alanjjohnstone
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You have a talent for responding only to certain points made.
Can you answer my message #237059 and present a class-based explanation rather than a Russian nationalist one.
As for Ritter, I can offer numerous former ex-military and advisors with far more experience that do possess insider access who would disagree with him. However, you automatically dismiss opinions that do not agree with your own pre-determined ones.
“He doesn’t need to have insider information to know what regiments, etc are where. It’s publicly accessible information.”
You over-simplify. Are you suggesting that neither NATO/Ukraine nor Russia require specialised intelligence departments with sophisticated spy technology and only require a public subscription to some media or academic outlets to know the enemy’s strength and dispositions, especially considering your put-down of Oryx website for using open-sourcing? Such double standards from yourself are to be expected.
A protester holding a rainbow flag and with a shirt saying “Respect For Iranian Women” on the back and “Save Ukraine” on the front of his shirt ran onto the pitch during Monday’s game between Portugal and Uruguay at the World Cup in Qatar.
Netanyahu appoints Avi Maoz, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Noam party, as a deputy minister, whose portfolio includes an office bolstering Jewish identity among Israelis. Maoz said the deal with Likud was the “first step in returning the soul to the country”.
Maoz, a Jewish fundamentalist and West Bank settler, is an outspoken opponent of LGBTQ+ rights and women serving in the military, and has voiced opposition to Arabs teaching Jewish students in Israeli schools. He has denied the legitimacy of non-Orthodox Judaism, including the Reform and Conservative movements, which are marginal in Israel but dominant in the US
This is in addition to a supporter of Zionist terrorism, Itamar Ben-Gvir, being given the security portfolio
Chinese state television has censored World Cup games to remove shots of maskless crowds to dampen the Covid lockdown protests
The market for illegally traded puppies is believed to be worth £13m.
Scotland’s prosecution service has warned puppy farming is a source of revenue for gang networks
Is it crystal ball reading when I said “…it is the workers who in the end pay the price.”
Or very basic Marxism?
This is a follow-up on my earlier claim that
“… workers are the source of wealth creation it will be us who eventually bear the burden…”The costs of war have to come from the increased extraction of surplus value from working people – economic exploitation of their work.
It is called the Marxist Labour Theory of Value.
And it applies equally to NATO countries as well as to Russia.
Hence my other prediction was that if the war keeps going authoritarianism will grow in Russia not because of civil or human rights but because of the necessity of the State to intensify the class war against Russian workers to appropriate more surplus value from them to make up the loss in profits from the expense of war.
That is not speculation. You forget that what underlies our views is always a socialist analysis, something you very much lack, simply because you don’t comprehend what Marx explains in the Communist Manifesto “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
The price of war is not just in workers’ blood but in their sweat and toil.
I’ve begun on the blogs to write “working people” more and more’
Not perfect, not fully Marxian, but sounds less ideological
“It can keep up current attrition rates for years if not decades.”
That is my fear which I have expressed several times – that it will indeed be a long war.
Even if a ceasefire is agreed, it will be broken and conflict resumed, then another ceasefire and again it is broken…and so on repeatedly.
Russia has the demographic advantage in population to sustain a forever-war but it will become more and more authoritarian.
Peace-seeking Ukrainians will eventually vote with their feet and join the diaspora that has now come into being. Russia won’t have de-nazified Ukraine, as the ultra-nationalists grow in power.
NATO will be stronger on Russia’s borders with Sweden and Finland joining and all its members increasing defence spending.
And the Donbass separatists will remain under siege.
The reliance on Nord Stream will become much less while America profits out of the LNG exports to Europe.
Russia’s war aims will not be achieved.
And as we say, it is the workers who in the end pay the price.
Stop lying to us
The head of the lower house of parliament’s defense committee, Andrei Kartapolov, warned Putin that he and the Kremlin should stop applauding Ukraine’s losses as if Russia is winning, and stop glossing over Russian defeats in Ukraine.
“The people know. Our people are not stupid,” Kartapolov said. “Stop lying.”
Retired Lt. Gen. Andrei Gurulev, a senior member of the lower house of Russian parliament said “It’s a problem of total lies and positive reports from top to bottom,” he said.
A 2017 article centred upon the political position of an American ex-president and an imagined scenario of a full-scale European theatre war.
How relevant is that today?
The fact that Russia had to mobilise 300,000 extra soldiers from its reserves shows that it never prepared for a long war nor expected such heavy casualties. That is a fact. And after almost 3 months it has still failed to deploy them to any extent to change the balance of the battle.
I did read today that Russia has brought up artillery and rockets in the South, to counter any attempt by Ukraine to advance beyond Kherson towards Crimea.
An offensive if it takes place is to the north on the Donbass front and there, as I said, it is trench warfare with artillery duels.
In your recent absence, I have posted on Scott Ritter’s lack of insider information from his time as an Iraq WMD expert.
Two decades out of the intelligence agencies loop, he has no more access to information than any other journalist, (perhaps even less as he is thought of as a pariah,) relying on what is in the public domain and in published research papers he read.
“Russia doesn’t pay much attention to propaganda.”
Of course not. That is why Putin had tea and biscuits with the mothers of soldiers. Nothing to do with PR, at all.
As I keep saying BOTH sides require constant replacement of used-up ammunition and lost equipment.
You are the one in total denial of such a basic fact, by imagining Russia has unlimited stocks. They can’t fit out reinforcements and you claim it is trivial.
Perhaps that is why Russia keeps denying it is receiving supplies from North Korea and Iran.
And you reduce such REAL logistic problems to having too few bandages.
This Special Military Operation was never intended by Russia to last so long. It should be re-named the Slow Motion Operation.
The initial Russian invasion was stopped because Ukraine succeeded in deploying very quickly the military aid it received from NATO.
You insist that it has all dried up and NATO countries cannot or will not provide further military aid. If Russia assumes the same as you, it will repeat its earlier miscalculation and mistake.I await the volleys of Russia’s hypersonic missiles as the signal for the anticipated offensive, once the 300,000 have got enough bandages. It won’t be too long now as the mud is now freezing up to permit the tanks to move. It will be all over by Christmas as they said in 1914.
Once again crocodile tears from you about the civilian toll. Previously you said it was unavoidable because of the dual-use of such infrastructure. Now you say the gloves are off, and infer civilians have become fair game because politicians won’t treat with one another.
From the horse’s mouth
“Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that there are issues with equipment for the hundreds of thousands of men being sent to fight in Ukraine under President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization decree. Peskov said a newly-formed council created by Putin is working on resolving problems with equipment.
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-equipment-weapons-shortage-peskov-soldiers-ukraine-1755057
Is Russia running low? The following article is a measured analysis (it too talks of mistaken estimates in the past)
Why do you dispute the obvious?
BOTH sides are using up an extraordinary amount of logistics, faster than they can be replaced. For BOTH sides there is a time lag in replacing them.
It is not me who predicts a short war and an imminent victorious Winter offensive by Russia but you.
Such a scenario becomes less likely.
From what I read, it is becoming much more of a trench war stalemate along much of the frontlines, reminiscent of WW1. And such warfare doesn’t involve missiles but artillery barrages to keep soldiers’ heads down.
For the stand-off to be broken an incredible use of weapons will need to be built up, and that will not go unnoticed by either side’s satellite spying.
Can Ukraine’s electric grid survive? We could see the possible delivery of all manner of diesel generators. I don’t see it being the war-winner some hope it might be. Necessity is the mother of invention. Ukraine will adapt and persevere. Neither its government or Russia’s really care about the toll on civilians, other than making propaganda capital.
Remove Trump and we still have De Santis
If DeSantis Wins 2024 Primary, It’s the Trump Nightmare With a Different Name
I know you will describe it as propaganda lies but the UK’S MOD suggests that Russia is indeed running low of weapons and are cannibalizing its supply of nuclear deterrent cruise missiles
Russia ‘having to reuse old 80s missiles with nuclear warheads removed’
The USA also possesses its plentiful stockpiles of relatively obsolete weapons.
America remains the arsenal of the world.
Putin can hope with a change in Congress, America’s will to support Ukraine is weakened.
As for the mounting cost of the Ukrainian refugees, the UK has been robbing Peter to pay Paul – the budget earmarked for general foreign aid is being diverted to the upkeep of Ukrainian refugees. The cost is being borne by the rest of the world’s undeveloped countries in need.
