Putin’s ‘civilizational’ speech frames conflict between east and west
DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar
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Western demonisation has not affected the image of President Putin, one of the most respected and popular statesmen around the world.(Credit: The Cradle)
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s much awaited address to the Russian Federal Assembly on Tuesday should be interpreted as a tour de force of sovereignty.
The address, significantly, marked the first anniversary of Russia’s official recognitionof the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, only a few hours before 22 February, 2022. In myriad ways, what happened a year ago also marked the birth of the real, 21stcentury multipolar world.
Then two days later, Moscow launched the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine to defend said republics.
Cool, calm, and collected, without a hint of aggression, Putin’s speech painted Russia as an ancient, independent, and quite distinct civilization – sometimes following a path in concert with other civilizations, sometimes in divergence.
Ukraine, part of Russian civilization, now happens to be occupied by western civilization, which Putin said “became hostile to us,” like in a few instances in the past. So the acute phase of what is essentially a war by proxy of the west against Russia takes place over the body of Russian civilization.
That explains Putin’s clarification that “Russia is an open country, but an independent civilization – we do not consider ourselves superior but we inherited our civilization from our ancestors and we must pass it on.”
A war dilacerating the body of Russian civilization is a serious existential business. Putin also made clear that “Ukraine is being used as a tool and testing ground by the west against Russia.” Thus the inevitable follow-up: “The more long-range weapons are sent to Ukraine, the longer we have to push the threat away from our borders.”
Translation: this war will be long – and painful. There will be no swift victory with minimal loss of blood. The next moves around the Dnieper may take years to solidify. Depending on whether US policy continues to cleave to neo-con and neoliberal objectives, the frontline may be displaced to Lviv. Then German politics may change. Normal trade with France and Germany may be recovered only by the end of the next decade.
Kremlin exasperation: START is finished
All that brings us to the games played by the Empire of Lies. Says Putin: “The promises…of western rulers turned into forgery and cruel lies. The west supplied weapons, trained nationalist battalions. Even before the start of the SMO, there were negotiations…on the supply of air defense systems… We remember Kyiv’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons.”
Putin made it clear, once again, that the element of trust between Russia and the west, especially the US, is gone. So it’s a natural decision for Russia to “withdraw from the treaty on strategic offensive weapons, but we don’t do it officially. For now we are only halting our participation to the START treaty. No US inspections in our nuclear sites can be allowed.”
As an aside, of the three main US-Russian weapons treaties, Washington abandoned two of these: The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was dumped by the administration of former president George W. Bush in 2002, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was nixed by former president Donald Trump in 2019.
This shows the Kremlin’s degree of exasperation. Putin is even prepared to order the Ministry of Defense and Rosatom to get ready to test Russian nuclear weapons if the US goes first along the same road.
If that’s the case, Russia will be forced to completely break parity in the nuclear sphere, and abandon the moratorium on nuclear testing and cooperation with other nations when it comes to the production of nuclear weapons. So far, the US and NATO game consisted in opening a little window allowing them to inspect Russian nuclear sites.
With his judo move, Putin returns the pressure onto the White House.
The US and NATO will not be exactly thrilled when Russia starts testing its new strategic weapons, especially the post-doomsday Poseidon – the largest nuclear-powered torpedo ever deployed, capable of triggering terrifying radioactive ocean swells.
On the economic front: Bypassing the US dollar is the essential play towards multipolarity. During his speech, Putin made a point to extol the resilience of the Russian economy: “Russian GDP in 2022 decreased only by 2.1 percent, estimates of the opposing side did not become reality, they said 15, 20 percent.” That resilience gives Russia enough room to “work with partners to make the system of international settlements independent of the US dollar and other western currencies. The dollar will lose its universal role.”
On geoeconomics: Putin went all out in praise of economic corridors, from West Asia to South Asia: “New corridors, transport routes will be built towards the East, this is the region where we will focus our development, new highways to Kazakhstan and China, new North-South corridor to Pakistan, Iran.”
And those will connect to Russia developing “the ports of the Black and Azov Seas, it’s necessary to build logistics corridors within the country.” The result will be a progressive interconnection with the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) whose principals include Iran and India, and eventually China’s mega-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
China’s plan for global security
It’s inevitable that apart from sketching several state policies geared towards Russia’s internal development – one might even compare them to socialist policies – a great deal of Putin’s address had to focus on the NATO vs. Russia war till-the-last-Ukrainian.
So it’s no accident that the US ambassador was immediately summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs right after Putin’s address.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Ambassador Lynne Tracey in no uncertain terms that Washington must take concrete measures: among them, to remove all US and NATO military forces and equipment away from Ukraine. In a stunning move, he demanded a detailed explanation of the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, as well as a halt to US interference in an independent inquiry to identify the responsible parties.
Keeping the momentum in Moscow, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi met with secretary of Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, before talking to Lavrov and Putin. Patrushev remarked, “the course towards developing a strategic partnership with China is an absolute priority for Russia’s foreign policy.” Wang Yi, not so cryptically, added, “Moscow and Beijing need to synchronize their watches.”
The Americans are doing everything to try and pre-empt the Chinese proposal for a de-escalation in Ukraine. China’s plan should be presented this Friday, and there’s a serious risk Beijing may fall into a trap set by the western plutocracy.
Too many Chinese “concessions” to Russia, and not as many to Ukraine, may be spun to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing (Divide and Rule, which is always the US Plan A. There’s no Plan B).
Sensing the waters, the Chinese themselves decided to take the offensive, presenting a Global Security Initiative Concept Paper.
The problem is Beijing still attributes too much clout to a toothless UN, when they refer to“formulating a New Agenda for Peace and other proposals put forth in Our Common Agenda by the UN Secretary-General.”
Same when Beijing upholds the consensus that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Try to explain that to the Straussian neo-con psychos in the Beltway, who know nothing about war, much less nuclear ones.
The Chinese affirm the necessity to “comply with the joint statement on preventing nuclear war and avoiding arms races issued by leaders of the five nuclear-weapon states in January 2022.” And to “strengthen dialogue and cooperation among nuclear-weapon states to reduce the risk of nuclear war.”
Bets can be made that Patrushev explained in detail to Wang Yi how that is just wishful thinking. The “logic “of the current collective western “leadership” has been expressed, among others, by irredeemable mediocrity Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general: even nuclear war is preferable to a Russian victory in Ukraine.
Putin’s measured but firm address has made it clear that the stakes keep getting higher. And it all revolves on how deep Russia’s – and China’s – “strategic ambiguity” are able to petrify a paranoid west flirting with mushroom clouds.
(Republished from The Cradle by permission of author or representative)
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UKRAINE War analysis: Phase 1
DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
by Aleks
black mountain analysis
by Aleks
black mountain analysis
Introduction
This article is a direct continuation of the “Path to war in Ukraine” article. So, it makes sense to read the former article first. The goal of this article is, to give you an overview of how the war started and what the first actions and results were. Moreover, I want to highlight some high-level procedures of military planning. This article does not intend to go into details, since one could write books over this article. It should only give a brief overview.
There is another ting, that I want to highlight here. I do not have military education. Basic training yes, but that’s all. Since I am analysing military conflicts since approx. 2010, having read a lot of military history and being a strategic planner and executive professionally, I assume, that I’m capable to predict military results by given facts. If you have any doubt, or if you want to listen to a true and very capable military expert, I recommend listening to Scott Ritter interviews, articles or to read his book.
Set objectives by the Russian leadership
On February 21, 2022, Putin addressed the nation with a set of decisions. I highly recommend to re-listen them or read the transcript here. Since it is not the goal to analyse his speech I will break it down, and the decisions that are announced the following several days into three main objectives:
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Denazification:
The Soviet Union sacrificed over 26 million people in the second world war, to defeat Nazism. Every family in Russia has some family members that died in the second world war. It is a big wound in the Russian soul. And the best attack vector against Russia. Unfortunately, Ukraine had huge numbers of Nazi collaborator cells during the world war, led (among others) by Stepan Bandera. Western Services knew about the Russian wound and cultivated it, especially in Western Ukraine, even during Soviet times. This trend exploded exponentially since the Western services took control of Ukraine during the events of 2014. Basically, an Anti-Russia [zombie state] was created, armed to the teeth, right on Russia’s borders. Not only this, but not too far from Moscow itself. Especially difficult was the fact that there is a huge Russian-speaking part of the population in Ukraine, which is getting discriminated, if not worse, by the Bandera followers. Russia’s goal is, to roll back this development and to remove the whole Nazi and Bandera ideology from Ukraine. This time thoroughly since it wasn’t done properly after WW2. How? I’m not an expert in such questions, so I honestly don’t know what the approach will be. It remains to be seen.
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Demilitarization:
Ukraine, if it remains as a national state, which I doubt at this point, would be allowed to have only a small self-defence force. This implies, that its whole [current, Nazi-infiltrated] military needs to be destroyed, or handed over to Russia. Moreover, this means that no foreign military hostile to Russia would be allowed to station its military or equipment on Ukrainian soil.
Ukraine could have surrendered. In this case, it would have handed over its military equipment to Russia. It could have kept, what Russia would define as necessary, for basic self-defence.
Without surrender/negotiation, demilitarization is being implemented by force. Which means, that all military equipment and troops on Ukrainian soil, that are not Russian or Russia-allied, will be destroyed. This includes both, Ukrainian and NATO equipment and troops.
Since the West is committed to defeat Russia on the Battlefield, through Ukrainian proxies, we can assume the following: “Russia will demilitarize Ukraine AND the West, as long as the West is committed to send its equipment and as long as there are Ukrainians alive that can use this equipment. This would lead to the total demilitarization of both, the West and Ukraine, unless the West doesn’t surrender (Ukraine) or Russia is being defeated on the Battlefield.
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Bringing to justice all Ukrainians that committed crimes against the Russian-speaking population:
Over eight years, Ukraine committed all kinds of crimes against its Russian-speaking population. There were three main crime places.
The Ukrainian-held Donbas in general: The Russian speaking population suffered different atrocities, which I won’t explain here.
In Mariupol, which is part of Donbas, in particular: The most fanatic Nazi formation, called Azov Regiment, had its headquarters in Mariupol. There are endless reports of atrocities.
Odessa: A city, founded by the Russian czarina, Catherine the Great. It is considered by most Russians, and as far as I am informed, by the inhabitants as well, as a Russian city. Nazi formations conducted a massacre here, in 2014, against Russian-speaking inhabitants. Putin mentioned this massacre, and its perpetrators especially in his speech. He said, all perpetrators are known and will be brought to justice.
Putin didn’t aim these goals at Donbas only but at the whole of Ukraine. Which brings us by logical deduction to the conclusion that the whole of Ukraine will need to be captured, to be able to fulfill the stated goals. There is no other logical way.
Strategic planning: Basics
First of all, there is no red line, that is followed by a professional military, no matter what.
Hence, there is no “Russia planned X, and didn’t achieve it”.
The only thing, that is constant in military planning, is the political goal, given by the political leadership of the country. Those objectives are the three, mentioned above. The way to achieve those goals can change, depending on the development of circumstances in the field. Ultimately, the political objectives can change as well, if the military might is much less or too big, or the political circumstances change.
If the military might is too weak, then the objectives might be adjusted to more reachable smaller ones. If the political leadership agrees. There are unfortunately examples where such adjustments did not take place in human history. If the military might is strong enough, and the political leadership agrees, then the goals could be expanded.
For the time being, and as all the time reiterated by Russia’s leadership, all goals will be achieved and there is no change.
The military is planning a strategy on how to achieve the political goals. Most crucial in military planning is, that you have options for all deviations from the original plan. As many people know, the best plan is only valid until the first bullet starts to fly.
Every military campaign is being planned, with many options, if things do not follow the initially planned way. And every campaign can consist of X military operations.
Strategic planning: Option A, B and C
I will present three scenarios/options, that I assume, Russia has planned for, for phase 1. Again, those are assumptions and, of course, they can be wrong: Best case scenario (A): Conducting a massive penetration on a broad frontline to cause a shock and quick collapse of the enemy. In this case, Ukraine would have fully surrendered within days or weeks after the invasion. Having analysed the facts, which are available, I assume, that it was one of the realistic Russian goals, which was not achieved, eventually. The result would have been the handing over of Ukraine to the Russian military. Middle case scenario (B): Fighting with Ukraine, by gradually increasing the intensity, and thereby the Ukrainian military and infrastructural casualties, until Ukraine is ready to negotiate a favorable post-war agreement. This was almost achieved at the end of phase 1. Unfortunately, the West intervened and held back Ukraine from concluding a negotiated agreement. In theory, such a scenario could still be concluded if Ukraine would be the sole actor. Since Ukrainians do not control their own country, but foreign powers, the timeframe for scenario B obviously is closed. Worst case scenario (C): This scenario foresees, that Ukraine will not surrender under any circumstances, as long it is physically able to resist. This means that it would fight until the last soldier is killed and the last piece of equipment destroyed, so that the Russian army can drive through, to the Polish border. Moreover, it implies, that NATO will assist and supply Ukraine, with most resources, except those, that are “redlined”, to prevent Ukraine, to collapse too fast. As far as I understand, this is the scenario, that is currently being implemented. Of course, all people involved are hoping, that the collapse takes place before too much damage is done. I just presented three, at least in my opinion or assumption, possible scenarios. Scenario A and B would have been possible to achieve within Phase 1. Both scenarios became impossible after Phase 1 was concluded. Now, unfortunately, only scenario C is left. I will go deeper into it, in the articles, covering Phase 2 and 3. As mentioned above, Russia needed to plan for three scenarios. Considering scenarios B and C, we can conclude, that Russia would need massive amounts of mobilized and trained troops, properly equipped hardware and all the intelligence capacity in place, for target acquisition and many more purposes. We can recall the beginning of phase 1. Very few details, troops and equipment were in place and all troops, except for some staff and general ranked officers, did not have any plan for whether it was serious or only a bluff. In turn, it means, the troops were not prepared and informed properly for the invasion. We can also recall that 12 hours before the invasion, Russia did alert and started to mobilise its intelligence services. Of course, there are some top-secret parts of the intelligence community, which helped to plan everything. But most parts were not involved and started being mobilised for war intelligence duty, 12 hours in advance. One could argue that I just described bad preparation by the Russian side. This is not the case. My opinion is that the Russian General Staff and the departments of the Russian Intelligence Services that were involved in planning, created a multi-level mixed military-political campaign. Taking into consideration the three (or how many ever they are) scenarios mentioned above, what escalation steps would be activated, if Ukraine doesn’t surrender after this or that event on the battlefield. The first step was made in total secrecy, to confuse Western intelligence services about the scale and objectives of the first push into Ukraine. If we take into consideration the public communication of the United States, days before the invasion, we can understand the deception that was in effect. The Americans were sure that Russia would invade Ukraine doctrinally and conquer it within days. Russia could have done that. The Americans know that. That’s why there were created maximal confusion. Only after scenario A failed, Russia activated the next, pre-planned steps, that led to phase 2, which I will discuss in the next article. What I simply want to highlight is, that all escalation steps by the Russians are pre-planned and the resources allocated. The are only released, if needed. Which means, unless Ukraine doesn’t surrender, more and more Russian resources will be released, that are already before the invasion earmarked, for exactly this escalation step. The last thing to say, is, that as described initially, the Russian troops didn’t have information about the war and their objectives, to keep everyone in total secrecy. The second the war started, everything was set in motion, to withdraw and train earmarked troops for purposes assigned to them in later escalation steps. Unfortunately, the Donbas militia took the biggest part of the fighting and casualties, especially in Donbas. The reason is, to keep Ukrainian troops at bay, grind them down and buy time, until the main Russian troops are fully prepared and trained for their earmarked purpose. Depending on the source that you take, Ukraine did have approx. 300,000 – 500,000 troops at the beginning of the conflict. And the number of troops in Donbas were, also depending on the source, between 100,000 – and 200,000 troops. This was the most experienced and elite troops, assembled for an attack at the militia-held territories in Donbas. Since the Americans knew for sure, that there would be an invasion, they prepared with the Ukrainians, especially with most of their special forces’ ambushes and traps on all roads, that would be likely used in the event of an attack. All means of guerrilla warfare were prepared. In this case, high-tech guerrilla warfare, with drones and satellite reconnaissance and communication. All other regions were thinly defended. My estimation is, that the American services calculated a push on Kiev and on Donbas and established their defences accordingly. In Donbas with the regular professional army. In northern Ukraine, Kiev included, with mixed components of the regular army, popular defence and most importantly, almost all special forces units of Ukraine, training for the mentioned guerrilla warfare. Russia prepared strike groups North, South, Special forces (airborne VDV), Donbas militia brigades and Wagner mercenaries. Of course, there were more sub-formations, but those were the most important. As announced before, I don’t intend to go into details. Though I want to highlight some points: Russia’s airborne special forces, called VDV, were responsible for pinning down the elite Ukrainian Special Forces troops in and around Kiev. Moreover, to apply maximum pressure on Kiev and the Ukrainian government, to assist either the negotiations or to bring a collapse of the government and achieve a quick Ukrainian total surrender. These troops did the most heroic fighting under the worst possible conditions. They also suffered huge casualties. There were special decorations of the involved formations by President Putin. The southern strike group was quite successful. As far as I can judge it, they achieved most, but not all set goals for the first phase. They captured the whole of Kherson, a huge part of Zaporozhe and fought in the battle for Mariupol. Moreover, they expanded buffer zones around Kherson, Mariupol and Kakhovka. In anticipation of future defensive battles, to have space for maneuvering, regrouping and tactical retreats. The northern group was tasked with pinning down troops across northern Ukraine from Donbas up to Kiev. As far as one can judge the reports (I could be wrong here), this group was not that successful and suffered heavy losses. It could be explained either by bad leadership, or because, as mentioned above, my assumption is, that Americans expected this vector as the main attacking vector and prepared accordingly all guerrilla warfare elements in this direction. There were several purposes, apart from the already mentioned scenarios A, B and C: Ukraine prepared a large-scale attack on the Donbas, which was ready to kick off any time. By attacking on a large front, Russia cut off most of the logistics and reinforcements for the frontline troops in Donbas. A large-scale attack on Donbas was no longer possible. Instead, the Donbas militia utilized the situation and went on the offensive on their own. Creating a permanent land bridge to Crimea. The bridge is good, but in wartime useless. Ukraine maybe isn’t capable, apart from terrorist attacks, to attack the bridge. NATO is. Would be one of the first targets that couldn’t be defended. Securing the permanent water supply to Crimea, out of the Kakhovka reservoir. As initially stated, NATO did prepare Ukraine very well for the likely Russian attack vectors. Therefore, several tens of thousands of special forces units were trained by NATO in Ukraine and on foreign soil, over eight years, to conduct this kind of guerrilla and stay-behind warfare. By taking this into account, one can understand one of the reasons why Russia has chosen the approach of invading with totally uniformed soldiers. To avoid that offensive plans trickle through to NATO and that thereby even more successful ambushes could have been planned. Having invaded in winter, Russia had even more problems with ambushes. Snow gives good opportunities for preparing ambushes. Especially because columns are forced to drive in an array on roads. Next, I will explain, why this is a problem: Ukraine pre-registered most road sections by artillery, where likely Russian columns woul need to pass. And they did. And many columns have been destroyed. It was a very successful approach. Nevertheless, by far not enough to hurt the Russians substantially. The Ukrainian military applied the strategy to hide in all civilian buildings on the roads, where the Russian columns needed to pass. So, either the Russians shot at civilian houses or they tried to rush through and sustain heavy damage, due to NLAW fire out of the windows of civilians. The worst of this approach is, that most civilians are Russian speaking. Which forced the Russian army to shoot at people, whom they wanted to protect. Rightfully, Amnesty International recognized this approach as a war crime by the Ukrainians. Of course, it absolutely makes sense, to mine the roads where Russians would have been forced to pass. And that’s what Ukrainians did. Many tanks and other vehicles, that weren’t equipped properly, to detect or remotely denote mines, were blown up. A part of the propaganda warfare in Ukraine was, to demoralize the Russian public, to trigger it to overthrow President Putin. To achieve that, many ambush kills were filmed by drones and broadcast immediately. The idea was to make the Russian public demand an end to the war and by refusing it, Putin would lose the confidence of the population and would be eventually overthrown. The broadcasting was very successful. But not the approach, that Russians would lose morale, and demand an end to the war. That failed badly. To achieve the exact same goal, to trigger the Russian public to overthrow Putin, Ukraine created much footage, where they tortured captured Russian soldiers horribly. I won’t describe it here in detail. This attempt failed as well. There were no calls for overthrowing Putin. Instead, the Russian public and soldiers got angry and demanded a far more resolute approach against Ukraine. Soldiers didn’t surrender that quickly. Instead, many fought to the death, because they knew what awaited them. I described the main strike directions of the first phase. As mentioned in the possible scenarios, those strikes were intended to achieve scenario A or B. Unfortunately, A was never an option. Ukrainians were remote-controlled, down to the unit level. There was never the possibility that orders could be issued from a central command to the various units, to surrender. This still applies today. Nevertheless, there were some pre-negotiations during phase 1 in Minsk. They led to a meeting on March 29, 2022, in Istanbul. These negotiations had officially the potential to end the conflict. Ukrainian neutrality should be declared and the recognition of Donbas and Crimea as Russian. The parties were close to a conclusion. The following days the proposals should have been discussed in the capitals and then an agreement at the top level should be reached. As a sign of goodwill, Russia withdrew all troops from northern Ukraine, including Kiev. [The West and Kiev treacherously used this opportunity to proclaim that Ukraine had actually inflicted a huge defeat on the Russians.—Ed). Unfortunately, the West had other plans for Ukraine. Boris Johnson flew immediately to Kiev and after a meeting between him and Zelensky, Ukraine completely withdrew from further negotiations. This event triggered the activation and announcement of phase 2 by the Russian leadership at the end of March 2022. Proceeding slowly, (If we exclude phase 1) so the West has all time it needs to deplete itself militarily and economically. So, Russia would be able to force the West down on its knees and implement the new draft security framework for Europe, without getting into an actual military conflict with NATO. Drawing out all Ukrainian troops and (NATO) equipment out of the big cities and Western regions. To destroy it in a place with short supply lines, a friendly population and total air domination. This is the Donbas and Kherson. Thereby a collapse of Ukraine can be triggered, slowly, but surely, without the need to fight devastating battles in Ukraine’s large cities. Thereby avoiding further Mariupol scenarios. Russia decided to apply a special military operation template in Ukraine. Not a doctrinal war. The big question is, why? Many people, including Western intelligence services, thought there would be a doctrinal push. It would have many advantages, but some disadvantages as well. This is a topic for another article. But I will go a little bit into it here. By applying a special military operation, Russia had the following opportunities: I want to highlight, that I’m by 100% convinced, that the Russian leadership calculated and still is calculating with confidence, on a full Ukrainian surrender. And the handing over of Ukraine as a whole by its military to Russia’s military. This is what eventually will happen. Unfortunately, we can assume that many people still will have to die before this happens. I wrote that I think that this was planned from the beginning. This is to be explained by what I wrote in the “Strategic planning” section of this article. Russia is following a predefined, but flexible escalation process: It was clear from the beginning that Ukraine as a whole, needs to be captured, to reach all geopolitical and security goals, set by the political leadership of Russia. Nevertheless, Russia needs always to show the whole world, and first and foremost its BRICS allies, that it is always ready to negotiate. Even though all parties are fully clear, that this is an existential war between the West and Russia. The party that loses, vanishes into geopolitical insignificance. There will be either a strong Russia with BRICS afterward and NO West (geopolitically) or the West and the BRICS project would be over. Therefore, all involved parties will always find, a reason why not to negotiate or why negotiations failed. As many say, “until the last Ukrainian”. I personally think that Russia proceeds carefully and will execute a quick final blow, when the time comes, that fits Russia, to preserve as many Ukrainians and their infrastructure as possible. Why? Because it will inherit it and will need to either incorporate it and rebuild it or find another solution. Why was I sure, from the beginning, that the whole of Ukraine is on the plate? Because the leaders of Hungary and Serbia started to be very bold in their communication with the West. They did and said things that would be a no-go before. Things, for which they would be sanctioned into oblivion. Hungary for example blocked many EU sanctions against Russia. This is huge. This tells me, that Hungary and Serbia had information in advance, what the Russian plans are and how the future landscape between Russia, Hungary and Serbia will look like. Without Ukraine. Since I believe that there will be a land-bridge between Russia (with the whole of Ukraine as federal subject) and Hungary, I think, that here will be finally military ground and air support, as well as trade by land and the black sea possible. So, Hungary and Serbia are no longer afraid of a military attack by NATO and by Western sanctions, which will be, after the implementation of the multipolar world order, obsolete. I have further thoughts about this, which I will explain in detail in another article. Here I want to give a quick overview of the achieved objectives of phase 1: Denazification was not completed yet. Demilitarization was not completed yet. Bringing war criminals to justice was not completed yet. Huge territorial gains were made, and deep buffer zones around big cities were created for maneuvering in defence. Both sides suffered huge casualties, which are normal under such circumstances. Thanks for reading Black Mountain Analysis! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Deception and cover up
Preconditions
Penetration
Ambushes
Negotiations
Further thoughts
Results of phase 1
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