it. At the time, Kiev tried to distance itself from the incident, insisting it was not behind the raid. However, RDK members themselves alleged that Ukrainian authorities had directly “signed off” on the raid.

Also, from what I’ve seen on the “Track a Merc” channel on Telegram, the claim that the raid was conducted by Russian nationals acting on their own is a lie – many, perhaps most, of the militants involved were Ukrainians.

But of course Ukrainians would lie, but that still leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The first and most obvious one is why launch a suicide attack into Russian territory that would obviously fail and incur a lot of casualties? Well, it might simply be because Ukraine’s combat power has been significantly depleted by the Bakhmut meatgrinder, while the opposing Russian forces have gotten significantly stronger. So launching more conventional offenses is simply not an option anymore, and Ukrainians have to switch to “asymmetrical tactics.”

I accept that as a partial explanation but I think there’s more to it, and the it’s hard to imagine that the USA wasn’t involved in the planning of this operation.

First off, I have written repeatedly about the US military establishment’s obsession with high-tech light infantry, which is often referred to as fourth generation warfare. From one of my previous posts:

An elite force like Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers or Falkenberg’s Legion, superb light infantry that is the 4GW theorist’s wet dream. A completely decentralized command structure with “strategic corporals” armed with super weapons (switchblade drones, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, etc). This army could presumably use high-precision weapons to devastate high priority targets (like generals and communication hubs) until the enemy occupation army collapses.

The Rise and Fall of Fourth Generation Warfare

So, this wasn’t the Ukrainians just being stupid. 40 or 50 unsupported soldiers using super sophisticated “asymmetric” tactics should be able to easily conquer Russia, and that’s a thing our military leaders actually believe.

Furthermore, after the Pentagon leak, I commented on how our intelligence gathering apparatus is terrible:

Because the USA’s intelligence gathering abilities are vastly overstated, especially in a war involving a third country where we mostly have to take their word for what’s happening. This isn’t a movie. When an intelligence officer says he’s getting super duper secret intel on Ukraine, or Syria, or Iraq, what he actually means is he’s going to surf the internet until he finds something to copy/paste. I keep saying this but people just give me funny looks – the vast majority of military intelligence is open source. Tools like drones and satellites are nice, but they’re not going to tell you specifics, like enemy casualty reports. For things like that, an American intelligence officer has to rely on Ukrainian sources, or third party websites. I feel like this should be very obvious, but it’s a struggle to get people to understand that.

What Everybody Gets Wrong About the Pentagon Leak

So when American, British, and NATO leaders claim that 97% of Russia’s armed forces are tied up in Ukraine and the majority of their military might has been destroyed or depleted, we need to accept that this isn’t a lie, and they actually believe this.

If you think I’m kidding, just go to any pro-Ukrainian or NATO account on Twitter. Hell, read the ISW “analysis” of the raid. They actually believe this suicide attack was a smart move and was successful.

If you’re still unconvinced by how absolutely deluded our decision-making bureaucracy is, consider this new insight from Seymour Hersh, who reveals that insider sources close to President Biden believe he literally does not read the daily 3-page intelligence reports that come across his desk. Hersh implies that this might be because Biden is just too old and feeble to process the information, directly comparing him to Reagan, who was also very old and probably senile (but at the very least, Reagan didn’t start showing obvious signs of deterioration until his second term).

Now, based on what I’ve said so far, there’s an obvious, and American, motivation for the raid. If you think “superb light infantry” can easily defeat much larger groups of (racially) inferior troops like in a Rambo movie, and also have a wildly backwards understanding of the strength of the enemy, it would make sense to try to snatch up more territory to force Russia to the negotiating table. Especially since NATO and western culture is obsessed with “negotiating from a position of strength.”

Consider, again, some of the material from the Pentagon leak that exposed private conversations between American and Ukrainian officials:

These leaked materials, part of a more extensive disclosure of U.S. classified information, illustrate Zelensky as a leader who boldly considers audacious military strategies. He pondered about striking Russia and capturing its border towns with ground forces to gain a strategic upper hand in talks with Moscow. He also expressed concerns about Ukraine’s lack of long-range missiles to target Russian military deployments and proposed the use of drones for attacks within Russia.

Ian Kummer

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