After the liberation of Artyomovsk (or, should we say, successful accomplishment of the Bakhmut meat grinder operation), some numbers are starting to come up, so I’ll lay down the basic stats.

The Ukrainians seem to have rotated between 27 and 35 brigades in and around Bakhmut. Those units are now mostly destroyed – dead or wounded. The minimal number of Ukrainian dead in this operation was around 50000, although I wouldn’t be surprised at twice as much.

The vast majority of Russian fighters involved in the operation belong to the Wagner private military organization, and the number that is mentioned is around 26000 men, enhanced by some Russian regular troops – marines and paratroopers. The losses on the side of Wagner are not clear – I haven’t seen any actual reports, but I would guess two to five thousand dead, but the number of troops involved in the operation definitely puts the upper limit of 10000 to a total number of Russian casualties in the operation. The Wagner people also seem to be tired, stressed out, and in dire need of being rotated out of the front line.

The Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut were among the most heavily fortified positions in the history of war, and I’m not saying that lightly. There are hundreds of kilometres of underground tunnels and facilities there, plus the Soviet reinforced concrete buildings that are incredibly hard to grind down. They also had all kinds of drones and surveillance equipment, uninterrupted supplies and so on.

The conventional wisdom of war states that you need a 3x stronger attacking force to conduct a successful siege. The fact that the Russians managed to grind down such a powerfully fortified settlement with so few troops is a unique thing in the history of warfare. Their success can be attributed to several factors. First, the Ukrainians tend to approach warfare like moles and ground hogs, digging themselves in and counting on being very hard to dig out. By doing this, they forfeit all initiative of manoeuvre warfare, and basically just postpone their inevitable defeat. Furthermore, the Russians used more and better artillery, advanced tactical and operational skills, and worked against an enemy whose position is fixed and known, with their own force that is flexible and mobile. They also used some very advanced stuff, like electronic tags for preventing blue-on-blue fire, drones, infrared goggles and sights and so on, and they also controlled the air, being able to call on occasional airstrikes, although this happened rarely. The fact that the Russians had a much smaller force contributed to the length of the operation, but to be honest, the nature of the operation was such that you could hardly do this faster by throwing more men at it; you would merely increase your losses, which the Russians tried to avoid, and quite successfully.

So, far from the picture of courageous but outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers fighting against a huge tide of Mordor, the truth seems to be the opposite – the huge number of Ukrainians dug themself deeply into concrete, displayed neither military skill nor tactical intelligence, underestimated their enemy, misread the tactical situation, and were an inferior fighting force by absolutely all standards of warfare, except for the level of equipment, which was of the highest NATO quality and included very current intelligence provided by American military satellites and analysts in Ramstein and other locations via satellite Internet link. Another deplorable thing about the Ukrainians is that they invariably tend to dig in in a civilian settlement, and not just any, but one with Russian population, because they know that the Russians will care about civilian casualties, and to them, the more Russian civilians die, the better. This fact complicates things immensely for the Russians, because they have to restrict the use of weapons of mass destruction, and basically dig out the ground hogs slowly with very granular and localised attacks, and not, for instance, with high-yield thermobaric weapons that would basically kill every living thing in the area, or with enough explosive to level the entire city blocks, which they absolutely could do.

All in all, this confirms my assessment that the Russians were doing this operation with basically their little finger, and one arm and both legs tied. They didn’t use practically any of their military, they didn’t use high-yield weaponry, they were constantly fighting outnumbered, and the enemy could count on NATO intelligence support from satellites and AWACS planes and what not, and they treated this not as some great adversity, but they literally called this “operation meat grinder”. They saw this as a slaughterhouse for the enemy, because they got them to defend a strategically crucial point they can’t afford to lose because it controls the entire area east of Dniepr river and is also the most heavily fortified area in that part of the world, and they knew several things: Russian soldiers are better, Russian tactics are better, and Russian weapons are better than NATO weapons. This sounds incredible, but the results speak for themselves.

Also, it is obvious that the Russians were in no hurry to end this quickly at all cost; they are in fact in no hurry even to end the regular bombardments of Donetsk city. My analysis of their strategy is that they are trying to accomplish two major things: first, not escalate this into a nuclear war if at all possible, because then the losses would be such, that the entire Ukraine would be a rounding error; and second, avoid being so successful in warfare that they destroy their own economy and relations with friendly countries in the process. Winning Ukraine is not really a goal; it’s basically not even something they really want, but rather something they tried very hard to avoid, but couldn’t. If they wanted to get Ukraine, they could do it easily by cutting all Ukraine’s ties to the West by entering from Belarus at the NATO border with several hundred thousand troops and thousands of tanks and other heavy machinery, turning off gas, electricity and water to all population centres of Ukraine, destroying the Ukrainian military, killing their leadership and installing their own military government in Kiev. This is still quite possible, but I have to ask, what would they actually gain, and at what cost? They would demonstrate strength and decisiveness and eliminate a very hostile force that is a puppet of their true enemies. Millions of Ukrainians would die. This would portray the Russians as ruthless, dangerous savages and would result in a serious propaganda victory for the West. Now they look “weak” and “indecisive”, but they also look restrained, careful and rational. Maybe they don’t want to look like someone who has the most powerful military in the world, and no virtue and restraint in its application, no? However, I’m not sure that their restraint works against America, because America seems to be too stupid to understand it or even to perceive it; they implicitly assume that the Russians would just go in and brute-force everything if they could, and the fact that they don’t means that they can’t. The concept that the Russians could easily depopulate Ukraine, but simply don’t want to do it because of moral reasons, is absolutely unfathomable to the Americans, because they see the Russians as a big violent stupid bear that does everything by brute force and great numbers, and they see themselves as surgical-precision superior-technology superpower; however, the mere statistical layout of the Russian victory in Bakhmut, which will be called Artyomovsk from now on, proves the opposite. The Americans are the ones who get by using low-precision (basically, kill them all and let God sort them out), brute force, numerical supremacy approach (so called “shock and awe”), and the Russians are using high-precision, high-technology, strategically and tactically careful approach, succeeding against a NATO force that has satellites and AWACS and all kinds of ground weaponry, and is 3-4x more numerous, and the result was a resounding Russian victory with minimal losses of manpower and equipment.

The silliest thing is, the West still thinks it has a technological and tactical superiority, and believes in magical virtues of “modern NATO weapons” and “NATO training”, both of which proved to be obviously inferior. Unless American military analysts do an analysis similar to the one I made, this is absolutely not going to end well for anybody, because they are going to double-down on their mistakes until they feel they have to resort to a nuclear option, which the Russians are trying to avoid at all cost, but this seems to actually increase the probability of such outcome. I don’t think it’s possible for the Americans to accept the facts of the situation, which are that their technology and tactical training suffered a resounding defeat by a technologically and tactically superior, but vastly numerically weaker enemy. They just had too much of their own kool-aid, and the talk of sending F-16s into Russian air defence umbrella is strong evidence thereof. They just don’t get it that the Russian rocket technology is at least 20 years superior to their own, that Russian radars are superior to their own, and that the Russians also have satellites and AWACS planes, high-precision and long-range rockets, and all kinds of technological wizardry. Unfortunately, after the cold war they stopped being afraid, and they could very much use fear at this point, because they were never so relatively weak against an opponent since their independence war against Britain.

The unexpected thing that happened recently was that Russia gave Belarus tactical nuclear weapons, and I don’t mean it in the sense that Russia deployed tactical nukes in Belarus under Russian military and political control; no, the nukes are under Lukashenko’s military and political control. This is unprecedented, because the Soviets never allowed the Cubans direct control over nukes deployed in Cuba, for instance; nukes leaving Russian control is an extraordinary move, literally breaking the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT) – literally, Article 1 as stated: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.”

Considering how anal Putin is about domestic and international law, this is really a shocking development and I don’t really understand what it means, in terms of geopolitical strategy. I would venture a guess that this was a concession Putin made to Lukashenko, and since we are not privy to their internal talks, I won’t even try to guess what it’s about. The statements in the news are phrased in a way that makes one assume that the Russian nukes are deployed in Belarus, and that they are Russian-controlled, but that’s not how I’m reading this.

The weapons are deployed in the Western part of Belarus, and, if we assume they are mounted on Iskander missiles with 500km range, they cover Poland and the Baltic states, as well as the western Ukraine. This is the most likely scenario. An extension of this scenario are the nuclear-tipped Kinzhal missiles on Mig-31 planes stationed in Belarus, but I would expect those to be under Russian military-political control. The tactical nuclear warhead is probably a variable-yield 5-50kT device. Since the Belarusian airplanes have already been modified to enable them to use nuclear weapons, this probably means cruise missiles, in addition to the ground-based forces.

In reality, since America is merrily proliferating their own tactical nuclear weapons within NATO, this can be seen as a response, but I still find it shocking. If we combine this development with the fact that the Russians have been arming their ships with tactical nuclear weapons for a while now, things begin to look quite serious.

Another unprecedented event is Admiral Gorshkov frigate (the one armed with Zircon hypersonics and, likely, tactical nukes; the one that made the American analysts freak out because it can sink anything in the Atlantic ocean) arriving in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This is obviously a message to America – not only do we no longer need your “protection”, but we invited this specific ship for a specific reason, which is for you to understand that any attempt to bully or intimidate us will end badly for you. The other side of this agreement between Saudis and Russians is the announced OPEC reduction in oil production, which will put pressure on America and its vassals. Also, I would expect American oil theft project in Syria to come to an abrupt and violent end.

In the meantime, in America the liberals are trying to prosecute Trump on some bogus charges related to some slanderous porn star and his lawyer paying her money to shut up, the deranged trans-perverts are shooting people in Christian schools, and the only thing they apparently produce there are rainbow flags that the rest of us find revolting and abominable. This rainbow-mania looks like a combination of a train wreck and something you think must be a joke but then you see that they are actually serious and you just stand there with mouth agape, not knowing what to say to that at first, but then you get your shit together and say “fuck that, you are all insane”. America is a lunatic asylum pretending to be a country, at this point. Basically, the sane half of the country seems to be in a combination of shock, incredulity and panic, and the other half of the country seems to be waging an all-out war against reality. Also, they spent most of their petroleum reserves already, they no longer control OPEC (in fact, Russia seems to be doing that), their economy is producing mostly “financial products” and it all looks like Wile E. Coyote from the cartoon, after he ran off a cliff and is still hanging in the air because he didn’t look down yet. Gold is at an all-time high, but honestly it’s dirt cheap compared to what it’s going to cost once the coyote looks down.

On a comical note, Finland just joined NATO, which at this point looks like a suicide pact of the broke and the gay. No industry and no energy, but plenty of money printing and banning cars because of “climate change”. Also, lots of gay and Ukrainian flags, which seem to be interchangeable at this point, because both stand for Satan.

Recently, Mexico declared lithium a strategically important resource and nationalized all deposits.

Biljana’s comment at that point was “watch how America occupies Mexico now”.

Current news: America contemplates sending the military to Mexico, because the terrible “drug cartels” (probably CIA-run) kidnapped some Americans, and baby Jesus will cry if America doesn’t introduce democracy and rules-based order to the suffering people of Mexico whose leader is a dictator who is killing his own people with weapons of mass destruction and is a new Hitler.

Either Biljana is a prophet, or America became predictable as fuck; you tell me.