Mister Bottom's Folly: NoW UPDATE: UKRAINE (UN)HAPPY HOUR

HOO-WEE! It’s rainbows and unicorns time, folks! 2025! Thank gawd that clusterfuk known as 2024 is over and done with! It’s smooth sailing ahead, me hearties! Let's pop the champagne and drink in the new year! Oh, wait. There’s that thing going on in the Yoo-craine still, that makes my heart skip a beat whenever Zelensky fires one of his missiles into Russia. What part of stupid doesn’t he understand? These missiles and drones accomplish nada, other than pissing-off the Russians. And his freedom fighter look, like he's just back from the front, is tiresome, don't you think? Doesn’t he own a suit and tie? Who’s he trying to kid?

THESE DAYS more world leaders are calling for peace talks to end the conflict, Türkiye most recently. Ukraine’s President Zelensky makes nice mouth noises about wanting to sign a peace treaty with Russia but only if he can bargain from a position of “strength” to force the Russians into making maximum concessions. The incursion into the Kursk region of Russia was supposed to give him leverage in any negotiations. The deal was they were going to capture the Kurskaya Atomnaya Stantsiya (“Kurst Nuclear Power Plant”) and use it as a bargaining chip. Instead, the Ukrainian army (AFU) is losing thousands of battle-hardened troops to Russian defense forces in the failed operation. And Russia continues to squeeze the remaining AFU troop deployments there until they pop like zits and are wiped away.

Che Zelensky
ZELENSKY hasn’t got the memo. It’s Russia that’s winning the war, not Ukraine. Ukraine is on the back foot and losers can’t be choosers. Russia won’t stop until the four ethnically Russian oblasts (Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia) are completely under Russian control. In the coming weeks I think we’ll see the Russian Army advance to the Dnieper River where they will consolidate and pause giving the new Trump administration* a chance to submit serious peace proposals that respect “facts on the ground” and Russia’s legitimate security concerns.¹

THERE ARE VERY IMPORTANT discussions that the Americans could have with the Russians, including nuclear arms control initiatives and the broader security architecture for Europe and Russia that would de-escalate tensions and promote dialogue and deconfliction protocols for all parties. On the other hand, Trump might come on like..well Trump, determined to ‘arm-twist’ the Russian president into accepting a “deal”, in which case Putin will continue the war, ordering his troops to cross the Dnieper. Then all bets are off. Russian forces might then march on Kiev or move west cutting Odessa off from the rest of Ukraine and linking up with the Russian enclave of Transnistria and taking the rest of Ukraine's Black Sea coast.²

HE MIGHT do all the above, forcing Zelensky and his government to hightail it to Liev in western Ukraine. In this scenario, Ukraine becomes a rump state without a port on the Black Sea, thus ensuring its demise as a viable, economically independent, nation. The longer this war goes on, the greater the likelihood of such an outcome. Russia will not accept a NATO state on its southern border, particularly one equipped with intermediate-range (IR) missile batteries, that could strike Moscow in a matter of minutes.

[Note: If China were to place a missile base in Windsor Ontario, the site would be turned into an ashtray pretty damn quick by the Americans. What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander. Give Russia some elbow room, some distance from NATO, guys! It's to all our benefits. Ed.]

PROBLEM IS, the lame-duck Biden administration is hell-bent on shoveling as much money and weapons into Ukraine as it can in the short time it has left. They want to leave things as messy and up in the air as possible for the return of Donald Trump to the White House. This means tens of thousands more Ukrainian troops will die just so Biden and his familiars can score political points. And the outcome remains the same: a Russian victory and NATO’s defeat.

RECALL that Ukraine is a NATO member in all but name, armed and supported by alliance members. Its army is NATO trained and equipped with several hundred thousand troops deployed. Russia, in essence, was battling NATO. And winning. Don't forget that.

BTW, look for Zelensky to announce conscription of eighteen-year-olds shortly.😲 Sure. Why not sacrifice another generation of Ukrainian men in this most unnecessary of wars?

"Tsar Bomba" 1961 USSR. 50 Mt yield.
JUST TO CONCLUDE, the deployment of IR missile batteries in Poland and Romania poses an existential threat to Russia because of how little time it would take to launch nuclear capable missiles into Russia. And Germany, for some unknown reason, has agreed to host U.S. Tomahawk missiles in 2026 which have a range of up to 2500km and can carry a nuclear payload. There may even be American hypersonic missiles sited there as well, if they are out of the development stage by then. IR missiles are perhaps the most dangerous of all strategic nuclear weapon systems because their speed and distance to target allows only minutes for the receiving side to decide whether they are under nuclear attack and to respond in kind. That’s why the INF treaty, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in 1987, which eliminated 2,692 “ground-based³ mobile-launched” missiles was so important for global security. False alarms have happened in the past and can happen again. As well, the nuclear doctrines of both the United States and Russia have been updated in 2024, lowering the threshold for using nukes in a conflict. The fact that hair-triggered IR missiles can blanket the entirety of Europe, with a similar capability from NATO/US missile batteries covering Russia, must keep politicians and military brass awake nights. And if these facts don’t give them sleepless nights, then it’s time for them to wake up and smell the coffee!

THAT’S WHY I recommend the newly published book, Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen. I won’t describe the scenario Annie uses to illustrate the dire consequences and deadly effects of nuclear weapons other than to say it is a highly plausible one. Her prologue, is utterly terrifying, describing as it does what happens when a single, one megaton nuclear missile explodes over a city. A one megaton explosion is the equivalent of 1000 Kt of TNT. By comparison, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima had a ‘mere’ 15 Kt denotation on that fateful day in August 1945. Today’s more advanced, more powerful “hydrogen” bombs are known as “city killers”, for that's what they are. It's important to realize there is currently only one remaining nuclear arms treaty (START) that limits the overall number of nuclear warheads that America and Russia may have in their respective arsenals. It is set to expire in 2026. Unless it is renewed (so far, nada) and unless other such treaties are enacted to put the brakes on, next year could see a proliferation in stockpiles of nukes, in deployment of nukes, new delivery systems as well as other countries joining the club (such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey). Sweet!😓

By itself, Annie’s prologue is disturbing enough, but the following chapters where she describes what would probably happen after the use of a nuclear weapon against an adversary make for a sobering read. She thoroughly researched the chain-of-command and authorization to launch protocols of America's strategic defense system. We follow the all-to-plausible decisions and mistakes politicians and the military make on both sides in the lead up to nuclear war. And we see the dangerous fragility of the strategic defense system, touted to be “Fail-Safe”, only to realize it’s anything but. Annie Jacobsen's book is a page turner that makes you feel grateful you somehow survived another night!

Cheers, Jake.

* Russia will hold peace talks with the Americans, going over the head of Washington’s puppet, Zelensky. (Besides, his term as president officially ended last fall, so any treaties signed with him would, technically, be invalid.) And the hostility coming from most European capitals is such that a dialogue with EU politicians would be difficult. So, initially at least, the Russians will only deal with the ‘big dawg’, the Americans.

1. Facts on the ground include: The four oblasts mentioned are now a part of Russia, as is Crimea; their status being non-negotiable. And, given the reluctance of Zelensky to bid for peace, more territory might be claimed by Russia.

👉Ukraine will never join NATO. Period.

👉It will adopt a neutral status along the lines of Austria’s system.

Also, Russia wants a “de-Nazification” of Western Ukraine, which I presume means sanctions and legal actions taken against those Ukrainians belonging to neo-Nazi groups or who support them.

👉Protection of minority rights in what’s left of Ukraine would be another important demand to be met before Russia will ink any peace deal.

👉For a future Ukrainian "rump state" there may be other demands from the Russians, for example, a cap on the size of Ukraine’s armed forces; no foreign troops on its soil, and perhaps no EU membership for Ukraine. Going forward, Ukraine will be smaller. How much smaller, and how functional it will be as an independent nation remains to be seen.

2. Transnistria is a narrow strip of disputed territory that sits along the Dniester River on the border between Moldova and Ukraine. It is a breakaway province of Moldova, formed in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Moldova still claims the Russian enclave as part of its territory and Transnistria’s status remains that of a “ceasefire” and “frozen conflict”, unresolved after all this time. However, the enclave operates as a de facto independent, semi-Presidential republic. Population is around 360,000.

INTERESTINGLY, Ukraine has recently stopped the flow of Russian natural gas to Slovokia. (Which had been flowing throughout the conflict despite the EU’s butt-headed sanction’s regime banning Russian natural gas sales to Europe. The move will complicate Slovakia’s ability to provide its citizens with enough gas for home heating, electrical generation, etc. Last week’s sanction also will affect Romania and Moldova that receive gas shipments from the shared pipeline. Moldova, for its part, has announced it will prioritize gas reserves for its own citizens. It will not, it says, provide Transnistria with gas when its reserves run low a few weeks from now. Some commentators suggest this is a deliberate ploy by Ukraine to force Russia to move eastward and link up with Transnistria to supply the enclave with gas. Perhaps they hope such a move would stretch and weaken Russian lines in eastern Ukraine. Is that the play? Stay tuned.

3. There are hundreds of siloed ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota, as there are in the other nuclear power states. Besides the Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) discussed, other strategic weapons and launch platforms include: SRBMS (Short Range Ballistic Missiles); submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs); bombers carrying “gravity bomb” and cruise missile nukes and, in the 1950s, there were nuclear artillery shells until they were replaced by missiles as the technology matured. So, there are many ways to get to Armageddon.