NATO might be willing to test Putin’s patience by crossing yet another of Russia’s perceived red lines in spite of its updated nuclear doctrine and new Oreshniks.
Hopefully Russia still has the bulk of the mobilized/recruited forces on the side. My layman's envelope calculation is 6 corps at the front line, the equivalent of 3 division for combat forces, add one for direct combat support, add another one for logistic support, and add one for airforce, navy, national guard support for each Corp. That would be between 360k to 540k. There is a chance that 300k remains undeployed. However, all other fronts have been stretched thin. For example, Marine brigades from Kaliningrad, Baltics, Pacific, and Black Sea fleets have all participated in battle. I don't think they have been sent back to reset. Even if the intelligence estimate could have been a Western plant, Russia still has to prepare. Maybe a "pretext" for a new round of call-up? Hopefully not. The way forward, it seems more ground troop no longer carries the decisive role it once carried. It is the industrial might and precision manufacturing need extra protection, and contingency plans for western false-flags. Alex Krainer and others have reported security camera black-out in London.
Also I wonder why SVR has been in the news so often lately? I don't remember SVR in the news limelight so often in the past.
You're right, SVR used to stay out of the public eye prior to the SMO, and it's only over the past 6 months or a year tops if my memory serves that it's begun publishing regular press releases.
Does anyone believe that Putin would fall for Minsk 3? He and everyone in Russia knows that if he freezes the war then they would be fighting a bigger one down the road.
Besides Russia is close to meeting one of its goals so why would he freeze the war? Plus this new weapon gives him a huge advantage.
Poland may end up with piece of Ukraine, but only if Russia gives it to them. Otherwise the Poles better put on their war gear and go out to die. they lack the power to pull off such a stunt and they know it.
Poland doesn't need to control the land and it doesn't want responsibility for the at least several million remaining Ukrainians in that part of the country, who are known to be the most "nationalist" in the country.
All that it wants is a sphere of economic influence from which it can reap lucrative business deals for its companies. Poles already have practically equal rights in Ukraine as the latter's citizens do per prior agreements and can already freely visit historic cultural sites so there's no reason to annex anything.
then Poland should stay home. Even our Polish friend who shared Thanksgiving with us, a fervent Pole and Russophobe, is angry about the attempt to get a world war going. Nobody wants a war with Russia. This shit has to end, because the Ukrainians are turning up all around the world with their drones and their corruption.
When Russia had seriously began its anti-ISIS operations for the first time in Syria, Turkey trecherously got its regular Turkish Army troops stationed in northern Syria, to shoot down a Russian airplane which had been flying on reconnaisance sortie for humanitarian rescue work, and then butchered the pilot in cold blood after capturing him after his ejection. Another Russian warplane was ambushed and shot down by Turkish NATO jets by firing missiles from the Turkish side of the border. Russia had erred on the side of restraint and posed too much trust in Erdogan's words, so much so that it had thrown caution to winds and failed to equip those planes with Vympel anti-aircraft missiles. And the European mainstream press broke this news by pretending as if the Turkish troops who downed those planes were not troops at all, but some previously unheard of "ethnic Turkoman dissidents native to northern Syria".
Moreover, this MSM added its observation accusing Russia of trying to provoke NATO by incursions into Turkish territory and testing NATO's patience and willingness to activate Article 5 of collective defence. Fine, so has Israel been "testing" Syria's Russian security providers by having mounted 1000 plus unprovojed bombing sorties into Syria, and Turkey by its innumerable punitive military expeditions into Syrian kurdistan. There are those in western MSM who urge Russia to chicken out at all tmes, saying Russia will lose support of countries like India if it provokes a major escalation. To put the record straight, except for some non majoritarian albeit influential priestcrafty untouchability-monger Dravidian racists, the general sentiment amonst Aryan Indians has always been aligned with Russia without a shred of doubt, as an article of faith and there are no indications that Aryan India will alter the most fundamental tenets of its self consistent world view just to propitate some fringe Dravidian weirdos. If anything, it is power projection that speaks without need for rabble rousing, and once the world order has drastically changed consequent upon intrepid first strike initiatives from Russian side, all preexisting incentives that motivate Russia's detractors even in places such as India, will evaporate in thin air. Their western sponsors will have become history, and no longer in possession of any resources to be able to bribe them.
The idea that NATO would bring 100k troops into Ukr is crazy. That's not happening. IMO, there are three things Russia needs to watch out for from the nutbar neocons (esp those in Wash DC and the UK):
1/ Assassination of a Russian official or officials;
2/ False flag somewhere in Europe; or
3/ Nuclear first strike.
Apart from those, I dont see any realistic way for the west to escalate without experiencing the same fate as General Custer. They are out of cards. Putin mocked them in his latest speech, which was highly amusing. He's a great man, who's going to go down in history as one of Russia's greatest leaders. Wish we had leaders with a fraction of his ability. Unfortunately, we're stuck on a ship of fools.
I believe President Putin and the vast majority of the Russian People are mentally prepared for that highly likely possibility and then the SMO, Special Military Operation will forcefully, necessarily evolve into a full fledged conventional war, since it would be happening in a non-NATO country, and President Putin will feel free (mentally and legslly) to unleash all the power of its conventional military might to crush ASAP that Gang of countries so willing and hell-bent on destroying Russia, to plunder its fantastic energy and mineral resources.
No more Russian Armed Forces fighting with one hand tied in the back, following Putin’s strict orders to minimize civilian casulaties and damage to basic infrastructure, and also unleashing the full conventional power of the Air Force to bombard NATO’s troop concentrations and ammunition depots…
Combined of course with the now standard all kinds of missiles+drones+heavy artillery combined forces.
I guess a sweet feeling of revenge for so many decades of hatred, lack of respect and aggressive behaviour against the Russian People.
Why are NATO troops in Ukraine not a legitimate target for Russia? Given NATO's role in attacking Russia with long range weapons, it has made itself a legitimate target.
Setting the training centers doesn't risk WW3; hitting them would.
Undoing the Dnieper bridges had not to be done: it would have risked WW3. Using a "peace contingent" to occupy as far East as the Dnieper? That may well be done; why? Because it doesn't risk sparking WW3.
All bridges on Dnieper and Bug rivers must be destroyed plus all roads and trains rails. I also said that embassies of finland, sweden, estonia, latvia, lithuania, germany, denmark, norway, uk, holland, france, israhell, us and canada in kijev. Otherwise Russia will be destroyed
I've already explained how I don't see a pathway for Russia to completely demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.
Even if they attack intervening NATO troops in Ukraine, I don't think that Russia will go nuclear, but would agree to a de-escalation deal after a brinksmanship crisis.
It can tolerate a militarized and nazified Ukraine west of the Dnieper. It won't like it, and another conflict will likely follow after some time, but it's not worth World War III.
I haven't seen anything to indicate that Russia is willing to risk its own destruction by American nukes in pursuit of that maximalist goal.
I'd be pleasantly surprised if they achieve it without a brinksmanship crisis, but I'm not getting my hopes up because I simply don't see the realistic pathway for that.
How do you think they can do that? Assuming that NATO might conventionally intervene if Russia crosses the Dnieper to keep them away from the bloc's eastern borders?
Any kinetic exchange will immediately lead to a brinksmanship crisis, and that'll either only end with nuclear armegeddon or a compromise deal.
Do you maybe think that NATO will withdraw after getting bombed by Russia? Or that they'll fight a strictly non-nuclear land and missile war, and Russia will win?
If the second, what makes you so certain that it wouldn't escalate to credible nuclear threats considering that strategic stability planning has been based on that for decades?
"Do you maybe think that NATO will withdraw after getting bombed by Russia?"
It depends on the severity of the first strike: if a high enough proportion of NATO resources can be neutralised, so there's no realistic hope of continuing without resorting to nuclear weapons, I think that would be Russia's best chance. You seemed surprised and dismayed Russia had neither neutralised the (easy) Dniepr crossings, nor struck already-obvious NATO logistic hubs in the Western Ukrainian or Moldova. Wouldn't it be strategically advantageous to have as much NATO investment in targets as possible, rather than offering 'warning shots'? Softball and hardball are two different games. Certainly, if it weren't directed by mentally/emotionally (and often obese and therefore physically) ill and unstable leaders, NATO would have withdrawn long ago... So, there is that. Надежда умерает последней.
"...what makes you so certain that it wouldn't escalate to credible nuclear threats considering that strategic stability planning has been based on that for decades?"
Nothing whatsoever (makes me certain). The combatants' health and stability, however, I believe offers the most telling insight: if the stability and health of the American nation is spiralling out of control to the extent they've felt the need to appoint someone so obviously suffering from NPD as their ultimate representative, there's little can be done to ameliorate that. The best way to minimalise the damage caused by (mentally/emotinally) disturbed people, threatening to harm others, is to be calm and wait for the be best moment to disarm then. Надежда умерает последней.
What made the elites turn back in Vietnam? There was little to gain.
As far as NATO, Goering had a certain practical experience in such matters.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Hopefully Russia still has the bulk of the mobilized/recruited forces on the side. My layman's envelope calculation is 6 corps at the front line, the equivalent of 3 division for combat forces, add one for direct combat support, add another one for logistic support, and add one for airforce, navy, national guard support for each Corp. That would be between 360k to 540k. There is a chance that 300k remains undeployed. However, all other fronts have been stretched thin. For example, Marine brigades from Kaliningrad, Baltics, Pacific, and Black Sea fleets have all participated in battle. I don't think they have been sent back to reset. Even if the intelligence estimate could have been a Western plant, Russia still has to prepare. Maybe a "pretext" for a new round of call-up? Hopefully not. The way forward, it seems more ground troop no longer carries the decisive role it once carried. It is the industrial might and precision manufacturing need extra protection, and contingency plans for western false-flags. Alex Krainer and others have reported security camera black-out in London.
Also I wonder why SVR has been in the news so often lately? I don't remember SVR in the news limelight so often in the past.
You're right, SVR used to stay out of the public eye prior to the SMO, and it's only over the past 6 months or a year tops if my memory serves that it's begun publishing regular press releases.
Is a victory of Georgescu in Romania at all possible? It looks like they already started a coup Moldova-style.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/romanian-election-could-be-rerun-official-says-2024-11-29/
Does anyone believe that Putin would fall for Minsk 3? He and everyone in Russia knows that if he freezes the war then they would be fighting a bigger one down the road.
Besides Russia is close to meeting one of its goals so why would he freeze the war? Plus this new weapon gives him a huge advantage.
Poland may end up with piece of Ukraine, but only if Russia gives it to them. Otherwise the Poles better put on their war gear and go out to die. they lack the power to pull off such a stunt and they know it.
Poland doesn't need to control the land and it doesn't want responsibility for the at least several million remaining Ukrainians in that part of the country, who are known to be the most "nationalist" in the country.
All that it wants is a sphere of economic influence from which it can reap lucrative business deals for its companies. Poles already have practically equal rights in Ukraine as the latter's citizens do per prior agreements and can already freely visit historic cultural sites so there's no reason to annex anything.
then Poland should stay home. Even our Polish friend who shared Thanksgiving with us, a fervent Pole and Russophobe, is angry about the attempt to get a world war going. Nobody wants a war with Russia. This shit has to end, because the Ukrainians are turning up all around the world with their drones and their corruption.
Nobody will ask Poles what they want.
I guess you mean even in Poland. Well, welcome to the global club of people with unresponsive governments.
Especially not in Poland.
Napoleon tried moving a peace keeping force toward Russia. What happened?
When Russia had seriously began its anti-ISIS operations for the first time in Syria, Turkey trecherously got its regular Turkish Army troops stationed in northern Syria, to shoot down a Russian airplane which had been flying on reconnaisance sortie for humanitarian rescue work, and then butchered the pilot in cold blood after capturing him after his ejection. Another Russian warplane was ambushed and shot down by Turkish NATO jets by firing missiles from the Turkish side of the border. Russia had erred on the side of restraint and posed too much trust in Erdogan's words, so much so that it had thrown caution to winds and failed to equip those planes with Vympel anti-aircraft missiles. And the European mainstream press broke this news by pretending as if the Turkish troops who downed those planes were not troops at all, but some previously unheard of "ethnic Turkoman dissidents native to northern Syria".
Moreover, this MSM added its observation accusing Russia of trying to provoke NATO by incursions into Turkish territory and testing NATO's patience and willingness to activate Article 5 of collective defence. Fine, so has Israel been "testing" Syria's Russian security providers by having mounted 1000 plus unprovojed bombing sorties into Syria, and Turkey by its innumerable punitive military expeditions into Syrian kurdistan. There are those in western MSM who urge Russia to chicken out at all tmes, saying Russia will lose support of countries like India if it provokes a major escalation. To put the record straight, except for some non majoritarian albeit influential priestcrafty untouchability-monger Dravidian racists, the general sentiment amonst Aryan Indians has always been aligned with Russia without a shred of doubt, as an article of faith and there are no indications that Aryan India will alter the most fundamental tenets of its self consistent world view just to propitate some fringe Dravidian weirdos. If anything, it is power projection that speaks without need for rabble rousing, and once the world order has drastically changed consequent upon intrepid first strike initiatives from Russian side, all preexisting incentives that motivate Russia's detractors even in places such as India, will evaporate in thin air. Their western sponsors will have become history, and no longer in possession of any resources to be able to bribe them.
The idea that NATO would bring 100k troops into Ukr is crazy. That's not happening. IMO, there are three things Russia needs to watch out for from the nutbar neocons (esp those in Wash DC and the UK):
1/ Assassination of a Russian official or officials;
2/ False flag somewhere in Europe; or
3/ Nuclear first strike.
Apart from those, I dont see any realistic way for the west to escalate without experiencing the same fate as General Custer. They are out of cards. Putin mocked them in his latest speech, which was highly amusing. He's a great man, who's going to go down in history as one of Russia's greatest leaders. Wish we had leaders with a fraction of his ability. Unfortunately, we're stuck on a ship of fools.
I believe President Putin and the vast majority of the Russian People are mentally prepared for that highly likely possibility and then the SMO, Special Military Operation will forcefully, necessarily evolve into a full fledged conventional war, since it would be happening in a non-NATO country, and President Putin will feel free (mentally and legslly) to unleash all the power of its conventional military might to crush ASAP that Gang of countries so willing and hell-bent on destroying Russia, to plunder its fantastic energy and mineral resources.
No more Russian Armed Forces fighting with one hand tied in the back, following Putin’s strict orders to minimize civilian casulaties and damage to basic infrastructure, and also unleashing the full conventional power of the Air Force to bombard NATO’s troop concentrations and ammunition depots…
Combined of course with the now standard all kinds of missiles+drones+heavy artillery combined forces.
I guess a sweet feeling of revenge for so many decades of hatred, lack of respect and aggressive behaviour against the Russian People.
Great motivation !!!
Thanks for this piece. We summarized and translated it into Swedish:
https://newsvoice.se/2024/12/nato-intervention-i-ukraina/
Why are NATO troops in Ukraine not a legitimate target for Russia? Given NATO's role in attacking Russia with long range weapons, it has made itself a legitimate target.
Setting the training centers doesn't risk WW3; hitting them would.
Undoing the Dnieper bridges had not to be done: it would have risked WW3. Using a "peace contingent" to occupy as far East as the Dnieper? That may well be done; why? Because it doesn't risk sparking WW3.
:)
The term "WW3" is vacuous.
Where are these troops going to land or enter Ukraine ? It’s not going to happen and if attempted it will fail.
This is the result of Russian indecision and dithering.
All bridges on Dnieper and Bug rivers must be destroyed plus all roads and trains rails. I also said that embassies of finland, sweden, estonia, latvia, lithuania, germany, denmark, norway, uk, holland, france, israhell, us and canada in kijev. Otherwise Russia will be destroyed
That Russia did not destroy those bridges on the first day of the war simply shows that the Russian leadership did not take this war seriously.
"...the most realistic best-case scenario for Russia."
Depends on how you look at it, which side you're on.
I've already explained how I don't see a pathway for Russia to completely demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.
Even if they attack intervening NATO troops in Ukraine, I don't think that Russia will go nuclear, but would agree to a de-escalation deal after a brinksmanship crisis.
It can tolerate a militarized and nazified Ukraine west of the Dnieper. It won't like it, and another conflict will likely follow after some time, but it's not worth World War III.
I haven't seen anything to indicate that Russia is willing to risk its own destruction by American nukes in pursuit of that maximalist goal.
I'd be pleasantly surprised if they achieve it without a brinksmanship crisis, but I'm not getting my hopes up because I simply don't see the realistic pathway for that.
How do you think they can do that? Assuming that NATO might conventionally intervene if Russia crosses the Dnieper to keep them away from the bloc's eastern borders?
Any kinetic exchange will immediately lead to a brinksmanship crisis, and that'll either only end with nuclear armegeddon or a compromise deal.
Do you maybe think that NATO will withdraw after getting bombed by Russia? Or that they'll fight a strictly non-nuclear land and missile war, and Russia will win?
If the second, what makes you so certain that it wouldn't escalate to credible nuclear threats considering that strategic stability planning has been based on that for decades?
"Do you maybe think that NATO will withdraw after getting bombed by Russia?"
It depends on the severity of the first strike: if a high enough proportion of NATO resources can be neutralised, so there's no realistic hope of continuing without resorting to nuclear weapons, I think that would be Russia's best chance. You seemed surprised and dismayed Russia had neither neutralised the (easy) Dniepr crossings, nor struck already-obvious NATO logistic hubs in the Western Ukrainian or Moldova. Wouldn't it be strategically advantageous to have as much NATO investment in targets as possible, rather than offering 'warning shots'? Softball and hardball are two different games. Certainly, if it weren't directed by mentally/emotionally (and often obese and therefore physically) ill and unstable leaders, NATO would have withdrawn long ago... So, there is that. Надежда умерает последней.
"...what makes you so certain that it wouldn't escalate to credible nuclear threats considering that strategic stability planning has been based on that for decades?"
Nothing whatsoever (makes me certain). The combatants' health and stability, however, I believe offers the most telling insight: if the stability and health of the American nation is spiralling out of control to the extent they've felt the need to appoint someone so obviously suffering from NPD as their ultimate representative, there's little can be done to ameliorate that. The best way to minimalise the damage caused by (mentally/emotinally) disturbed people, threatening to harm others, is to be calm and wait for the be best moment to disarm then. Надежда умерает последней.
Check this article out, I think it highlights the main areas of contention any peacekeeping force would experience.
NATO's Phantom Armies.
And the ghost of Carl von Clausewitz.
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/natos-phantom-armies
Thanks for recommending this article. It answers practically all the questions I had stemming from the Korybko one.
Nobody will ask western populations what they want
The US could continue indefinitely in Vietnam. The US elites decided that it wasn't worth it..
NATO sees the War On Russia as more existential.
What made the elites turn back in Vietnam? There was little to gain.
As far as NATO, Goering had a certain practical experience in such matters.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."