Will There Be a Russian Big Arrow Offensive?

Attrition v. Big Arrow

Dima of the Military Summary Channel at midday today, April 22nd, has continued to express high certainty that there will be a major Russian offensive after mid-May, only he cannot be sure where or exactly when. He believes he sees evidence from Russian MoD announcements of a concentration of control of the Russian army at the top, possibly in preparation for a major offensive, even while individual commanders in the field may continue to believe individually that their own zone of activity is the most important. The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, has also stated within the past few hours that he expects that Ukraine will encounter a difficult situation from mid-May or early June.

This coincides with the final days of President Zelenskiy’s legitimate hold on presidential power (ends May 21st) amid a growing chorus of criticism of Zelenskiy’s leadership from various units of the Ukrainian army, from former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, and from the commander of Ukraine’s volunteer army and head of the Right Sektor, Dymtro Yarosh. Personnel of Ukraine’s 79th Brigade, which in recent days has evacuated from Novomykhailivka, south of Marinka - leaving the entire settlement under Russian control - have had strong words of criticism for the military leadership who they believe abandoned them and refused to continue supplying them beyond April 15. Additionally, the 25th Airborne brigade was disbanded after surrendering to Ukraine near Pervomaiske. The 67th (Right Sektor) brigade has been disbanded following the leaving of positions from near Chasiv Yar, and the so-called “Russian Volunteer” corps almost obliterated attempting to flee Ocheretyne (the 47th Brigade was redeployed to that area to replace them but they too refused to enter Ocheretyne or even to wait around for another replacement) - all to the fury of Right Sektor leader Dymtro Yarosh (whose direction of the Maidan insurrection in 2014 led to the assault on government buildings which was the proximate cause of the fall of the Yanukovych government). The Third Assault (Azov) Brigade may suffer a similar fate. Additionally, the 115th Mechanized Brigade abandoned positions from near Ocheretyne that allowed Russian forces to penetrate the southern end of the settlement.

In brief, all has not been well with morale in the Ukrainian armed forces.

As for an imminent Russian Big Arrow offensive, a direction from north of Kharkiv would be a strong possibility but this may be the conclusion that the Russians hope that others will draw from its current activities. These include: de-mining the border zone between or along Kharkiv and Sumy areas, reported ban on the sale of alchohol, pushing Ukrainian border forces back, in other ways creating a “buffer zone” to better protect Russian border towns, the bombing of dual-use energy facilities in Kharkiv itself (and also, yesterday, its Television Tower), and encouragment to citizens to flee the area as soon as possible. The purpose may be to protect civilians, or to create panic, or to overstress the transportation system but, most likely, the idea is to misdirect Ukrainian perception away from Russian preparations for advances from alternative directrions. A statement by the governor of Belgorod concerning the 600+ casualties that have occurred in his city as a result of Ukrainian attacks may also signal an explanation for the coming offensive. Note, by the way, the significance of an increasing Russian turn to dual-use targetting. This may be a reprisal for the intensity of Ukrainian terror attacks as at Belgorod or Moscow (Crocus Hall) or, over a much longer period, Donetsk City, or a response to Ukraine’s greater reliance on dual-use assets to achieve advantage.

Other possible directions for a Russian advance would include a Russian move from Avdiivka and Ochertyne, once completely taken, further west; or from Chasiv Yar and Bohdanivka, once completely taken, further west; or from Siversk, once taken, further west; or from Kostyiantynivka, once taken, further west.

I have recently ventured that there may still be a great deal to gain if Russia opted to continue in its present aggressive-defense, attritional mode. This would not require Russia to redeploy its forces from parts of the current combat line to concentrate on only one point; it would allow Russia to continue its relatively predictable pattern of slow, incremental advances that tie down Ukrainian forces at points all along the combat line; it avoids the danger involved of a serious blow against a highly visible and symbolic Russian Big Arrow attempt.

We should not forget that although Russia may have extended its border at the eastern end of Ukraine by around, say 100 kilometers or more from the mainland, there is still a further 150-200 kilometers separating Russian forces in, say, Avdiivka or Bakhmut areas, and cities such as Dnipro and Zapporizhzhia on the Dnieper. Not to mention the further 800+ kilometers that separate the Dnieper from Ukraine’s western border, territory which can accommodate a great quantity of men, materiel and weapons and which is bordered by many NATO countries. Some of these may be prepared to use their forces to assist Ukraine (as, for example, Zelenskiy yesterday suggested, by such means as shooting down Russian fighter jets over Ukraine), despite supposed Russian air supremacy.

While some commentators (Mercouris is one of them) are given to very optimistic projections for Russian forces in the event that they break through the current main Ukrainian fortifications along the line of combat (and this is, admittedly, looking rather shaky at present in numerous places) in being able to make a “dash to the Dnieper,” I myself harbor serious doubts as to the ease with which this can be accomplished, whenever I look at the map and digest the huge number of towns and villages that would still obstruct such an advance, and taking into account the recent US allocation of additional monies to Ukraine. A significant portion of these, by the way, may already been spent as credit by US armaments manufacturers on behalf of the US government, something that might help explain the continuing resilience of a weaker but unbowed Ukrainian army).

Pro-Russian commentators typically seem to want to emphasize the speed of Russian advances even when others might be more impressed by their slowness. This is a different kind of war for many reasons but, for now and perhaps most dramatically, the principal reason is the impact of the cheap drone on the practice of warfare which, even taking into account the growing sophistication of electronic hacking disruption, is difficult to underestimate. In the recent past, armies would have depended mainly on artillery, tanks and on bombing from the air in their efforts to push back advancing opponents, and both of these methods were highly vulnerable to the opponent’s own artillery, tanks and aircraft. In this scenario, assuming equivalence of strategic skill, the stronger army, inevitably, could manouever rapidly forward. But cheap drones present significant new, less predictable, less visible dangers (especially at night), even to stronger armies over vaster areas of the combat zones such that the caution of responsible commanders to respect and conserve the lives of their soldiers imposes even greater diligence, caution and care.

Battlefields

The main recent developments on the battlefield have been the clear fall of Novomykhailivka, already mentioned, and significant Russian penetration of the south of Ocheteretyne (and already moving towards its center), north of Avdiivka. The first of these strengthens Russian preparedness to move west toward the village of Paraskovinka and then to the larger settlement of Kostyantynivka. Ukrainian forces are attempting to set up a new line of fortifications to the east of Paraskovinka. Russian forces already control a large swathe of territory to the south of Novomykhailivka and Kostyantyvka, and are now in a position where they will likely move on Route 24, an important supply road that connects Kostyantynivka to the city of Vuhledar to the south. Russia has been shelling and bombing Vuhledar and its smaller neighbor, Vodiane, for several weeks now. It has proven difficult to take in the past because it is on higher ground and most of its buildings are fortress-like high-rises. The fall of Vuhledar would then make it much easier for Russia to proceed towards Kurakhove, further west, and eventually to Kramatorsk. The fall of only part of Ocheretyne to Russian forces is already making it easier for Russian forces to turn their attention to settlements to the west such as Novobakhmutivka and Solonove, and to settlements to the north such as Keramik, Novokalynove and Novokeramik, and from there the possibility opens up to a continuous line of Russian offensive forces from south of Avdiivka (including Vuhledar) up to Chasiv Yar and, to its immediate east, Bakhmut. The eventual fall of Chasiv Yar will open up the path for Russian advances to clear Berdychi of remaining Ukrainian forces. There are reports of an unexpected Ukrainian counterattack yesterday between Ivanivka and Chasiv Yar and between Ivanivska and Klishchiivka. North of Bakhmut, Russian forces are penetrating the settlement of Rozdolivka, to the east of Sakko I Vantzetti.

Financing Ukraine

It seems highly likely that the Senate will vote through the aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan tomorrow. Indeed, the package clearly supports the general argument I have been making for some time that our current global state is one of counterrevolution by the US and its allies against the forces of Multipolarity, and that right now the three principal combat fronts are Ukraine, the Middle East and Taiwan and the South China Sea.

I do not think this is a war that the US will win.Why? Because it lacks the resources, the people, the ideological purity of a winner, and it is gravely short on leadership, competence, a sense of the public good and, to be blunt, intelligence at the top. While popular Russian television has it wrong about the ways in which the US is a depraved, corrupted, Satanic society it is not wrong in its sense that the US and its made-up “rules-based order,” is indeed in decline and that in the wake of this decay fall the wealth, the health, the intelligence, the collective memories, public morality of its peoples.

So, $61 billion to Ukraine which, as we have had occasion to remind everyone for some time, two thirds of that goes to the US armaments industry to make up for lost weaponry and to come up with ideas for new weaponry, to pay off these guys for weapons they have already sent to Ukraine on credit, with some more to keep Ukraine’s politicians and administrative class in bread and marmelade, and to make sure the corrupt Ukrainian elite have enough for yet more boltholes on the Mediterranean. That kind of thing. The illegal and debased waving of Ukrainian flags in the US Capitol reminds us of all the members of the political class and lobbyists who will be slopping up the dregs along with their buddies in the MICIMATT.

Oh, and by the way, Zelenskiy says he is happy about the $61 billion, thank you ever so much, but that he needs more, lots more, and that anything that nonentity countries like Spain or Italy have in their warehouses should be shipped directly to his address. Because, if they dont, then Russia will want to attack the Baltics next. (I think that the Baltics will eventually learn to be so sick of Zelenskiy that they will wish, vainly, that Russia would want to invade them). Thanks too to the 60 US “advisors” now rushing to Kiev to protect Zel against assassination by his own supporters. Zelenskiy is working with Germany on a master plan very similar to one that was drawn up early in 2023 by which Ukraine would stage a missile-based (ATACMS etc) assault on Crimea. The ultimate goal is a stabilization (i.e. “freezing”) of the front lines, possibly some distance west to where these currently lie. Meantime, Germany’s latest gift of Leopard II tanks for the protection of Kiev has been denounced by critics as useless in the absence of a functioning Ukrainian air defense system for its capital.

In the meantime it is reported that hundreds of Bradley and other fighting vehicles are concentrated at the Polish-Ukraine border near Rzeszov, awaiting Biden’s signature later today (April 23rd) on the $61 billion - suggesting that some of the weaponry that was to be bought with the $61 billion has already been purchased and dispatched awaiting delivery. Russian surveillance presumably knows where these vehicles are and is preparing to bomb them once they are inside Western Ukraine. Dima reports that Ukrainian consulates have anticipated the execution of the recently-passed mobilization law by withdrawing services from Ukrainian men of military age in a bid to compel them to return to Ukraine and to be drafted.

Seizing Frozen Assets

Now, there is also the matter of the $250 billion or so of frozen Russian assets lying about principally in Europe and a bit in the US (maybe as little as $5 billion in the US). Mike Johnson’s aid packages are making space for this bit of larceny as well, but my understanding is that Europe’s elites, advised appropriately by their Central Banks, have rejected giving away Russian assets - up until now, that is, but this feckless and weak generation will doubtless give in, especially when incentives are thrown in and they can buy some more farmland in Piedmont. They will be helping to pour hundreds of years’ of western financial credibility down the drain; they will ensure that many western businesses lose whatever they have left of their fortunes in Russia, and they can be sure that when the tables are turned, Russia will prove to have more than an adequate memory - perhaps using frozen assets of the collective West to spend on efforts by the Global South to combat climate change.

There can be one certain conclusion to be drawn from the collective West’s forever instinct to double down on the losing money, that is to say, that the war will continue, many tens of thousands of more lives will be lost including, now, lives of the collective West, that the precipice of nuclear annihilation will be visited many times more and that either we all die, or the collective West sinks like the proverbial stone. Russia on the other hand will continue to fight until the capitulation both of Ukraine and of the collective West. The only mild uncertainty is what “capitulation” will entail. It will certainly leave Russia with all of its gains so far; probably with a few more thrown in in order to provide it with the security that it has been asking for all along; it will leave Russia and its allies in a far stronger position of global influence, ready to build structures that will now replace those that have been corrupted and taken over by the neocon ideology of the collective West, such as the UNSC and many other so-called international regulatory agencies.

Sanctions Everywhere, All at Once, All the Time

Blinken is preparing to visit Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing to tell him that China is producing way too much and is giving Russia microchips, machine tools and even, apparently, he says, engines for cruise missiles. This is very naughty of course because it controvenes the US “rules-based order” in which nobody knows what the rules are until Washington has pronounced them and nobody is every consulted about them. Washington is in new sanctions-wielding fever at the moment, applying sanctions against Iran for, well, for just being Iran basically; it is sanctioning Venezuelan oil, again, because Washington doesn’t think Venezuela should have any oil and it hates socialists; and it is now building up a rage to justify the imposition of new sanctions on China.

This is all very good news, basically, because the collective West’s economics of sanctions has shown that it hasn’t worked in the case of Russia and China and that Russia is in fact far richer now as a result, Europe is far poorer, and that the most important thing that sanctions do is to encourage countries to become far less dependent on the collective West, to do much less business with the collective West and to do much less of the business that they do do in dollars.

Washington’s real sanctions target, as Alexander Mercouris speculates today, is to demotivate countries from joining the new global financial and trading architecture that China is constructing to replace that of the collective West. Washington wants the sactions, in other words, so that it can sanction countries that prefer to do business with China than with Washington (a strategy it seems that would make them all the more determined not to do business with the West). Since this really requires them to pitch in with the BRICS order, one that favors lifting the boats of all its members, rather than pitch in with the Washington order, which prefers to impoverish all its members except for Washington (this is now literally true in the case of Europe), I think the final outcome may prove very satisfactory.

Palestine and Iran

It is clear that Iran has shown it has the capability not just of bypassing Israel’s “iron dome,” but of doing so with missiles that are not the finest of Iran’s armory, and of hitting targets close to Israeli military and possibly nuclear facilities at the Negev Center. Certainly, Israel has between 200 and 400 plutonium-based warheads. Israel, in turn, has shown itself capable of inflicting damage on Iranian peaceful nuclear energy facilities (although there is a school of thought that thinks Iran may have progressed to the next level already). Separate visits at this time to Pakistan by Iran’s foreign minister and by Iran’s prime minister Raisi - Pakistan is Iran’s neighbor, a Sunni Muslim country, a nuclear power, with fairly close but also deeply ambivalent ties to the West, but one which has also shown itself sensitive to the situation and interests of its neighbor - have certainly raised questions and speculation about mutual military aid, or technology transfer, things of that kind.