I was over on Unz.com reading Laurent Guyenot’s latest piece and enjoying it immensely, when I saw that the editor-in-chief of the site had decided to wade into the discussion concerning the war in the Ukraine with his own article.
If you don’t know, let me be the first to inform you that Ron Unz runs one of the most interesting websites on the internet. How he hasn’t been censored yet is beyond me. But there he remains, for now, hosting content from the entire spectrum of Western dissident thinking all in one place. To get someone up to speed on the whole “red pill” worldview, all one has to do is send and Unz link and hope that natural curiosity will get the red pill acolyte clicking links and falling deeper and deeper down into the rabbit hole.
As fans of the blog know, some of my pieces get featured on Unz.com from time to time. I get pretty much nothing out of it except outraged comments from people who are quite sure that I am a CIA/Mossad shill. There isn’t even a referral link to my blog or a short explanation of who I am and what I write about - a curtesy extended to other writers on the site. Actually, to make lemons out of lemonade, I’m thinking of starting a new series of posts titled “Reader’s Mailbag” where I highlight some of the best spergouts aimed in my direction. People ask me why I prefer to remain anonymous and the comments section of Unz is the perfect explanation. Even the people who are supposedly “on my side” are actually vicious retards who are gnawing at their restraints and eager to sink their teeth into someone, anyone. And since the real enemy can’t be touched, softer targets like myself will do as a consolation prize.
Now, clearly Unz himself doesn’t agree with my perspective on the war. So, kudos to him for publishing my stuff anyways. But I am not the only one who is having serious doubts about Russia’s looming victory on his site. Paul Craig Roberts has been sounding the alarm about the Kremlin’s disastrous foreign policy for years now. To my pleasant surprise, he even quoted me in one of his recent articles featured on Unz.
That’s a link to my OO piece
From reading Unz’s piece, it appears to me that the key sticking point where he disagrees with my pessimistic take on the situation relates to Russia’s losses in the Ukraine. From what we can gather from Ron Unz’s words, he trusts the opinion of Douglas Macgregor.
For decades, Col. Douglas Macgregor has been regarded as a leading conservative military strategist, authoring several well-regarded books and having many dozens of guest appearances on FoxNews. After having a long career in NATO, he had been a finalist for the position of National Security Advisor, served as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, and was nominated as U.S. Ambassador to Germany. He is obviously very well-connected in such establishment military circles, and based upon his Pentagon contacts, he has repeatedly stated that it is actually the Ukrainian forces that have suffered horrendous casualties, including as many as 160,000 combat deaths compared to far lower Russian losses of perhaps 20,000 or so. Other military experts such as Scott Ritter and Larry Johnson have expressed very similar views.
The only problem with trusting MacGregor is that Macgregor has been wrong about virtually everything for about a year. The most glaring example has been his constant refrain that the Ukrainian army is on the verge of defeat and that a large Russian offensive is in the works to mop them up.
This is patently not true.
As for the number of Ukrainian military death that he cites, he is way off, but is not as egregious as the people on Twitter claiming 1 million deaths. As for the number of Russian deaths, well, the number he gives is absolutely laughable.
There may indeed only be 20K Russian military deaths as Macgregor claims and as Unz concurs. But that doesn’t count the LDNR fighters, who have been used callously by the MoD. Or the Wagnerites. Or even Kadyrov’s mercenaries.
I promised an article with a revised death count and I figure now is as good a time as any to give a number. Put me down for about 90-110k Ukrainian dead soldiers and 70-90k Russian dead soldiers.
And if this is closer to the real number, then the “attrition warfare” strategy of the Russian army, a phantom strategy that doesn’t actually exist anywhere but in the minds of 5D bloggers, is a total failure. Killing at 10:1 is one thing. But I would be extraordinarily surprised if Russia even managed to crack 2:1. Especially if they continue to launch costly head-on attacks against heavily fortified Ukrainian positions like they are doing now.
Unz continues:
So we have diametrically conflicting positions, with Ukrainian officials and the Oryx website claiming Russian losses have been several times greater than Ukrainian ones, while Macgregor and his allies put the ratio at perhaps 8-to-1 in the opposite direction.
I personally lean much more towards Macgregor’s perspective, but I actually doubt that the issue matters much in strategic terms. From the beginning, I’ve never regarded the operational-level details of the fighting in Ukraine as very interesting or important, and haven’t paid much attention to it. This explains why I had never looked at the Oryx website until just a few days ago.
If the Russian army were completely defeated by the Ukrainians and lost control of Crimea and the Donbass, that sort of military disaster for Russia would have major global consequences. But I consider that possibility exceptionally unlikely and doubt that anyone sensible thinks otherwise.
Let me just state point-blank here that Russia is on the brink of defeat, folks. The whole war effort is teetering on a knife’s edge. Since the fall of Kherson, Russia has show a complete lack of interest or inability to go on “big arrow” offensives. The latest action we saw in Ugledar was a total failure. In fact, Russia continue to fight ineffectively and suicidally in and around Ugledar. And the man in charge of conducting the operation was promoted for his failure.
HUGE Telegram channels like “Grey Zone” who are pro-Russia and pro-SMO are absolutely livid.
Muradov is a faggot. "Wagner" will confirm this from the Syria campaign.
Muradov is a faggot. Russian peacekeepers and peaceful Armenians will confirm this from the Karabakh fiasco.
Muradov is a faggot. The marines will confirm this from the Donetsk region.
This squishy bitch sits at the command post and sends column after column until the commander of one of the brigades participating in the assault on Ugledar dies on the line of contact. This pissy bitch is just lucky that he is not next to the fighters who would pull a “two hundred” on him, like others got “two-hundreded”. There have been such cases. And Muradov would be the next.
If you didn’t catch that, Russians are calling for the “fragging” of Muradov. They want him dead.
Muradov, by the way, is not a Russian. He is some ethnic minority from Dagestan. Perhaps that is why he is so callous to the men under his command? They’re not his people, after all.
Grey Zone also had this to say:
Muradov continues to kill troops on Ugledar, in particular, apparently, before the planned spring Ukrainian offensive, he decided to further weaken one of the best tank brigades (5th tank) of the Russian Armed Forces. But not only is he not removed from his post by poisoning him under a military tribunal, but he is also promoted in rank.
p.s. they say that recently the commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet called out Muradov for the loss of marines near Ugledar, and the relatives of the victims are inclined to blood feud against the general.
And if you want to know the fate of anyone who questions the insane behavior and orders of these psycho generals, well, they get sent to prison colonies just for demanding proper supplies and coherent orders.
Here, by the way, yes. Alexander Leshkov’s term, better known by his nickname, the "Master of Sports", was extended by the court from the previously appointed term of 5.5 years to 7 years in prison (https://t.me/grey_zone/16593) in a strict regime colony.
Just for pushing an officer who, in actual wartime, treated his duties negligently, which could lead to further grave consequences. This is in legal terms. And if in a simple way, then because of such motherfuckers, the boys are dying on the ground. But they are not only not imprisoned, they are not even removed from their positions, unless they are transferred to another equivalent, where they will slaughter soldiers in another place, such as Muradov near Vugledar.
I tell you without jokes and exaggeration, several mid-level commanders in the combat zone in Ukraine were simply “lost in the attack” (understand this as you like) under the guise of an accident or enemy actions. And only thanks to this, the fighters did not go and did not perform another, as it is called, “one-time task”.
You’ve heard about how bad the Ukrainian soldiers have it by now, and there’s no denying that they are used like cannon fodder by “their side” as well. This is made worse by the fact that it appears that there are now NATO officers being put in command over them. Read: Poles who want as many dead Ukrainians as possible. So sending men to their certain deaths is definitely a problem on both sides.
But is Mr. Unz aware of this information?
If he reads and listens to Macgregor, then he is in the dark. But, seeing as I get posted on Unz from time to time, why not read what I have to say and consider it before blindly believing the “good guys” on “our team”?
Say Russia is winning on the field. Where then is this reflected?
Territory gained? No.
Enemies armies destroyed? No.
What then is the source of this optimism?
Now, as to why I care so much about this confusion and disinformation, let me just say this. This whole war and the COVID crisis before it has shown us just how few of our dissident thought leaders have the ability to practice discernment and separate truth from fiction. Yes, we have quite a few people who are capable of “owning the libs” but few who are capable of seeing through the lies and disinfo and formulate a clear picture of reality that could be used (in theory anyways) to organize a timely resistance.
To his credit, I have seen Mr. Unz’s opinions and views change over the course of his writings. He recently discovered for himself that AIDs is a myth, and that polio was just DDT poisoning, but used to justify vaccine rollouts. It is only a short hop and a skip from there to questioning the entire concept of viruses and the vaccines that save us from them. But by the time that our dissident thought leaders do, it may be too late.
Western dissidents seem to always be a day late and a dollar short.
What makes the whole Ukraine war disinfo situation so baffling is that it really isn’t hard to figure this one out on account of the fact that there are many big name Russian accounts on Telegram like Strelkov or Wagner, for example, who are sounding the alarm. And if machine-translating Strelkov’s posts on Telegram is too difficult a task, you could always just read the executive summaries that I provide on my blog (and link my blog as well, please) to get the more complete picture.
Imagine a Russian trusting the US government to get his information on what is really occurring in the West. We would pity the naive fool and shake our heads. And yet, so many do the exact same thing vis a vis China and Russia. Why not apply the same standard and see what the patriotic dissidents in Russia have to say, at the very least?
In the West, we have all learned to treat what our governments tell us with extreme skepticism. Why then the blind trust of the Russian MoD?
Me, I’m not a genius predictor or a well-connected Russia insider, actually. I just don’t apply double standards to my analysis. I don’t trust the official propaganda of any government and always lean on dissident patriot voices in their respective countries to provide me with their perspectives.
I also appear to be the only Russia blogger out there who does so. This is why I languish in obscurity and poverty.
Please consider financially supporting me or, in lieu of that, spamming this article in the comments section so that Mr. Unz sees it.
Tons of basic bitch well meaning pro Russia Westerners assume that if you criticize Moscow in any way that means you accept the moral superiority of global homo. If you distrust Shoigu than you must trust Schaub and be a paid NAFO shill. The point about people being too damn lazy and boomer tier to just be able to mash the translate button on some Russian telegram pages is what annoys me the most personally. Gayzov tier neo-nazis tailor their outreach to Western right wingers. They are dependable allies of the Zog establishment but they are able to obfuscate this by knowing exactly how to appeal to Western dissedents. On the other hand pro Russians in the West apparently dont even know that Russian Patriots who mistrust Moscow exist at all. Of course this might be explainable by Western spooks knowing how to present Ukrainian neo-nazi PR to Western dissidents whereas Russian Patriots have no state backing whatsoever from anyone.
4or5 years ago I was also pretty trusting of the Russian government but if one really is interested in Russia it follows you would research it on your own. Before I could understand any Russian at all I was scouring the internet for 1st hand English language translations from Russian volunteer fighters in Donbass. I would actually use the horrendous internet translations of the time to try and least get a vague idea of what actual Russians thought about current events. Im not trying to fluff myself here, my point is that McGregor, Ritter etc are apparently researchers in their own right but even my amateur self many years ago was making more effort than they are. And if someone is seriously too lazy to just mash the translate button on Telegram than that person is only very superficially pro Russian. They are in fact just more anti globohomo than pro Russian. Thats all fine and perfectly acceptable in itself. Being a patriot/nationalist for your own people first is a good default. But when you are banking on Russia to save you indirectly by destroying NATO than you really, really should look into what your dissident counter parts in Russia have to say.
Anyway as for the war Im tentatively thinking that Bakhmut might end up being a pretty decisive battle in spite of the towns lack of strategic significance. The Ukrainians at resident are saying that Kiev is pulling reserves from Zaporozhye to throw at Bakhmut.
https://t.me/rezident_ua/16708
Apparently Zaluzhny is against it personally but is going along with it publicly. Sirski apparently smells blood and thinks the total bardak and conflict between MoD and Wagner is an opportunity to exploit and they need to hit soon. Imo its a huge gamble on Kievs part but I absolutely wouldn't put it past Shoigu for a second to fu(k over Wagner if they get hit hard by Ukrainian reserves. If a Ukrainian counter attack against Wagner succeeds than Russias best assault troops will be combat ineffective for the foreseeable future. Especially since they are cock blocked from recruiting zeks. No more tying down Ukrainian troops and the initiative at the front will be totally with Kiev. On the other hand if Zaluzhny is right and the counter attack flops than a future big Ukrainian counter offensive will be derailed for awhile.
Of course this is based mostly on the anons at residents analysis but they are considered pretty reliable sources that Russian Patriot channels often site and so far they havent made any bad calls.
Just ask the 5d chess retards why russia did lockdowns, vaccinated its population with a 'vaccine' developed with astrazeneca, is close to implementing a CBDC, and hasn't won the war yet. They will flat out deny this and call you a NATO shill.