Things in Ukraine are developing more-less according to my expectations, albeit more slowly. In essence, Putin wanted to get the elections behind him, so that he has a clear mandate and the political issues don’t interfere with the military matters. The army also wanted to wait until the rasputica ended, so that the tanks can move across the ground without sinking into the mud. Until then, they basically just increased pressure on the front line, grinding the Ukrainians down, so that they’ll have less men and equipment to fight with once the true offensive starts. Now that those conditions have been satisfied, they are apparently mopping things up, because prolonging this mess serves no useful purpose at this point. The Russian army is very successfully advancing toward Kharkov from the north, and at the same time crushing the fortifications at Chasov Yar and other places. The Ukrainians usually deal with such things by moving the units from one place to another, but now this isn’t going to work since the Russians are applying pressure at several places at once, and all of them are already crumbling, so there are really no more options for Ukraine. They lost too many soldiers by throwing them into meat grinders, defending indefensible spots, essentially repeating Hitler’s mistakes at Stalingrad that cost him the war. Those can now no longer be replaced with fresh units and the entire structure is crumbling. Also, the West doesn’t have the economic and industrial power that could match Russia’s, they depleted their weapons stockpiles and this phase of the war is done.

So, what can NATO do next? There are several options. The first is to concede that this war is lost and Russia won. This option is unlikely, but not impossible. The second option is to try to win this by committing NATO troops to the fight. This is also very unlikely, simply because they don’t have enough men and equipment to defend the current front line, let alone push back the Russians. The third option is what I anticipated before, and I still think it’s most likely – they will enter Ukraine and try to defend certain strategic points they wish to keep at all cost, such as Odessa, and thus, at least in their minds, deter the Russians from trying to take those areas. However, the Russians already told them that such an attempt will initiate a tactical nuclear response, and not in Ukraine, but at the targets in the offending countries. This means that, far from such an attempt deterring the Russians from advancing, it will be seen as a direct attack on Russia and will trigger extreme escalation.

The Russian threats have been serious enough to have triggered immediate re-considerations in the West, and this process of figuring out what to do next is ongoing. The Russian posture reveals that they are seriously done with this shit, and whoever wants to fuck around, will immediately find out. This is in stark contrast with their normal diplomatic and conciliatory approach, which apparently took a course until the Russian pool of good will was exhausted, and now they are taking off the gloves with the West.

Unfortunately, the idiots that run the West will eventually conclude that “Putin is bluffing”, because that follows from the kind of dogmatic and predictable thinking that gets stupid and incompetent arselickers promoted. “Putin is bluffing, he’s a dictator, Russia is weak, we need to show strength” and other inane drivel will eventually inform the decision, leading to a Russian response that will be nastier than anything we’ve ever seen, because the Russians have seen that the restrained approach isn’t working with those idiots, because they interpret restraint as weakness and proceed to escalate.

As for the rest of the world, meaning primarily China, this thing took long enough to show without any doubt that nothing can be done with the West peacefully, and a strong military solution remains as the only option, and they will unconditionally back Russia now.

Fear of American economic retaliation is still strong, but since Russia managed to do just fine, China will eventually come to terms with the fact that it will just have to lose all the money it has in US bonds and dollars, because America has already threatened them with consequences if they continue with their gold-pumping system. China is now reconsidering their approach, but I don’t expect it to take long before they make their decision. Essentially, they will decide that they have to pull the band-aid off, absorb the loss and be done with it.

I found this article this morning:

Russia will test its ability to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced on Monday. The drill will be conducted “in the near future” and was ordered by President Vladimir Putin, the statement said.

Missile forces of the Southern Military District will be directly involved in the exercise. It will also require the participation of military aircraft and the Russian Navy, the ministry said.

The goal of the exercise is to iron out “the practical aspects of the preparation and deployment of non-strategic nuclear weapons,” it added.

The military cited “provocative statements and threats against Russia by certain Western officials” as the reason for the drill. The troops will confirm that they can “ensure unconditional territorial integrity and sovereignty” of the nation, it added.

This is pretty much unprecedented, because Putin until now refused to even acknowledge the concept of tactical nuclear weapons, and claimed that any use of nuclear weapons will trigger inevitable escalation that will result in global annihilation.
This is obviously a “non-threat”, essentially a message to “someone” that they are about to cross a very thick red line and if they do not rescind, the response will be a counterforce nuclear attack.

That’s the first part of the message. The second part will be visible when we see the rockets used in the exercise; if they use stuff with cca 400km range, that means the response will be regional, within the Ukrainian theatre. If they use 1500+ km rockets, it means the response will be across the Europe.

ps.:
So far, Dmitry Medvedev made his own statement, very harshly stating that the nuclear response will be targeting the offending countries themselves, outside of the Ukrainian theatre. However, he is somewhat prone to hyperbole so I would wait for the weapons demonstration before formulating opinion about the intent.

Choir of the irresponsible

The number of scoundrels among the Western political elite calling for sending their troops to a non-existent country is expanding. Now it includes representatives of the US Congress, French and British leadership, and individual madmen from the Baltic states and Poland. They also call for the active use of their missile weapons, which they supplied to Bandera’s supporters, throughout Russia.
And this is not a spring aggravation, but a cynical calculation for political dividends. There is some kind of total degradation of the ruling class in the West. This class really does not want to logically connect elementary things. Sending your troops to the territory of b. Ukraine will entail the direct entry of their countries into the war, to which we will have to respond. And, alas, not in the territory of b. Ukraine.

In this case, none of them will be able to hide either on Capitol Hill, or in the Elysee Palace, or on Downing Street 10. A world catastrophe will come.
By the way, Kennedy and Khrushchev were able to understand this more than 60 years ago. But the current infantile morons who have seized power in the West do not want to understand.

And that is why today the General Staff began preparations for the exercises, including activities for practical testing of the preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons.

New developments:

Russia issues military ultimatum to UK

Moscow will retaliate against British targets in Ukraine or elsewhere if Kiev uses UK-provided missiles to strike Russian territory, the Foreign Ministry told London’s ambassador on Monday.

Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the ministry following remarks by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron to Reuters that Ukraine has the right to use long-range missiles sent by the UK to strike deep inside Russia.

”Casey was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.

The US and its allies had previously qualified their deliveries of long-range weapons to Kiev by saying they could only be used on territories that Ukraine claims as its own – Crimea, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Cameron’s statements to the contrary “de facto recognized his country as a party to the conflict.”

Russia understands Cameron’s comments as “evidence of a serious escalation and confirmation of London’s increasing involvement in military operations on the side of Kiev,” the ministry added.

Casey was urged to “think about the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps from London and to immediately refute in the most decisive and unequivocal manner the bellicose provocative statements of the head of the Foreign Office.”

There’s an interesting fact about legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood that is commonly being swept under the carpet. Take a look at this map:

The numbers speak for themselves, and it’s obvious which part of the Soviet Ukrainian SR is actually inhabited by Ukrainians. I wonder whether this western-Ukrainian banderist part will continue existing as a sovereign state after the war, since it happens to be the part the neighbouring countries have historical territorial claims to. One thing is certain: the timeline where this becomes relevant overlaps with the timeline where NATO directly intervenes.

There has been increasing talk in Russia about needing to detonate a nuclear weapon in order to stop the creeping escalation of the war by the West – basically, if they don’t want to be in the position of a slowly-cooked frog, they need to jump out of the pot and presumably make some shocking action that will snap the West out of their complacency and belief that nuclear weapons will of course never be used so they can defeat Russia by conventional means.

At this point, France had basically announced that they will enter Ukraine with their military in an official capacity and, basically, sit on crucial points because the Russians “won’t dare attack them”. The Russians already announced that the French soldiers in Ukraine will be priority targets. The next argument is “but then France might use nukes against Russia”. The Russian assumed response is “go right ahead, see what happens”.

The terrorist attack in Moscow was clearly ordered by the West and implemented by the Ukrainian intelligence. Simultaneously, the British cruise missiles are being fired by the British on Crimea. The Russians are supposed to pretend it’s raining, and not the UK pissing on them. Also, everybody got comfortable with Russians being cautious and moderate in their response. Essentially, Putin’s moderation and caution encouraged escalation to this point, so this strategy is obviously not working to cool down Western hotheads. We can easily project this into the future, where at some point Russia will be forced to do a full nuclear strike because things got too far. If I can see this, obviously the Russians can see it as well, because it’s not exactly rocket science, it’s more like the basic game theory, where de-escalatory actions are seen as a sign of weakness by a belligerent actor that thinks it is permanently and absolutely exempt from consequences because they have any consequences trip-wired to maximum escalation.

I actually disagree with the Russian analysts who recommend doing an aerial nuclear test, or nuking some military target as a warning. Their assumption is that the Americans are doing this because they are unaware of the nuclear consequences. My analysis, however, says that the Americans actually want the nuclear consequences, because they know that their time is up anyway, and they’ve been slowly building things up to this point with the express purpose of causing a nuclear exchange, thinking they will be able to come out on top after the dust clears. They also likely want to have extreme measures enacted in order to prevent the elections, which would be disruptive to the team currently in power. Essentially, if the Russians do nothing provocative, the Americans will escalate to the point where the Russians either lose or do a nuclear strike. If the Russians do something provocative, the Americans instantly escalate. In either case, there’s a nuclear exchange, and the only way the Russians can actually have a non-fatal outcome is to attack the American nuclear forces and wipe them all out pre-emptively, because the one that strikes first will have the best odds. Also, I think this is all being discussed in Moscow.

I already recommended elevated preparation measures three weeks ago, which was right in time for this current situation, so I have nothing new to recommend.