Last week at a Thanksgiving gathering in Moscow I had the privilege of meeting Kosti Hayskonen, a Finnish journalist reporting out of the military zone in Donbass. His recent documentary is worth a look, and gives a first-hand glimpse of life there, from the Alley of Angels to the streets of Avdeevka.
Ian Kummer
A Note About “Progress” In War
This is a map of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916. Over 18 weeks, French and British forces advanced 10 kilometers capturing a little over 300 square kilometers. In total, this brief conflict on a small battlefield killed or wounded more than a million men. From this we can make some … Read more
Why Aren’t there NATO Troops Deploying En Masse to Ukraine?
So there is this idea, based on exactly nothing, that western troops are better than Ukrainian troops. There is also this idea that American logistics are the best in the world, “We can set up a Burger King anywhere in 24 hours.” So why would supplying 1 million NATO troops be different than supplying 1 … Read more
Thoughts on Conscription Past and Present
This week the Associated Press openly stated something that most of us have known for a while. That Biden administration is pressuring Ukraine to lower the conscription age to 18. This is the usual life cycle of facts from Ukraine. Facts are initially dismissed as “Kremlin talking points” for 6 to 12 months, then they’re … Read more
Reflections on Afghanistan
The rewriting of history continues. Afghanistan is the latest case of “the USA could have easily won but we just chose not to.” Is that really true though? In my first deployment there in 2009 to Camp Bastion there were still largescale combat operations and had enthusiastic participation by most ISAF members. I would not … Read more