I've done three posts on Ukraine's Maidan Color revolution & aftermath, in this one I get into how Ukrainians are wired in dealing with dishonorable enemies.
"Ukraine is returning to its cultural roots from the Kievan Rus/Viking period, the Cossack period being an extension of that. Community is everything.
These people are at heart Viking berserkers – and we have seen it over and over again on the battlefield 3/
...over the last 9 months. Cornered Ukrainian officers, wounded, surrounded by Russian Spetsnaz, pulling the pins on a string of grenades, to take the enemy with them, which they did on multiple occasions."
I've been expecting the full Viking Berserkergang...and seeing it.
The Russian 247th Guards VDV Air Assault Brigade was pivotal to the Ukrainian loss at Ilovaysk in the 2014-15 fighting.
Thus it was likely involved in the Ilovaysk murder of Ukrainian wounded and POWs. 4/
The Ukrainian annihilation of that unit in this invasion was preordained.
A Ukrainian reading friend says he sees the phrase "revenge for ..." popping up all of the time in Ukrainian social media.
Then, when it was reported a Su-27s killed two Russian CANDIDs carrying VDV, 5/
...it was "revenge for the Luhansk Il-76 ambush".
Whatever else happens, Putin will not be able to conquer the entire Ukraine and may not even get to keep the Donbass.
Putin has created a Ukrainian nationalist monster that will hate Russians for both the great famine of 6/
...the 1930’s under Stalin and now the very raw territorial wound of detached Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
Ukrainians will work for a 100 years to get all that back, minus anyone who is visibly, culturally, Russian.
The Ukrainians are now fighting a national people's war. 7/
The Russians are fighting as a classic Oriental despotism whose chief objective is to keep Putin in power, whatever effect this has on Russia’s long term interests.
This Ukrainian Viking Revival will be the defining event of the early 21st Century.
8/End
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I'm tempted to say the difference between military flag ranks who are competent at 2026 peer to peer warfare, and those who are not, is the understanding and application of attritional loss curves to combat loss rates, electronic warfare and logistics.
The set of curves I had an AI produce for me above have been used for air warfare many times starting at the end of WW2, in the USSBS after WW2 and by many classic RAND airpower studies from the 1950's to 1980's.
2/
All post 9/11/2001 Western flag ranks are counter-insurgency (COIN) trained & experienced.
They have no gut feel at all to statistical attrition models at all.
These "COIN-head" flags may prove to be highly resistant to changing this. Which is required to deal with drones.
2/
The effectiveness of drones is directly affected by the electronic warfare competence of the drone users.
The fact that the US Army defenestrated every EW practitioner in the 2000's and has compete "EW virgins" as flag rank leadership means it will fail with mass casualties in its first major drone war combat.
1/3
3. The shooter arrived at the hotel the day before the event.😯
4. TSA rules require firearms to be transported in checked baggage, unloaded, and locked in a hard-sided container, declared to the airline at check-in.
2/
5. Local DC law requires firearms in vehicles to be inaccessible from the passenger compartment and unloaded.
6. Washington DC is not a "safe passage" jurisdiction for non-residents without a license. The shooter lacked this license.
3/
USN flag ranks & their staffers have been fighting the idea of distant economic blockade of China tooth an nail as a response to China invading Taiwan for 30 years.
They really don't want a recent precedent of a successful blockade...
...to prevent their Carrier fleet Pickett's charge into the South China Sea.
Specifically distant blockade as a strategy against China makes having/regaining 100 Cold War era
2/3
...frigates and destroyer tenders supporting them on distant blockade stations outside the 2nd Island chain, "budget relevant" for a military strategy of conducting three years of blockade enforcement.
I was calling out two dead for every three Russian wounded in Sept 2022 as the more realistic Russian casualty ratio in Ukraine because it was taking more than 24 hours to get to the equivalent of a battalion aid station.
"Oil revenue collapsed to roughly 5% of the national budget, down from 32% the prior year. Taxes increased over 60%. Food prices climbed at least 50%. ATMs across major cities are running out of cash."
Since Clausewitz, the West recognized "war as an extension of politics."
The corollary of that is "politics is an extension of money."
Iran doesn't have any money, thanks to hyper-inflation and now an 84% reduction in oil revenue.
2/
The failed January 2026 Iranian uprising kicked off because hyperinflation caused massive food insecurity that required the mass murder of 30,000 (+) Iranian protestors to suppress.
The 12-day war and the current one have made Iranian hyper-inflation far worse.
3/