The Russians executed a campaign of deep rocket strikes targetting the infrastructure of Western Ukraine. The (incomplete) list of results as of now, according to Intel Slava Z channel:

🇷🇺🇺🇦 The result of today’s missile strikes:

▪️The following cities were hit:

– Kiev

– Dnepropetrovsk

– Kharkiv

– Zaporozhye

– Ternopil

– Odessa

– Krivoy Rog

– Lviv

– Zhitomir

– Rivne

– Nikolaev

– Krapivnitsky

– Kremenchuk

– Konotop

▪️Strikes on important objects:

– Glavk SBU (Kiev)

– CHPP-5 (Kiev)

– CHPP-6 (Kiev)

– Lviv CHP (Lviv)

– Burshtynska TPP (Ivano-Frankivsk region)

– EU Advisory Mission (Kiev)

– Department of law enforcement agencies (Kiev)

▪️Metro in Kiev and Kharkov stopped

▪️Light gone:

– Lviv

– Zhitomir

– Sumy

– Kharkiv

– Khmelnitsky

– Poltava

– Ternopl

– Lutsk

– Rivne

▪️In many cities of Ukraine, there are problems with water supply and the Internet

Putin made a statement saying, basically, that this is a response to the Kerch bridge attack, and if anything similar happens (which, of course, it will), there will be a “significant military response”. This can’t be anything other than a preparatory move ahead of the great offensive, but the bridge attack served as a convenient explanation that avoids telegraphing the intent ahead of time. The delay between this and the ground assault can’t be too long, though.

I see this as a second phase of Russian offensive. The “light shafts towards the sky” disrupting satellites was the first. The third phase would be cutting down the Ukrainian forward positions now that the communications with NATO are disrupted, and the fourth phase would be to roll everything down with a massive ground assault once the teeth are pulled from the Ukrainian forces in the East, reducing Russian losses.

The Ukrainians just blew up the Kerch bridge to Crimea in a terrorist attack.

The Russians are extremely pissed off, to the point where pressure is really growing on Putin to either set the Western Ukraine on fire, or let it freeze, or both, in whichever order. This is going to get very ugly, very quickly, and I better make some popcorn.

To quote Intel Slava Z Telegram channel:

• Putin approved the ratification of the agreement on the admission of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions into the Russian Federation.
• Putin signed laws on the admission of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions into Russia (laws on the ratification of treaties on accession and federal constitutional laws on admission as subjects of the Federation).

This changed the situation significantly, in a sense that Russia is no longer ahead in the war, in a sense that it is occupying parts of Ukrainian territory. As things stand now, Ukraine is occupying significant portions of Russian territory, and basically the entirety of the war is now being fought inside the Russian Federation. This means that Russia is waging a war to liberate the Motherland for the first time since they kicked Hitler out. Ironically, that last one was also fought in Ukraine, against the Western occupiers helped by their local Banderist servants. We’re basically watching a re-run of the second world war, and the craziest part is that it isn’t a paintball game.

Now that Putin’s legalistic itch has been properly scratched, we can expect something along these lines:

• Russian forces reach their designated positions; this might be the actual reason why Putin took his time with the legalist part, because to move half a million people along with heavy weapons takes time, especially across such a vast territory. The fact that they seem to be almost done is a monument to their logistical skills.
• Putin will make a speech offering Ukraine negotiations for peace
• Ukraine will show him the middle finger
• Putin will ask Duma to declare war in order to liberate the Motherland from foreign invaders.
• War will be declared and Putin will be given war powers.
• The entire Ukraine will be covered by the kind of artillery fire we haven’t even dreamt of so far, in full depth, up to the Polish border. This will destroy all their barracks, railroad tracks and terminals, airports, electrical grid, communications and so on, throwing Ukraine into a dark, cold silence. American satellites coordinating the Ukraine war will go silent.
• Hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, along with heavy weaponry, will cross the border, and the gates of hell will open for the Ukrainian troops. Odessa and Kharkov will be taken, Kiev will be struck with immense force and fall within days, and the Western Ukraine around Lviv will be on fire.
• Absolute panic will take place in NATO command centres, and they will be faced with a choice of either going in and risk being struck at depth by Russia, or watch as they lose their entire anti-Russia campaign. With all the propaganda going on, I expect the former.
• NATO will find some excuse to strike Russia at depth.
• Ramstein base and, likely, NATO headquarters, are burning holes in the ground. NATO loses everything they have in Poland and Germany. Everything that participated in anti-Russian war in Ukraine, meaning all the command and control centres in Europe, is on fire.
• Americans launch a single low-yield nuclear device hitting Russian defence ministry building in Moscow.
• Russia retaliates by eliminating the entire American and British military with nuclear strikes.
• A few American nuclear sites launch at Russia and China. Russia eliminates 90% of the warheads, but some get through to Moscow, St.Petersburg, Vladivostok and other major centres. Some Chinese major military installations and cities are destroyed.
• Russia retaliates by destroying American cities, with full force. 200M Americans die within 30 minutes. All British major cities are also destroyed. China launches everything they have at America, Britain and Australia, for good measure, stirring the dust over the glass parking lots.
• And only then, without power, fertilisers, agriculture, refrigeration and modern medicine, things start going really bad. The largest number of fatalities happen during the next five years. Mankind loses the position of influence over the future of the world, and their own fate, as technosphere degrades and is lost.
• Somewhere in the near future, the interglacial period ends, and the last remaining Homo Sapiens species goes extinct.
• Since the passage between Antarctica and Chile remains open, Earth continues cooling and we have the first global glaciation in 500M years, ending the period that started with the Cambrian explosion of life. Most of life on land is extinct. I don’t know how total glaciation affects the sea life, but I don’t expect ice blocking sunlight from reaching sea plants to be good for the food chain. Also, I don’t expect all the CO2 being dissolved into water to be good, either.

The good part is that Greta won’t be there to bitch about the CO2.

When I want to find out what America is planning to do, I listen what they are warning people of others wanting to do. For instance, when they warned of Russia going into Ukraine, they were actually amassing troops on the border with Donbass, intending to wipe out its Russian population and potentially going into Russia, to which the Russians responded by amassing troops on their border in return, which was seen as the “proof” of what Americans were “warning” about. It’s easy to be a prophet that way, if you’re actually causing the problem.

Also, Americans were harping about “enemies” attacking critical infrastructure, such as the underwater cables, pipelines and so on, and what did they themselves do? They blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, and who knows what else is in the works.

Now they are warning about Russia using tactical nukes in Ukraine, as if that makes any sense whatsoever, because that’s what a desperately losing side would consider. And then it clicked: of course, they are the desperately losing side. The Russians are preparing an enormous force that will go into Ukraine and be done with its military in short order – no more “special military operation”, this will be an actual war, and Ukraine has barely any military left as it is. Facing with the complete destruction of their puppet, and with potential Russian attacks on their other puppets in Poland and other places, they would detonate a small nuclear weapon (probably something they acquired on the Russian black market in the 1990s, so that they could deny involvement when the isotopes are examined) and then they would have an excuse to strike Russia with something nuclear but limited, thinking it’s a “warning”. Of course, the Russians according to their doctrine respond to this by a full, unlimited nuclear retaliation against America and all its allies. Russia doesn’t have an “escalate to deescalate” doctrine; that’s American invention. Russia has a doctrine of “launch everything if a nuke went off on our territory”.

They are already preparing their population for the nuclear option:

Considering how the Western economies are on the precipice right now, and I am seeing precursors of total economic collapse for several years already, the kind of collapse Soviet Union had in the 1990s, I would take this very seriously, because hiding their own collapse behind a nuclear exchange, which they plan on surviving better than everybody else, is something I’ve been perceiving as an undercurrent of American strategy since 2014.

The Russians haven’t been happy with the withdrawal from the Kharkov region and the loss of Izyum, and this wasn’t forgotten just because Putin decided to absorb four new regions into the RF. They perceive this special military operation as lackluster, indecisive, taking too long, leaving Ukraine in too good a position, including being able to hit Russia and kill/intimidate Russians, and they are very angry.

This is because the people in Russia perceive this SMO in a way that doesn’t necessarily have much in common with Putin’s perception. They perceive Ukraine, they pay attention to every little piece of land changing hands and if they think there has been a setback, they will find someone to blame. If Russians withdrew from Bucha or Izyum, and then Russians got slaughtered by the Ukrops, they see this as a betrayal, as leaving our guys at the mercy of those bastards.

Putin, on the other hand, constantly thinks in terms of “if I do this, and it escalates to the point of a nuclear exchange, and all the cities in Russia are nuked, will you still thank me for being decisive and not allowing Donbass to be exposed to attacks”? The people of Russia see a little girl being killed by the Ukrainians and think Putin is to blame because he didn’t hit Ukraine hard enough and fast enough. Putin thinks “will you still think saving this girl was worth it if I get 50 million Russians killed doing it?”

What do I think? I think Putin’s conciliatory stance and measured approach don’t work, because he’s not dealing with a rational opponent. He’s dealing with power-addicted crazy people who behave like street thugs. If you try not to provoke him, it means you’re weak and you fear him, and he’s going to bully you harder. If you stand up to him, it means you’re a threat and he needs to fight and defeat you to prove his dominance. At the very moment Putin decided to make Russia strong, and not a slave to the West, he set it on a course that must put it in a military conflict with America. Trying to avoid it only emboldens the enemy, who thinks you fear them. Trying to stand your ground immediately triggers a dominance fight. It’s no wonder Americans are so obsessed with the stupid ideas such as being an “alpha male”, and with “body language” that needs to show decisiveness and dominance. They think in instinctual, animalistic terms, and see themselves as a pack of wolves or something. I think this is because they implicitly assume that they are invincible in any kind of a conventional conflict, and nuclear war is “unthinkable”, which is somehow interpreted as “only we are allowed to do it, and nobody else would dare”. Basically, the Americans use amygdala instead of the frontal cortex. They don’t like complicated ideas and long articles; they like sound-bites that provoke decisive action.

If you are careful not to give Americans too much of a bloody nose, in order not to make them feel like they have to escalate, they will see you as weak and scared. If you give them a bloody nose, they will immediately think about the nukes. So, how to find a middle path between conceding to serfdom, and having nuclear mutual annihilation? That’s what Putin is trying to navigate. He knows that America is actually weakening as a function of time, and if he could only wait long enough, their economy would lose the ability to power their military, which is intentionally designed to be high-maintenance in order to continuously siphon money into the military-industrial complex. Everything actually costs more to maintain than to purchase. If there’s no money to siphon, things degrade very quickly. However, I just don’t see America going quietly into the night if they have the option to destroy the world first.

The advantage of Putin’s approach, compared with something more sudden and decisive, is that it gives Russia time to adapt and strengthen, and come to terms with the realities of the situation, because a significant percentage of Russians only slowly came to understand that the West is not their friend, and that they are actually hated and seen with contempt. Also, it gives the west time to weaken by bleeding conventional military forces in Ukraine, and by showing weaknesses of their economic and energy policies. These things take time, and you don’t want to attack the enemy too suddenly if they are already making mistakes that will make them weaker in the future.

The bitter pill to swallow is that it’s going to get worse, but there’s an advantage to gradual worsening of the situation, compared to having “business as usual” followed by nuclear destruction; people get to experience the direction things are going, and they get to think about whether they really want to go all the way in that direction. The problem is, I don’t think people decide anything in the West; the political class talks about democracy a lot, but I don’t think that word means what they think it means.