In my last posting on Wednesday, I made reference to a Quincy Institute paper that argued that if one bundles all of NATO together, while sensibly excluding the USA (because of the increasing likelihood of an anti-Ukraine-involvement under a Trump presidency) and Turkey (which has the largest army in NATO, but whose foreign policy is highly mercurial and, on balance, drifts more readily towards the BRICS and to Russia than to NATO and Ukraine) there still remains a major advantage to NATO over Russia, in some domains even reaching a 20:1 advantage.

I welcomed the paper because it appeared to be asking some questions that are insufficiently attended to by the media of both sides. Furthermore, it was asking these questions at a time when NATO continues, in public, at least, to exude an air of great confidence, and when its members make the strong pretence, at least, of purposefulness and unity. And there have been times, recently, when one could have worried and perhaps should continue to worry that NATO is preparing the ground for all-out war. Led by Washington, NATO has for the most part followed a trajectory of escalation that many people, including myself, believe has greatly imperilled the planet with the threat of nuclear war - not only intentional nuclear war, but also, too, accidental nuclear war.

And “accidental” war can be induced “intentionally,” if that is not too much of an oxymoron. There was an example recently where Ukrainian drones (and possibly one cruise missile - I am not sure that this was ever satisfactorily confirmed) targeted component parts of Russia’s nuclear early warning system thus exacerbating the limitations of Russia’s land-based early warning system by contrast to the superior US satellite-based system. It has been reported earlier today but not confirmed to my knowledge, that there has been another Ukrainian drone attack on an early warning facility in Orsk, in Russia’s Orenburg Oblast. Optimists say that so long as it is only (mainly?) drones that are involved, these are not capable of knock-out damage.

Not only does the US advantage in this matter give Russia significantly less time to react to an incoming nuclear attack than has the US but could also increase the likelihood of Russian error in determining whether or not it is actually being attacked. This might therefore increase the possibility that Russia would respond to a falsely-interpreted signal of some kind and that this response in turn would unleash armageddon. We have plenty of examples, historically, of such near-misses.

The Quincy Institute paper provided the basic numbers of weapons systems available to all of NATO (minus the US, minus Turkey) against those available to Russia and Belarus. These provided pretty convincing prima facie evidence of NATO advantage. The authors argued that this was of concern because Russian weakness might prompt it to reach out more readily to its nuclear weapons in the event that more conventional attacks on Russian assets in mainland Russia were threatening the stability of the Federation.

Mindful of the shocking inability of NATO to compete with Russia in the production and acquisition of essential ammunition such as 155mm shells (it promised 1.7 million in the last year, but managed to come up with only 500-600,000), I have some doubts as to the trustworthiness of the statistics on which the Quincy Institute conclusions are based. I very much doubt that they adequately reflect the depletion of Western arms stockpiles that has occurred over the past two and a half years along with the massive transfer of Western military assets and wealth to Ukraine,(even if a high percentage of this goes directly into the pockets of US arms manufacturers) a great deal of which has been destroyed on the battlefields.

I doubt the claim to the qualitative superiority of Western weapons. Rather, the evidence of this war so far has been that virtually every weapons system introduced into the battlefield, even including HIMARS, ATACMS missiles, Patriot air defense systems, Leopard II tanks and all the rest of it has failed to live up to the hyperbole. And it seems unlikely that the constantly-touted F-16s (thought by many Russian pilots to be inferior to Russian Su27s), of which perhaps 6 will be in service for Ukraine by the end of the year and possibly another few dozen next year, will gravely affect the overall computation. A total of 48-60 has been canvassed. Zelenskiy asked for 128.

In terms of manpower I frankly find it inconceivable that NATO would be able to persuade the citizens of member powers to tolerate any attempt to force them onto the battlefield in defense either of Ukraine or of NATO itself. They are far too smart. Stolternburg recently talked of 100,000 troops in readiness being available in one week, 200,000 in a month and, ultimately 500,000. Without reference to the sheer cost of such an operation, I again find these figures not only unlikely in themselves but also wildly insufficient against a likely response of towards a million Russian troops. The size of Russia’s armed forces and the pace of its monthly recruitment of contracted volunteers is such as to allow Russia just today to announce plans to allow up to 300,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine to take vacations and otherwise to be rotated into this summer and fall.

Despite the extraordinary military largesse expended by NATO on Ukraine for the past two to ten years (remember, this all started in 2014, or even well before then), expert sources now advise that Ukraine cannot even manage to launch its much-touted third major counter-offensive (it won the first in 2022, lost the second in 2023) because Western money cannot be converted into actual weapons in the time required.

Do the Qunicy Institute calculations - can they? - really catch up with the speed of evolution of modern warfare. Just look at the vast range of different drone systems that are now in play on the battlefield, and the many ways in which these transform battlefield tactics. Can they take into account such factors as the speed of innovation in the development of improved versions and of counter-weapons as in the case of the evolution of Russian electronic warfare technology?

Fundamentally, however, the limitations of the Quincy analysis lie less in the domains of technology and numbers than in those of politics and economics. So far, for example, NATO has largely avoided “direct” involvement in the war (even if we may well consider that if NATO collects the targetting information, provides the missiles, provides or trains the personnel to fire the missiles and overseas the whole process from production to firing it is doing something a bit more than “indirect”). It does have some boots on the ground but so far these appear to be mainly in the form of intelligence personnel and contractors and trainers and advisors. Macron’s threats to send up to 2,000 French troops now seem much less likely, even if, as some recent sources attest, there are already some French forces in Ukraine (and there have been several incidents over at least the past year where French and other nationalities have been blown apart, in significant number, by Russian missiles).

But we should not allow ourselves to be overly impressed. As these events are evolving, we see escalation in terms of US placement of intermediate ballistic missile systems in Poland, Romania, the Philippines (they have been withdrawn, on sensible Philippe resistance to becoming a target in a nuclear exchange). Now, following the NATO summit, they will be located in Germany, where mobile Typhons are also envisaged. These may evade incoming nuclear missiles, but the areas that these missiles strike will burn just the same.

Inevitably, as recently as June 28, Putin has announced that Russia will now proceed with its own production of comparable, if not more advanced systems.

The case of the US is perhaps the most critical. Biden’s dementia and his insistence on staying in office, renders the country dangerously rudderless. But if the Democrats are still interested in any way in winning the presidential race in November they will not want to have launched a Third World War that will lead to nuclear annihilation of the human (and a good many other) species, even if they will struggle hard to avoid the appearance of having lost the war.

Politics is a bitch, and I doubt that the Quincy analysis is up to the task of adequately factoring it in. Another hitch is the future role of China, amidst reports (that I do not believe to have been fully confirmed) of Chinese troops exercising along with Belarussian along the Ukrainian border with Belarus facing off against Ukrainian and NATO forces on Belarussian borders. This is entirely credible and is the natural consequence of the alliance between Russia, China and Belarus.

We should note that Belarus has recently joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), adding a European dimenstion to the SCO just as NATO turns to the Pacific. The SCO has a collective security dimension. Its recent summit, a few days ago, took place in Astana, a reminder that Kazakhstan along with other “stans,” including even Afghanistan, are lining up in the new order of the BRICS and EurAsia security.

It would be inordinately remiss of Chinese military not to take any opportunity for sprucing up the military readiness of the Chinese army by providing battlefield or near-battlefield experience. This is especially so given that the NATO communique released at the conclusion of its recent summit makes it clear that China is now formally in NATO sights as it has been for some time in Washington neocon sights, and as it was previously in Trump’s sights and maybe will be again, very soon.

In short, those collective NATO resources that are referenced by the Quincy Institute are not intended to serve just one front: they have to cope with an ever expanding number of fronts of war that call on NATO offensives. They increase in line with the rate at which the global hegemony of the US and its vassal states, including European members of NATO, rapidly diminishes. It is astoundingly obvious to any impartial observer that US military capability is thinly stretched across the globe and highly vulnerable to the debris of both marco and micro conflicts (see West Africa).

And then we come to the question: what or who exactly IS NATO? Why on earth is this a force to be reckoned a certain victor in a titanic conflict with Russia (or Russia and China, or even, conceivably, Russia, China, India, North Korea, Iran and other BRICS members and some others besides)?

Yes, sure, NATO can broker some new friendly alliances such as the one just concluded between Japan and the Philippines (which, by the way, in the event that in choosing Washington it would abandon its trading dependence on China, will be quickly impoverished). It can play with the Quad (Australia, Japan, and, once again the fence-sitting India), but its bid for recognition as a legitimate military force in East Asia has no grounds whatsoever, neither in international law nor in the East Asian popular imagination. Nobody in Washington has the slightest interest in consulting with the already-established SEATO. East Asia and the crisis of Taiwan with which Washington and NATO are trying to poke China in preparation for yet another war of false pretext (one of the three major current prongs of the collective West’s counterrevolution against multipolarity - Ukraine, Iran and China) stretches the collective West far beyond its capability or its appetite for struggle.

In an article today for Swiss news outlet NZZ, Julia Monn highlights some of the fundamental structural weaknesses of NATO. Yes, it has a collective military budget of 350 billion Euros, similar in scale, note, to Russia. And this could double, she says, by 2028. With Trump as president - perhaps trying to force European NATO members to shoulder even more of the alliance’s expenditures than the 2% of GDP with which 23 of the 32 member States currently comply - one could reasonably envisage this as a goal. But at what conceivable price that European citizens are going to tolerate?

The recent European elections and the elections in France and in Britain (together with the outspoken rejection of NATO expansionism by Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia and Turkey) are already exposing the thinness of “universal” support for NATO’s arrogant presumptions. This is a body that should rightfully have folded along with the Warsaw Pact in the 1990s but seems fated to ensure its continuation by constant appeal to the threats of Russia, China, terrorism, “autocracy,” protection of human rights or any other pretext that comes to hand (but, strangely, not to the most immediate threats of climate change, nuclear annihilation, US hegemony, Liberal-Neocon authoritarianism or Trumpian absolutism).

EDITOR—THE RULE OF SELFISHNESS APPLIES TO EVERYTHING THE WEST'S POLITICIANS DO:
NATO insistence on security for its members seems deaf to Russian protests that a “security” that reduces the security of others does not produce security. It produces insecurity for all.

At the end of the day, only 20% of European NATO expenditure actually went on new weapons, equipping troops or developing new technologies, and 75% simply went on maintaining the status quo. Why? Because no intelligent Western politician really believed that Russia, or China, were actually threats until these were conjured into threat status to resolve, as the Neocons wrongly expected, the diminishing hegemony of Washington. In short, NATO became very heavily dependent on existing stocks which have proven easily depletable.

NATO defense policy, Monn argues, has been heavily dependent on national rather than community priorities. The continent has over 30 different defense budgets, 30 different procurement systems, and 30 different arms industries. It has less power of productive capability than the US, or China, or Russia. European defense industries are fragmented across 2,500 small and medium-sized companies alongside the 30 largest defense companies. Even the ten very largest companies enjoy a market share of less than 5%. Their annual turnover in 2022 was between 4-25 billion euros, set against the industry’s total turnover of 550 billion euros.

European companies produce several versions of the same weapons systems. For example, there are 28 different variants of 152 and 155mm howitzers. Whereas the USA has 33 main weapons systems, Europe has 179. The spirit of national protectionism discourages smooth collaboration. National governments often cannot offer long-enough contracts or sufficient scale of demand to motivate local manufacturers to produce and, when these do go along, their prices are far higher than for the equivalents in the USA (and, more so even, Russia or China).

The result is that Europeans have made 78% of their arms purchases outside of Europe for the past two years (mainly from the US, also South Korea). NATO is trying to overcome this with new targets that would have members invest 50% of their defense budgets within the EU by 2030, and 60% by 2035. But these are only guidelines, not requirements.

These considerations need to be assessed alongside evidence of a growingly robust and resilient Russian arms economy. A report by the UK’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) discussed today by Dan De Luce for NBC News concludes that Western sanctions have failed to undermine Russia’s weapons production and that Moscow has ramped up the manufacture of key weapons.

Partly to blame for this, says the report, is “overly cautious” decision making by Western governments and delays in sharing intelligence among Western allies. I read earlier today that Trump will reduce intelligence sharing between Washington and some European countries whose intelligence systems he does not trust. One analyst has speculated that this may relatate to Trump’s perception of European intelligence agencies that might have played a role in fomenting the well-documented Russiagate Hoax of 2016 - MI6 comes to mind - in partnership of course with the DNC, CIA and FBI).

Since 2022, Russia is reported to have dramatically increased the production of artillery rounds, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones. This will come as no surprise to those who have been listening to the defense monitoring of critics such as Brian Berletic and Alexander Mercouris over the past two years. For example, Russian production of Kh-101 cruise missiles has increased from 56 a year to 460 since 2021. Its stock of Iskander ballistic missiles increased from 50 before the invasion to 180 today. It has achieved access to all electronics components that it needs despite Western sanctions. The RUSI report advances ideas for more effective sanctions but seems unable to gets its analytical mind around the reality of the China-Russian alliance and the changing world order under BRICS leadership.

In saying that “we are ahead of a big trial, a trial of hardships and challenges, simply to provide a prosperous life to our people,” Pezeshkian has quite reasonably prioritized the welfare of Iranian citizens, a universal, non-divisive stance. Contrary to Western mainstream media insistence that an anemic economy helps account for relatively lower voter turnout, the Iranian economy has rebounded over the past few years from a previous period of economic stagnation, in conditions, it should never be forgotten, of continuing merciless Western economic sanctions warfare against Iran.

Here is a 2022 World Bank assessment:

Iran’s economy is characterized by its hydrocarbon, agricultural, and service sectors, as well as a noticeable state presence in the manufacturing and financial services. Iran ranks second in the world for natural gas reserves and fourth for proven crude oil reserves. While relatively diversified for an oil exporting country, economic activity and government revenues still rely on oil revenues and have, therefore, been volatile. A new five-year development plan is under preparation. The previous plan for 2016/17 to 2021/22 comprised three pillars: the development of a resilient economy, progress in science and technology, and the promotion of cultural excellence. Among its priorities were the reform of state-owned enterprises and the financial and banking sectors, and the allocation and management of oil revenues. The plan envisioned annual economic growth of 8%.

External shocks, including sanctions and commodity price volatility, caused a decade-long stagnation that ended in 2019/20. The large contraction in oil exports placed significant pressure on government finances and drove inflation to over 40 %for four consecutive years. Sustained high inflation led to a substantial reduction in households’ purchasing power. At the same time, job creation was insufficient to absorb the large pool of young and educated entrants to the labor market.

Over the last two years, Iran’s economy has started to rebound, supported by a recovery in services post-pandemic, increased oil sector activity, and accommodating policy action. Economic activity has also adjusted to sanctions, including through exchange rate depreciation which helped domestically produced tradable goods to become price competitive internationally. The decline in oil exports has prompted additional processing of crude oil and hydrocarbons that have then been exported as petrochemicals. Under sanctions, trade has pivoted further towards neighboring countries and China, and bilateral currency exchange, barter, and other indirect payment channels are increasingly used to settle international transactions as most assets abroad have become inaccessible due to sanctions. The government expanded cash transfers and subsidies to mitigate the impact of high inflation on welfare, but this also added to fiscal pressures as most interventions were not sufficiently targeted.

Iran faces intensified climate change challenges, including from severe droughts, which are restricting agricultural production at a time when global food prices and food insecurity are on the rise. While higher oil prices, due to a recovery in global demand and the war in Ukraine, have raised oil export revenues, higher prices of other commodities, including food items, have significantly increased the import bill. This increase poses additional strain on government finances as direct food price subsidies stood at 5 %of GDP even before the recent price surge.

Risks to Iran’s economic outlook remain significant. Intensified climate change challenges such as more frequent floods, droughts, and dust storms, as well as energy shortages could significantly impact the economic outlook. These challenges coupled with the recent inflationary pressures could add to pressures on the most vulnerable and pose a potential risk of social tensions, particularly since modest growth is expected to generate limited job opportunities. Other downside risks relate to renewed COVID-19 outbreaks, further deceleration in global demand, and increasing geopolitical tensions if the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Vienna talks were to fail. On the upside, the projected growth outlook could be significantly stronger if economic sanctions were to be removed. Higher oil prices could also improve fiscal and external balances further.

Pezeshkian has demonstrated loyalty to the supreme leader Khamenei, seeming to underscore, according to Al jazeera, that the president-elect is seeking to avoid a rift with Iran’s political establishment. He has said he will defer to the supreme leader on matters of foreign policy (and, of course, defense). Yet some analysts consider that Pezeshkian’s win may see the promotion of a “pragmatic” foreign policy, ease tensions over the “now-stalled” negotiations with major world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal (read: deliberately wrecked by idiot Trump) and improve prospects for social liberalisation in Iran (well, yes, the women’s issue is indeed hugely important but the West should shut up about other people’s human rights violations and think much, much, more about their own).

Mostafa Khoshcheshm, a Tehran-based analyst and professor at Fars Media Faculty, said he was not expecting strategic changes to Iran’s foreign policy.

The foreign policy file, he explained, “is decided by the entire establishment, mostly at the Supreme National Security Council, where [there are] representatives of the government as well as the armed forces, the Iranian supreme leader and the Parliament.

If Donald Trump comes into office, I don’t really expect any kind of change, any talks between the two sides, or any change in the present course of actions,” Khoshcheshm told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera concludes that in the end, Pezeshkian will be in charge of applying state policy outlined by Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in the country.

Al Jazeera describes Pezeshkian as a “centrist” while Western mainstream media describe him as a “reformist” and make much of his record as one who has advocated for improved relations with the USA. I am not inclined to make much of this and, in any case, am amazed that any Iranian who cares about the history, core values, dignity and independence of Iran can talk in good conscience about improving relations with a country that was culpable of overthrowing, in favor of Anglo-Amerian oil interests in the exploitation of Iran’s oil wealth, Iran’s democracy in 1953 in favor of a cruel autocracy, that has been implacably opposed to the Islamic revolution of 1971, has conspired with Israel in the fabrication of foolish narratives of Iran as a “nuclear threat” when, even now, it has no nuclear weapons and its major regional opponent (now that Iran has established good relations with Saudi Arabia) secretely maintains an arsenal of hundreds of nuclear warheads - yes, we are talking of course about the genocidal regime of Israel, - that has reneged on an international agreement to lift economic sanctions in return for Iranian concessions on the accumulation of enriched uranium for its peaceful nuclear energy program, has assassinated key Iranian army commanders, has an ally, Israel, that has murdered at least half a dozen Iranian scientists and that is now engaged in a genocide of fellow Islamiats (predominantly Sunni, in contrast to Iran’s prevailing Shia religious commitment) among many other indications of extreme Western hostility to a proud nation that has refused to succumb to Washington imperial power and its global financial and neocon authoritarianism.

My expectation is that Pezeshkian will not confront the leadership of Khamenei, and that, for the benefit of Iran as a whole, he will continue to do his best to pursue Iranian’s trajectory in the SCO and the BRICS. I anticipate that he will do nothing to upset the good relations between Iran and Russia, and that the two countries will, after all, conclude a mutual security arrangement.

I note that Western mainstream media are quiet about the indications of a robust electoral process in Iran, or express surprise that someone they label as a “reformist,” should have won the election. Rather, they prefer to emphasize the authority of the Supreme Leader and the fact that the roll of candidates for the presidency must be approved by a body of senior clerics. All this might seem to dampen Iranian claims to “democracy,” but, surely, no more than the way in which access to the candidate list in the USA requries the financial backing of billionaire sponsors and very great wealth, or the multiple ways in which the US congressional-military-industrial establishment (MICIMATT if you prefer the full version) contains the spectrum of permissible speech to an extremely narrow waveband that is dominated by distracting identity politics.

The British election has brought to power a piece of wood in the form of Keith Starmer who, ignoring completely the message of anti-Ukraine war Nigel Farage’s stunning rise to influence, decides to talk first (or almost first) among foreign leaders to none other than M16-stooge Zelenskiy and promise him a hundred years of solidarity. And what use is that going to be to anybody after a nuclear armageddon that the British foreign policy establishment is doing its best to provoke, while ignoring the social, cultural and economic decline of the UK?

McGovern notes with some alarm the recent NYT article by David Sanger (of “Iraqi WMD” notoriety) to the effect that there was a 50% chance two years ago that Russia might have used nuclear weapons rather than face defeat in Ukraine. Well, Russia is certainly not losing at present (Larry Johnson expects the war to be over by summer), so has no incentive to use nuclear weapons. But mightn’t Biden have that incentive? McGovern concludes that Putin will have noticed, and that the Russian leader must now be adjusting his strategy accordingly.

All this might suggest that Nuland’s departure, whatever it actually signifies, does not necessarily signify a victory of the China Hawks over the Russian Hawks, at least while Biden still has an election to lose. It might indicate a shift of relative influence in Washington, but it does not amount to an actual change, yet. She might have had to go anyway, given her multiple failures or failures of her proteges since the failure of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive up to and including the collapse of Avdiivka, the extremely poor state of the Ukrainian army, the leaking of the conspiring between Luuftwaffe officers to use Taurus against the Kerch bridge. All followed in some kind of symbolic appropriateness with a call to Zelenskiy from the Pope to raise the white flag.

There can be little doubt that Ukraine’s battefield situation is deteriorating, especially given the recent heavy losses of Ukrainian air defense systems (10 in one month). These had been pulled by Ukraine closer to the combat lines in order to reduce the impact of heavy Russian bombing with regular use of FAB 1500 guide bombs. The accelerating strength and more numerous presence of Russian aircraft close to the combat lines may also have made them more vulnerable and this might account for Ukrainian claims, likely exaggerated, to have shot down several of these Russian S-24 fighters.

Western weapons have not been impressive on Ukrainian battlefields. In one day recently Russia destroyed three HIMARS launch vehicles and two French long-range Ceasar Howitzers. 37 Howitzers have been supplied altogether, but because of high pressure on the gun barrels, they can only fire a couple of rounds a day. More than half of the Leopard II tanks supplied by Germany are nonoperational or have been destroyed. Only 7 of 14 British Challenger II tanks are still operational. Marder tanks, M777s and Bradleys are no longer being produced. Talk of the sending of Taurus tanks is still around, perhaps by means of a swap of British Storm Shadows for German Taurus, for Britain to pass the Taurus missiles on to Ukraine (to get around German parliamentary opposition to sending Taurus to Ukraine).

Alexander Mercouris, in his daily broadcast today, suggests that the total US shell production by the end of this year might reach half a million, supplemented by, say 60,000 from Europe. This would not meet Ukraine’s current consumption of over two million a year, nor come close to the current Russian rate of production of over one million a year.

Battlefields

In Novomykhailivka, Russia has taken control of the farmlands in the northeast. There are clashes for warehouses in the north. Russians are extending their control over the territory above the north eastern half of the settlement. Ukrainian forces in the settlement are now in danger of being encircled.

North of Novomykhailivka, Russian forces are preparing the ground for further offensive operations west of Pobieda. From here they can proceed south west to Kostiantynivka and Yelyzavetivka.

Further north, in Heorhiivka, Dima confirms Russian presence in the east of the settlement. Russia has taken more territory in the area between Heorhiivka and Krasnohorivka (the southern section of which is under Russian control and which Russia is hitting with FAB 1,500 kilo bombs) to the north of Marinka. Ukrainian forces in this area appear to be encircled. Russia has attacked many Ukrainian FPV drone positions in this area.

Further north, Russia entered the settlement of Pervomaiske. Russian forces are closing in on Vuhledar by way of the village of Shevchenko. There has been no substantial change in the situation west of Avdiika in the past 24 hours, only reports of very heavy clashes around Berdychi and Orlivka, to which Ukraine is sending reinforcements. Significant numbers, perhaps as many as 7, of Abrams tanks were destroyed in this area in the previous week, leading to a replacement of the Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigade.

Russian forces are moving in the direction of Huliaipole, by way of Chervone. To the east they are subjecting the settlement of Malynivka to heavy bombing.

Further north there is not a lot of new activity to report around Bakhmut, other than indications of Russian preparation to move on the town of Siversk.

In the Robotyne the situation remains unclear. The front line is unstable.

Ukraine on Russia

Ukrainian Intelligence chief Budanov is saying that there will be a major Ukrainian attack on Crimea in the coming days. There is also a Ukrainian intelligence effort to monitor Russian partisans in the Odessa region.

This information comes hard on the heels of reports of the destruction of Ukrainian ambitions to launch a major attack on Belgorod. Ukraine tried to concentrate a significant number of forces in the borderlands near Tarasivke, close to Popivka, with a view to entering and seizing Russian territory as far inland as Grayvoron and Dobroye. All this was diversionary, however, from the main target further south, which was the Russian town of Valuyki in the Kupyansk area. If successful, this operation would have cut off main Russian supply routes to their forces in Kupyansk, Lyman and the Teryny-Yampolivka area over which Russia is currently establishing control. The concentrations of Ukrainian forces were destroyed by heavy Russian missile, bombing and drone attacks.

Middle East

Netanyahu and even Benny Gantz (invited by Washington without Netanyahu being advised) both confirm Israel’s intention to proceed with a ground operation against Rafah, demonstrating that there is little point in trying to divide Israeli leadership. Biden continues to send weapons to Israel, yet says that the US cannot stomach the loss of another 30,000 Palestinian lives. As Alastair Crooke notes in interview with Judge Napolitano today, Biden, despite the fact that he claims that Rafah is a red line, actually has no red line - he is failing to show Israel that there are consequences for mass murder. Biden’s plan to build a pier for offloading aid will take at least two years to implement, and is a clumsy, contorted route for getting aid to people who needed it months ago by the most direct route possible. Crooke thinks that the IDF has a lot more preparation to complete before going into Rafah: it has the potential of trouble in the West Bank during Ramadan, which started two days ago, and given the scale of resistance it is likely to meet in and from Lebanon and Iraq.

Crisis for Ukraine in Avdiivka

Dima predicts a steady Russian move westwards to a line well beyond Tonenke and Sierverne to places like Prohas, Komichivka, Netilove and Pervovmaiorsk. While there are no significant updates (yet) on other areas of Russian advance such as in and around Novomykhailivka, Staramaiorske, or Robotyne, and noting also the virtual collapse of the Ukrainian adventure in Krynky, the immediate if not longer-term future of Ukraine looks dire. It is even more acute, given that Congress has left for vacation without voting through an arms package for Ukraine. Even if the House of Representatives were to vote for passage of the Biden arms package on their return to Washington in early March (and such a vote currently seems unlikely) the first installment of the package would not arrive until May (not to mention that the chances of the availability of newly produced weapons before the end of the year do not seem high). Germany is talking about giving $7 billion to Ukraine (even though it cannot afford the required 2% of GDP for its NATO dues), an amount which would hardly help Ukraine survive for another six weeks, and exacerbate Germany’s economic crisis. It would be hardly enough to give Ukraine’s RADA the confidence to vote through the mobilization of 500,000. Even Ukrainian analysts are saying that Ukraine cannot afford to deal with the mobilization and training of more than 250,000. All this may incentivize Russia to make what progress as soon as they can, especially in these latter and muddier stages of the Winter. This would likely point to a major advance in Lyman-Kupiansk-Kharkiv areas, especially given the significant concentrations of Russian forces there, and given the context of recent Ukrainian bombings of civilian targets in Belgorod, and the successful Ukrainian hit of the Russian ship, the Caesar Kunikov.

Russian Black Sea Weakness

A number of successful Ukrainian attacks on Russian ships many employing newer generations of maritime drones (including the Magura-5, with a range of 450 nautical miles) in the Black Sea has allowed Zelenskiy to claim significant success, overall, in establishing a Black Sea corridor for Ukrainian exports following the collapse last July of a Turkish-brokered deal (the Black Sea Grain Initiative) with Russia and Ukraine. According to Ukrainian and US sources, 22.6 million tons of Ukrainian cargo have moved through the corridor in the past seven months and more than 700 ships have used the passage to the Bosphorus and beyond to world markets. The same sources say that $1.9 billion worth of Ukrainian exports were shipped by sea (out of a total of $3.4 billion). Some ships have offset the risk by taking up insurance through a scheme called UNITY, created by the Ukrainian government together with a pool of insurance companies. Such shipping has not been subject to Russian attacks (which has chosen, instead, to focus on port and storage infrastructure). One-third of the Black Sea fleet has been disabled or destroyed. Remaining ships rarely venture into the western half of the sea. Following successful Ukrainian missile attacks on Sevastopol last August, Russia withdrew some of the fleet to safer ports on the Russian coast.

Editor's Note: Every major navy today faces the same problem: the inability to protect its ships from drone, rocket and missile attacks. The Russian navy entered the war with ships that, despite their modernity and capability in deep blue water zones outside the reach of drones, drone attack boats, missiles and rocketry, could not quickly develop efficient (technical and economic) countermeasures against such weapons. To date, no one has. That's why the US Navy, especially its carriers—big floating targets at the mercy of long-range missiles— could do little against Iranian missiles or even Yemeni  rockets. Same applies to US vessels challenging Russian or Chinese cities or installations near their shores. Big war navies are rapidly becoming obsolete due to the rise of these new technologies. —PG

Navalny

Scott Ritter today in an interview with Ania K says of him that he was not a good man, that he was a white supremacist (for example, he called Georgians cockroaches and advocated the shooting of Chechnyan Muslims) that he was a traitor to Russia who, in the 1990s, identified more with the West than with Russia. A lot of his funding came from non-Russian NGOs that were “democracy-promotion” fronts for Western intelligence. Ritter claims that Navalny was groomed, perhaps recruited, by the CIA at Yale (the paperwork that sent Navalny to Yale was signed off on, says Ritter, by then US ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul) with a view to returning him to Russia as an opposition figure whose purpose was to bring down Vladimir Putin. Navalny would have thereby weakened, not strengthened democracy in Russia, given Putin’s commanding position in all polls. Apart from the official Russian account, we dont know exactly how he died, but he had had medical problems for some time, and, when moved to a harsher prison within the Arctic circle (because of enhanced charges brought against him), doubtless found it difficult to adapt.

Satellites