First of all, let’s see Scott Ritter’s take:

Basically, the Russians structured the battlefield in a way where they have very little if any casualties as a function of time, the Ukrainians are sustaining huge casualties and material losses as a function of time, and now the Russians are basically doing to NATO what NATO was planning to do to them – they are bleeding the enemy and letting time do the work for them. NATO attempts to target Russia proper show desperation on the part of NATO – basically, they understand that they’re fucked and now they are trying to escalate things and change the setup so that the function of time doesn’t cause so much of a one-sided loss.

I would say that Russia will have their hands full with saboteurs, because some of the damage they’ve sustained is internally caused.

Economically speaking, the EU is sustaining the worst damage, and the gas is still flowing. When that changes, time will start running out for the “united Europe”.

The statements made by NATO countries are getting more and more, should I say, nervous? in ways that are diplomatically ill-advised unless you want to get nuked. This behaviour seems to be caused by the fact that they are losing Ukraine, in ways they didn’t predict. What they predicted was a quick war where Russia takes Ukraine but then they have a long-term guerrilla warfare on their hands, basically a second Afghanistan, where the West will keep feeding the slow fire that will bleed Russia into bankruptcy and social unrest, causing the second 1990s that will lead to the country’s breakup and destruction. What they got is prolonged “hot” warfare in which Russia keeps destroying the ammo and weapons the West keeps sending about as fast as it arrives, they neutralised the Ukrainian army to the point of a rat hunt, Russia is having less economic difficulties with the sanctions regime than the West, Ruble is actually above the pre-war levels, the Russians keep testing and improving their tactics and weapons, Putin is more popular than ever, and the West is less popular in Russia than probably at any time since the late 1980s. Also, NATO had to increase the support to Ukraine to the point where America, Britain, Poland, Romania and Germany, to name a few prominent ones, are in de facto open war with Russia, and the only thing missing is the official acknowledgment of this fact by Russia, followed by hypersonic missiles (nuclear-tipped or not) hitting the NATO bases. Putin already warned of such an outcome:

Russian president Vladimir Putin has warned outside forces against interfering in the Ukrainian conflict, promising a “lightning-speed” response to such actions, with the use of Moscow’s most advanced weaponry.

“If someone decides to intervene in the ongoing events from the outside and create unacceptable strategic threats to us, they should know that our response to those oncoming blows will be swift, lightning-fast,” Putin said in an address to lawmakers on Wednesday.

“We have all the tools to do this. Tools that no one except us can brag about. But we’re not going to brag. We’ll use them if such a need arises,” the president said, without specifying which tools could be deployed.

Russian authorities have already made all necessary decisions to prepare for such a response, he added.

Also, I would expect the strikes on Russian territory to be answered soon, and not necessarily in ways one would expect.

Edit: American troops are moving to the Romania-Moldova border:

My interpretation is that the Americans will try to militarily seize Transnistria in order to prevent the connection of the Russian forces in Ukraine, on the Odessa side, with Transnistria, which would greatly improve Russian position and make any attempt of Ukraine to achieve exit to the Black Sea very difficult. The problem with this idea is that the Russians are very unlikely to allow it.

I just found this:

“It is completely legitimate for Ukraine to be targeting in Russia’s depth in order to disrupt the logistics that if they weren’t disrupted would directly contribute to death and carnage on Ukrainian soil,” Heappey told Times Radio.

Let’s enter slight reciprocal corrections, shall we?

“It is completely legitimate for Russia to be targeting in NATO countries’ depth in order to disrupt the logistics that if they weren’t disrupted would directly contribute to death and carnage on Ukrainian soil”

I can’t say I would disagree with that. It’s obvious that NATO is the actual party at war with Russia, providing logistics and weaponry to Ukraine.

Besides, America already stated that they are at war with Russia:

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters after a trip to Kyiv that “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” The new US goal is “to defeat Russia on the battlefield so decisively that it will refrain from any new attacks.”

It’s obvious that they are pissing on Russia, and Russia is trying to keep the pretence that it’s raining.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote an article in which he expresses a viewpoint that the Russian gradual and slow approach to the Ukraine war will only encourage American war hawks, giving them the false impression that Russia is weaker than it is, and that attacking them in a nuclear war might actually be a good idea. He thinks it would’ve been better if Russia ran over Ukraine with overwhelming force and simply killed everybody. That would supposedly give Americans pause.

Dmitry Orlov responded on the Saker blog with an emotional article that accuses Roberts of advocating for genocide of Ukrainians, accuses Roberts of pontificating to Russia, and argues that Russian approach will flood the Europe with Western Ukrainian refugees which is good because it will harm Europe, free Ukraine of people who hate Russia, and so on.

I think both sides are under a misapprehension of some kind; Roberts thinks that the nuclear war is preventable. I don’t think it is, because the clique in America that holds literally ALL the power sees such a war as a necessary part of re-arranging the world so that America can have its collapse and emerge as the dominant force decades later. Whatever Russia does or doesn’t do, the outcome will be the same, because it isn’t about how weak they think you are, it’s about what they actually want to do. What they want to do is degrade all possible competition to a position worse than their own for at least the duration of their collapse and presumed recovery.

Orlov, on the other hand, is working under a misapprehension that the amount of killing that would in present circumstances be called genocide matters in the large scale of things. I don’t think it does; even the most strong-armed approach by Russia would probably only increase the speed of killing, not change the ultimate outcome, if Mariupol is any indication, and I believe it is. Basically, with more troops and bombs you end up with the same level of destruction in the timeframe of days instead of weeks, which might actually reduce the time civilians spend in basements starving or risking their lives looking for food and water. Also, he is thinking emotionally and not strategically, and that’s good if you’re taking care of individual people, but it’s not good if you’re trying to come up with some kind of a stable and livable scenario. For instance, let’s say Russia spares the West Ukraine. There’s no bombing, no civilians killed there. It leaves them in a better position to attack Russia later, and they have no personal experience that would advise them against this course. This results in postponed bloodshed, where Russia still has to run them over, but likely more people die, and, more importantly, more Russians die, because I don’t really care that much about the Banderites, considering how they are likely the worst people in the world.

So, the real question isn’t genocide or not. There’s going to be genocide regardless. The Ukrops are going to kill all Russian speaking Ukrainians after this. Unless they are killed, they will make a hell on Earth. Deaths and suffering are inevitable, it’s just a matter of who dies, in what way and order, and how quickly. Also, having in mind that the nuclear war is inevitable, leaving a country full of vile indoctrinated Russia-haters at your doorstep, leaving it intact and with no worry other than how to harm you more when you’re down, is a very bad idea. I agree with Roberts that Ukraine would be best completely wiped out; it would be perfectly unwise to leave them sufficiently intact and able to form a threat in the quite probable near future. However, the fact is that both Russian people and their political leadership are incredibly unwilling to have a nuclear war with the West, and their “weak” approach reflects this unwillingness. It is also the fact that the Americans see this as encouragement and proof of their supremacy, which is a grave mistake, because Russia is actually stronger militarily. However, I wargamed a very large pool of options and the only situation where there isn’t a nuclear war is if something disrupts everything out of the blue, to the point where it makes American plans obsolete – a supervolcanic eruption in America, a huge asteroid strike, a gigantic solar flare that wipes out the technosphere and so on. In any normal scenario, it doesn’t really matter what Russia or China do, because they are not the ones trying to have a nuclear war; they are playing with black figures, so to speak, and America doesn’t really have a de-escalation mode in their political scene.

Someone actually designed the Ukrainian flag as it should be, to reflect their true nature:

I’ll just leave it at that.

The Western intelligence services managed to prove two things conclusively in their massive, centrally orchestrated campaign against Russia during the intervention in Ukraine.

First is that the entirety of Western “free press” is totally controlled from a central point and serves the purpose of disseminating propaganda originating in Langley. Those of us who have been paying attention knew this for quite some time already, but fresh evidence doesn’t hurt.

The second is that the Russian media influence is so minuscule, their voice is not being heard, AT ALL. People in the West learn things about Russia exclusively from the enemies of Russia. As a corollary, the idea that Russian intelligence outreach and propagandistic influence are so intense and sophisticated that they are able to influence elections in America and promote brexit and so on, was conclusively proven to be not only wrong, but also completely ridiculous, and by overdoing the propaganda effort regarding Ukraine Langley managed to prove this conclusively and thus score an own-goal. Not only is the Russian side inaudible, it’s also quite obviously very unskilled in communicating their point across; when I see their generals making reports, it makes me feel as if I’m in the 1940s. Also, since their army prohibited the soldiers from using smartphones, they had a complete lack of actual footage from the war from the Russian standpoint, which extremely facilitated the Ukrainians in disseminating their propaganda to the news-hungry Internet. The Russians comfort themselves by saying that wars are not won on the Internet, which is true; no amount of propaganda can help the Ukrainians actually win. However, what propaganda managed to do is create a fictitious “reality” in the West, which will make it very easy for the American-controlled politicians to promote policies that will harm Russian interests even in the short-term; for instance, Sweden and Finland are joining NATO, all kinds of NATO countries will host American nuclear weapons and who knows what else, everybody is funneling weapons into Ukraine, and what was left of freedom in the West after the covid hysteria will be permanently lost and everybody here will be reduced to absolute and total subservience to the government. Everything here in the West is turning into a giant prison, and our only hope is for the Russians to nuke the bastards, because they have been gradually building the infrastructure for complete multi-spectrum enslavement of the population for quite some time, and at least since 9/11. It’s actually not possible for citizens of one country to overthrow their government and free themselves, because each country is so interconnected with the international monetary and political superstructures, that the country’s economy would be instantly subjected to “sanctions” and destroyed, because the dictatorships and tyrannies are no longer national; we are literally dealing with tyrannical oversight at the level of the American-controlled part of the world, and American “sanctions” are enforced by other countries that are afraid of America, and apparently everybody is afraid of America, even Russia.