I am looking through several scenarios here. It would take me a long time to dump all of it into a written form, so I’ll just do an abbreviated version.

Low-probability option, war fizzles out because America runs out of time, and Pentagon decides against the nuclear option for some reason. Funding for the CIA political control projects worldwide runs dry due to total economic collapse. The opposition to the installed and controlled politicians and media grows and grass-roots political options form, but the populace is mentally and emotionally weakened by the Internet hypnosis and is not capable of reversing the fatal economic trends quickly enough to avoid collapse. Welfare financing of Muslims and Africans in Europe ceases due to economic collapse, and they enter a state of perpetual riot outside of the rule of law. Collapse of the petrochemical industry leads to the collapse of the food supply, energetic sector and transportation. America and Europe descend into chaos, with various degrees of kinetic conflict and a paradoxical combination of anarchy and totalitarianism. Russia pacifies Ukraine, and it turns out that without America, all the current hot-spots of conflict suddenly cease to be a problem. Israel is in a desperate situation of either brokering a harmful peace or being destroyed. China replaces the USA with the rest of the world as a market, but the volume of trade scales down significantly due to deindustrialization and impoverishment of the major centres. Taiwan was only ever a problem because of America. Japan suffers a terrible economic collapse. South Korea reintegrates with the North. America and Europe are violent, poor, vicious shitholes sidelined by history.

Low probability option, war escalates to the point of ten million dead but then shock and panic force America to de-escalate. Russia establishes total victory in Ukraine. Poland enters the conflict with 300k troops. Russia responds with an extremely vicious counter-attack, inflicting over 70% casualties on NATO within the first week. American bases in Poland and Germany are destroyed. America responds by attempting a decapitation attack against Russian leadership. This results in several high military officers killed, and the Russians respond by destroying the entirety of American military with nuclear strikes. All the Ohio nuclear submarines are sunk, all the shipyards are destroyed, all the military bases are destroyed, all the aircraft carriers are sunk, CIA HQ and Pentagon are destroyed, America launches an attempted nuclear response, Russia takes down 90% of the ICBMs, Russia loses several major bases and industrial cities. Russia issues an ultimatum, requesting American unconditional surrender or total nuclear retaliation will ensue. Since most of the Russian nuclear forces are intact and most of American nuclear forces are destroyed, America stands down and surrenders.

Extremely low probability option, something unexpected happens and disrupts everybody’s plans – supervolcano, aliens, asteroid, supernova, extreme onset of the ice age or whatever. Since the parameters are unknown, precise modelling isn’t possible.

High probability option, same as above but the Russians are more heavily compromised and shaken, and launch total nuclear retaliation without even attempting a political outcome. Several hundred warheads of 100kT or above pepper American cities, industrial and military installations. Tens of millions dead within days, hundreds of millions dead within the year. Russia and China lost most military and industrial installations and all major cities. UK is completely devastated and its population dies off. Several major points in Europe suffer the same fate. Total collapse of the Internet, total collapse of world trade and finances. Predictive ability past this point lost due to chaos.

Cumulative probability of “good outcomes” is below 10%, but those include totalitarian governmental/corporate/AI control over the populace and a complete loss of freedom, so “good outcomes” might be a misnomer. Probability of Western economic collapse within the timeframe of 5 years is over 99%. Probability of Western civilization recovering to pre-2019 normal is zero. Probability of nuclear exchange within the timeframe of a year is over 80%. Probability of nuclear exchange within a month is over 20%, but then starts growing as several parameters simultaneously converge to the critical points. The main critical point is the collapse of American control over the global economy, and resultant loss of American military budget, creating a “use it or lose it” situation for the people behind this entire mess. In this scenario, it is over 90% likely for them to use the nuclear option to degrade the rest of the world and give the collapsed America a chance of recovering ahead of others, according to the original plan. The likelihood of them proceeding with the plan is exceedingly high because we’ve been living in this scenario since at least 2008, and likely longer.

America (but I can’t eliminate the possibility that sources of power in UK, Israel and elsewhere participate in the problem) still controls the entire roadmap, but approaches the point where they aggravate other actors to the point of no return.

Probability of the sudden global glaciation is showing a non-null percentage within the timeframe of a century, so that too is a “dark horse” to be mindful of. This is due to extreme winter events in North America and indications of permafrost melting in Siberia, which indicates climate approaching the conditions in the last glacial phase. Also, the Sun has been acting strangely, departing from its usual 11-year cycle, which still doesn’t feature significantly in my analysis but it’s something I’m keeping an eye on.

I frequently see Western press qualify the war in Ukraine as Russian aggression, where Ukraine is seen as the “good guys” based solely on the premise that the war is waged on their territory which they are defending.

Strangely, I would have normally accepted such a premise without much discussion, because in the assumption that one side is peaceful and the other side invades it, the invader is the bad guy. However, in the case of Ukraine, you need to have a really short memory and attention span for that to make any kind of sense.

Let’s see what the territory actually is, historically. The entire war is waged deeply within the confines of the Russian empire. Also, the entire war is waged deeply within the confines of the Soviet Union. The war is waged by NATO forces against the forces of the Russian federation, at the territory that was formerly Soviet Union. By those standards, this is a military and political aggression of the West against Russia, waged by hybrid information/political/military means, at the territory that is historically Russian. Suddenly, the term “aggression” changes direction.

“But wait”, you will say, “Ukraine is a sovereign and independent state”. No, it isn’t. First of all, validity of its statehood is questionable since it was declared contrary to the wishes of the people declared on the 1991 referendum. 71.4% voted to remain in the union with Russia. Let’s compare this to the results of Slovenian and Croatian referendums for independence from Yugoslavia, where over 90% voted for independence. There is an obvious difference, and therein lies my first objection to Ukrainian statehood – it is illegitimate, declared against the wishes of the people by a nationalist political clique with their own agenda. My second objection is that the Maidan coup in 2014 basically ended the existence of Ukraine as a political entity with any kind of legitimacy. Since then, it has been a fascist shithole under complete American control, with North Korea-like brainwashing of the populace, teaching children to hate the Russians, and so on. Furthermore, the part of the populace that declares as Russian (which is over 50% of the people on the post-Soviet borders of Ukraine, which is why pro-Russian politicians almost always won the elections, and which is why the Americans decided to finance the insurrection to overthrow the legitimate government) was openly persecuted after that point.

A more legitimate interpretation of the war is that the Soviet Union dissolved due to various economic and political reasons we won’t go into at this point, and the vacuum was filled by nationalists who promised the people all kinds of unrealistic and illusory ideas, such as being part of the “West” and going away from those primitive Easterners and so on. Since the Ukrainian economy was completely integrated with the Soviet Union, any degree of separation from Russia resulted in serious degradation, and any attempt of joining the West always resulted in fraudulent and corruptive activities between the Ukrainian oligarchs and the Western intelligence services and the “NGOs” that work for them. As things got worse, the politicians found it expedient to always blame the Russians. As the Russians themselves, under Putin’s expert leadership, got to the other side of the 1990s nightmare, and rebuilt their economy and country in general, Ukraine languished under Western-sponsored corruption and thievery, where the oligarchs nominated the politicians to serve as their sock puppets, and the West called that “democracy”, the only required quality of that being subservience to America and hostility to Russia. After 2014, when Ukraine basically dissolved as a state, Crimea and Donbass having declared independence and desire to join Russia, the Kiev junta started openly killing Russians; there were over ten thousand dead over the years just in Donbass. Also, the Americans used the failed-state status of Ukraine to install all kinds of nefarious shit there, such as biolabs researching covid-like bioweapons based on SARS-type of coronaviruses and what not, trying to figure out how to preferentially kill Russians and use birds or similar natural contagion vectors to spread it into Russia. Basically, they tried to figure out how to exterminate the Russians while being safe from their nuclear retaliatory strike. At some point, the Russians had enough of this, and decided that limited open war is preferable. If the Americans continue on their present course, the Russians will decide that unlimited war is preferable.

So, basically, it’s a much more complex situation than “the Russians are invading Ukraine”, since the entire war is waged on Russian historical territory that has been, mostly fraudulently, converted into hostile political entities in the 1990s, and weaponized against Russia by a hostile military alliance of NATO to the point of representing a direct military threat to Russia. Also, the majority of the people of Ukraine consistently voted for the governments that would keep the relationship with Russia friendly, which lasted until the Americans simply created an astroturf coup and took the country over by installing their proxies, who turned out to be Nazis. I’m not calling them “neo-Nazis”, because that would be wrong. They are old-school Nazis, because they are organized in units Hitler would recognize as his own, and if alive, he would issue them orders which would have been obeyed. This is devoid of any kind of political legitimacy and represents an obvious element of evil and chaos, and if not for the risk of open confrontation with America, the Russians would probably have taken over in 2014 and would have been perfectly justified in doing so, since this is an open revision of the outcome of the second world war.

So, having in mind the actual situation on the ground, this is in fact an aggression, by America and NATO, upon historical Russia, waged on the territory of the former Soviet Union, with the goal of spreading American total dominance by nefarious means of false propaganda and corruption, and eventually kinetic warfare by using Nazis as a proxy.

Russia just issued an ultimatum to Ukraine, which is of course a mere formality; they expect the Americans – pardon, Ukrainians – to respond in their usually arrogant fashion, to which they will shrug and start the long-prepared winter offensive.

This seems to answer my question from the previous article: they will cease their present, highly effective “meat grinder” strategy and wipe out NATO and the local fascists from Ukraine, because they assess that this situation, where the entire NATO is accumulating forces that perform probing attacks so close to the Russian border is an unsustainable strategic vulnerability and they basically need to end this failed experiment with “Ukrainian statehood”, which started illegitimately and against the wishes of the majority of the people, and everything went downhill from there.

What am I talking about? Soviet Union referendum, 1991. Question: “Do you consider it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of a person of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?” Result: Ukraine 71.48% “Yes”. Regardless, independence of Ukraine was declared due to the fact that the west-Ukrainian (Galician) nationalists pushed for Ukrainian statehood. Ukraine since then fell into a vicious circle of corruption and Western influence feeding it, and eventually became a failed state directly controlled by America in the Maidan coup of 2014. This failed state outlawed all non-fascist political parties, implemented an open reign of terror, propagandized its population with lies, and continuously killed Russians in Ukraine for 8 years, and the fact that America calls this “democracy” is very revealing, regarding American definition of democracy.

Also, the very idea of “Ukrainian nationality” before 1918 would be completely unknown; there was no such thing, and this BTW is the answer to the Croats who for some reason identify with the Ukrainians; no, those two identities have nothing even remotely similar or common. Croats are an ancient people who were already known as such between 6th and 7th century. “Ukrainians” are a political artifact of the 20th century; this identity is historically unknown prior to the 1st world war. Basically, it’s a political invention of Lenin, later enforced by Hitler and the Banderists as an instrument of fighting Russia, and this worked because the western Ukraine is a mixture of so many different national identities and groups, that telling them they are their own special thing, which is defined by being opposite of Russian, apparently worked, because weak and insecure people are always easily convinced to hate. That’s another difference between Croatians and Ukrainians – it’s interesting how the Croats in the 1991 war never hit back at Serbia. The entire war was fought on our territory, and when we got the Serbs to fuck off, the war ended. It was never a “civil war”, it was never “you hit us, so we hit you”. It was Serbs trying to secede parts of Croatian territory, Croatians taking the territory back, and Serbs fucking off, and then there was peace. We didn’t hit Belgrade, or Niš, or Pančevo. The very idea would be seen as insane here in Croatia – why the fuck would we do that? We just don’t want them fucking with us, but other than that, we have no interest in hurting them or anything. There was a joke during the war of building the great wall of China at the border between Croatia and Serbia, and that basically summarises that “fuck off” sentiment; we don’t want them being able to invade us or try to convince us that we are some kind of Serbs, but other than that they are perfectly free to do their own thing, as far as we are concerned.

The “Ukrainian” defining quality of hatred for Russia and trying to be part of “the West” is an element of inherent instability that causes them to seek conflict and acts like some kind of a virus that tries to convert Russians into hate-Russians, which is why Ukraine would be more accurately and appropriately called “Haterussia”. Such a hate-based national identity would not be unheard of, but what makes this one particularly dangerous is that it is weaponised by America, which is systematically feeding the most malignant nationalist elements in all post-Soviet and former Warsaw-pact countries, feeding the sentiment that everything bad that ever happened to them was caused by the Russians, and in order to be free, progressive, democratic and “Western” one needs to hate Russia, which explains why “Haterussian” identity transcends Ukrainian borders.

I’ve seen many commentaries of the war in Ukraine, and even the realistic ones keep talking about Russia changing strategy, making mistakes and so on. Basically, the Russians underestimated the level of opposition from the Ukrainians due to faulty intelligence; then they made a mistake trying to negotiate with the Ukrainian government and even showed a “good faith” move by removing their military from Kiev, not understanding that the Kiev government is basically a Washington sock puppet and peace is simply not an option, ever, because America wants this war as means of weakening both Russia and Europe. I could go on, but the general idea is that the Russians had to change strategy and adapt as they went along. Also, the general assumption is that Russia wanted to have a negotiated solution where they would have the Ukrainians cede Crimea and Donbass, and accept neutral status.

None of this really makes any sense, because I don’t see a process where Putin needed to learn about the situation by trial and error. If anything, there was a significant portion of the Russian people that were sympathetic to the West, and reluctant to accept Putin’s very clear and accurate picture of the geostrategic situation. The gradual and underwhelming nature of this war seems to serve the purpose of showing the Russian people what they are actually facing, and get them on the same page with Putin; not because he’s that much smarter, but because he simply knows more, due to the nature of his job.

So, basically, the reason why Putin couldn’t escalate war too steeply is because he had to give time to the West to show how much they really hate the Russians, and to introduce all kinds of sanctions that would actually cut the puppeteering threads used to control Russia and keep it subdued economically, mostly because the West simply forgot what mechanisms they had put in place and with what purpose, due to several generations of diversity hires being promoted through the ranks, and “boomers” and rational people in general being sidelined and/or retired. All Putin had to do is make a very small military incursion into Ukraine that was of very little consequence regarding the situation on the ground, and he got the West to overplay its hand to the point where Russia is now forced to develop its own resources and rely on its own strength, and the Americans can no longer just print money to bribe people in Russia to use American equipment instead of the perfectly good Russian equivalents – for instance, shelving perfectly good Russian passenger planes in order to buy Boeing and Airbus, or neglecting Russian semiconductor foundries for decades because the market is flooded by cheap imports. Russia is now forced to get out of its medically induced coma simply because the Americans sanctioned its oxygen, forcing them to use their own lungs to breathe. I think this would go down in history as the most ridiculous case of a self-inflicted wound of all times, because the West makes almost nothing other than “finances” and money printing, Russia makes almost everything other than the few connective items to bring it all together, and it has all the resources in the world; Russia has the nuclear technology, the hydrocarbon resources and technology, heavy industry, agriculture, hard science, sophisticated technology, and it has human resources, and what it doesn’t already have, it’s currently building. The worst problem is that everything was scaled down and stunted due to extreme import pressure and foreign-financed corruption (“buy American thingy instead of a perfectly good domestic one, and you’ll get a commission”), and there is not a clearly defined civilizational goal within Russia; basically, Russia doesn’t have a motivational idea of its own, after socialism was discarded, and if they don’t find it, I’m afraid they won’t have a future.

Also, they now have an unwinnable war at their hands, because let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they destroy/conquer Ukraine, kill all the NATO troops there, and secure the Western border. America can produce a new Ukraine quite easily – Poland, the Baltic states and so on, they proved very easy to indoctrinate into anti-Russian hatred and could be used as new proxy-battlegrounds. The only way Russia can actually win this is if the war lasts long enough that America is taken out economically, which is not a crazy idea at all, because I’ve seen America making desperately destructive moves that traded the future for present since 2008, and they are functioning on fumes and borrowed time for quite a while. The fact that America managed to spend a significant portion of their weapons and ammunitions stockpiles just by feeding Ukraine shows that their military industry is excellent for sucking the budget dry, but isn’t nearly as good at actually producing weapons in quantities one would need to fight a peer. The stories about Russia running out of weapons are an interesting case of projection. Also, one thing America is really scared of is sending their top weapons to the war, only for it to be revealed that they are not really anything special, and, if anything, that they are poorly designed, breakable, overhyped crap.

On the Russian side, I think there has been a huge revelation that changed their entire thinking: it turned out that the suicide drones, of both the Geran and Lancet kind, are incredibly effective. I think they are still trying to figure out what to do with this information, but it is definitely going to influence their actions in the future. Also, they are seriously annoyed by the fact that the Americans are very openly providing intelligence to the Ukrainians, from the space assets that are supposedly untouchable, and from the military bases such as Ramstein and others, also supposedly untouchable, in order to perform attacks of the kind Ukraine on their own would be perfectly incapable of. This means the Russians have to fight America dressed up as Ukraine, but they aren’t actually allowed to hit America proper, and have to pretend the golden rain is falling. As the Americans keep testing Russian defences in deep Russia proper, I think the Russian generals are running out of patience and are advising Putin to give Americans a lesson they will never forget, and if there’s a nuclear response, so be it, because fuck this shit already.

The expectation is that Russia will do a very powerful land offensive during this winter, and basically take Kiev and Odessa and possibly the entire Ukraine; I’m actually not sure it’s the right thing to do. It is militarily expensive, and it will achieve very little besides moving the front line away from the Russian borders, and even that isn’t going to do much, considering how the Americans can always finance and equip some terrorist within Russia to blow something up, and how they can trivially make Poland into a next Ukraine, thus forcing Russia to continue militarily crushing neighbouring countries and expending resources, while their true enemy is protected behind the ocean. No, that’s not going to achieve anything, other than forcing the Russian military to improve its tactics and weapons and bring them into the 21st century (remember those suicide drones?), and expend Western resources, because the West doesn’t have neither the energy, the raw materials nor the human resources to actually fight a proper war at such a scale. They can do posturing and terror attacks, but they would be annihilated in an all-out war with Russia, whether they know it or not. So, peace by Russia winning in Ukraine doesn’t seem like a realistic option; peace by Russia playing a resources game against the West is unlikely to be attained since the West will use the nuclear option in desperation, as they are defeated economically and militarily.

So, barring some unexpected event that will change the strategic scenery, this is going to get worse, and worse, and worse, and the feeling I had in the fall of 2019, that this is the peak of this civilization and it’s downhill from there, seems to have been on point.

It’s no wonder the Russians prefer to play this out as a slow grind, attracting the resources of the collective West into the meat grinder of Ukraine, that they seem to operate with their little finger; this is the move that reduces the risk of escalation, employs a near-minimum of their resources, keeps their economy at near-peak efficiency by not depleting it of manpower, is testing their tactical ideas and equipment in a real-life scenario, and is keeping the sanctions alive, which strengthens their economy and allows them to develop financial mechanisms that completely remove the West from the world trade, thus performing a truly fatal blow to America without firing a single nuke. Also, it allows them to be seen as reasonable and moderate by their non-Western partners, which makes them trustworthy.

What do they gain by conquering Ukraine in a huge offensive? Several things. They get to demonstrate strength, and discourage enemies; that’s not going to show in the Western media, of course. They get to move the line of contact with the enemy further to the West, and Dnieper river seems to be an ideal natural border; however, settling for Dnieper would introduce significant problems, such as giving up on Odessa and Kherson city, which is now Russian territory, and that would be a bad precedent. Also, breaking Ukraine in such a way would introduce significant problems to the NATO alliance, since Poland, Hungary and Romania have territorial claims to Western Ukraine, and that would mean all sorts of infighting, where the Russians could make popcorn and watch. Also, winning means a psychological conclusion of the war for the Russian people. Past that, I hardly see advantages, because any incursion further west from Dnieper gives them control of land with increasingly hostile population, which seemed to be the problem in Kherson city. Having control over land where people hate you is not a good thing. Creating a meat grinder and having all who hate you jump into it until they are all safely dead, all their support is exhausted, and a devastated Western Ukraine being a burden to your enemies, is highly preferable strategically. One also needs to keep in mind that irreversibly destroying the infrastructure in Western Ukraine and having the winter kill everybody there is a realistic and very price-effective course. Having in mind that the Russians must know all this, let’s see what they do next.