Wars happen because some people expect one outcome, and others expect a different outcome. So prediction is hard, for if it was easy, the war would likely have been avoided, though as the war goes on, and on, and on, becomes easier.
Due to fog of war, hard to know what is happening now, or has happened recently, But after a while, it becomes obvious what did happen, which gives some indication of what will happen.
It has long been obvious that the west is run by demon worshippers, and with the opening of the Paris Olympics a couple of days ago, this should now be obvious to everyone. Demon worshippers want you dead. Well, they want everyone and everything dead, including themselves, but you first. The tactics and strategy of this war becomes a lot more intelligible if one understands that one side is commanded by people who believe themselves to be serving demons, or perhaps actually are serving demons.
The war started off with war of movement, as did World War I, but, as in World War I, both sides quickly became very good at shutting down the other side’s movement, and, since then, like World War One, it has been war of attrition.
The rationale for the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive was to regain war of movement. Nato wonder weapons, Nato training, and all that. Of course Nato has not fought a peer war since World War Two, so have no idea.
Plus, Nato is completely structured about keeping commissioned officers nice and safe in nice safe bases, where they send grunts and non commissioned officers out to die.
I have long said that if you have one man in your army that does not fight, pretty soon you will have no men in your army that fight. Nato organisation is all about having no commissioned officers that fight. The left does not like warrior armies. Finds that it needs warrior armies, but has concluded it does not need a warrior officer corps.
This is partly the managerial state, the triumph of unaccountable bureaucracy over people who do actual things, and partly the leftist state. The left is priestly, and priests and warriors always conflict. So now we have a full priestly officer corps, which is a protection for the left against coups, but not a protection against insurrection, invasion, or conquest.
Ukraine, however, inherited from the Soviet Union a warrior army, plus the forces that made the Maidan coup were the Nazis, and a core part of their ideology is to have a warrior army and rule by warrior-priests. Nato looked down their noses at this insufficiently holy and progressive organisation, and has been re-organising them.
The plan for the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive was to probe all along the front for weak points, then charge through at the weakest point, cutting off Russian forces to the west, thus regaining a vast swathe of territory to the west, without having to fight for every ditch, every tree, and every house.
The weakest point turned out to be the low ground between Russian controlled high ground. Ukrainian progress through the buffer zone in front of the Russian defence lines was very slow, and very costly, and when they finally reached the first line of defence, and occupied it, they had to bring troops and materials to it through a long and winding gauntlet along the low ground between Russian strong places on the high ground on either side. They got to the first line of defence, but were never able to get beyond it, for whenever they stuck their heads above the fortifications that they had managed to seize, their heads got blown off. The Russians had prepared their first line of defence to be indefensible against attacks coming from their second line of defence. The “weakest point” was a killing field, and the first line of defence was a death trap.
The Ukrainians lost an army, except for their retreat blocking brigades, and had to conscript a new army.
The interesting and extraordinary thing was the West’s stubborn persistence in a strategy that had turned out to be horrifically bad and entirely disastrous. Why did they just keep pumping more and more men into killing fields and death traps?
Partly it was the managerial state. The mid level managers are focused on on next week’s power point presentation, and demand that the low level managers supply them with with good bullet points for that presentation. The high level managers look at the good bullet points, and all is well, so issue orders to keep doing what you are doing, so the system as a whole tends to mindlessly pursue a short term, high time preference strategy, while generating meaningless numbers showing highly successful pursuit of a long term, low time preference strategy. The Russians on the other hand, tended to focus on winning the war, hence actually did pursue a long term, low time preference strategy, where they sought to conserve their resources for the final battles, brave men being the most important resource of all.
Partly it was demon worship. Those organising this war want Russians to die, but also want Ukrainians to die. The people who organised the Maidan coup are Jews with family reasons for wanting Ukrainians dead and the Ukraine destroyed.
The managerial state reinforces leftism, because being in contact with reality is a bad career move, and leftism reinforces the managerial state, because leftists do not like people telling them that reality is real, and both of them reinforce demon worship, because demon worshippers are fine with actual reality going to $#!&. All three depend on lies, each of them provides a different reason for lying, but a lie promulgated for one reason finds support from the other two reasons. The bureaucrat wants the right bullet points regardless of whether the bullet points meaningfully represent reality, the leftist does not believe that existence exists, that reality is real, and the demon worshipper just likes lies and lying. The confident inversion of truth is the demonic equivalent of prayer.
The Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive eventually petered out, due to lack of men, and lack of weapons. Nato is out of ammo. Nato troops have been disarmed.
In order to continue attriting the Ukrainians, the Russians were forced to go on the offensive. Since the objective is attrit the enemy, rather than gain turf, there are no big arrow offensives. Every ditch, every tree, every ruin, is gained at enormous cost to both sides.
It looks to me that when well trained, well equipped, highly motivated, battle hardened, experienced, Russian troops attempt to take a village from well trained, well equipped, highly motivated, battle hardened, experienced, Ukrainian troops, they suffer very high casualties and frequently fail.
Fortunately for the Russians, most of the well trained, well equipped, highly motivated, battle hardened, experienced, Ukrainian troops died in the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive.
Increasingly the battles consist of experienced and highly motivated Russian vets versus barely trained reluctant Ukrainian fresh meat. The death rate among inexperienced Ukrainian troops is vastly higher than the death rate among Ukrainian vets. The number of Ukrainian vets continues to shrink. Fresh Ukrainian conscripts do not seem to be becoming vets, but corpses — in part due to a commissioned officer corps that is grossly out of contact with reality. If you want your fresh meat to survive to become vets, you need to issue retreat orders in time.
The Ukrainians have a troop rotation policy that should in theory result in fresh meat becoming battle hardened veterans, but this does not seem to be actually happening in practice all that much.
In part the bubble of delusion around the Ukrainian commissioned officer corps is a result of the managerial state, the triumph of unaccountable bureaucracy over functionality, the Natoization of the Ukrainian military. In part it is the result of leftism, for leftism inherently tends to solipsism. And in part, demon worshippers just like human sacrifice.
A few weeks ago I reported that the Russians were taking one or two villages every one or two days. Now it is one to four villages every day. Because the Ukrainians are out of everything, and most of all, by far, they are out of men.
This is reminiscent of the hundred days phase of World War One.
At the current rate of advance, it will be a very long time before the front line changes significantly, but the exact position of the front line does not matter. What matters is how much army and government the Ukraine has left. And the accelerating rate of Russian advance reveals that the Ukraine has considerably less, and that what it does have is shrinking every faster.
So the questions are:
1. Will the Ukraine make the concessions the Russians are asking for?
Probably not, because everyone in the Ukraine dying cannot possibly happen for the managerial elite, cannot happen and is unimportant for the left, and is a positively delightful outcome for the demon worshippers.
2. If they don’t make the concessions, when does the Ukrainian muppet government disappear?
Never, because the muppet government is located in Washington and Cambridge.
3. OK, when does the muppet government lose the ability to hold photo ops in the Ukraine?
And that is what is hard to know. Could be tomorrow, could be years. The sooner it happens, the more Ukrainians there will be left in the Ukraine. I hope for November, by analogy to the hundred days that led to the end of World War One.