As one commenter noted, “Never thought I’d live in a world where I would be hyped for the Austrian army dropping a new video.”
You can watch it here, as I do not know how to embed it in Word Press.
By the way, if you want to understand Putin, you read Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, not Mein Kampf to suggest otherwise is an abdication of being intelligent.
Nota bene: Crime and Punishment is the best novel ever written. Just saying.
Nota bene duo: the Ukrainian drone attack at 5:05 on the Russian soldiers is terrifying.
Poul
Col. Reisner is one of the rare Western officers who has tried to give a realistic picture of the war. As he has said in a video from 2022 the purpose of staff officers is to give a sober view of a war so that the best decisions can be made militarily and politically. So no sugar coating.
He also has pointed out that the Ukrainian Army has lost a lot of key personnel and is less capable. He mentioned that out of five Ukrainian officers he served with in the UN force in Kosovo as a Major, three had been killed in the war by 2023.
Soredemos
Everythi g ive seen and read tells me the attrition is hugely one-sided. The Russian side has up to a 12:1 artillery and missile advantage. Their standard approach now is to bombard a position, then send in drones or scouts, and if anyone is left alive, bombard them again. And again.
The claims of massive losses among the ‘Russian orcs’ are not only not supported by in-depth analysis of actual death records, they intuitively don’t make sense given the overwhelming munitions mismatch. They’re just a retread of Asiatic horde smears from WW2 (that weren’t true even then).
Russia runs this war as a sideshow with a major focus on both minimizing its own losses, keeping a lot in reserve in case of direct NATO escalations, and using Ukraine as a theater to rotate units through for training.
Both sides use drones, yes, but Russia is producing them at an industrial scale, while Ukraine makes propaganda mini-documentaries about how average citizens are making them at home at a rate of three a week.
Ukraine really is nearing Germany in early 45 levels, if it isn’t there already. If we just give Steiner some more Volkssturm and Luftwaffe troops I’m sure he can turn things around though.
From the Biden administrations perspective the goal is probably just to hold things together another three weeks until after the election. After that, freefall.
Dan Kelly
‘By the way, if you want to understand Putin, you read Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, not Mein Kampf to suggest otherwise is an abdication of being intelligent.’
‘Notes from the Underground’ is the shibboleth, Sean?
Thanks for the key.
So I will ‘understand’ Lubavitcher Putin by reading one book. And it of course defines intelligence to always reference the Hitler bogeyman.
If you want to understand what’s going on in the world at large you’d be better off reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together.
There is an English language version due out next year – but you better check the originals as it will probably be published by a Zionist publishing house and so who knows how they’ll butcher it in their own interest.
Remember, Russia has ‘holocaust’ laws that get you thown in jail for in any way questionimg the Zionist version of history. Putin proudly signed these.
Throwing people in jail for daring to look into the history they’re presented with is hardly a good way to foster intellectual integrity. To suggest otherwise is an abdication of being intelligent.
Putin says Gaza war must end with establishment of Palestinian State:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241018-putin-says-gaza-war-must-end-with-establishment-of-palestinian-state/
My crazy, irrational, ‘antisemitic’ thoughts on the matter:
https://alethonews.com/2024/10/19/putin-says-gaza-war-must-end-with-establishment-of-palestinian-state/#comment-406779
Err, you’ll have to excuse me. The ADL/FBI is knocking on my door:
https://irmep.com/2024/02/adl-defines-genocide-and-civil-disobedience-within-the-fbi/
vmsmith
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the conventional wisdom across the board was that it was all going to be over in a matter of days. If you Google to find Colonel Reisner’s views, I’m sure he was solidly of that opinion, too.
And here we are, on day 969. One can quibble about a lot of details, but the Ukrainians have shown the Russians to be the paper tiger that they are: corrupt, incompetent, and lost in a fantasy world of Russian greatness. If Russia didn’t have nukes, Ukraine would have all its land back by now.
The only person worth listening to here is Herodotus, in his story of Solon and Croesus: it ain’t over ’til it’s over. To try to say what’s going to happen before then is a fool’s errand.
Sean Paul Kelley
I thought it was Yogi Berra who said that!
vmsmith
Yogi Berra was dumbing it down for the quasi-literate American population that would rather watch baseball than read a good book. But go check the story of Solon and Croesus in Herodotus’s “Histories.” He essentially said it first.
Sean Paul Kelley
I am very, very familiar with the dialogue between Solon and Croesus. It’s one of the more arresting scenes in Herodotus’ masterpiece. However, for me, the best part of the Histories is his anthropological and historical description of the Scythians. I was 19 when I first read it and it was the book that decided me on becoming an historian.
As for Yogi: It was an attempt at humor.
Duncan Kinder
The Brothers Karanizov is better than Crime and Punishment.
Jefferson Hamilton
>If Russia didn’t have nukes, Ukraine would have all its land back by now.
Delusional.
I also recall the propaganda stating the war would be over quite quickly, but it was western media blaring that Ukraine would surely push back the Russian hordes in short order. Well.
Soredemos
The war was almost over quickly. Russia invaded with a vastly smaller army, hoping to move fast and pressure Kiev into negotiating terms. It almost worked too, until the West, in particular the UK, assured Zelensky they’d give aid and money and he’d win because they also believed Russia was a paper tiger.
There’s a now hilarious War on the Rocks piece that insisted the Russian army was logistically defective and could only maintain an offensive for long enough to take a couple villages before exhausting itself and needing a prolonged period to reset.
This type of thing was the genuine Western consensus. ‘Russia is an army of demoralized, primitive conscripts, and if we just hold firm, and send a token amount of obviously superior Western equipment, Putins hordes will soon run out of everything and collapse or even rebel.’
In reality, when the quick approach failed, Russia refocused on the slow solution. They annexed (with as far as I can tell genuine popular support) the four east oblasts, which made them Russian for the purposes of Russian law and opened up legal options for defending them (Putin is actually a stickler for legalisms, to an often obnoxious degree).
The Russian military has only increased in size and quality of equipment since the war started. It’s revamped its organization.
Putin and his clique are fundamentally bland neoliberals by inclination, but even they have a limit. It so manifestly doesn’t work for military production that they’ve turned away from it and back to a much more state managed model.
Meanwhile NATO gear 1. has turned out to mostly suck, and 2. there isn’t enough of it for fullscale modern warfare, and 3. we’re institutionally incapable of changing things easily, or at all, to make more of it.
The way NATO has stumbled into a trap of a fairly limited war that had enabled Russia to get a kind of test run against all kinds of ‘premier’ NATO equipment and tactics to learn to counter them is amazing. So now we have things like HIMARS now having a 90% failure rate. And there’s little evidence of a corresponding degree of adaptation against Russia capabilities going on for the NATO side.
There is indeed a paper tiger in this war. And it isn’t Russia.
elkern
Good piece, thx.
Anybody know what weapon caused the “shotgun” effect seen in the lower righthand part of the screen at 3:43 ? Presumably some kind of “bomblet” thing? Looks like it would be more effective against infantry, where most of the video in that part of the presentation focuses on blowing up vehicles.
ibaien
the ‘victory is around the corner’ bloviation on both sides is as predictable as it is depressing. UKR shouldn’t have held out this long; that they have is a testament to the general resolve of people not to have their countries conquered & with the history of the holodomor still fairly fresh. RUS can’t afford to bleed young men forever; their birth rate is dismal and the fact that they’re now having to stiffen their lines with DPRK mercs makes it clear that they’re as fatigued as the ukies. they’ll try to knock out ukrainian power plants and freeze the country into capitulation this winter, and the commenters on this blog can decide whether or not that’s a fair way to win a war. to be fair i think that offering RUS a path to european integration in the late 90s was the obvious play, but these days i can only root against imperial minded bullies of any race or creed.
Gaianne
elkern–
At 3: 43? I am just guessing, but I would say area cluster munitions. There are many types, but they all distribute small bomblettes over a wide area to saturate it. Mainly good against infantry.
–Gaianne
Mark Level
I’m with Duncan. The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoyevsky’s master work. (Later on when he became a Christian nationalist anti-Semite, he became intolerable dreck. “The Idiot” is indeed Idiotic.)
Thanks to Smith for the laughs, specifically, “One can quibble about a lot of details, but the Ukrainians have shown the Russians to be the paper tiger that they are: corrupt, incompetent, and lost in a fantasy world of Russian greatness.”
I’d agree that they screwed up in the first year, but they have steadily pushed back since. I have recently started reading Peter Hopkirk’s 1992 well-reviewed (incl. the pre-alchoholic, pre-NeoCon Islamophobe Chris Hitchens) book, The Great Game. The Mongols, the dumbass Napoleon & Herr Hitler & the Reich learned that the Russians are anything BUT a paper tiger in the long term. As to corruption, I’m sure Russia has it, but they are not fit to touch the hem of the Ukrainians in that particular skill-set.
Clausewitz’s “Never get into a land war in Asia” has been vindicated many times over. The US lost Vietnam, it didn’t control but “lost China” in the 40s, it failed in Afghanistan (& you wanna talk about corruption?) after 2 solid decades.
One should clean up one’s own house before casting stones at others. The US NeoCons lose wars; that’s all they can do. They might still be able to pull off a full bore genocide in Palestine thru their rabid Zionist attack dogs. But there won’t be a US victory there in the long term either.
Oakchair
There is indeed a paper tiger in this war. And it isn’t Russia.
——
This is evident when looking at the amount of resources and money each side has spent.
NATO has sent Ukraine almost 400$ in aid since 2021. Russia’s military spending for 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 is estimated at 65$, 75$, 110$, and 145$ respectively. For a total increase from pre-war years of 135 billion or less than 40% of the aid NATO has sent Ukraine.
Russia’s economy is growing faster than it was before and has now overtaken Germany and Japan in size and Europe at best is barely out of a recession.
bruce wilder
I find myself unable to articulate any theory of Russia’s strategy that would take full and rational account of inching forward for over a year and attacking the Ukraine electrical grid for longer than that without actually disabling it.
If the Russians have indeed adapted technologically to various Western wonder weapons, that has great geopolitical significance potentially, but war is still a means of persuasion and I am not clear what argument Russia wants to win or how they hope to do that.
Russia lost the election in Moldova to the EU — just barely and possibly not fairly, but a useful reminder that Russia has a poor w-l record in the region. Georgia and Armenia, next?
Sean Paul Kelley
@Bruce: Armenia has long been a Russian client state. They will remain one for the foreseeable future. Georgia is divided. When Georgia attacked Russian positions in South Ossetia in 2008 both Russian forces in and around South Ossetia and jointly with Abkhazian forces, Russia occupied Zugdidi, Gori, Poti and Senaki and the Abkhaz captured the Kodori Gorge. Through these actions Russia effectively split Georgia into three parts and there will be no Georgian admission into NATO. In fact, my buddy Mamuka who lives in Tbilisi in Georgia told me earlier this year, “we just have to make our peace with our giant neighbor to the north, like Mexico has made its peace with the USA.” He’s not wrong.
Nate Wilcox
Personally I much prefer Lermentov’s A Hero of Our Time (or even Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons) to Dostoevsky’s endless internal monologues.
Agree about the Austrian Col. though. Good stuff.
Soredemos
The DPRK troops fighting for Russia stuff almost certainly isn’t real. Even the NYT admits there’s no actual evidence of it, and a couple claimed data points making the rounds are video of a supposed captured North Korean soldier speaking perfect Ukrainian (??? Not Russian; Ukrainian), and footage of Laotian troops being passed off as of NKs.
This is really desperate, weak stuff. It’s surreal to see literal fake news leading to (performative, they know it’s bullshit) real world effects like SK demanding NK withdraw the troops from Ukraine that almost certainly don’t actually exist.
@bruce wilder
They’ve been inching forward while taking the Ukrainian army to pieces while minimizing their own casualties.
As for the electrical grid, ‘you break it, you bought it’. Russian politics still has a notion it’s fighting its own brothers, and seeks to minimize civilian losses both out of some notion of restoring friendly relations later, and because they’ll likely have to foot the reconstruction bill.
Russian political aims are at odds with what I’m sure much of its military leadership would like to be doing. Putin remains a relatively restrained figure compared to many of his critics. Time will tell if his paced approach was the correct one, or if they should have just gone for the killing stroke long ago (knowing they would probably take heavy losses doing it). Also consider Yves Smith’s notions of ‘don’t make sudden moves around crazy people’. Russia probably fears that a sudden, rapid collapse scenario for Ukraine might scare NATO into some foolish overt escalation. Again, debatable logic. Do NATO and its neocons strike anyone as rational even now?
Also if your enemy can still move, he can pile up inside firebags where you can easily slaughter him. That’s a recurring ugly truth of the Russian strategy in this war.