[1]
By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
For all its public talk, NATO has agreed on a secret six-month plan for Ukraine. It’s a case of do or die by December.
Either the Ukrainian forces, firing everything the NATO allies can give them — from US cluster munitions to Franco-English Storm Shadow missiles and German Leopard tanks — will gain territory and advantage over the Russians; or else the Kiev regime will be destroyed and must fall back on Lvov while NATO beats its own retreat westward from the Polish and Romanian borders — its military capabilities defeated but its Article Five intact.
This is hardly a secret. “Whatever is achieved by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation”, the Czech President Petr Pavel, former Czech and NATO army general, announced on the first day of the summit meetings in Vilnius [3]. There is no more than a six-month window of opportunity, Pavel added, which will “more or less close by the end of this year”. After that, “we will see another decline of willingness to massively support Ukraine with more weapons.”
The difference between the Czech’s “more or less” was explained to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky by Henry Kissinger on the telephone. But the telephone was rigged, and Kissinger was talking instead to the Stavka in Moscow, in the guise of the pranksters Vovan and Lexus [4].
After justifying himself at length for initially opposing NATO membership of the Ukraine, and then mispronouncing the word “anomalous”, Kissinger acknowledged there is a problem for the Biden Administration to combat European government opposition to NATO membership for the Ukraine. The Ukrainians must fight against that, too, he implied. So long as the US is backing Zelensky, it is necessary for the Ukrainian offensive to demonstrate small territorial advantages; abandon more ambitious ones (like Crimea); and only then agree to ceasefire talks. Although Kissinger told Zelensky he had been speaking with US “military people”, he gave no hint that they had warned him the Ukrainians are facing defeat on the battlefield, and the loss of both territory and European support.
The Russian General Staff calculation is different.
At the current rate of battlefield casualties – announced by the Defense Ministry counting conservatively — by December 31 the Ukrainian army will lose between 75,000 and 100,000 dead, and up to 300,000 wounded and out of combat. In parallel, the destruction of NATO weapons will accelerate faster than the NATO states can resupply and deliver them, or replacement parts to keep the surviving stock going at the front. By the time Russia’s General Winter takes control of the battlefield, there will be too few Ukrainian fighting men left, and insufficient weapons and ammunition, to resist the start of the Russian offensive. A demilitarized zone of mines and cluster bomblets will have taken shape over several hundred kilometres west of the surrendering Odessa, Nikolaev, and Kharkov; they will abandon Kiev when Kiev abandons them.
The Russian target then will be to drive what remains of the Ukrainian regime, its flags, tattoos, money, and stay-behind terrorism plans, into an enclave around Lvov. The NATO window, as General Pavel called it, will have been opened, but then will be closed to keep NATO itself from catching cold.
One of the unreported outcomes of the Wagner mutiny, and of the June 29 meeting in Moscow between President Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin [5], is Putin’s commitment to fight for nothing short of the Ukraine’s rout to Lvov, and the NATO retreat westward in the footsteps of the Grande Armée and the Wehrmacht. This too is incomprehensible at NATO headquarters.
The text of the 22-page, 90-paragraph agreement [6] by the NATO allies declares at the penultimate, 89th paragraph that “NATO remains the strongest Alliance in history. As in the past, we will stand the test of time in safeguarding the freedom and security of our Allies and contributing to peace and security.” To make this point less than wishful thinking, the earlier paragraphs keep the Ukraine out of the NATO alliance but with a verbal promise which makes the indefinite future tense appear to be the present tense.
“Ukraine’s future is in NATO. We reaffirm the commitment we made at the 2008 Summit in Bucharest [7] that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, and today we recognise that Ukraine’s path to full Euro-Atlantic integration has moved beyond the need for the Membership Action Plan.”
To get from the present to the future, the communiqué promises interoperability with NATO weapons management, and joint command-and-control for warfighting against Russia (China too). “Allies will continue to support and review Ukraine’s progress on interoperability as well as additional democratic and security sector reforms that are required. NATO Foreign Ministers will regularly assess progress through the adapted Annual National Programme. The Alliance will support Ukraine in making these reforms on its path towards future membership.”
“We have decided to establish the NATO-Ukraine Council, a new joint body where Allies and Ukraine sit as equal members to advance political dialogue, engagement, cooperation, and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. It will provide for joint consultations, decision-making, and activities [sic], and will also serve as a crisis consultation mechanism between NATO and Ukraine.”
The impact is pushing the NATO allies to withdraw back over the Vistula and Oder Rivers towards Berlin and Paris with this admission: “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.” They don’t agree now. The conditions will not be met, cannot be met, if and when – after the coming winter — the capitulation of the Ukrainian armed forces will have been conceded, and the retreat to Lvov begun, leaving the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and Novorossiya to the east.
French General Staff officers have been conceding this retreat by camouflaging [8] it as “not a French war, perhaps an American one”. According to another retired French general, Jean-Bernard Pinatel, “I absolutely do not believe in the success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive…the biggest disadvantage Ukraine faces is [not] so much the amount of military equipment, which by the way is not always of high quality, because the West supplies Kiev with outdated equipment. Ukraine’s greatest vulnerability is its people, or rather a lack of them. Its best fighters have long been dead [9].”
Retired German generals have been saying in public the same things on behalf of active service general staff officers in Berlin who remain under the gag of German government. Read them – retired Major General Harald Kujat here [10]; Vice Admiral Kai-Achim Schonbach [11]; and retired Brigadier General Erich Vad [12]. In order to make war on Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz are not only gagging their military leaders but also avoiding accountability and voting by the Assemblée National and the Bundestag.
On the front, the current daily casualty rate for Ukrainian forces, men and weapons, since July 1 looks like this:
UKRAINIAN LOSSES OF MEN AND ARMS IN THE FIRST WEEK OF JULY
[13]Source: http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/ [14]
If the daily loss of men averages 500 per day, and the rate of Ukrainian offensive operations continues, then by December 31, the Ukrainian losses will have totalled another 75,000 men. If the rate of attacks is escalated, and the number of killed in action (KIA) averages 715, as it did in the first week of this month, the total losses will reach 107,000. At that point the strategic reserves of men will have been exhausted.
The losses of tanks, other armoured vehicles, artillery and rocket launchers are also increasing at a faster rate than NATO can repair or replace. The new summit communiqué promises “to further step up political and practical support to Ukraine as it continues to defend its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders, and will continue our support for as long as it takes.” For as long as it takes is short because the time is running out for the Kiev regime; and its replacement in Lvov will have neither the space, the range, nor the manpower to recover the territory it has lost.
STRATEGIC RESERVES OF UKRAINE’S WEAPONS & NATO REPLENISHMENT,
[15]KEY: magenta=available at the beginning of the Special Military Operation, February 24, 2022; light blue=delivered since then by NATO and other western states; blue=promised for delivery by NATO and other states.
Source https://t.me/readovkanews/62281 [16] -- July 10, 2023
The Russian assessment, openly published [16] this week, is that “by the end of the year, Kiev will not have a strategic armoured reserve — the volume of foreign supplies to Ukraine is on the decline. It’s no secret that the combat capability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine [AFU] is based on the supply of shells and equipment from abroad. We have already analysed the schedule of what has been received, the costs and the losses of these operations, and we can see the culmination of these efforts [on the battlefield]. Enemy losses are heavy, and there is nothing to replace them with because deliveries cannot be made instantly.”
“About four to five months elapse between the period of active announcements of deliveries and the actual fact of the transfer of weapons to Kiev. Right now we are destroying tank columns whose armoured vehicles were promised for transfer at the very beginning of 2023. The nuance is that no additional deliveries were announced in the second quarter. Perhaps something will be announced at the NATO summit in Vilnius, but the arrival of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles will not happen before the beginning of 2024. In the event of failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian army will have an additional head-start.”
“If at least the 471 tanks promised by the West have already arrived in Ukraine, then only 286 are additionally expected, some of which will arrive no earlier than 2024. The situation is similar with infantry fighting vehicles and howitzers — more than two-thirds of the total planned deliveries have already been implemented, so there are practically no reserves left. Despite the fact that both what has already been delivered and what is expected to be delivered are inferior in quantity to the old Soviet equipment in service with Ukraine (we have not even taken into account the vehicles which can be cannibalized for parts or upgraded). The prospects are obvious — on the horizon of the next six months, the AFU will have no sources with which to replenish the thinned-out units. The balance of forces at the front may significantly shift in our favour.”
An American veteran with NATO service in Afghanistan adds: “Given NATO’s inability to make up for the Ukrainian materiel losses at the front, the bottom-of-the-barrel conscript base, and increasing Russian military proficiency across the board, we could very well see the move to establish a DMZ before the Fall is out.”
“From the volume of reports I read regarding Russian strikes on Ukrainian logistics hubs, storage and marshalling areas, I am amazed by how they are managing to maintain the current tempo of operations. This being said, the Ukrainians and their handlers seem to be doing a good job of keeping much information regarding shortages or disruptions quiet for public consumption. Yes, we get the word about the need for more of this or that weapons system, or ammunition, but reading reports from both sides, the shells, missiles, rockets, etc., continue to fly from the Ukrainian side at the Russian defence line with regularity – also with walking-dead lack of quality that seems to be limitless.”
“A clue to the effectiveness of Russian interdiction is the inability of the Ukrainians to concentrate powerful forces at any point to achieve a breakthrough. The concentration at Artemovsk [Bakhmut] provides some clues. There are more than sixty thousand Ukrainians and foreign legionnaires concentrated on that front. The composition is heavily mechanised and well-supported by artillery. They are constantly in action, constantly on the attack. And yet despite their being very menacing and able to bleed outnumbered Russian defenders, they’ve not achieved much while expending huge resources.”
“Looking at other sectors of the line, such as Zaporozhye and South Donbass, it appears that the attacks, while violent, don’t have the same level of strength or stamina. The Russians are confident enough to give ground, shell their abandoned trenches, force the Ukrainians to retreat or face slaughter, and repeat the process time and time again. The Ukrainians just don’t have the resources to suppress the Russians, press the attack, and make real gains. There are several reasons to explain this. Ammunition, fuel, spares, even food, may all be in shorter supply than anyone is reporting. Logistic routes and transportation may be compromised to the point where only segments of the front can be adequately supplied at any one time – a large part of this situation may be due to the lingering effects of the electric war. Russian strikes on the NATO command-and-control centres may be undermining the Ukrainian/NATO capacity to coordinate supply trains. This is a very under-reported aspect of the war.”
From New York the century-old Henry Kissinger has confirmed to the fake Zelensky that the Biden Administration wants the Ukrainian forces to demonstrate enough gains against the Russians to retain European country support, and not to risk ceasefire talks until the battlefield gains are in place; otherwise the Europeans will stop their support, and refuse to allow Ukraine’s admission into NATO.
[17]“Europe”, said [4] Kissinger, “has organised itself to defeat Russia and it would be anamalous [sic] if Finland and Sweden go into NATO but Ukraine, which has sacrificed so much, is not admitted into NATO… Ukraine will be a major country after the war, and after it is rebuilt, it should be in NATO…. We had a Bilderberg meeting…and it was very strange that the European countries that are fighting [Russia] — technically they are supporting you –at that meeting were not in favour of [Ukraine] going into NATO. I was… It will be difficult to engineer membership in NATO.”
Between ceasefire negotiations and final peace negotiations, Kissinger said [18] , “you [Zelensky] understand that after a ceasefire it will be very difficult to start the war again with total allied support… I believe the trend in America now is towards a ceasefire… I believe you will be able to conduct your current offensive with full support. I believe our people believe that you will not have total success, that you will regain some territory but not everything. That’s what I was told by military people.
NOTE ON THE LEAD IMAGE: the snake cut into pieces represented the thirteen original British colonies of America. The cartoon with the original caption, “Join or Die [19]”, was published in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin in 1754 as a call for unity among the colonies facing their indigenous and French adversaries. It then became the American colonial rallying cry in the war against the British.