All-Out War for Ukraine, Nukes for Israel

Ukraine

Aid Packages

In Kiev today, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin committed a further, very modest, sum of $100 million aid to Ukraine for artillery munitions, additional interceptors for air defense, anti-tank weapons, and three million small arms rounds (a small number by contrast with previous packages), and equipment for HIMARS precision rocket launchers.

US Shells

Bear in mind that US production of 155mm shells is 336,000 a year and that Ukraine uses 3,000 to 5,000 a day (or 1 to 2 million a year). In other words Ukraine consumes very approximately three times as many artillery shells than the US can produce or that the US+EU can together produce. The EU has eaten up most of its stocks. In the realm of missiles, as Alexander Mercouris aregues today, neither Britian nor France continue to produce Storm Shadows or Scalps; US stocks of ATACMS are modest and their performance has not been overwhelming. Russia, we understand, has a stockpile of 1,000 cruise missiles to use on Ukraine this winter.

For an institution - the Pentagon - that paid as much as $76 for a screw back in 1998 and over $400 for a hammer in 2011, I am skeptical that $100 million goes very far at all.

German Misery

Interestingly, Germany has also provided additional aid of 1.3 billion euros, a much larger amount than the US package, mainly for air defense purposes. The German defense minister, Boris Pistorius, has also just recently visited Kiev in the wake of reports of the very weak condition of the German military, amid the necesity for major pubic expenditure cuts in Germany, and which continues to suffer problems of bureaucracy, disorganization, misallocation of resources and a dire shortage of equipment (including of its air defense Patriot and Iris-T air defense systems), tanks and rifles, that have been so generously - recklessly, stupidly - shipped to Ukraine.

But then again I suspect that European armaments industries have as much fun grossly overpricing NATO as do their American counterparts in Washington.

New Weapons

In the meantime there has been a succession of reports of new weaponry coming out of Russia, precisely at a time when the usefulness of relatively cheap drones is proving far higher than the usefulness of very expensive cruise missiles and in this field Russia appears to have long surpassed Ukraine and its western suppliers.

The latest Russian drones have night-vision capabilities which not only replace the usefulness of missiles but also replace the necessity for storm troopers. Yet missiles (Kailiber, Iskander, etc.) keep coming - production has risen threefold over the past year, according to Russian Defense Minister, Shoigu who has claimed that there were 270 missile strikes in the past year, scoring 330 hits. In the field of electronic warfare we have reports of Russian hacking of Ukrainian cellphones for the purposes of geolocation and precision drone attacks far into the Ukrainian mainland.

On the Ukrainian side, Russian forces were shocked to discover that the machine gun position that has been holding up their progress in the south of Avdiivka for some time was electronically controlled from a distance, a technology that Russia will surely adopt and advance.

All-Out War

The principal reason for Austin’s visit to Kiev, according to the Secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, was to warn Ukraine that Russia would limit its activity in Ukraine for the next four months to its campaign against Avdiivka, mainly, waiting until after Putin is reelected President in the March 2024 elections before launching all-out war and total mobilization. Victory in Avdiivka will help Putin achieve a very strong election majority without alarming the Russian people with what is to come at the beginning of Putin’s next seven year term.

Ceasefire Impossible

Austin’s visit to Kiev followed that of CIA director Bill Burns last week where Burns met with senior officials where he may have tried to calm the unfolding power struggle between Zelenskiy and Zaluzhnyi. Some analysts consider that Burns may have tried to persuade Zelenskiy to allow elections in the spring of 2024 as well as commending Zelenskiy for his turn from a failing offensive strategy to one of defense in which, supposedly, Ukraine (with barely any resources to do it) builds new fortifications acros the country to stem a potential Russian big-Arrow attack.

Others think that Austin and Burns want Ukraine to seek a ceasefire. If so, then we can conclude that Washington is unable to grasp the fundamental point that in the light of the collective West’s blatant disregard of and disrespect for the Minsk accords, Russia cannot possibly risk presuming that it can ever again take its promises and its professions of good faith with any seriousness or trust. Especially given that the Russian army and the Russian economy is growing stronger by the day.

More Ukrainians to Die

The US and European response to this impasse of their own making is now driving some western analysts and political leaders to call for the most desperate and utterly stupid measures - in the form of demands that Ukraine in effect mobilizes all human beings left on its territory and capable of motion, and throw their lives into the mincer. Could it be that the most sinister of these voices are actually trying to create a scenario of depopulation to pair with Russia’s own demographic pressures amidst the enormous losses of the world wars, the reckless drive to capitalism in the 1990s and now the war with NATO.

Assassinating Zel

Zelenskiy, in interview with the British, Murdoch-run, tabloid, The Sun, claims to have been targeted for assassination by Russia five or six times. In a news environment suffused with rubbish on the Ukraine war, I pass over that claim in silence while continuing to wonder how many times he has been targeted for assassination by his Neonazi comrades in Ukrainian intelligence or by American, British or European intelligence agencies.

Kherson Assaults Pre-Advertised

In Kherson, there are reports from Ukraine of a special training program in the West for 4,000 Ukrainian troops and 300 Ukrainian special force personnel in preparation for an attack in the Antonovsky Bridge area that Dima of the Military Summary Channel anticipates for December or January. In the meantime, Russia is bombarding areas of Krynky with FAB-500 bombs and has reentered a part of this abandoned settlement (nearly all settlements along the combat line seem to fall into that category), and has identified a new launch position from the Ukrainian side of the Dnieper for the small boats that it sends across the river (we have video of some of these being destroyed with FPV drones).

Russian Advances

There are no reports of any Ukrainian progress in the Robotyne salient. Russia has been busy mopping up abandoned Ukrainian tanks left behind in their latest attempt on Novoprokopivka. North of Vuhledar, Russian forces are now within 1.5 kms of Novomykhailivka, and in a position to subject the settlement to all kinds of fire, including anti-tank fire. Russia has also increased its span of control over the territory to the north of the settlement.

In Avdiivka the situation appears to be further Russian advances to the south, Russian penetration of a residential area, Russian bombardment of the chemical plant, Russia control of the railway up to and north of Stepove, its entry of Stepove and Ukrainian construction of fortifications designed to prevent Russian movement west to Berdychi. There is no further news of Horlivka other than that there has been some Russian redeployment from Bakhmut area to Avdiivka. Ukraine is taking advantage of this to stem Russian advances in Andriivka. In the Lyman area there are barely any new reports, but in the Kupyansk area, Russia has been advancing south from Ivaniske to the settlements of Kyslivka and Kotliarivka.

Armenia

There are reports that Armenia, once a protectorate, in effect, of Russia, and soundly trounced by Azerbaijan in the recent Azerbaijani launch to take possession of the formerly disputed area of Ngorny-Karabakh, has been sending weapons to Ukraine. This seems to me a demonstration of senseless, clueless Armenian leader Vahagn Garniki Khachaturyan, likely bought out in some way by NATO powers, who appears to have almost gone out of his way to hand Ngorny-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, to render his country even more vulnerable to possible future Azerbaijani incursions onto Armenian territory, and to insult Russia (which is now seeming to ally itself more closely with Azerbaijan). In any case, it hardly seems likely that Armenia has many weapons to provide to Ukraine that have any value at all.

Pakistani Conundrum

Similarly, there have been reports of Pakistani supply of weapons to Ukraine, almost amusing given the weakness of Pakistan’s economy, but again reflective of US pressure, in a period in which it seems that Pakistan’s arch nemesis, India, is also moving closer to the US camp even despite its membership of the BRICS. But we have to watch these movements in the context not only of the NATO war with Russia over Ukraine, we have to watch them in the context of the war of genocide by Israel against Palestinians and on this, see further below. These movements both of Armenia, Pakistan and India all reflect both the ease with which the collective West can manipulte geopolitical tensions in its favor through tactics of divide-and-rule, bribery and threat.

Middle East Nukes

Concerning the Middle East, there are reports that the successful recent passage of the Malta resolution through the UNGA in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza may yet lead to a firmer, mandatory resolution in the UNSC to this effect, one that Israel will almost certainly ignore.

The strike yesterday by Hezbollah of an Israeli military base in northern Israel close to the border with Lebanon (very likely, I surmise, a response to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon) would seem, on the face of it, and in the absence of signficiant diplomatic activity to remedy the situation, to be a very dangerous moment of escalation to regional and potentially global war. At the very least, it demonstrates the hair-trigger sensitivity of the current crisis.

Gaza

Israel’s fight in Gaza meanwhile is under pressure to finish its campaign within the very near future - something which is looking increasingly unlikely - because a mobilization of 300,000 men in a very small country (to fight only 25,000 Hamas fighters, albeit in the difficult conditions of dense, destroyed urban rubble) is creating a very difficult economic crisis that will extend the war, and raise the odds against long-term Israeli survival. Israel’s claim that it has finished in the north of Gaza and ready to progress the genocide to the south, should be taken skeptically. But the economic and political pressures to complete quickly could translate into an attempted escalation of the pace of genocide and/or of the forced expulsion of the people of Gaza, aided and abetted by the US which is doing absolutely nothing to take the action that it could to stop the crisis.

This in turn, according to Col. Dougles Macgregor, could excite a nuclear strike on Israel by Turkey. Erdogan, he says, is viewed as the effective leader of Sunni Islam and his country could mobilize two million men in thirty days. And Turkey has sophisticated weapons. In his most recent remarks, Erdogan has warned Netanyahu that Israel will not survive, despite Israeli nukes. Pakistan has made it very clear to Turkey that it will make its nuclear weapons available to Turkey if necessary. As I indicated above, Pakistan’s extremely complicated relationship with Washington and its current internal crisis of governance puts a large question mark over this assertion but, on the other hand, we should not forget Pakistan’s consistent support for the Taliban from their inception through their return to power in 2021. Additionally, Turkey has the largest stockpile of drones in the world. Further, it is certainly imaginable in today’s situation that Sunni Turkey and Shia Iran, especially in the light of Sunni Saudi’s raprochement with iran, are more than capable of collaboration.

This is all very different to the Iranian situation which does not have nukes and has concentrated instead on conventional weapons, which are considerable. I note that Scott Ritter today is arguing that Iran and Hezbollah have the capability of taking out Israel - in electronic media narratives that are becoming increasingly apocalyptic, as is this. The bottom line, says Ritter, is that Israel cannot beat Hezbollah.

Escalation, says Macgregor, is inevitable. Israel has crossed the Rubicon with an Arab World (reaching the conclusion that Israel has to be destroyed) and the rest of the world, with the exception of the US and its reducing number of acolytes.