Great News for the Rootin' For Putin crowd: After four full years of Russia's three-day Special Military Operation, the number of Russian armor casualties has dropped off a cliff, compared to the relatively massive losses in the early days of the war.
Bad news: That's because the number of available Russian tanks still running has also dropped off a cliff. In the timeless words of Bob Dylan, in Like A Rollin' Stone: "When you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose". Bummer for Vladophiles.
To date, Russian army casualties are somewhere around 11,000 tanks, and 1,500,000 casualties, including half a million dead. They're gaining ground at a rate best measured with a pocket ruler each day, and at the current rate, they'll be in Kiev again by about the year 2576.
What they've succeeded in doing is showing the world their military is fourth rate on their best day, while taking Ukraine from a second-world nation to a third-world one over the last four years, and tanking the economies of both countries for probably the next 50 years, or until someone in Russia holds a Makarov retirement party for Putin, and Russia pries their fists and feet out of the Ukrainian tar baby.
Final answer: this is a geopolitical disaster for Russia, like we told you when they failed to conclude it in the first 96 hours. Russia has suffered more casualties than the U.S. did from VJ Day to yesterday, plus more casualties than Russia suffered in Afghanistan before concluding they'd lost that one too. This is why Hubris and Inertia are the two worst generals to lead in a war of attrition.
Charlie Brown, to date, has fallen on his ass trying to kick the football Lucy holds less times than the Russian military has in the last four years.
That makes the continued conflict a clowncarnucopia of fail, providing endless wailing and gnashing of teeth for those who keep Rootin' For Putin. The only thing funnier, at this point, than Russia unassing Ukraine, would be them winning, and embarking on the next century of endless guerrilla warfare there. It's only a pity we never hear about the underground that must be doing a thing or two in Russia every day. But at least Vlad has gotten used to constant defeat, and has stopped pushing his generals out of unfortunately open twelfth floor windows in the middle of Russian winters.
At this point, Russia's best gamble is the Grand Fenwick strategy: Pick a direct fight with the U.S., surrender immediately, and then rake in endless fortunes in post-war restoration projects, and hope for a renaissance worthy of post-WW2 Germany and Japan.
The conflict continues to be funny, but in a vaudeville-circa-1960 way: the joke is old, and the audience who cares is shrinking due to actuarial inevitability.
I have a friend that is an M1 Abrams driver/instructor in ukraine. he did that in the army and when they needed instructors he stepped up.
ReplyDeletehe is in the donbass area as of a month ago (the last letter I got) and he said he hasn't seen anything bigger than a golf cart in 3 months.
What I don't understand is Donnie's "love" for Putin, other than his preference for his fellow oligarchs. That, his Russia supporting staff and advisers.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to wander over to Sonar 21 and see what 4+ years of supporting Ukraine and Israel has done to our military strength and our crippled supply chain of missiles and inability to deliver F35 fighters complete with their radar system.
ReplyDeleteSeems that even General Caine is warning Trump the cupboard is bare.
Maybe take note the US Navies issues with a toilet mutiny. I'd be surprised if more "issues" of mission critical equipment don't suddenly show up.
Notice that the Storm Shadow and such British and French missiles so promoted as super weapons against Russia have dropped out of the news? Because they were not producing them (they be Broke) and burned through their entire stockpile. Now CIA and Mi6 has gotten Ukraine in the cruise missile building business. That's the weapon names bragged about with their propaganda successes.
The Special Military operation seems to have disarmed Europe and America pretty well as well as given China and Russia real time learning on how to stop our Wunder weapons.
Since China throttled and stopped delivering rare earths to America (see US missile production and F35 radar issues for details) and Russia stopped selling us Tritium Gas needed for nuclear weapons some years ago there is some question about what % of the nuclear triad is fully operational. Really operational not F35 pencil whipping operational. Our domestic production of tritium isn't enough so for decades we bought it from Russia.
We might be stumbling into a Sicilian Expedition like the Athenians in Iran to defend the interests of our Bestest Ally evar.
Not to mention the economic and social issues currently besieging our Republic. You are intelligent I don't have to point them out.
If the powers that be wanted America militarily defanged and economically destroyed, how would they set it up I wonder..
But then again you remember I posted a year or so ago to you that perhaps Trump was Hoover 2.0 Greater Depression.
I'd like to be wrong in all accounts, but I've seen a Socialist-Democrat Muslim get elected Mayor of NY fucking City of 911 infamy. And so on.
1) What it's done, is devastated Russian military readiness for the next century. Even Ukraine invaded them, and ot took months to dislodge a token incursion.
Delete2) The cupboard has been bare on US military ordnance stocks for going on 60 years. You could Google reports from even the liberal Brookings Institute on this topic going back to the early 1970s. Four years of Biden and eight years of Obozo didn't help the issue. Trump has been treating the military like it's important again, but there are limits to how much rot you can scrape out in a few years. And Russia and China aren't the only sources of rare earth minerals or tritium. They're just the primary sources this minute. That can be changed, and should have been, long since. In the meantime, Russia isn't even a threat to the Baltic States any more, nor any time in the future for the next 30-50 years without massive upheaval and probably another national collapse and restructuring. Five seconds after that happens, they lose everything in Ukraine, including Crimea. History says Ukraine has better odds for victory than Russia does, unless Putin lobs a nuke and Europe goes up in fallout within about 72 hours, but that would include everything west of the Urals too, and probably most of China, along with the U.S. Which is why I maintain that the minute he reaches for the red phone, Putin's brains decorate the walls of his throne room in about 0.2 seconds, and I'd estimate he'll look more like Clyde Barrow's corpse, just before the solemn announcement on state media that he suffered another one of those fatal strokes Russian dictators keep having. (And hey, technically, when twenty-seven AK bullets blow your head off down to the neck, it is, indeed, most accurately medically described as a "cerebro-vascular accident".)
3) None of anything you wrote makes Russian military might any more fearsome. At this point, Lithuania could invade them and get all the way to St. Petersburg. This was always an unjustifiable and stupid military adventure, in the service of rebuilding the former Soviet Empire. It's turned out predictably bad for Russia, and the only question remaining is whether they retreat, and then depose Putin, or do it the other way around.
It's amazing when you recognize that Russia, will not and cannot lose this contest, that you're "rootin for Putin". Soft thinking from a supposedly erudite mind.
ReplyDeleteHow did "Too Powerful To Fail" work out for them in Afghanistan? Get back to us when you catch up on demonstrated Russian military prowess since 1946.
Delete* The tank is no longer king of the battlefield.
ReplyDelete* Defense has the upper hand in a field where surveillance is non stop thanks to drones.
* An infantryman with a $1000 drone can destroy a $5m artillery piece.
Its not Desert Storm any longer.
And who do you envision in the various Peter Seller rolls?
ReplyDeleteSomeone funnier than Putin. Maybe they can bring in Rowan Atkinson in a guest role.
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