Okay, I am going to ask you to make a real effort and, for a while at least, drop your certitudes and what you believe is a good or a bad way to prosecute a war.  Instead, I am going to appeal to your common sense.

Long before the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) in the Ukraine started, but following the Russian ultimatum, I indicated many times that what Russia would be doing is the following: ask for negotiations and if the other side rejects them, Russia would turn up the “pain dial”, slowly, step by step.  If the other side agreed to negotiations, but then used them to stall and negotiate in bad faith, same response: Russia would turn up the pain dial.  A little.  Step by step.

And do WHAT exactly next???

What is the point of turning on the pain dial and remaining silent?

The purpose of the pain dial is to convince your enemy to agree to substantive talks.  Conversely, that means that turning the pain dial WITHOUT offering talks simply makes no sense.

Yeah, yeah, I know, in Zone A NOT to negotiate with the enemy is a sign of manhood, virility, courage, prowess and being “Presidential”.  Which did not stop the Ubermacho Trump from… … negotiating with “Rocket Man” and then end up being totally screwed over by him.  So, I get it, when you are used to stupid politicians, you do not want negotiations, or you end up with SNAFUs like Biden telling the 82nd in Poland about “you will be there” (that is in the Ukraine!).

But please understand that Russian politicians are not as stupid as yours.

And a country with smart and well-educated diplomats does not need to fear talks, quite the contrary.

Lavrov vs Bliken – you get what I mean?

Next, another Zone A hangup: the goal of a war.

In Zone A, wars are to be fought towards maximal destruction of lives and infrastructure.  That is what the US promises its enemies “we will bomb you to the stone age” and that is what Uncle Shmuel did to Iraq.  Only to eventually lose that war too (ditto for all the other wars the US has ever fought since WWII).

In Zone B people understand that the goal of a war is to achieve a political outcome.

As Ho Chi Minh tried to explain to his ignorant counterparts “you can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win“.

“Just” mass murder achieves very little and the little it does achieve is never long lasting.  And nobody looks very “Presidential” after getting his ass handed to him!

For the Kremlin, this is a no brainer: you always talk to anybody worth talking to, especially if these talks increases your chances to:

  • Lose less soldiers
  • Lose less equipment
  • Kill less people (on both sides)
  • Preserve the civilian infrastructure
  • Get a sense of how your enemy is doing and feeling
  • Prove to your own and foreign public opinion that you are using violence only as a last resort
  • Only slowly increasing the pain on your pain dial, thereby making each increase more sensitive
  • Save immense sums of money
  • Have somebody on the other side to sign a declaration of surrender
  • Allow the country which you defeated to recover faster and better

What did the US ignoramuses do in Iraq?

  1. First they did bomb it viciously and genocidally (Madeleine Aldumb admitted that openly!)
  2. Then they invaded with the “kill! kill! kill!” mindset.
  3. Then they declared victory.
  4. Then they got stuck and defeated.
  5. Then they shamefully had to run with their tails tucked.

General Shamanov vs General Petraeus – you get what I mean?

Now I do NOT want Russia to follow this no doubt “brilliant” US plan.

Turning the Ukraine into Iraq is NOT what Russia wants or needs.

So, and especially for those alternatively gifted or really mentally stuck in Zone A:

Russia is doing the absolutely correct thing by negotiating and talking with pretty much everybody and anybody.  The problem is not the fact of talks, it is the dismal way the Russians (superb negotiators but sub-pathetic PR people) presented the information, which they did only partially, rather ambiguously and with all the wrong faces doing the talking.

The benefit of this PR disaster was a wave of rage and patriotism which is now even way higher than it was at the initiation of combat operations.  There is a kind of an informal referendum going on in Russia where people vote with their feet to go to the local recruitment center and volunteer for combat in the Ukraine!

Now the center of gravity of this operation is clearly going to go to the big cauldron containing two more cauldrons in the Donbass.

Nobody really knows how many Ukrainian soldiers are left alive there, what their condition and morale are, and how much of their deep defenses still stand.  But here is what we do know:

  • This is the biggest Ukrainian force in the entire theater of operations
  • There are AT LEAST several TENS OF THOUSAND soldiers still left
  • These were the best trained and equipped forces of the Ukrainian military
  • The way the Nazis organized them is, roughly, that in each Ukrainian “brigade” there is at least one bona fide Nazi “battalion” tasked with making darn sure that nobody negotiates with the Russians or, if they do, that those who do quickly get dispatched.

In these conditions a direct assault by Russian forces is always an option, they have proven in Mariupol and Avdeevka that they can do that when needed.  I remind you that during WWII the Soviet Union liberated 1’200 (one thousand two hundred!) towns and cities from Nazi occupiers.  The Russian military knows more about urban warfare than any other army on the planet, especially modern urban warfare.

But it would be INFINITELY better to convince these Ukrainian forces (which are doomed, and they understand that!) to surrender and, for that goal, offer them some kind of “out” which would include some tangible concessions/rewards for those units who will accept the inevitable and surrender.

The same goes for the “big” top level negotiations in Belarus or Turkey.  Here is what Lavrov declared today about these talks.  The Ukrainian side agreed to:

  • No nukes for the Ukraine
  • No NATO for the Ukraine
  • No alliances of any kind and a neutral Ukraine
  • Give up any claims on Crimea and the Donbass

Now if you do not see these as major concessions, you have issues I cannot help you with.

I will just say that many Ukie propagandists instantly dismissed it all as “false” just as they have, apparently, “resurrected/transported” the two Ukrainian soldiers who tortured Russian POWs to a location in Kiev.  The truth is that these are painful and major concessions.  Hence the desperate Ukie (and, really, US!) needs to present ANY negotiations as “5min to total surrender” by the Russians – the reality is too awful for the leaders of the Empire of Lies to even contemplate, let alone admit.

Add to this the “disarmament” of the Ukraine by the Russian armed forces and you will see that things are going pretty fantastically well, especially for such a short and RELATIVELY small and limited operation.  At least that is true for the military aspect.  Info operations, alas, not so much :-(

Finally, and as always, I remind you that this is not, repeat, NOT, about the Ukraine.

Disarming and denazifying the Ukraine is only a means towards a much more important goal: the future collective security architecture of a post-NATO Europe which, in turn, is just the cornerstone of all of international security.

So, the goal is NOT to denazify the Ukraine, that is a means towards the goal, the real goal is to denazify the planet.

Oh I know, very few, if any, in Zone A will see that as anything but totally over the top hyperbole.  Why?

It’s a mental block: most folks in Zone A think of themselves and their country as somehow “indispensable”, but they are wrong.  Far from being indispensable, they need to be permanently re-educated (over several generations!) and eventually integrated into Zone B as a “normal”, morally and mentally sane, country.

This, by the way, also implies NEGOTIATIONS with the US, NATO and all of Zone A!

And if Zone A does not want to negotiate anything?  Correctomundo!  You turn up the pain dial, and ask again.  Then repeat until Zone A accepts talks.

It’s that simple, really.

My very last comment will be this: right now, the purely military aspects of the SMO are taking second place to the economic cataclysm which Zone A brought upon itself (and much of the world).  The Eurolemmings especially are only slowly beginning to discover the immene joy and privilege of being a member of the European Reichsgau of Empire of Lies truly is!

What can I say?  They SO richly deserve this….

And if all of the above is just Putinist propaganda, by all means, send a letter to the Russian General Staff, ask for a meeting, and explain to all these boneheads how warfare “your way” is so much superior to warfare “their way”.  Begin by listing all the heroic victories which your country has ever won.

Or apply to the CIA.  They actually might hire you! :lol:

Andrei