The Russo-Ukrainian War VI

From the war of attrition into peace or WWIII? (Free)

Almost a year ago, I published my first critical assessment, and a worst-case scenario, of the Russo-Ukrainian war. As expected, I received a swathe of criticism (which could also be labelled as ‘vile crap’) calling me a Putinist or a ‘vatnik’. As an analyst and a forecaster, I’ve grown to overlook the criticism, because I am simply a few months to a few years ahead of the vast majority of the populace, which are currently also bombarded with relentless propaganda.

Now, the main predictions of my article have become a reality:

1. Ukrainian losses are massive (passing Russian ones most likely 5-10 times).

2. The Russian army has not collapsed, but it may have become the strongest it has been since WWII.

3. The West (NATO) is fighting a ‘proxy-war’ in Ukraine with a possible aim of regime change in Russia.

4. Russia has drawn out most of NATO’s ‘excess’ resources in Europe.

The only prediction from my worst-case scenario which, fortunately has not come to be, is the major offensive of Russia. Strategically, though, this is no surprise because Russian forces have been able to decimate the forces of the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) in devastating numbers. During the much-touted counter-offensive, the high command of the AFU, combined with the highly effective Russian defenses, have created a ‘meat-grinder’, where seriously outnumbered AFU troops attack heavily fortified Russian lines with basically no air support. Military strategist have known, since at least the Napoelonic wars, that this type of attrition warfare leads to extreme losses in the offensive party, thus creating an opportunity for a devastating counter-attack.

It looks like the meat-grinder has been created in a desperate effort to gain some breakthroughs to support the narrative poured upon the willfully ignorant western populace to achieve victory in the ‘hearts and minds’ -battle with Russia. I am ashamed that our government and my country has taken part of this slaughter of Ukrainians. It’s a disgrace, but I am certain if most Europeans would have been told the truth about the devastating Ukrainian losses, we would have peace already. This is the power of propaganda. Unfortunately, much more may be in store, e.g. for Finland from the NATO -planners.

The toll for Europe participating in this war of attrition has also started to become visible. The economy of Germany is sinking and the deindustrialization of Europe, on which I warned a little less than a year ago, is progressing. Winter is approaching and European energy issues are also far from resolved. The ultimate price tag for Europe will be very high, regardless how the rest of the conflict plays out.

I will now continue mapping the worst-case scenario by two options for the war to reach its ‘climax’:

1. Major Russian offensive.

2. A ‘false flag’ operation by NATO.

I deal with each of these in turn.

Finishing off Ukraine?

Russia seems to have fulfilled most of the stated aims of its ‘Special Military Operation’, but it does not control all of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson regions (enshrined in the Russian constitution) and there’s also a threat of the the conflict becoming more and more costly. What would be the solution for the Russian side? Simply, ending the conflict with a major offensive.

The U.S. has committed to supplying Ukraine with M1-A1 Abrams battle tanks, while, e.g. Denmark and the Netherlands have committed of supplying Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets. The war of attrition threatens to drag on for at least another year, and become more entrenched with the possibility of serious aerial battles. President Putin and the Russian MoD (Ministry of Defense) may want to avoid this by crushing Ukrainian resistance once and for all, after the current (third) Ukrainian army has been sufficiently weakened (effectively destroyed). This would be done in an effort to force Ukraine to surrender.

It is of course impossible to know, what the Russian leadership will decide. From a military strategy point of view they could benefit from learning first hand (but without top pilots) from one of the leading fighter jets of the NATO. From this point of view, supplying Ukraine with F-16 can be viewed as yet another strategical blunder from the West, adding to the blunders of letting Russians to learn NATO’s strategical and tactical capabilities, allowing them to learn how to destroy the main battle tank of Europe (Leopard) and providing Russians a critical edge on battlefield drone development. What’s one more mistake in this clusterfuck, right? Well, every one of these blunders flips the scales towards Russia, which is not a good strategy, no matter how you look at it.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of the problems faced by the West.

NATO under threat

Major conflicts (wars) tend to come to be when mutual defensive clauses come into action (WWI) or when a humiliated party elects dictatorian leaders to form strong alliances (WWII). Like I explained in the last update to the Russo-Ukrainian war II, a threat of some kind of repetition of the path that led to the Great War is worryingly high.

In the case that Russia would start a major offensive, and be successful in it, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, would face two dire options:

1. Capitulation to peace on Russia’s terms.

2. Escalation drawing NATO forces into the battle.

We know that peace would most likely have been achievable already in March 2022. This implies that the U.S. is deliberately escalating the war in a desperate effort to overwhelm Russian forces, but this strategy is backfiring massively.

The myth of NATO superiority is already gone and slowly but surely fear has started to creep up to the minds of Europeans. NATO is not the superior power we were told. Leopard tanks “burn like the rest of them”,¹ and the extensive NATO training of the AFU has not been able to overcome Russian military tactics. Thus, in the first option, the credibility and even unity of NATO may come under threat.

To bypass this, a major escalation drawing resources from all NATO countries could be needed. The collective defense Article 5 of NATO states that:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

So, it’s all about “assisting” the member of the NATO under attack. Effectively, enacting Article 5 does not automatically guarantee that NATO countries send troops to the attacked country, especially if the country is not in NATO, like Ukraine. For this to happen, it basically needs a massive media campaign to muster the support of the populace for sending their boys to fight in a foreign country. Such a media campaign has been run in Finland since the start of the conflict.

What NATO planners would still need would be a serious enough escalation to enact Article 5.

‘False flag’

It was strange to watch the ‘dodge-ball’ game between Ukrainian intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Association, or IAEA, on the “mines” in Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. This went on for several rounds with Ukrainian intelligence claiming that mines were placed, e.g. in technical rooms or even the rooftops of the plant, while IAEA kept denying that this was the case (they did warn that mines were close by, but they now seem to have been removed).

The whole Zaporizhzhia fiasco can be seen as a preparation for a false flag operation, that is a strike conducted by the AFU and blamed on Russia, to draw NATO countries directly into the conflict under the disguise of Russia using “another type” of nuclear weapon (radiation) to attack NATO. When this threat arose, some western leaders gave statements warning Russia that a deliberate nuclear accident would be considered as an attack against NATO countries (enacting the Article 5). We naturally cannot say for sure that this was the plan, but it looks that the integrity and incorruptibility of the IAEA completely demolished this false flag avenue for NATO planners.

An alleged attack by Wagner, most of which is now said to be stationed in Belarus, to Poland could serve as another potential false flag operation to draw NATO forces directly into the conflict. There’s naturally the possibility that Wagner could actually commit such a action by themselves, but for what reason?

Like I wrote in my first piece, based on the extensive research by two researchers of the Brookings Institution, President Putin is a reactive strategist. A direct conflict with NATO would be an extremely risky maneuver, which could (probably would) eventually lead to a nuclear confrontation. I seriously doubt that this would be the aim of Mr. Putin. Therefore, any alleged Russian aggression towards Poland, or other NATO countries, can be considered as a false flag operation.

The flat-earthers of geopolitics

There seems to be a persistent misunderstanding on the nature of geopolitics in Europe, which the media has been feeding. This was best summarized by my American friend few months ago, by stating “If Mexico would be joining a military alliance with Russia, and would be shelling Texas, there would be no Mexico no more”. Not a single U.S. citizen I have told this quote to, has refuted it.²

Ukraine is Russia’s Mexico. Period. Like I wrote in my earlier piece on the history of NATO and Russia, Russia’s leadership has made this clear over and over again. Even the most notorious ‘NATO hawks’, like Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, noted that Ukraine (and Georgia) were no-go-zones for NATO without Russian co-operation.

This is what geopolitics is all about. It’s preserving the safety, a ‘buffer zone’, around countries with military dominance. Ukraine and Finland were crucial pieces in this concerning Russia. Drifting too far into western influence triggered the war in Ukraine and now we wait and see what NATO membership brings for Finland. It has been my worry all along that NATO will not bring peace but war. Worryingly, Russian military high command has stated that Finland has became a threat because of the NATO strike weapons. This is the first time in my lifetime that this has happened.

It’s also quite unfathomable how easily European leaders gave up on Eurasian unification. Like also noted in my previous piece, Eurasian economic union was considered as a dire threat to U.S. dominance in certain powerful political circles. This gives a motive for the U.S. to first escalate the conflict in Ukraine into a war and then feed it. The U.S., like Russia, also does not have a very good track record of pulling out of failed military campaigns (Vietnam vs. Afghanistan wars)

Russia was not a threat to Europe anymore, at least in the existential sense we knew it from 1949 till 1990. A partnership formed, where Russia provided cheap energy and minerals, China was the “factory” and Europe was the consumer and the provider of technologies and capital. This was the ‘Eurasian union’, which is now in shambles. The U.S. planners have succeeded with devastating accuracy, and we Europeans have been, and continue to be, played as fools. We are acting like the geopolitical realm of Europe would be ‘flat’ (fitting to our simplified belief system). We cannot be this stupid, can we?

Conclusion

Since October, Russia has been amassing their forces in Ukraine in an effort that looks like a preparation for a major offensive. Amassing troops and equipments, and holding them in reserve is very costly, which leads me to suspect that the Russian administration is preparing for something major, unless the reserve is there simply to stave off NATO aggression. It should also be noted that ‘spearheaded’ attacks (with armored forces ‘spearheading’ through enemy lines) do not seem to work in a way they did in previous wars in this new, satellite and drone -controlled warfare³ So, Ukraine may be in a state of attrition warfare semi-permanently, which can be considered as the ‘consensus scenario’ (the scenario with the highest likelihood, currently).

However, western media has started to admit that war in Ukraine is unwinnable. In the wake of this, a bat-crazy idea of full mobilization of Ukraine has been floated. This would, most likely, lead just to another round of mobilization in Russia (in addition to the ‘stealth’ one which has been in progress since past summer) and eventually to an utter massacre of vast majority of Ukrainian men. What is the reason for proposing such atrocities? I have difficulties coming up with any other explanations than generalized psychotic ‘russo-phobia’, created by the media in a similar fashion that the hate campaign against us non-vaxed were setup in 2021. We Europeans should know better than launching another war against any of our neighbors. It has never led to anything good.

To stave off the most adverse scenarios (losses) for herself, and possibly to Europe, Russian leadership may launch a campaign to crush Ukraine, and to claim the missing” areas, before the leadership of Ukraine reaches a point of national ‘run amok’. The optimal time for launching a major offensive would be at the point, when the current forces of the opponent are nearly exhausted and the reserves have not yet arrived or they are not ready to be used. Battleground conditions naturally matter too. With this thinking the nearest optimal time for major Russian offensive would be September, when winter is still a few months away and new western reserves (like the U.S. tanks) have yet not arrived. The second one could be the ‘dead of winter’ (November-February) and then again one late-spring/early-summer (May/June), when the mud season is over.

In any case, we are likely reaching a point, as predicted by this worst-case scenario, where a crucial decision for Europe needs to be made. Currently, relationships with Russia and China could still be restored, to a degree at least, and some parts of Ukraine could be saved, but if a major Russian offensive or a false flag operation by NATO appears, that door closes and we enter a path leading to World War III.

It should not be difficult for European leaders to see, which path carries the best option for our continent, and the world.

---

Disclaimer:

The information contained herein is current as at the date of this entry.  The information presented here is considered reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed.  Changes may occur in the circumstances after the date of this entry and the information contained in this post may not hold true in the future.

No information contained in this entry should be construed as investment advice. GnS Economics nor Tuomas Malinen cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in the data presented. Readers should always consult their own personal financial or investment advisor before making any investment decision, and readers using this post do so solely at their own risk. 

Readers must make an independent assessment of the risks involved and of the legal, tax, business, financial or other consequences of their actions. GnS Economics nor Tuomas Malinen cannot be held i) responsible for any decision taken, act or omission; or ii) liable for damages caused by such measures.

1. President Putin said this during an interview in the summer.

2. See also the interview of Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

3. I’ll write more on this later after I have had time to familiarize myself with the topic.