Withdraw
from Artyomovsk!
This is the
advice which social media say the U.S. Government is today giving to the
Zelensky regime in Kiev. It follows by a day or two the public release by
German intelligence operatives of their own assessment of the latest course of
the war, saying that the stubborn resistance of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to advancing
Russian ground units in Artyomovsk, just as the defense of Soledar (lost to the
Russians a week ago) and defense of Bakhmut (still hanging in the balance) were
and are death traps set by the Russians for the Ukrainians. As the U.S.
overlords understand today, continued losses of Ukrainian forces in these
hopeless PR stunts are compromising any chances of their making a spring
counteroffensive when the advanced military gear now being shipped to them
arrives and is put into the field.
What
conclusion can we reach from “withdraw from Artyomovsk”? Very simply that the notion of 1:1 death and
ingured rates that the Anglosaxon news disseminators have been shouting for
weeks to slant the news towards some “stalemate” between the opposing sides is
pure nonsense. It would be safer to
follow the figures put out by the Russian military, which indicate a 10:1
imbalance in casualties on the Ukrainian side.
Meanwhile,
the big news in the past 24 hours was the meeting of the Ukraine Contact Group
in the German army base at Ramstein. This was most notable for the failure of
the defense ministers of the 50 participating countries to reach any agreement
over delivery of tanks to the Ukrainians. Tanks are allegedly needed to support
Ukraine’s spring counter offensive, with the objective not merely to push back
the Russians to the line of demarcation in Donbas prior to the start of the
Special Military Operation, but even to recapture the Crimea.
The central
issue at Ramstein was German Chancellor Scholz’s refusal to send in German
Leopard heavy tanks or to allow the many NATO countries where Leopards are held
in the inventory to send any of their tanks to Kiev. Scholz is said to insist the Americans first
ship their own Abrams tanks to Kiev before Germany will lift a finger. And why is he being so stubborn in resisting
all the jackal states in NATO on this very issue? Western reports say he is
fearful of leading the pack on delivery of tanks and incurring special Russian
wrath.
Let us
decode this message: the German
chancellor is not some indecisive imbecile, as our newspapers hint. No, he is a cunning fox who is unwilling to
allow Washington to send him and Europe to hell in what could easily become a
Russia-NATO hot war if the Russian red lines forbidding heavy armaments
deliveries are crossed.
So all the
Ukrainians will get by way of new weapon systems as per the decisions announced
yesterday in Ramstein are token deliveries of armored personnel carriers and
armored machine gun and cannon vehicles that one might just call light tanks. That and a lot more howitzers of every
variety coming from several different NATO countries.
But in
terms of the big picture, what difference would tanks make? The vision of big tank warfare across the
Ukrainian steppes that underlies the Washington war scenario is
fallacious. As I have pointed out
repeatedly, despite the lies and PR blasts from Washington and London, the war
is being fought according to the Russian scheme, not the U.S. scheme.
We have
heard how poorly the Russians coordinate air and ground. We have heard how they just cannot put
together any good shock and awe. But this is beside the point. The Russians are waging an artillery war for
good reasons: they have the world’s
largest manufacturing industry of cannon, multi-rocket field launchers and
munitions and they are waging a war of attrition on the ground which can only
favor their armies.
If the
slaughter of Ukrainians continues at its present rate, if the United States and
its allies cannot ramp up munitions production, if the destruction of the
Ukrainian energy infrastructure continues, if the logistics for conveying
Western military supplies to the front are further impaired, then the Russians
will find themselves against a disarmed Ukrainian army some time in the early
spring, and they may get the capitulation they seek without shock and awe
heroics.
In saying
this, I acknowledge my own misreading of the Russian war plans, since I expected
them to deliver the death blow to Kiev some time ago. But then I am joined in this misreading by
many others who actually have military expertise guiding their assessments,
such as Col. Douglas MacGregor.
Who laughs
last, laughs best. And that may well
explain the sardonic smile we see from time to time in President Putin’s public
statements about the course of the war effort.
That is not
to say that we can sleep calmly in the belief that the end of the war is nigh. There are risks arising as the inevitability
of a Russian victory sinks into thick skulls at the Pentagon. The latest risks come from those saying
publicly in Washington that the Ukrainians must be given longer range missiles
so that they can strike directly at Russian military installations in Crimea if
not in Central Russia. Such extravagant
plans for the conquest of Russia can lead only to a nuclear response from
Moscow and…the end of civilization as we know it.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023