Thread by @imetatronink

Response 🧵

It was I that characterized Peter Zeihan as a clueless #EmpirePropagandist clown.

In any case, as I read your posts, it is evident to me that your perspective on this war has been substantially informed by the very same species of propaganda Zeihan echoes.

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https://twitter.com/DaveRoot88/status/1613311576953749506

The western intel propaganda psyop that commenced before the conflict went hot in early 2022 has effectively inverted the truth of what has actually occurred. And its overriding success has been predicated upon establishing fallacious parameters for interpreting events.

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Foremost among those fallacious interpretive parameters has been the degree to which the conquest and retention of territory has been established as THE measure of military success. In relation to this, I strongly recommend my analysis from early July:

3/
imetatronink.substack.com/p/destroying-m…

Some weeks after I posted that essay, the legendary US Marine General Paul K. Van Riper published an absolutely essential affirming analysis in the Marine Corps Gazette. It is a MUST-READ in relation to these questions:

4/
imetatronink.substack.com/p/a-former-us-…

I have repeatedly expanded upon these concepts in subsequent blog posts. I continue to emphatically aver that, not only has Russia been “winning” this war from the very beginning – but it has been doing so OVERWHELMINGLY.

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Contrary to the pervasive CIA/MI6 propaganda universally promulgated by state-controlled western media and their endless parade of clueless think-tank monkeys and academicians, the disproportionate casualty ratio of this war is unprecedented in modern times.

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The Russian high command has never once been distracted from its primary objective: TO DESTROY THE UKRAINIAN ARMY.

They have been content, since late August, to receive AFU attacks against well-established Russian defensive lines.

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imetatronink.substack.com/p/fall-like-a-…

They deliberately ceded real estate to draw AFU forces into costly “counter-attacks” in Kharkov and Kherson oblasts. These attacks steadily diminished in potency from October until mid-December.

AFU offensive potential is now effectively exhausted.

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imetatronink.substack.com/p/maneuver-war…

In the past several weeks, the AFU has expended a large proportion of its remaining competent combat capacity in a desperate but futile attempt to retain the Bakhmut/Soledar fortress they had constructed over the course of almost a decade.

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The importance Ukraine attached to the defense of Bakhmut is reflected in the staggering losses they have incurred.

According to even Ukrainian sources, the AFU has, over the past few weeks, suffered at least 20k casualties, including an inordinate number of KIA.

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At least 15 battalions of the best troops and equipment the AFU had left were hastily shifted to Bakhmut from both the northern and southern regions of the line of contact.

They are now shattered.

The strategically positioned fortress is lost.

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During the Battle of Bakhmut, the AFU has outnumbered the attacking Russian forces at least 3 to 1. With only a minority of regular Russian army troops involved, the Wagner PMC and Donbass militia have methodically destroyed numbers far greater than their own.

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Of course, it has been Russian artillery and air power inflicting the vast majority of the damage on Ukrainian troops and equipment. Most AFU casualties never even saw a Russian soldier before they were hit. And those who did found themselves consistently outclassed.

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And because of the very nature of their tactics, and the relentless firepower they can bring to bear, Russian forces have suffered (as I have noted repeatedly) a minor fraction of the casualties they have inflicted.

All assertions to the contrary are demonstrably false.

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Examined with a narrow focus, Russian prosecution of this conflict reveals a few missteps and miscalculations. That is the nature of war. But viewed as a whole, I submit they have attested exceptional strategic discipline and impressive tactical adaptiveness.

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And, at this very moment, as the AFU is more depleted and demoralized than at any prior point, Russian forces are at the peak of their strength, armed with better equipment – and more of it – than at any previous stage of the conflict.

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The original cadre of Ukrainian professional soldiers and virtually all of their equipment are now long gone.

The much smaller and more poorly equipped AFU/NATO hybrid army has been wrecked over the past four months.

A third army cannot be conjured from the ashes.

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Those still in thrall to the myths spawned by this conflict’s peerless propaganda will likely continue, for a time, to cling resolutely to their imaginary war. But no later than the summer solstice, it will have become undeniably evident that it was all just a mirage.

18/end