“Helping you do that is my job. That’s the president’s job as well.” - Joe Biden

Joe Biden was allegedly elected to be President of the United States in November 2020.
Link

Tell us Joe.
Who is the President?

CBS Censors Own Documentary After Ukraine Outraged

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...weapons-gone-missing

CBS has censored its own documentary investigative reporting after an avalanche of pushback from supporters of Ukraine and its military. The segment highlighted that tons of weaponry shipped from the United States to the country's military has gone missing, and sounded the alarm as billions in dollars more have been pledged by the Biden administration.

"CBS partially retracted a documentary in which it said that shipments of weapons to Ukraine from the US had been going missing," Insider reports Monday. "CBS tweeted on Monday that it had removed a a video promoting the documentary that included a months-old quote saying most aid was not making it to Ukraine's front lines." Below is the deleted tweet, with the offending line of "30% of it [US-supplied arms and munitions] reaches its final destination."

Terrifying how swiftly and obediently the corporate media walks back facts that are undesirable for the regime.
CBS News
@CBSNews
We removed a tweet promoting our recent doc, "Arming Ukraine," which quoted the founder of the nonprofit Blue-Yellow, Jonas Ohman's assessment in late April that only around 30% of aid was reaching the front lines in Ukraine.



The segment, titled "Arming Ukraine" was published days ago, and follows on the heels of Pentagon and US intelligence officials issuing similar warnings that there are few mechanisms in place to legitimately track the arms flowing into the country. One admin official even described in April that, "we have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time."

The fresh CBS reporting added to these concerns, quoting the the head of a Lithuania-based organization supplying the Ukrainian military, Jonas Ohman, who said bluntly:

"All of this stuff goes across the border, and then something happens, kind of like 30% of it reaches its final destination."

Ohman stressed that actually getting the weapons to the designated Ukrainian army units involves having to navigate an array of "power lords, oligarchs [and] political players." This also as there have been persistent reports that some weapons end up on the black market, or might possibly be moved outside Ukraine.

More at link.

quote:

@CBSNews
We removed a tweet promoting our recent doc, "Arming Ukraine," which quoted the founder of the nonprofit Blue-Yellow, Jonas Ohman's assessment in late April that only around 30% of aid was reaching the front lines in Ukraine.

One comment that one guy from one nonprofit NGO in Lithuania made three or so months ago. Is that supposed to be some kind of smoking gun? Because I can't imagine why it would matter to anyone that the Ukrainian military didn't make sure this one guy in Lithuania knew where every last artillery shell wound up.

Come to think of it, isn't a retraction exactly what we would expect CBS to do if they couldn't corroborate what this guy said - in the last three months?

Let's assume there was a factory to muzzle tracking system in place (as there may well be). Would we really want random staffers in Biden's office or Pelosi's office to have access to that information given the Dems' propensity for yakking thoughtlessly to anything that even vaguely resembles a journalist?

Let's assume the weapons do have to "navigate an array of 'power lords, oligarchs [and] political players'". Are we talking about weapons being divvied up by the equivalent of a bunch of Afghan warlords up in the hills or are we talking about different constituencies and agencies trying to influence the central government over how it allocates the weapons and ammunition it receives from abroad?

Bear in mind that the weapons don't have to enter Ukraine through some central clearing house in Kiev in order for the central government to be able to control where the weapons go. Bear in mind, too, that deliveries across various points on Ukraine's borders make it possible to avoid Russian monitoring and to get the weapons where they're going in the shortest (and therefore least risky) amount of time.

As for black market sales, there's no way any substantial sales on the black market could happen without someone's finding out about it. There has been the odd story about small quantities of donated weapons showing up on the black market, but we're talking numbers small enough that the weapons could have as easily been captured and sold by Russians as they could have been stolen and sold by crooked Ukrainians.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Il Cattivo,

WOW

I'll just ummm, leave this here ...

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
Here are my opinions on Ukraine:

When the Soviet Union left Eastern Europe and withdrew their military back to their borders it was done voluntarily, they were not forced out. The Soviet Union gave up communism and that was huge victory. The United States gave assurances that if Germany were allowed to reunify then NATO would not move forward toward Russia. Many people in and out of government advised against moving NATO closer to Russia including Henry Kissinger and many others. They knew this would be unacceptable to Russia and would lead to an eventual conflict.

Under Bill Clinton Poland was allowed to join NATO 8 years after the Soviet Union withdrew. Russia began to protest to the West that they were breaking their agreement. More countries were allowed into NATO and Russia protested more. Then it was announced that NATO membership was going to be offered to Ukraine and Georgia which were right on Russia's border. Russia said this was a redline for them that they would not accept, Russia then invaded Georgia.

The 2014 Maidan coup occurred and a hostile to Russia government was installed. I remember news commentators in the U.S. talking about how NATO would be allowed in Ukraine and that Crimea would now be a naval base for NATO instead of Russia. I thought at the time that it was hard to believe that Russia would give up this base. Then Russia took over all of Crimea. After the coup the Eastern section of Ukraine wanted to secede from the newly installed government and hostilities began. I am sure Russia welcomed this and probably helped with the instability.

In my opinion the West missed a huge opportunity when the Soviet Union withdrew it's forces and eventually gave up communism. What a much different world it would be today if we had drawn Russia closer to Europe and the United States, both economically and militarily. Now Russia is being drawn toward China while China will soon be the largest economy on Earth and growing stronger militarily every year.

Here's the problem. The same Russian popular camp driven by post-imperial phantom pain that feeds you propaganda about a CIA-instigated "coup" in Ukraine (which amounted to the pro-Russian president packing a couple bags of money and fleeing the country despite a Western-mediated agreement with the opposition for him to stay in office until new elections), and the previous one in 2009 (the "Orange Revolution" which grew out of protests against election fraud to keep the last pro-Russian president in office), and how the West broke its "promises" on NATO expansion (signed off on by Russia, if grudgingly, in the 1997 Russia-NATO Founding Act) also believe that the US tried to destroy Russia in the 1990s by American advisers "making" the Yeltsin government adopt liberal market reforms which led to robber baron capitalism and weakened the state. At that time there were actually ideas of Russia eventually joining NATO and the EU, tying it closer to Europe as you suggest. And they consider it another attack.

Before that, there were complaints about NATO's aggressive Pershing II and cruise missiles countering peaceful Soviet SS-20, and the US supporting counter-revolutionary coups in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia and Hungary wich "made" the USSR intervene. There were people in the West back then too believing the Soviet propaganda that the real problem were their own imperialist capitalist warmongering governments which were going to get everyone killed for not leaving the reasonable security interests of the USSR alone. The terms and hookup lines may have changed - "globalists!" is the new "imperialists!", wokeism and immigration have replaced mass unemployment and income inequality as the bogeymen indicating the decline of the decadent capitalist West - but the mechanisms are the same as in the Cold War, and arguably the days of the Comintern, just refined for the internet age.

The downfall of communism is irrelevant to the issue; in fact Soviet communism could be seen as just another expression of traditional Russian imperialism and authoritarianism. Putin is no communist, yet he's on record stating that the breakup of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. He is the product of the last KGB generation who saw that the West was leaving the Soviet Union in the dust economically, and in the early 80s suggested economic market reform while keeping authoritarian politics. Sorta like it eventually happened in China, though at the time their role model was Pinochet's Chile, of all places. Of course Gorbachev lost control of the dynamics and ensuing centrifugal tendencies, and in the late 80s the KGB mission turned to looting the national wealth and stashing it away in preparation for their eventual return to power in a different guise (something very similar happened in East Germany, and probably elsewhere).

Putin is that return. He is the representative of that last KGB generation who saw that communism wasn't working to maintain the traditional Russian empire, yet remain wed to the Cold-War thinking where the West is always the enemy. They were never going to forgive the West for prevailing in the Cold War, "breaking up" the USSR through "pro-Western agents" like Yeltsin, and "trying to destroy Russia economically" in the 90s. They don't share your view that they "weren't forced out" of Eastern Europe, either. "Threatening" Russia by admitting its former satellites which were seeking securities against a return of Russian dominance into NATO and the EU was merely another confirmation. More than all else, they fear the model of Western liberal free-market democracies in Eastern Europe successfully competing with the quasi-feudalist authoritarian system they have created to secure their power. Again.

There's always room for doubt, questioning and criticism of Western actions, of course. The thing is, if you didn't believe the former KGB guy who headed the USSR in 1982 saying that the real problem is the decadent imperialist warmongering West, why would you believe the former KGB guy heading Russia in 2022 saying the same?

dr. Jill walked away in disgust, fiddling with her hair.

quote:

“Helping you do that is my job. That’s the president’s job as well.” - Joe Biden

Joe Biden was allegedly elected to be President of the United States in November 2020.
Link

Tell us Joe.
Who is the President?

That video. He's so drugged up they need to put sunglasses to hide his dilated pupils. The cadence in his speech is horrendous.

Meanwhile, back at the war, Ukraine seems to have done a number on the Russian Air Force base in Crimea. Multiple videos are floating around the internet showing multiple massive explosions, and Russian tourists are reportedly clogging the road leading to the bridge from Crimea to Russia.

http://www.euronews.com/2022/0...itary-base-in-crimea

Putin had Medvedev go out and (for the umpteen jillionth time) hint at the use of nuclear weapons and a massive strike on Kiev if the Ukrainians attacked Crimea (as rather breathlessly reported in the Asia Times).

http://asiatimes.com/2022/07/r...aine-strikes-crimea/

Well, it looks like oil check time for Putin in Sevastopol. Russia's annexed Ukraine (although the international community doesn't seem particularly convinced), so it's at least notionally Russian sovereign territory. Here's the box Putin is now in -

Biden has threatened that NATO would respond 'in kind' if Putin uses chemical or biological weapons there.

http://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/24...logical-weapons.html

Biden has also kept to previous doctrine (despite a campaign promise to the contrary) that nuclear deterrence is the "fundamental" rather than "sole" purpose of the American nuclear arsenal. In other words, Uncah Ho reserved the right to a first nuclear strike in the event of 'extreme circumstances' rather than purely in response to an attack. It's publicly known (and therefore known by the Russians) that he did so specifically in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...e-circumstances.html

On the other hand, its hard to see Russia delivering a "Judgement Day"-quality conventional attack on Kiev. They have yet to establish air supremacy over Ukraine, so their planes are only reasonably safe in small, low-flying groups. They can launch cruise missiles from Russian airspace, but they haven't been doing much of that lately. Kiev is certainly out of range of Russia's artillery.

So what does he do? A nuclear (or MWD) strike invites a problem that he can't quite define or quantify, doesn't really want to have to deal with, and that can almost certainly be guaranteed to escalate unless Russia can find a way to alter the likeliest course of events. On present evidence, one or more massive conventional strikes will only engender a spirit of resistance in Ukrainians and further attacks on Crimea. No response at all reveals Putin to be utterly full of shit when it comes to backing words with weapons, and won't deter further strikes on Crimea (or anywhere else outside of the internationally-recognized borders of Russia, for that matter) at all.

Ukraine – the situation (August 10, 2022)

https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/...tion-august-10-2022/

Overview
* The Ukrainian “offensive” in the south has been underway for 18 days as of today. As an American military intelligence officer observed, “I’m reminded of Lincoln’s comment about McClellan: ‘He has a case of the slows.’” More on this propaganda offensive below.

* In the principal theaters of action, the mouth of the Donbas salient, the line of Ukrainian fortifications near Avdivka, west of the city of Donetsk, and the areas west and north-west of Kherson, there is heavy and stepped-up Russian artillery shelling accompanied by multiple missile attacks throughout Ukraine.

* Russian forces are within 2-3 kilometers of the city of Bakhmut, the transport hub that anchors the south end of the Donbas salient.

* Amnesty International acknowledged the “distress and anger” caused by its report that accused the Ukrainian army of criminal behavior by using civilian facilities as ambush sites and shields but said that it “fully” stands by the report.

* Reports of Russians mining and threatening to blow up the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have been shown to be false, according to US military sources.



East/Center

Russian forces are engaged in ground and tacair operations with strong artillery support along all points and lines of contact from north and northwest of Sloviansk to Bakhmut and further south to the area west of Donetsk with activity focused on Avdivka, the scene of heavy fighting back in 2017.

Sloviansk itself and at least 11 small towns near Bohorodychne northwest of Sloviansk were struck by sustained artillery fire. Further east, there was small unit ground activity near Siversk.

But principal Russian attention continues to be on Bakhmut as ground forces are pushing toward the transport hub from the Luhan River Reservoir as well as from the east.

Reports that Russian forces have entered Bakhmut from the south-east were contradicted by the Ukrainian General Staff. But even the slowest Russian grind will bring the south-end anchor of the Donbas salient under Russian control in a matter of days to a week.



The most intense current fighting in the East/Center sector is taking place further south along an extended line of contact from Krasnohorivka in the north to Avdivka and Pisky around Donetsk City all the way down to Marinka. The Avdivka to Pisky segment is being contended the hardest.

After taking the fortified Butivka mine halfway between the center of Donetsk City and the center of Avdivka, Russian forces now appear intent on pushing through the fortifications of Avdivka established by Ukraine in 2015-17.

The Ukrainian General Staff still reports that the Russians have not taken Pisky but bloggers and videos show Russians in the town center. A breakthrough at Avdivka looks possible in the near term and would open the western areas of the Donetsk Oblast to Russian attack along the major M-04 highway.



South

The vaunted Ukrainian southern offensive “to liberate Kherson Oblast by September”, as asserted by President Volodymyr Zelensky, to date has been desultory at best.

Aside from establishing a bridgehead across the Inhulets River between Bilohirka and Andrivka some 100 kilometers north of Kherson City prior to the announced start of the offensive on July 23 and off-and-on company-size engagements with Russian forces in the area, there has been no Ukrainian ground forces activity.



The main tactic appears to be to use some of the 16 HIMARS delivered by the US to strike Russian ammo depots and attack bridges across the Dnepr River upstream from Kherson. Perhaps the Ukrainians are still massing forces and the plan was to sever the Russian supply lines and let them “whither on the vine.” But that is not playing out.

Another Ukrainian plan might be to conduct a grand deception, tie some Russian forces down near the bridgehead and build a large strike force near the City of Kryvyi Rih to drive down the west bank of the Dnepr River and catch the Russians from the rear. But there’s no evidence of that yet.

Meanwhile, the Russians are moving more men and material to the region, reportedly at a rate of three to four major convoys a day, and are directing near incessant artillery fire into the bridgehead toward the cities of Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih, and Nikopol and into Ukrainian defensive positions along the LoCs.

That has the feel of a Russian “counteroffensive” in the direction of Mykolaiv and some Russian forces have probed in that direction. US military intelligence is now picking up talk by Ukrainians of “postponement” of the offensive.

Assessment

If the Ukrainian offensive that never was is indeed being postponed, then the delay would merely acknowledge military realities. To conduct a significant military offensive without sizeable air support or decisive air superiority is difficult if not impossible.

Even the best of long-range artillery cannot substitute adequately for tacair operations. Moreover, of course, the classic three-to-one manpower advantage or close to that has to be in place. How would the Ukrainian armed forces have come up with that?

Manpower losses on both sides in the months-long slow grind in the Donbas salient were large, probably larger on the Ukrainian side while they had been larger on the Russian side in the early ill-fated attack on Kiev.

New Ukrainian recruits plus forces withdrawn from the East and Center sections of the war theater would have had to make up a Kherson offensive strike force. But there are major constraints on both of these resources.

Russian forces pushing west out of Donetsk into Pisky and threatening Avdivka – even if they were not to continue to drive west – represent a severe threat to more central regions of Ukraine.

Moreover, a Russian victory at Avdivka would have serious morale consequences as it would mean a loss of positions held by Ukrainian forces for seven years. A similar threat is posed by the likely fall of Bakhmut, which might be followed by the fall of Sloviansk.

There may have been the vague and rather desperate hope by the Ukrainians to be able to trap substantial numbers of Russian forces in exposed positions west of the Dnepr River and deliver a quick and demoralizing blow. There may also have been the hope that allegedly exhausted Russia would fail to marshal forces to counter the slow-motion Ukrainian moves.

But it was always a high-risk gamble, a push they will have known could not succeed but undertook nonetheless to convince the US and NATO to deliver massive additional offensive weapons or even eventually intervene more directly.

^^^ Again, for those who would prefer to see the original assessment rather than the Asia Times' Red-China-friendly edited interpretation of the assessment:

http://www.understandingwar.org

Assessments provided daily.

Note on the maps: Russian recent gains are in buff (or light tan, if you prefer), Ukrainian recent gains are in light blue. If you look at those maps you'll see that the Russian gains in the post above are actually...well, pretty damned miniscule considering the time, materiel and blood the Russians have spent on making those gains. You'll also notice that both the Russians and the Ukrainians are shifting their forces and the axes of their attacks around in response to what the other side is doing. As an example, over the past few days the Russians have lost ground in the north after having shifted massive forces to the south to curb the Ukrainians' offensives there.

IOW, don't trust a newspaper that feels obligated to kowtow to Beijing - go check the original source instead.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
^^^ Again, for those who would prefer to see the original assessment rather than the Asia Times' Red-China-friendly edited interpretation of the assessment:

http://www.understandingwar.org

Assessments provided daily.

Note on the maps: Russian recent gains are in buff (or light tan, if you prefer), Ukrainian recent gains are in light blue. If you look at those maps you'll see that the Russian gains in the post above are actually...well, pretty damned miniscule considering the time, materiel and blood the Russians have spent on making those gains. You'll also notice that both the Russians and the Ukrainians are shifting their forces and the axes of their attacks around in response to what the other side is doing. As an example, over the past few days the Russians have lost ground in the north after having shifted massive forces to the south to curb the Ukrainians' offensives there.

IOW, don't trust a newspaper that feels obligated to kowtow to Beijing - go check the original source instead.

A little background on your preferred resource on all things Ukraine.

https://www.understandingwar.o...-assessment-august-9

Our History

Dr. Kimberly Kagan founded ISW in May 2007, as U.S. forces undertook a daring new counterinsurgency strategy to reverse the grim security situation on the ground in Iraq . Frustrated with the prevailing lack of accurate information documenting developments on the ground in Iraq and the detrimental effect of biased reporting on policymakers, Dr. Kagan established ISW to provide real-time, independent, and open-source analysis of ongoing military operations and insurgent attacks in Iraq. General Jack Keane (U.S. Army, Ret.), the Chairman of ISW’s board, also played a central role in developing the intellectual foundation for this change of strategy in Iraq, and supported the formation of the Institute in 2007.

Dr. Kimberly Kagan:

Kimberly Kagan is the daughter of Kalman Kessler, a Jewish accountant and school teacher from New York City and his wife Frances.[3][4][5] She received her BA in classical civilization and her PhD in history from Yale University. At Yale, Kagan met her husband Frederick Kagan, who is an American resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI),[6] son of Donald Kagan, a well-known historian, and brother of Robert Kagan , another well-known writer and publicist.

Robert Kagan:

Kagan is married to American diplomat Victoria Nuland ,[9] who served as deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Biden administration since April 2021,[10][11] and previously as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in the Barack Obama administration. Nuland held the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest diplomatic rank in the United States Foreign Service. She is noted for her criticism of Russian policies.

So the Sister in law of Victoria Nuland, the one that many people say had a hand in the coup of Ukraine in 2014, is the founder of this website. Nothing fishy here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kagan

^^ Interesting. OTOH, you're the one who keeps quoting the Asia Times when they quote the ISW, so...is it really my preferred news source? All I'm trying to do is help people here get past one more layer of biased editing.

Ukraine – the situation August 15, 2022

https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/...tion-august-15-2022/

Overview

OPSEC: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told government officials last week to stop talking about the coming offensive and Kiev’s military tactics, an apparent response to remarks by the Ukrainian General Staff G-3, Major General Gromov, that the offensive would begin soon and liberate much of occupied Ukraine by the end of the year. “The general rule is simple: war is definitely not the time for vanity and loud statements” Zelensky said, forgetting perhaps that he had forecast the liberation of Kherson “by September.”
UK MinDef Ben Wallace said: “They [the Russians] have failed so far and are unlikely to ever succeed in occupying Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian General Staff reports that Russian air forces have doubled their sortie rate since last week and that Russian artillery fire across all lines of control has increased substantially. Independent observers (American) report that the Russians are now sustaining 20,000 rounds of artillery fire per day while the Ukrainians are firing 5,000-6,000 rounds per day.
Russian ground forces’ activity at the western end of the Donbas salient near Bakhmut and Kramatorsk has picked up significantly.
Further to the southwest opposite Donetsk, both sides report heavy fighting near Avdivka and Krasnohorivka. The town of Pisky has been taken over by Russian forces and is being cleared out.
Ground activity in the south is limited to, at most, company-size skirmishes at the small Ukrainian bridgehead across the Inhulets River.
On the regional-strategic level, continued concern is voiced by Western observers over Russian plans to move west from the City of Kherson and beyond Mykolaiv for a link-up with Russian and pro-Russian forces in Transnistria. However, we’re talking here about covering a distance of close to 200 km, which – with current Russian forces – is as unrealistic as Gromov’s home-by-Christmas talk.



East/Center

The Ukrainian General Staff over the weekend reported that the city of Kramatorsk was attacked by Russian ground forces and later was struck by heavy rocket fire. The UGS also said that the Russians were pushed back.

If the UGS reports are correct, even if only Russian reconnaissance elements were involved, this is a new development. Kramatorsk lies about 30km northwest of Bakhmut and 8 to 10 km south of Sloviansk. As Bakhmut falls (as is expected in the course of the coming 7 to 10 days), Russian forces driving southwest from the Izium region could be pushing between the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk or just south of Kramatorsk and trap Ukrainian forces to the east of the Izium-Kramatorsk-Bakhmut line.

Near Bakhmut, the town of Zaitseve just southeast of Bakhmut is now under Russian control. The Russian front line is still moving slowly, but now more perceptibly westward. The UGS says that more than 150 missiles hit Bakhmut overnight.



The intensity and size of engagements has also been picking up opposite the city of Donetsk from Krasnohorivka 20 km to the north to Avdivka directly opposite to Pisky further south. The town of Pisky essentially is leveled. According to the UGS morning report, a Russian foray along major route M-04 toward the town of Pervomaiske was unsuccessful.

Avdivka, as we have previously detailed, is a fortified town that has defined the line of control since 2017. A breakthrough by Russia there would open up major railroad and highway connections to the western portion of Donetsk Oblast and be seen as a strategic loss for Ukraine. No surprise that both sides describe the fighting as fierce.



South

The Kherson region where the Ukrainian offensive was supposed to take place has arguably been the quietest region over the past several weeks.

Russian ground forces undertook no substantive ground operations in the past several days, but did conduct artillery and missile strikes across most of the line of contact. Seven to eight towns in and around the small Ukrainian bridgehead over the Inhulets – about 6km wide and 5km deep – were subjected to air strikes, and essentially every town was struck by rocket and or tube artillery. The city of Mykolaiv continues to be struck by rockets, as does Nikopol.

Ukrainian artillery and HIMARS and other MLRS systems continue to target Russian supply and ammo dumps and are reported to have struck two more ammo dumps in Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblast, but with diminishing effects as the Russians have minimized their size and dispersed them.

An American observer on the scene near Kherson City notes that “HIMARS has been effective, but the numbers are not adequate to change the outcome, only provide scattered tactical successes. Without the advent of some game-changing technology in sufficient quantity to shift the balance, it’s hard to predict anything other than a grinding war of attrition.”

But Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition.

Assessment

A Ukrainian official, not the one chided by President Zelensky, commenting on the explosions at the airfield in Crimea last week, told a reporter, in response to a question as to whether that might mark the start to Ukraine’s long awaited offensive, “You can say it is.”

A NATO member country military intelligence report of which we have seen excerpts noted, “The comment by the official doesn’t ring true. Rather, it would seem that the Ukrainians are reaching the end of the rope before the Russians – optimistic predictions of most Western media and some Western governments and intelligence agencies notwithstanding.”

This war, on all fronts, has settled into a war of attrition. It also appears that Russia is meeting both its manpower and firepower supply needs. Without an infusion of substantial amounts of new offensive weapons and the trained troops to wield them, it will be difficult for the Ukrainians to win in even a limited sense. A few spectacular hits like the sinking of the Moskva or the destruction of a Crimean military airfield will not turn the current tide.

A war of attrition in which neither side is willing or able to launch decisive offensive action is, in effect, a war in which both sides are trying to destroy the other’s army, to kill or disable as many enemies as possible. Such a war the larger army wins – unless the smaller army’s allies supply large amounts of added resources, including personnel.

The Build Back Better Western Energy Policy is Making Russia Very Rich

As the global cleaving begins taking shape based on the new western energy system, the Build Back Better agenda, Russian energy exports are worth a lot more money. As a result, the Russian economy has gained more wealth than before the western sanctions regime was triggered. As noted by the Wall Street Journal:

(Via WSJ) – […] Demand from some of the world’s largest economies has given Russian President Vladimir Putin the upper hand in the energy battle that shadows the war in Ukraine, and has confounded the West’s bid to cripple Russia’s economy with sanctions.

Sales are booming in Russia’s export market, the world’s largest in crude and refined fuels. And new trade arrangements have given Mr. Putin cover to use natural gas exports as an economic weapon against Ukraine’s European allies. Before the war, Russia supplied Europe with 40% of its gas. It has since throttled flows through the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany and other conduits, driving prices higher and putting pressure on European households and businesses.

Oil revenue more than makes up the difference. “Russia is swimming in cash,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. Moscow earned $97 billion from oil and gas sales through July this year, about $74 billion of that from oil, she said.

[…] Russian energy sales have flourished by finding new buyers, new means of payment, new traders and new ways of financing exports, according to oil traders, former Russian industry executives and shipping officials.

“There came a realization that the world needs oil, and nobody’s brave enough to embargo 7.5 million barrels a day of Russian oil and oil products,” said Sergey Vakulenko, an analyst and former Russian energy executive.

After buyers in the U.S., the European Union and their Pacific allies cut back their Russian oil imports, much of it went to nations in Asia that have declined to take sides in the conflict.

An unexpected market has been the Middle East. Exports of Russian fuel oil, a lightly refined version of crude, now go to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, often stopping in Egypt en route.

The Russian oil is either burned in Saudi power stations or exported from Fujairah, a U.A.E. port and hot spot for blending Russian and Iranian oils to conceal their provenance. This is oil that before the war was shipped to U.S. refiners.

The Russian imports, purchased at a discount, free state giant Saudi Arabian Oil Co. to export its crude at market prices. “The Saudis are happy to take their oil and sell it rather than burning it,” said Carole Nakhle, chief executive at consulting firm Crystol Energy.

The arrangement adds supply to the global oil market, helping put a lid on prices. “This is a win-win situation for the Russians and even, I would say, for the Europeans and the U.S.,” Ms. Nakhle said. (read more)

https://theconservativetreehou...ry-rich/#more-237116

long article

Claims Ukraine is counter attacking Kherson

https://hotair.com/allahpundit...on-has-begun-n493130

I didn't fully believe the story that has been making the rounds for a couple weeks how they managed to hotwire American HARM missiles to Ukrainian MiG-29s and wreak havoc on Russian air defense systems, but there's video up on Twitter showing just that. That will be a hell of a story some day.



Mind, that we're even seeing Ukrainian fighters zooming around like that half a year after an invasion by what was supposed to be an opponent with crushing numerical and technological superiority is a point by itself.

China Is Aggressively Reselling Russian Gas To Europe

https://www.zerohedge.com/mark...g-russian-gas-europe

One month ago, we were surprised to read how, despite a suppressed appetite for energy amid its housing crash and economic downturn (for which "zero covid" has emerged as a convenient scapegoat for emperor Xi), China has been soaking up more Russian natural gas so far this year, while imports from most other sources declined.

In July, the SCMP reported that according to Chinese customs data, in the first six months of the year, China bought a total of 2.35 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) – valued at US$2.16 billion. The import volume increased by 28.7% year on year, with the value surging by 182%. It meant Russia has surpassed Indonesia and the United States to become China’s fourth-largest supplier of LNG so far this year!

This, of course, is not to be confused with pipeline gas, where Russian producer Gazprom recently announced that its daily supplies to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline had reached a new all-time high (Russia is China’s second-largest pipeline natural gas supplier after Turkmenistan), and earlier revealed that the supply of Russian pipeline gas to China had increased by 63.4% in the first half of 2022.

What was behind this bizarre surge in Russian LNG imports, analysts speculated? After all, while China imports over half of the natural gas it consumes, with around two-thirds in the form of LNG, demand this year had fallen sharply amid economic headwinds and widespread shutdowns. In other words, why the surge in Russian LNG when i) domestic demand is just not there and ii) at the expense of everyone else?

“The increase in Russian LNG could be a displacement of cargoes going to Japan or South Korea because of sanctions, or weaker demand there,” said Michal Meidan, director of the China Energy Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

One thing that was clear: China wanted to keep its arms-length gas dealing with Russia as unclear as possible, which is why the General Administration of Customs of China stopped publicizing the breakdown in trade volume for pipeline natural gas since the beginning of the year, with spokesman Li Kuiwen confirming that the move was to “protect the legitimate business rights and interests of the relevant importers and exporters”.

Well, we now know the answer: China has been quietly reselling that evil, tainted Russian LNG to the one place that desperately needs it more than anything. Europe... and of course, it is charging a kidney's worth of markups in the process.

As the FT reported recently, "Europe’s fears of gas shortages heading into winter may have been circumvented, thanks to an unexpected white knight: China." The Nikkei-owned publications further notes that "the world’s largest buyer of liquefied natural gas is reselling some of its surplus LNG cargoes due to weak energy demand at home. This has provided the spot market with an ample supply that Europe has tapped, despite the higher prices."

What the FT ignores, perhaps intentionally, is that it's not "surplus" - after all, if it was Chinese imports of Russian LNG would collapse. No - the correct word to describe the LNG that China sells to Europe is Russian.

Going back to the story, the details are intuitive: with Russian pipeline gas to Europe effectively shuttered...

Europe’s imports of LNG have soared 60% year on year in the first six months of 2022, according to research firm Kpler.

Some more details:

China’s JOVO Group, a big LNG trader, recently disclosed that it had resold an LNG cargo to a European buyer.

A futures trader in Shanghai told Nikkei that the profit made from such a transaction could be in the tens of millions of dollars or even reach $100mn.

China’s biggest oil refiner Sinopec Group also acknowledged on an earnings call in April that it has been channelling excess LNG into the international market.

Local media have said that Sinopec alone has sold 45 cargoes of LNG, or about 3.15mn tonnes. The total amount of Chinese LNG that has been resold is probably more than 4mn tonnes, equivalent to 7 per cent of Europe’s gas imports in the half year to the end of June.

Make no mistake: all of this "excess" LNG was soured in part or in whole in Russia, but since it has been "tolled" in China, it is no longer Russian. It is instead - drumroll - Chinese LNG.

The good news is that the 53 million tonnes that the bloc purchased surpasses imports by China and Japan and has brought Europe’s gas-storage occupancy rate up to 77%.If this continues, Europe is likely to reach its stated goal of filling 80% of its gas storage facilities by November (at which point it will start draining the reserves at a breakneck pace to keep warm during the winter). But while China’s economic slump has brought much-needed relief to Europe, it comes with a major footnote. As soon as economic activity bounces back in China, the situation will quickly reverse, and Beijing will no longer re-export Russia LNG to keep Europe warm.

Hilariously, it also means that instead of being dependent on Russia for gas, Europe is now becoming dependent on Beijing instead for its energy - which is still Russian gas, only this time imported from China - which makes a mockery of US geopolitical ambitions to defend a liberal international order with its own energy exports.

Worse, while Europe could buy Russian LNG for price X, it instead has to pay 2X, 3X or more, just to virtue signal to the world that it won't fund Putin's regime, when in reality is is paying extra to both Xi and to Putin, who is collecting a premium price thanks to the overall market scarcity.

Amusingly, without expressly stating it, the FT does imply that Europe is buying Russian LNG by way of China:

If Russia ends up exporting more gas to China as a means to punish Europe, China will have more capacity to resell its surplus gas to the spot market — indirectly helping Europe.

Why not just admit the obvious - that China is helping Russia skirt sanctions as both countries get very rich in the process? Because then the FT's own judgment - after all, the newspaper is a conduit of the neoliberal thinking that demanded a complete embargo on Russian energy, an embargo which even the WSJ now admits (see "Russia Confounds the West by Recapturing Its Oil Riches") has backfired spectacularly - would be put into question.

FT's flaws aside, the newspaper is correct that the longer this kind of circuitous bypass of Russian sanctions by a hypocritical Europe (which signals its virtue so loudly when the adversary is Russia but doesn't dare say peep when it's China) continues, the bigger China's influence on Europe will be:

The more desperate Europe becomes about its energy supplies, the more China’s policy decisions will have the power to affect the bloc. As Europe attempts to wrestle out of its dependence on Russia for energy, the irony is that it is becoming more dependent on China.

In the end, all Europe has done is replace one energy master (as Trump warned in 2018) with another, even though both are joined at the hip and laughing at the stupidity of Brussels which, under the sage advice of a petulant Scandinavian teenager, made all of this possible just in time for China - which together with Putin now determines Europe's daily energy intake - to invade Taiwan without a peep from Europe's virtuous signalers.