I will present four of my reflections on what is undoubtedly the most discussed topic lately – that of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
1.
To a no small and hopefully not fatal degree, as the counter-offensive approached, the West buckled.
As Sun Tzu says, the first to leave the battlefield is the thought of retreat.
That is why the bridges behind the back were often burned – so that there was no possibility of retreat.
Therefore, before the decisive battle, Spartacus killed his horse – telling his army that here they will either win or die.
So for the West, the first reason for reducing the striking power of the Ukrainian counter-offensive was the thought that it could be overwhelming and that would push Putin to the wall.
The West is constantly thinking about how Putin will perceive the course of the counter-offensive.
The West, as I sometimes write, is not what it used to be; and it is not yet what it should be.
The West got along great with Putin, and everyone thought it was because of the benefits of cooperating with him. Apparently, this was also due to the fear of Putin.
That is why I have been saying since the beginning of the war: The West must stop being afraid of its fear that Putin, pushed to the wall, can use a nuclear weapon!
The fear of this fear is paralyzing the West. And after the West starts providing massive military aid to Ukraine, at some point it gets scared and starts maneuvering and twisting. So it was September-October 2022; so it happened in January-February 2023.
What is the difference between Churchill and Chamberlain?
The difference was mainly in the following:
Chamberlain was afraid of his fear of Hitler. And this fear of fear disgraced him forever.
While Churchill was afraid of Hitler (and who wouldn't be) but he didn't give in to that fear. Churchill overcame the fear of the fear of Hitler.
The fear of fear - this is actually the great Western, Chamberlain's Fear. Fear with a capital F.
To the trouble of Ukraine, Europe, the West and the Democratic world, today we do not have a new Churchill. We live in a time of over-proliferated Chamberlains.
As a result of the Fear of the West, of the Chamberlainism of the West, the West never gave F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine and thus drained a lot of strategic blood from the Ukrainian counter-offensive. It can solve, and God forbid, it will solve serious strategic tasks, but at the moment its main content is likely to be operational with a number of tactical breakthroughs and successes.
My heart breaks for Ukraine, which does not have a real West as its support, even though Ukraine plucks the chestnuts of the human democratic future for the West.
So – yes, the West helped immensely in the military aspect of Ukraine, did what was necessary, but did not do enough to ensure a crushing Ukrainian victory.
2.
About a month ago, or a month and a half ago, with a rather impressive sweep from different directions of the compass, as if coordinated or at least by a coincidence of interests and concerns, an active counter-offensive began against the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
From all sides, those who, for various reasons, do not want and therefore think that they cannot allow the Ukrainian counter-offensive to succeed, have united.
As I have long analyzed, the reason for this is that a successful, Russia-crushing Ukrainian counter-offensive would be the farewell bell for the current world order.
This world order was formed after the end of the bloc confrontation. Its formation began after the European catastrophic event 9/11 (the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989), and its permanent establishment materialized after the American catastrophic event 9/11 (September 11, 2001).
The current world order had a number of undemocratic and immoral countries, which did not mean that it was an ineffective solution to global processes in the decades after the end of socialism.
Its main shortcoming was that in its imposition (somewhat spontaneously and at the same time consciously), it included Russia as a significant alternative strategic factor to the West and did not include China as such an alternative strategic factor to the West.
Meanwhile, Putin has ruined Russia, pushed it back in time, demodernized it, deindustrialized it, degraded its economic organism and deprived it of any possibility to be a key geostrategic player (pole). At the same time, China began to emerge more and more decisively on the global stage.
The unipolar model with a single superpower, the USA, and a weak non-democratic strategic alternative, Russia, gradually began to come under the pressure of the objective need for the transformation (and recognition) of China as a second geostrategic pole.
The current world order threw dust in Russia's eyes and recognized some fictitious status of its undemocratic alternative because it was super profitable for the West to keep the deal with Russia – Russia gives the West cheap energy resources, and the West turns a blind eye to how Putin is carrying out his domestic policy of violent terror against his own population, stifling democracy in Russia, corrupting Western political elites and exporting uncontrollable chaos to neighboring countries.
The prices of energy raw materials received by the West from Russia were profitable because the laws of the Western (neo)liberal market were in effect – the prices were mainly economically and financially determined, and not imposed by Putin's will.
A lot can be written about the current world order, naturally the superficial sketches here do not exhaust its essence. The main thing is that this world order is going away.
That is why I have been writing since the beginning of the War – do not consider Russia's War against Ukraine only as an anomaly, as an abnormality, because of Putin's psychopathy and megalomania! This War is a rear guard fight with a retreat of the departing world order! This world order is doomed. He will self-destruct. The problem is that only a crushing victory for Ukraine will give Human Civilization a chance to build a more democratic and pro-development New World Order.
Yes, but too many countries, transnational companies, power structures, open and secret societies, prominent personalities are profiting from the current world order. And it was for this material and amoral reason that this aggressive counter-offensive against the Ukrainian counter-offensive began. Those who do not wish to end the current world order imagine that by stumbling Ukraine and turning this War into an Eternal war or at least a very long war, they will save their world order. They are in vain. It is unsalvageable.
3.
My opinion about the greatness of the Ukrainian battle for BahmUt, and that it will go down in the textbooks of military affairs, I have already shared it, and I continue to think the same way.
Along with that, however, after the rapid victories in Kharkiv and Kherson, the advance of the Ukrainian armed forces was stopped, and the West played a big role again, which after these victories suddenly reduced its military aid to Ukraine several times. And since then, months and months of Ukrainian defense have been loaded, without giving energy and optimism significant successes. At the same time, Ukrainian fighters were dying, and Russia was torturing the Ukrainian civilian population with heavy airstrikes.
All this caused both physical and psychological fatigue among Ukrainians.
With the leaking of secret materials, with the writings about corruption among Ukrainian government circles, with the information campaign of the chekist special services, with the discord among the West regarding military aid to Ukraine,
the hesitations among the Ukrainians (among a significant part of them) also intensified, perhaps not even so much hesitation as pessimism – that the end of this war is not in sight. It is very hard to live in during such a bloody War. No plan can be made, not even for the near future. People are left without property, they often live in a foreign place – in Ukraine or abroad; It is not possible to provide a good education, the conditions for normal health care have deteriorated.
Ukraine is currently a martyr, a heroine!
Again, unfortunately, the residual symptoms of the division in the Ukrainian elites, which paid such a heavy price in 2014, are showing themselves. The unwritten refrain from criticism against President Zelensky is fading, and he – both in Ukraine, but already in the democratic West – has begun to be attacked to question even his moral political leadership. All sorts of immature and embittered forces within Ukrainian politics, parasitic on the burdens of war, arose. These all are phenomena that Ukraine cannot afford herself. Actually, not that she can't - as you can see – Ukraine affords them. But she shouldn't allow them.
Ukraine urgently needs successes on the battlefield!
Ukraine desperately needs a successful counter-offensive!
In order not to lose her spirit. In order not to lose her will to endure the nightmarish ordeal.
Too bad many in the West don't understand this.
And how can they understand it, when for quite a few people the results of the matches Barcelona-Real or Manchester-Manchester are of greater interest.
For Ukraine, War is everything - life or death.
For the West, War is not everything at all. And for part of the West, it is not even a thing. Or it's an annoying thing.
4.
Despite everything, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is approaching. My calculations since early April indicated that this counteroffensive would most likely begin in early May, approximately May 4th.
Of course, weather conditions, Western hesitation, strategic considerations of the Ukrainian political and military leadership, as well as some sudden Black Swans, can delay the start. Although the delay is not healthy at all.
We remember how the Balkan events delayed the start of the war of fascism against the Soviet Union by 2 to 4 weeks, and this somewhat saved the Stalinist regime from a catastrophic loss in that war.
So it's time for a Ukrainian counter-offensive!
Even if it is not by chance at the beginning of May, but at least by the middle of May it should be for start!
Let's not forget that to be successful, it must last at least 4 months.
Few know where and how it will take place.
Several blows are likely to be delivered, including with
destruction of the Crimean bridge;
turning, if possible, the entire Dnieper River into an area controlled by Ukraine;
exit to the Sea of Azov;
further liberation of Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhia regions;
starting offensive on Luhansk and Donetsk….
I'm not an expert, I'm just saying what I want.
But it is clear that everything seized after December 2022 must be returned.
After that, everything seized after February 2022 must be returned.
And finally to move towards a decisive return of everything seized between February 2014 and February 2022.
Otherwise, the main goal is still clear – the return of all of Ukraine within its borders by December 1991.
There are many skeptics about the implementation of all this.
But they - even Ukrainian sympathizers - look only at Ukraine and possibly the fighting between the Ukrainian and occupation armed forces. That is, they are looking specifically at the War.
And one should not forget the processes in Russia itself and especially the impact on them of the Ukrainian victories. If the rashists have raised their heads recently, it is because their faces have not been properly beaten anywhere for several months.
Along with the progress of the war, Russian military capabilities will be depleted.
Yesterday a very good expert was talking about the huge lack of bearings (as machine parts) – for tanks and locomotives. A small thing – some bearings (or rather the lack of them) can have terrible consequences for the Russian troops (armored equipment) and rail transport – the main Russian transport on the terrible Russian roads. Russia simply did not learn to produce quality bearings! And it's not just the bearings.
Putin's Russia was throwing billions of money for energy resources to piecemeal buy technologies from the West, without developing a scientific and technological base, without creating specialists, without increasing the quality of university education, without motivating talented people to stay in their country, without to think about the future. And now many production bottlenecks are about to break. There is a process of total degradation of Russia – as technologies, as methods of process management, as training of personnel, as primitivization of thinking.
Putin's Russia is the sick man of Europe. Or rather, of Europe and Asia.
Comrade Xi has already taken advantage of this, he possessed Putin, turned him into his concubine (to put it mildly – into a vassal). But the thing is that it is not actually Putin who is possessed, it is Russia who is possessed by China. And it is not Putin, but Russia, who is forced to give its energy raw materials worthlessly to China in the long term.
Therefore, the Ukrainian counter-offensive should not be considered in isolation, by itself. It should be placed in the general context of processes on a global, continental, regional and national (both in Ukraine and in Russia) plan.
All this makes me rationally optimistic about the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Optimistic – because the counter-offensive will be successful – here the question is not Whether?, but To what extent?
Rationally – because if the West was as it should be in order to continue to be the leader of Human Civilization, the counter-offensive could turn out to defeat Russia on the military fronts and give Russia a chance for a pro-democratic evolution.
After all, the Ukrainian counter-offensive will be what it will be. And what it should be – successful.
It must be so because History demands it.
And it's hard to argue with History. Because, after all, History always turned out to be right.
Hitler realized this and took the bullet.
Putin is about to realize this. And I don't envy him at all when he realizes it.
04/24/2023
