Task & Purpose: How The Russian Military Is Adapting In Ukraine

The stalemate narrative disguises the fact that the nature of war has always been fluid. The introduction of new technologies begets new tactics and strategies, which inspires the development and use of new more lethal technologies, and so on, which usually makes war more awful.

Task and Purpose:

KYIV, Ukraine — The commander and staff of a Russian battalion take over a home near the Ukrainian town of Irpin north of Kyiv. They demand food from the elderly woman living there, and she reluctantly complies. She’s alone; her husband is dead, and her son is away in the army. While preparing the food she adds a liberal dose of laxatives to the commander’s meal. These soon take effect, and as his subordinates settle down for the night, the commander rushes to the wooden outhouse – a common fixture of rural Ukrainian homes even in the 21st century. The woman waits until he is mid-void before dousing the sides of the outhouse with gasoline and setting it alight. By the time his horrified companions break down the door, the commander is charbroiled, and the woman is gone. …

The Russians are already adapting, and by doing so are narrowing the Ukrainians’ tactical edge. The one-sided culling of Russian armored columns that characterized the opening days of the war, and kept YouTube subscribers around the world happy, are a thing of the past. The Russians now lead their formations with electronic attack, drones, lasers and good-old-fashioned reconnaissance by fire. They are using cruise missiles and saboteur teams to target logistics routes, manufacturing plants, and training bases in western Ukraine. Realizing that the Ukrainians lack thermal sights for their stinger missile launchers, the Russians have switched all air operations to after dark. It may be for this same reason that Russian cruise missile strikes in western and southern Ukraine have also been at nighttime. …”

We’ve sent tens of thousands of Javelins to Ukraine.*

How is Russia going to adapt to the battlefield to get around the Javelins?

TAC:

“During their 1998 phone call, Friedman asked Kennan about the Senate’s approval of a planned NATO expansion, to which Kennan replied, ”I think it is the beginning of a new cold war.” At the Madrid Summit the year prior, NATO member nations agreed to invite Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to begin accession negotiations. On March 12, 1999, the three nations were granted full NATO membership and the protections that comes with it, bringing the total number of countries in the NATO alliance to 19.

“The Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake,” Kennan told Friedman. “There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.”

Kennan also pilloried how the Senate, which “has no real interest in foreign affairs,” so casually and  “light-hearted[ly]” went about its business with respect to NATO expansion. ”What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,” Kennan went on to say.  ”I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don’t people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.”

The Senate’s framing of NATO expansion, “shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are—but this is just wrong.” Again, it seems not much has changed. …

Kennan’s predictions have certainly come to pass, but we haven’t been unlucky or unsuccessful—this is the effect policy makers in Washington set out to achieve. And Kennan recognized that what was set to transpire was more than mere accident.

As the pair bid each other farewell, Kennan told Friedman, “This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.”

World War I didn’t look like previous wars.

World War II didn’t look like World War I.

Just a year ago, a conflict between nuclear powers resulting in World War III seemed unthinkable, but now it is on. It has probably taken this long because it took this long for older generations who lived through World War II to die out and for politicians to be replaced by idiots like Lindsey Graham.

Note: By *we*, I mean the clique that controls our inperial foreign policy, not us. We’ve never had any input in that area.

18 Comments

  1. But, but, but, muh Iraq 2003 and vodka man bad big dumb Ivan was on teevee?
    There already is a no fly zone over the 404, enforced by Russia.
    No Great Reset Leap Forward without WIII and there won’t be any vote on it in muh democracy.

  2. Calling BS on the Turbolax story but maybe that’s the point. The Javelin missiles are probably not very effective against infantry. Maybe they kill a few tanks I don’t know. More likely they get sold on the black maket.

    • most javelin system and NATO aid have been destroyed or are already in Russian hands

      There are pictures on Twitter of German LAWs just dropped on the ground in the rout by the AFU, factory new with the original shipping papers attached tracking them back to the German arsenal from where they came

    • Yep, the granny thing is most likely fake. Javelins are not for anti-personnel, but very lethal against tanks.

  3. How many pieces of silver did you sell out for, Wallace? Enough to pay for the kid’s private school so he didn’t have to rub elbows with the Alabama niggers and White trash?

    • POSTOP1970, “alabama niggers and white trash” you along with spahn and nbf, have sullied and tainted this honorable site long enough, time for spring cleaning, time too take out the trash, meaning you, be gone, with your nasty selves, we don’t need you……typical up north asshole, his and his families business, AINT none of yours….

      ….

  4. “the greatest bloodless revolution in history”:

    It was the greatest successful treason in history, leading to massive loss of life, life expectancy and quality of life, not only in Russia but many other countries around the world in the decades since. Paul Craig Roberts said the loss of the USSR was the worst catastrophe of the twentieth century, because it made possible a unipolar, global hegemony.

    • The Ukrainian Army massed to attack the breakaway provinces, now Russian airpower has destroyed their ability to maneuver (no fuel!). The Eastern front is collapsing as Russian (late) mobilization is entering the war. Soon Russia will sweep to the Dnieper and beyond. I hope they score Odesa and land-lock a Galician rump state.

      Then the New Silk Road will unify Asia and it is the end of The Big Idea (the New World Order).

      In that setting, the New Nation can be born.

    • I agree with the viewpoint that the end of the YEAR was the worst tragedy in the world; especially for White Americans and the Europeans in Western Europe.

      It did seem like our fearless leaders were less frivolous and feckless when the Soviet Union was still around.

      I think that the bloodletting the Bolsheviks unleashed on the elites of every country they occupied scared the oligarchs here enough that they felt they had to create and maintain prosperous working and middle classes to benefit somewhat from capitalism.

      They sold the American Dream of upward mobility and started shipping out jobs and industry while simultaneously lobbying our Congressional whores to amnesty every illiterate third world peasant with a pulse who could sneak over our very porous southern border the moment Gorbachev started
      to liberalize the Soviet system.

  5. The Russians learned from Stalingrad, and Berlin, the best way to take a city is to stand back, cut it off, and shell & bomb the shit out of it. That’s what they are doing. Even if our TV generals don’t get it. LOL.

    The Russians will close the Polish, and Slovak border next. They are already in the area, even if you don’t see it on TV.

    I know there are a few elderly West Pointers here, and I would be more than happy to be corrected by you. If I’m wrong.

  6. Javelins are not very effective. Lament around Javelins reminds me Germany most hyped super rockets V1 and V2.

    Those terribly expensive toys were extremely inaccurate and when they exploded they did as much damage as most common cheap aviation bomb.

    Until now we know about mighty Javelins only from Empire propaganda. I’ve seen also videos about blowing tank turret off but was this video editor the same guy who made Ze homosexual dance video or someone else, this remains to see.

    My counrty also gave Ukraine Javelins and evil rumor claims that those Javelins demonstrated on trainings so bad results that our commanders considered them useless. So we lost nothing.

  7. I just read the (((Wikipedia))) profile of Kennan: brilliant he was. Right not only about war-monger assclowns like bottom-bitch Graham, but also about race & (((Democracy))).

Comments are closed.