Narrative #4?

Every time a phrase gets repeated by officials in Washington and the media, even if you know nothing about the subject, this should be the first indication that it’s false. It’s an often-outright inversion of the truth but in the very least an outrageous canard. Seeing as the conflict in Ukraine is the most significant thing since World War 2, it serves as a macabre illustration of this principle.

“One man’s war of choice” / “Unprovoked invasion”

The stated goal of long-term U.S. policy in publicly available official discourse is to break up the Russian Federation into controllable entities. Part of this strategy is bringing NATO up to Russia’s borders ahead of the Federation’s scheduled demolition. This is common knowledge, even to the average Russian television viewer, but not in the West, where everyone has been told the expansion is to stop the restoration of the Soviet Union.

Back in 2008, when William Burns (current CIA Director) was our ambassador, he was called into Foreign Minister Lavrov’s office, and asked if he understood the concept of “no” and informed that Ukraine was a red line over which action would be taken. His cable on the meeting was later published by Wikileaks. There’s a reason why Putin receives sky-high domestic approval on his handling of this threat and the broader respect of countries that constitute around 80% of the world’s population.

“Only made incremental gains”

If gains are measured purely in kilometers, sure the Russians have only been incremental in their success against a series of massive fortifications and minefields that can’t be blitzkrieged like the U.S. appeared to do in Iraq. This isn’t World War 2. Post-war, the Soviets set up Ukraine so nobody could ever tear through it again on their way to Moscow like the Wehrmacht (if World War 3 broke out).

However, if the metrics are irreplaceable Ukrainian lives and equipment, then Russian gains can be assessed as absolutely catastrophic. The MOD tally as of May 21st: 428 airplanes, 234 helicopters, 4,245 UAVs, 424 AA systems, 9,251 tanks and armored fighting vehicles, 1,100 MRLS, 4,871 artillery pieces, 10,365 special military motor vehicles. Depending on the estimates, these figures might entail 300,000 to 500,000 casualties. It’s difficult to count dead bodies from explosions, and Ukraine refuses to give anything approximating an honest accounting of who’s been lost from their units.

The grim reality is that after Ukraine refused (probably wasn’t allowed) to reach terms at the outset of Phase One before the Russians invested too much to compromise, they adopted a grim strategy of eliminating every soldier Ukraine could muster and blowing up all of their equipment while allowing NATO to deplete its stockpiles. This keeps the suicide operation going until a solution can be imposed once the other two sides have nothing left to offer in terms of conventional combat.

NATO doesn’t have anything close to sufficient military industrial capacity to sustain this war effort, not even a fraction based on what could be produced per month versus what’s required. After these finite resources are exhausted, the situation will collapse and then the comprehensive territorial acquisitions to resolve Russian political and security objectives will happen along with other measures the Ukrainians won’t find agreeable.

The best place to conduct this slaughter is in Donbass, where Russia owns the skies and its troops can be easily rotated and supplied. It makes no sense to waste Russian soldiers by the tens of thousands (perhaps more) punching through a fun house to make direct contact further to the west with extended, vulnerable supply lines where they’d take even more losses. It’s much better to let the Ukrainians come east for suicide.

It’s been designated an SMO (Special Military Operation) for a reason. They’re trying to minimize the losses of Russian personnel, not sacrifice them in a pointless narrative war with the West, which would never admit the truth anyway. Regular Russian forces generally don’t even storm urban areas. That’s done by the PMCs, Chechen volunteers, and the militias.

"Putin also badly underestimated the Ukrainian military, [which] has been in the midst of a transformation into a modern Western army where daring and initiative count. Putin also badly underestimated the reaction of the West."https://t.co/kns3hX6gRW

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 15, 2023

“Counteroffensives”

What you’ll never see on television is that these operations are deliberately allowed by the Russians as part of this strategy of eliminating the entire Ukrainian military and everything NATO can send. As stated above, it’s much easier and safer to do this in Donbass rather than trying to locate units scattered over the vast western expanses of Ukraine because the logistical network has been knocked out.

The winter strikes against the electrical grid that didn’t cripple it were meant to drain irreplaceable interceptor missiles, as two are fired per intercept attempt. It’s now obvious why much of the Ukrainian logistical network is still in place despite their ability to take it all down from the start: the Russians want Ukraine accumulating men and material for missile and drone strikes to the west, and also moved into the east to get blown up by airstrikes and artillery.

A lot of this stuff only becomes clear in hindsight to outside observers because the Russian General Staff would never be stupid enough to disclose its plans. Putin’s initial statement on the morning the tanks got rolling was that his objective was to “de-militarize” Ukraine, but what that meant wasn’t clear at the time. As it turns out, “de-militarize” is a very sanitary term for this process of wholesale, indirectly-facilitated destruction described above.

As forces are assembled ahead of the much-hyped third counteroffensive, the Russians have been striking these concentrations with massive missile and drone barrages. In other words, why blow up the trains before the other side can pack them full of men and material? They’re essential to moving large amounts of both for long distances. If this grim logic is applied, the paradoxes marketed as evidence of Russian failure starts making sense. They don’t want to paralyze the Ukrainian military for a guerrilla war, that would be counterproductive.

The Ukrainians have accumulated billions worth of NATO munitions and equipment in massive stockpiles to the far west ahead of this counteroffensive. A series of missile strikes have produced the largest explosions of the war. It’s clear Russia knew this all along and waited to let them get packed full, before blowing everything to hell. Some of these recent explosions register on the Richter Scale.

The idea that NATO could accumulate massive stockpiles in Ukraine while keeping them a secret from Russia is ludicrous. There were probably human eyes watching all these logistical operations up close. Likely, the strikes were launched when the Russians concluded everything had been accumulated to begin sending east to smaller depots for distribution in combat.

“Russian Retreat”

What happened in the past two counteroffensives is that the Russians ceded ground in order to avoid taking heavy casualties fighting in direct contact with the Ukrainians, whose lives were earmarked to be sacrificed for this purpose. The Ukrainians gained ground but at the expense of having their forces decimated as they advanced in great numbers into Russian artillery.

This is how one-sided slaughters take place, not by plucky Ukrainians mowing down Russian orcs. Publicly, the U.S. military believes otherwise and goes with whatever figures Ukraine fabricates out of thin air. That’s how you get American officials citing these demented numbers asserting that Russians are dying in droves despite have tremendous firepower advantages.

“Failed Siege of Kiev”

This is probably the most pernicious piece of evidence I’ve seen cited for the past year, because it really helps sell the others. During Phase One, keeping Ukrainian units (greatly outnumbered what the Russians sent in) stuck was critical as the Russians stormed Mariupol and secured a land bridge between Crimea and the new republics.

The force parked outside Kiev put political pressure on the government, but it was there mainly to keep Kiev’s massive garrison in place. It never attempted to enter or invest Kiev. Storming a city of this size could involve millions of deaths and far more troops than Russia has committed to the entire SMO.

So many would be required that war would first need to be declared for a general mobilization. Something on this scale hasn’t even been attempted since World War 2. After Phase One wrapped up, the Russians dispersed. It was nothing more than a feint.

“Putin has already Lost”

This is the triumphal centerpiece of an official narrative shift, with the caveats that since he’s already lost, he’ll have to cut a deal not to come any further in order to save his own skin by ending the conflict. The official discourse aims to declare victory despite not delivering the full Russian defeat everyone was first promised. This is done by asserting that since Donbass and Crimea were already in dispute before his unprovoked invasion, NATO’s efforts to preserve Ukrainian freedom have been a success.

As far as negotiations are concerned, the Russians have made it clear that NATO can’t be trusted to follow agreements, as it has repeatedly broken them with malicious intent. Their official position on Ukraine is that it’s merely a puppet of NATO, so they’re not going to negotiate with Zelensky, either. What might happen is that some sort of one-sided agreement is imposed on the Ukrainian government while NATO squawks and tries to adjust the narrative for a fourth time from the sidelines.

A Recap

The first narrative was that Putin launched an unprovoked invasion using comically incompetent, cowardly forces equipped with junk who’d run out of munitions in literally a matter of days as the Ukrainians conducted a 10 to 1 turkey shoot. Following Ukrainian victory over all its territories, he’d be overthrown as Russia’s economy collapsed. We were told to expect all of this to unfold essentially overnight.

The second narrative basically just adjusted the first but admitted this would take longer while citing the successful defense of Kiev, two counteroffensives, and Russia’s incremental gains as proof Ukrainian victory would materialize while things dragged on for over a year.

The third narrative is now saying that Putin has officially lost and that an end will be negotiated after Ukraine’s incoming counteroffensive, but that victory for NATO won’t include Crimea and Donbass, which is fine because Ukraine didn’t begin fighting off this unprovoked invasion in possession of these territories anyways.

This is why the phrase “full-scale invasion” has been employed consistently by NATO from the start. What does this mean in objective terms? Nobody really knows, but what they’re trying to convey is that Russia has used up everything it could possibly throw into the fight. Meanwhile, it’s been fulfilling major weapons export contracts the whole time while quadrupling military production for 2023. That’s the simple formula for making inferences about these catchphrases, which are merely tools for selling even bigger lies.

Iran to receive 1st batch of Russian-made SU-35 jets next weekhttps://t.co/QGeDiM02BA

— Press TV (@PressTV) May 12, 2023

Accountability

The fourth narrative is going to be a real yarn to spin. I think we can be confident that it will focus on the massive casualties we inflicted on the Russians and how we saved the rest of Europe because Russia has taken such losses it can never try this again. The rest of the next round of nonsense would have to respond to what Russia specifically does to wrap things up, so it’s hard to predict.

It does seem probable that some of the other canards will have worn themselves out. After all, nobody says we fought the terrorists over there, so we didn’t have to fight them over here anymore. That’s retarded and it couldn’t stand the test of time. That should also be the case with Russia running out of munitions and equipment.

What we can also safely infer is that in light of all the other lies Americans believed about misadventures that ended in disaster since the end of the Cold War, most will believe the official take on Ukraine as well. That’s the nature of these average people. Through some combination of ignorance, gullibility, and a desire to believe we’re the good guys, they’ll continue to be conned right up until the end.

In terms of domestic accountability for the evil parasites who caused this slaughter and their functionaries, like Gen. Petraeus or McFaul, I’m pretty sure they’ll never even be blamed for anything or punished until the hereafter. Nobody important is even going to come out and say that we shouldn’t have given this a try in the first place.

For years, NATO countries feared that the expansion of NATO to Ukraine would trigger Putin. But Putin invaded Ukraine anyway. So after the war is over, is there a reason to not invite Ukraine to join NATO? Your thoughts?

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) May 14, 2023