6 Men, A Boat, and a Bridge in Arizona to Sell You!

I judge to be a total intelligence plant the WSJ fantasy story of how Zelenskiy’s crew concocted but then cancelled a sabotage attack on Nord Stream involving six men and a boat, but that then former chief of staff Zaluzhniy went ahead anyway. An alleged Polish participant has been charged by Germany but slipped into Ukraine with which Germany has no extradition treaty.

It smells rotten from when we are told that this account supplants the only other acknowledged possibility which is that Russia, which could have just turned off the tap to achieve the same result at much less expense and effort and which would have been denying itself revenue had it done so, did it to itself.

Not only is this former “alternative” account totally ridiculous but the only totally plausible and, I believe, credibly (if anonymously) backed account - that the culprit is, of course, the USA - is completely ignored. And when this account from America’s best celebrated investigative journalist Sy Hersh was first published it was also totally ignored by western mainstream media. These leaped instead, and only a few days later, on an earlier (CIA-generated?) six-men-and-a-boat story.

President Biden told the world publicly in 2022 that if Russia invaded Ukraine then he would destroy Nord Stream, so you might imagine that the pinnacles of “press freedom” in the collective West might take that open statement of intent seriously enough to investigate it.

Of course not. Western media failure to pick up on the Hersh revelations ranks, in my mind, alongside their failure to tell the world that CrowdStrike’s CEO had to confess that his company did not actually have hard evidence that Russian agencies had hacked the DNC servers in 2016 - central to the RussiaGate hoax - and their failure to expose the WMD hoax in 2003. Three very good reasons, and far from being the only reasons, to deem Western mainstream media hopelessly corrupt and inept on matters critical to the perpetuation of Western hegemony.

The main problems with 6-men-and-a-boat stories are that the actual sabotage took place in the middle of NATO-controlled waters and would have required something far more ambitious in terms of shipping, diving support and expertise, and the planting of explosive charges. The tragedy that they expose is that the US used the destruction of Nord Stream. and still uses it, to cripple Germany, particularly, and western Europe more generally as economic competitors by denying them cheap energy and, I would add, sovereignty of decision-making, although the European Commission doesn’t need a lot of help in that regard.

Now on to other matters Ukrainian: the Kursk invasion. The pro-Russian commentariate is sounding a great deal happier today. As of yesterday it did seem, albeit within the fog of war, that the progress of Ukrainian invaders had been stopped in the north east of Sudzha, in Keronovo, and, in the north, at Bol’Shoye Soldatskoye, and to the east at Martynovko, although a small Ukrainian force had penetrated north beyond Anastas’Yavka (a column of which, 12 vehicles, was destroyed by Russia at Sofiivka, west of Anastas’Yavka and south of Petrovskoye, on August 12) and another was pushing towards Pushkorne to the east. Russia attacked another column at Zhuravi. Ukraine was thought to have been in control of Mikhaylovka just south of Martynovka but, earlier today, Dima reports that Mikhaylovka is now contested territory.

Dima judged in his midday broadcast yesterday that Russia had stabilized the situation in the north and east, and that the rate of Ukrainian advance was tapering off.

On the Ukrainian side of the ledger, Ukraine could reasonably claim to have seized 1150 square kilometers of territory, and 82 villages, albeit mostly concentrated on the border; it had taken large swathes of the village of Sudzha and its suburb Kasachy Loknya, close to the border. It is expecting soon to start using F-16s in combat, to receive a significant new military package from Germany, to be sent JASSM (450 kilo) missiles from the USA, and further green lighting of the use of Western weaponary and, possibly (likely, in my view) of long-range missiles to strike anywhere in the Russian Federation.

I note with interest press reports, at last, of British Challenger tanks apparently doing something useful. Were they allowed on this mission because the British regarded this campaign as a “slam dunk” which was unlikely to yield photos of the Challenger in flames. Up until now they have been relatively invisible.

It looks as though Ukraine has been advancing, and has the capability and opportunity to continue advancing on Glushkovo and Zuknainovko, well to the west of Snagost and Sudzha, causing authorities in Glushkovo to order an immediate civilian evacuation of the entire area. From Gluskovo, the Ukrainians would likely attack the town of Rylsk to the north while also attacking this town from the west, starting at the Ukrainian settlement of Hlukhiv where Ukrainian forces were recently reported to have concentrated. A Ukrainian HIMARS missile attack has taken out a bridge near Glushkovo to make it difficult for Russian reinforcements to arrive into the town.

The ultimate Ukraining objective would be to cut a large chunk of territory that would stretch from Bolaro-Lozhachi in Ukraine to Popovo-Lezhachi and Korovyakovka in Russia to the Ukrainian settlements in the east of Bezsalivka and Glushkovo (all west of Snagost).

Since my last post, it appears that Russia has now redeployed some of its forces from the Kupyansk region to Kursk. Russia must wish it had invested more effort last year when its forces were approaching the city of Kupyansk only to be held up by Ukrainian counteroffensives in the forests of Synovka to the immediate northeast of the city.

It seems incontestable that Russia continues to make good progress in the areas of Pokrovsk and its surrounding villages such as Ivanivka, Novotoretske and Hrodivka (all especially significant from a logistics point of view and now fully evacuated) and the areas of Zalizne, Privdenne, Toretsk and Niu-York, and in the direction of Chasiv Yar and Vuhledar. In the Pokrovsk area, Russia is said to be in control of 30% of Hrodivka, to have control of Mykolaivka, and to be close to shutting off the M30 supply road between Karlivka and Selydove. West of Kransnohoriivka, Russian forces are close to penetrating Maksymilianivksa.

Feeding the recovery of morale among the pro-Russian commentariate is the growing sense that Ukraine has failed in its most important objective, which they say was to seize the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. They calculate that Ukrainian forces may now be trapped, and that the village of Sudzha has little strategic importance. Sudzha is a hub for the transit of Russian oil and gas to European clients. If Ukraine needs to shut off supply, it does not need Sudzha to do it. At the request of the European Commission, Ukraine had already shut off supply to EU members Hungary and Slovakia which have, in retaliation, shut off their supply of electricity to Ukraine which badly needs supplementation of power following Russian missile and drone damage to Ukraine’s electric grid.

It could be argued that with the Kursk (and Belgorod) invasions, Ukraine has redeemed itself in the eyes of the collective West, that it has irritated and possibly worried Russia, exposing critical weaknesses in Russian defense, and that it has lifted the morale of the Ukrainian armed services and the Ukrainian people. Against this point of view are those who stress the growing weakness of the Ukrainian economy; divisions in Kiev that undermine the status of Zelenskiy (who now rules, not legitimately, but on the basis of a parliamentary decree); the decline in the intensity of support from the collective West whose plan to provide a $50 billion loan based on seized Russian assets is floundering in face of the absence of bondholder enthusiasm for taking on this load, even with European guarantees; and amidst growing signs of declining US support for Ukraine, as suggested in statements from both the Trump and the Harris camps.

One purpose of the Kursk invasion was for Ukraine to secure bargaining power at the negotiating table. Only there isn’t a negotiating table. The invasion appears to have hardened Russian resolve against any negotiating, and to have weakened any belief in the Global South, including China and Brazil, that negotiations could be meaningful and productive. The goals that Russia had first set itself will likely now have to be abandoned in favor or more ambitious goals.

In short, the war must go on. By far the more likely winner is Russia. Russia has the size, the military might, the experience and the resolve necessary. (If anyone “won” World War II, it was Russia). As I have argued so many time in previous posts, Russia did not choose this conflict. The conflict was not of Russian making. The principal driver behind the conflict is Western lust for privileged access to the material wealth of Russian territory, and the principal reason for this lust is the inability of Western assets to cover the vast galaxy of debt that the West has incurred as the price of its hegemony in an increasingly multipolar world. But war is a cruel roller-coaster, with a vast and painful capacity for jarring and unnerving surprise.