NoW: UKRAINE UPDATED

 

The NEWS of Ukraine’s surprise “offensive” into the south-western Kursk region of Russia with troops pulled from several fronts reminds me of a video game I once played. The game consisted of driving around in various cool cars while taking in the digital sights. You could do that for quite a while, but if you started to commit crimes, from parking infractions to vehicular murder (so much fun!), the police would be on your tail. The more crimes you committed, the more cop cars piled on to put an end to your virtual rampage. That kind of reminds me of what’s happening now in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. The more Ukraine pokes the Russian bear, the greater its response.

One recent 'poke of the stick' is Ukraine's invasion into Russia in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine's Sumy oblast. There are conflicting reports on how serious the fighting has been. Some dismiss it as a publicity stunt to prove Ukraine's ability to continue the war (and thus continue to receive copious amounts of money and materiel). Another commentator, Gilbert Doctorow, suggests it’s more than a sideshow, with hard fighting between battle-hardened troops in a complex frontier battlefield. The mission goal for the invading AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine)  may have been to capture the Kurst Nuclear Power Plant (NPP): To take and hold the nuclear complex, and use it as a bargaining chip for future negotiations, something more and more Western elites concede is inevitable.  Regardless of what they intended, Ukrainian troops didn’t get anywhere near the plant, but they managed to launch several small drones at the facility which were shot down. This action by Ukraine could have been serious had they hit their target because the Kursk NPP is an older design lacking protective “domes” to cover the reactor cores that newer facilities have. The reactors (one is still operating) have conventional roof structures, making them vulnerable to artillery or missile fire. Thus, a new “Chernobyl” crisis (albeit smaller) might have occurred had these structures been hit or damaged. [Note: On August 11, AFU drones hit a cooling tower at the Zaporizhzhia NPP that Russia captured in September 2022 as part of its "special military operation". The nuclear plant is located in the Zaporizhzhia oblast ("province") which was annexed by Russia along with the  Donetsk, Kherson and Luhansk oblasts. Ed.] In addition, on August 31 Ukraine launched drone attacks on power plants and oil depots inside Russia. This comes days after Russia launched a major missile and drone attack on Ukraine's power grid. 

 

THE FIGHTING in Kursk will probably continue for the next few weeks as Russia moves men and materiel into the region to crush the invading Ukrainian forces that number fifteen to twenty-thousand troops by some estimates. Like Zelensky's request to launch long-range munitions into Russia, the Kursk operation is there to provoke the Russians into acting with disproportionate force in order to lure NATO and the U.S. into the fray.*

 

But, in terms of negotiations—back channel or otherwise—the Ukrainian offensive into Russian territory may have put the kibosh on all that, with a real “red line” having been crossed. Putin and his FM, Sergey Lavrov, both said last week that there will be no further negotiations. And what that means for Ukraine, will become clear in the coming weeks and months. 

 

ON the eastern front-lines, in the Donbas region of Ukraine, the Russians are pushing forward and will soon take the rail and communications hub-city of Pokrovsk. After that it’s anybody’s guess because it looks like there is a major Russian offensive stirring. Will Putin advance to the Dnieper River and perhaps sweep the remaining Ukrainian coastline, up to and including the port-city of Odessa, and even linking up with the Russian enclave of Transnistria? Is it possible that Russia's ally, Belarus, will enter the fray and move on Kiev? Stay tuned.😲

 

AND IN CASE ANYONE THINKS crossing Russian red lines is a good thing, remember: Russia has the world’s largest store of nuclear warheads and is updating its “nuclear doctrine” that would take into consideration other threats to Russia coming from non-nuclear weaponry or assaults. In other words, a lowering of the threshold of when it will launch a nuclear strike if the country's security is threatened.  Do we seriously want Russia to lower the bar for when it will respond with a nuclear strike? Is that a good idea? Ratcheting up tensions between two nuclear superpowers is insane. MEANWHILE, the meat-puppet in the White House is promoting a pivot to China in terms of nuclear targeting protocols. Biden wants more of his missile batteries and other nuclear forces to have designated strike targets inside China (Chinese ICBM sites, military facilities, cities). However, such a move would come at the expense of removing some strike targets from Russia, robbing Peter to pay Paul, essentially. He will decrease, the number of American nuclear weapons stationed in Europe and increase their number in the Indo-Pacific. Washington will abide by the total number of deployed nuclear weapons allowed under the New-START arms limitation treaty; it will just shuffle some of them around to China. In response to this growing threat, China has announced it is increasing its nuclear arsenal with the goal of achieving parity with the United States and Russia by 2030, even surpassing them in the number of deployable weapons.  

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle and is stirring up tricks all around us. Let the good times roll!😱

 

PART of the 'problem' for America is that it is limited by a treaty (those damn treaties!) to 1550 deployable (i.e. armed) ICBMs, "gravity" bombs and SLBM missiles it can have ready to launch. The same goes for Russia. Both countries signed and ratified the New-Start treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction treaty) in 2010, and it’s due to be renewed in 2026. The U.S. currently has 5044 warheads in its arsenal; Russia has 5580. New-Start is the last nuclear treaty¹ still in force that has kept a lid on (mostly) the expansion and proliferation of nuclear weapons for decades. Will it be renewed? And will further treaties be inked to limit the development of other nuclear weapons' technologies that 'lower the bar' for their deployment and use? Under a Harris or Trump administration it seems unlikely.

 

FURTHERMORE, the United States has recently announced it will install upgraded nuclear gravity-bombs tricked out with “glide bomb” technology in several European bull's eye states. Germany, along with Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Turkey, already host American B-61 nuclear gravity bombs. The "glide" hardware update extends the bombs' range of operation and improves their accuracy. In a further move, the Sholtz government, in its utter fecklessness, has just concluded an agreement to host American "Tomahawk" cruise missiles and still-in-development "Dark Eagle" hyper-sonic missiles  in 2026. Such missiles had been banned  under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, that the U.S. walked away from in 2019. Now they'll be back, slapping their host countries with big, fat bull's eyes for hungry Russian nukes.🧿

 

    "Fat Man" gravity-bomb. Nagasaki. 8/9/45. 21kt.

IT SHOULD be noted that last year and in January of this year the U.S. made overtures to Russia to begin talks on renewing New-Start. Moscow declined Washington's offer, stating that a comprehensive discussion around European security must be held in conjunction with any nuclear arms treaty, and those discussions must take into account Russia's genuine security concerns. I assume the U.S. plan to return cruise missiles to Europe (banned under the defunct INF treaty) are the result of this stand-off. It's another example of how the Ukraine War is making the world less safe. We need dialogue, not more bombs!

 

Q: "Russia, in a nuclear war, whether for a first-launch strike or a retaliatory one, what is the first thing you should do?"

A: "Turn all countries hosting U.S. nukes or having their own nuclear arsenals into ashtrays."

 

We may be at the start of a new arms race, this time a three-way match between Russia, the U.S., and China. (Provided we make it that far!) And to ratchet up tensions even more, the Biden administration may give Ukraine permission to fire munitions and missiles deep into Russian territory. While some commentators argue that Ukraine should be allowed to strike into Russia; they are at war, after all, others suggest such pin-prick strikes will not change the trajectory of the Ukraine conflict which is decidedly in Russia’s favour. And studies have shown that aerial bombardments tend to strengthen, not weaken, the resolve of a besieged population.

BUT will Russia come to see such attacks as an existential threat? Recall earlier this year when the AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) launched drone attacks on two of Russia’s early warning radar stations, damaging one array. Will Ukraine provoke Russia with such rash actions? 

 

    Battle of Kursk, 1943

AND for the historically-challenged, we note that Kursk was the setting for the largest tank battle in history during WWII. Needless to say, the arrival, in early August this year, of German tanks and armored vehicles once more on Russian soil hasn't gone down well with Russians who recall 1943’s Battle of Kursk. And the Russian people have very long memories.

 

👉A final point to consider: One of the pie-in-the-sky goals for Western elites and militaries was to have Ukraine inflict such damage on Russia that, along with sanctions, would cause Putin to lose his grip on power and Russia to become destabilized and more easily balkanized and asset-stripped by foreign interests and assorted carpetbaggers. But, I think if we look rationally at the current state of affairs in that bloody, years-long conflict, it's possible that Ukraine will be the one that is balkanized. Neighbouring countries—Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia all have historical claims of one sort or another to parts of Ukraine. It may be that Russia works out deals with these countries to take over and control those parts that Russia does not wish to govern. Who knows?

 

👉IT IS TIME for cooler heads to prevail lest we find ourselves on a path we hadn't chosen, moved by forces we'd not considered, and all of us arriving at a place we had never dreamed possible.

 

Cheers, Jake.___________________________________

 

* Hey, isn’t that the same trick  Netanyahu is using  by attacking Iranian consulates and Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon? The Israeli PM wants to drag the U.S. into a conflict with Iran by hook or by crook. It’s like both Netanyahu and Zelensky are using the same playbook.

 

1. A nice timeline of the twists and turns nuclear weapons' treaties have taken, from the Kennedy-Khrushchev Test Ban Treaty of 1963, through to the cancellation of the penultimate treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 2018, is found here.

 

💀 Does anyone feel safer with the latest generation of nuclear weapons, from nuclear-tipped hyper-sonic missiles, "stealth" missiles, "tactical" or "theatre" nuclear weapons; "glide bombs", "suitcase" nukes, and I've probably left out a few. Not to mention the problem of nuclear proliferation, with more nations (like Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example) debating whether they should join the nuclear 'club', currently composed of nine members and counting. 

 

Q: "Do you feel safe? Snug as a bug in a rug?"

A: "No! Give me the Cold War anytime!"