Collapse Narratives in Syria & Ukraine
Hama Falls, Homs Next?
In the interval between the arrival of reinforcements from Russia, Iraq, Iran and Hezbollah to Syria, on the one hand, and this assistance actually engaging, on the other, the Turkish-backed (and Western and Israeli supported) SNA-HTS invasion of northern Syria has gravely weakened the position of the Damascus government.
The entirety of Hama is reported to have fallen to the jihadi forces which, in the latest reports that I have seen, are moving on to Homs. This, if taken, would have the effect of cutting off the connections between Damascus (which is in the south west of the country) and the strongly pro-Damascus Alawite region of Latakia along the Meditteranean, also endangering the Russian naval base at Tartous.
The future of Damascus on this evening of December 5th (California time) now suddenly looks a good deal more fragile than it did earlier in the week.
A few days ago, reports of Syrian Army fortifying the area around Aleppo and between Aleppo and Hama suggested that the Syrian Army and its allies - especially with the aid of Russian bombing of jihadi positions around Aleppo - had stamped on the progress of the jihadis. The Syrian Army, it seemed, even if it had been taken badly by surprise by the strike on Aleppo, had now regrouped and was about to offer real resistance.
But now, it seems that whatever resistance was offered has been relatively slight (perhaps around 800 killed in fighting so far) and has not been sustained. The reality now looks closer to a collapse of the army and, perhaps, of the Syrian government itself.
What had been a veritable fighting machine up to 2020 may by now have been gravely weakened by the economic devastation not just of the 2011-2020 war but even more so of the stealing by the US and the Kurdish SDF of Syrian oil and agricultural wealth, partly for the benefit of Israel, and by the severity of US Ceasar Act sanctions that have significantly prevented recovery and reconstruction. The result has been processes of decay and corruption of institutions that have undermined the efficacy of the army.
There is still time and opportunity for a turnaround, with Russian help and with help from Iraqi, Iranian and other anti-US militia in the region. (Even Egypt, along with other Arab powers, is now expressing support for Assad). Russia must surely badly want to shoulder Syria as part of its defensive alliance with Iran, and it has considerable military muscle for that purpose, even despite the priority that it must afford its continuing and successful advances in eastern Ukraine.
But Russia must face growing doubt in Russia itself as to the benefits of supporting a country, Syria, that may no longer be able or even want to support itself. Similarly, sympathetic regional militia may now at least be asking themselves whether the war in Syria is any longer a viable proposition.
I have argued in the past that the Kurdish SDF could strengthen their position were they to follow up on the partnership with the Syrian army they demonstrated the other day trying to protect southern Aleppo, with a more robust re-engagement with Damascus, with a view to pushing both Turkey and the US out of Syria.
But the US-SDF alliance in the northeast was still a discouraging reality-check of any such a prospect, as have been reports of US support to SDF attacks on Syrian army positions in the east.
Assad, very typically, seems devoid of the kind of flexible imagination needed for a political leap to such a rapprochement. If he is not capable or able to make peace with one of the most important minority populations in his own country (and note that Syria has a strong claim to being a tolerant outlier in the realm of Middle East sectarianism) the chances that Assad can ever entertain anything other than hostility to the treacherous leader of Turkiye, who, with the US and perhaps Qatar, is the single most important culprit for the modern tragedy of Syria, are slim indeed.
As I have recently suggested, the posture of Russia may still be one of support for Syria, but not necessarily for Assad, given Russia’s stated faith in the resuscitation of the Astana accords whereby Russia, Iran and Turkiye will collaborate in finding a durable solution for Syria and for the protection of Syria as an independent state.
Another dimension to the jihadi success in its invasion from the province of Idlib, to which it had agreed to be contained in the peace talks of 2020 (for the safety of the jihadi multitudes who might otherwise have ended up dead or in concentration camps), is explored in a recent article in the Financial Times. This reports on the transformation and re-invention as a “moderate” force, the jihadi HTS. HTS now boasts a military academy that replicates the regime’s military service, based on nine months of training divided into three-month increments of basic, intermediate and advanced. It exercises centralized command over rapidly deployable specialist units including infantry, artillery, special operations, tanks, drones and snipers; and even a local weapons manufacturing industry.
SNA (formed by Turkey from pro-jihadi militia) and HTS benefit from the flood of weapons into Syria initiated under Obama in the days of the CIA’s Timber Sycamore program in 2011 that exported weapons from Libya through - and with the connivance of - Turkiye, to the jihadi militia in Syria.
HTS also boasts a homegrown manufacturing facility for drones and missiles, producing long-range missiles, rockets and mortar shells. Missiles include a new one, called Qaysar. Much of the expertise required is drawn from online resources. Rebels have dropped leaflets from drones over civilian areas to encourage defections. In recent days, guided missiles have been fired dozens of kilometres across open territory ahead of the new offensive. There has been a thriving black market trade between regime forces and HTS for weaponry and ammunition. Some HTS stock has been supplied by rebel groups that Ankara backs in northwestern Syria. Turkey has given rebels Toyota 4x4s, armoured vehicles and personnel carriers.
The fall of cities whose population exceed one million as in the cases of Aleppo and Hama, where the regime did not even move to arrange evacuation of civilian populations, is disturbing and deeply disappointing.
Only Dictators Washington Can Live With
There is a good chance that President Yoon of South Korea will be impeached the day after tomorrow. No justifiable reason has been given for why he attempted to declare martial law over South Korea and certainly no evidence presented for his insinuation of some kind of oppositional plot to collaborate with North Korea, although (almost unbelievably given current tensions) the two countries have come close to talking reunification in recent years. To my knowledge there was no US reaction to the declaration of martial law. The US has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea. It appears far less perturbed by evidence of clear dictator-like behavior in countries where it dominates, as in South Korea or in Ukraine (where it now seems the people have been denied elections until the West’s proxy war with Russia is over to the last Ukrainian, which the West pontificates much include the regime’s last 18-year olds), than in countries which it does not dominate and where there is no dictatorship, as in Georgia.
Georgia may soon have an unexpected ally in Romania. In the first round of presidential elections on Nov 25 (second round coming up on December 8), the top performer has been Calin Georgescu (described by Western media as “far right,” a term which increasingly seems to mean “anti-globalist, nationalist and non-neocon). He is considered to be pro-Russia, anti-EU and anti-NATO. He calls the NATO missile shield, constructed by the US in the Romanian town of Deveselu a “diplomatic embarrassment”. Is anyone surprised that Washington is already complaining of Russian interference in the election process?
With yesterday’s fall of the government in France, as a result, at least in good measure, of hearty opposition from the parties of Melanchon, to the left, and Marine Le Pen to the right, to Macron’s globalist pretensions for war against Russia in Ukraine, the neocon globalist agenda is looking increasingly precarious. We should not forget the fall a week or so ago of the Scholz government in Germany as a result of comparable public hostility to the giving away of national wealth to a totally foolish and losing prospect of a NATO proxy war against Russia. This war is being fought for the sole purpose of a Canute-like propping up of US hegemony (a project that dates back to and helps explain US entry into World War 2).
In other words, the term “globalist” is a misnomer for US imperialism. Only, the US empire much prefers its puppets to accept the burden pay for propping up a US empire in whose blood their own hands are drenched. Thus, wretched EU leaders (and close allies such as the UK) are now scrabbling, in the midst of economic recession, to come up with a $500 billion package from bonds put up by member countries that will compensate for the abandonment of project Ukraine by Trump. Their efforts will assuredly impoverish their countries for even longer than now seems likely, and increase their voluntary subjugation to a more powererful, centralized and authoritarian EU, and increase their dependence on the US.
Russia in Ukraine
House Speaker Michael Johnson has reportedly told Biden that he will not progress Biden’s request for another $24 billion for Ukraine, and that such a measure should be left to the incoming Administration. The presumption has been that Trump will not approve such aid because he believes he can negotiate a deal to end the war. There is increasing skepticism outside of the neocon colony that has captured Washington for the past few decades that such a deal is anywhere close.
The idea that Washington can buy some time by aiding Ukraine and supposedly strengthening its hand in advance of a negotiation, as I pointed out yesterday, presumes (and it is a big presumption) that further (failing) Ukrainian offensives will achieve anything other than weakening rather than strengthening the West’s negotiation position as intended. Furthermore the West seems incapable of identifying a starting point for any such negotiation that would be remotely interesting for Russia or that would counsel Russia to bring a premature end to its long win in Ukraine.
On the battlefield itself, Russia’s recent use of Iskander missiles on Ukrainian positions in the region of Dnepropetrovsk may well constitue a message of discouragement to Ukraine against any intended offensive south across the dry Chervnohryhoriva reservoir on the Russian-held Zapporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. And/or it may signal progress towards the Russian objective of taking the city of Zapporizhzhia, capitol of one of the four oblasts that Russia has already integrated into the Russian Federation. Russia may itself cross the Chervnohryhoriva reservoir and march on Ukraine’s city of Marhanets.
There continues to be relatively fast Russian progress in Donetsk. Russia has taken the village of Blahodatne, north of Urozhaine and south of Velyka Novosilka, and has taken farmland to the east that extends north to the outskirts of Velyka Novosilka itself. Russian forces will likely soon take the settlement of Strozheve to the west of Blahodatne and Neskuchne closer to Velyka Novosilka, and Makarivka. To the north of Velyka Novosilka, a Ukrainian counter offensive has overturned Russia’s recent acquisition of Novyi Komar.
Closer to Karakhove and the Karakhove reservoir Russian forces are regrouping south of Rozdolne, moving on Sukhi Yaly (the town) and - also on the river of Sukhi Yaly - Kostiantynopolske, west of Uspenivka (a Ukrainian-held town that lies on the western edge of a major cauldron in formation that is likely to entrap several hundred Ukrainian troops). Russia has bombed a strategic bridge across the Sukhi Yaly at Yantarne. From Sukhi Yaly, Russia will be able to move north to Ulaky on the H15 highway as part of a broad manouver to surround the entire Kurakhove reservoir area, one that also take in Dachne (also on the H15) which lies west of Stari Terny, now under Russian control on the western end of the reservoir. Another huge potential cauldron is thus being formed.
Russian forces move with steady inevitability around the northern, eastern and southern outskirts of Pokrovsk, having taken Zhoute, Novopustynka and are on the outskirts of Novotroitske, to the south with FPV drone control that reaches west to Novosylivka, while attacking Shevchenko a little to the northeast. A Russian line from Shevenko to Dachne will form another cauldron stretching to what is now Russian-held Selydove.
Russia every day extends its control over Toretsk and may have subjugated the entire settlement within the next two to three weeks. Major progress is being made further north in Chasiv Yar. Siversk continues to take heavy Russian artillery and bombing but there has been still no ground offensive. In the Kupyansk area, Russian forces have established several footprints west of the Oskil river. While there has been a Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kursk in the directons of Nizheny Klin and Darino, this has proceeded with heavy losses and does not seeem a promising development for the survival of the Kursk initiative.
There has been some process of reassessment going on in alternative media about the Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic multi-warhead (but non-nuclear) missile which destroyed a missile production factory in Dnipro a few days ago. Putin has declared it a game-changer with the power, if several were fired at once, to inflict damage comparable to a nuclear weapon. Skeptics have claimed that it has the ground impact equivalent to only a two-ton explosive warhead, and that the damage to the Dnipro factory is less extensive than originally thought (nobody seems to know for sure). Others say that the damage it inflicts is more vertical than horizontal, that it is, in other words, a magnificant “bunker buster” whose reverberations would disturb even the sleep of Zelenskiys hundreds of feet below the surface.
Yet others believe that the Oreshnik’s kinetic energy alone (i.e. with no explosive attachment), in conditions of hypersonic speed and high precision is considerable and could be much more so if and when it is fitted with explosive warheads that could be nuclear. There is some debate as to whether the very intense heat that is generated by hypersonic speeds of 10-20 Mach is or is not compatible with explosive warheads. There is apparently something called hexotol explosive that can overcome this problem, although I have no information as to whether it is applicable to nuclear devices.