Kiev Will Not Face Any Consequences For Breaking the Blockade

(nor for anything else for that matter)

So remember those port strikes and that naval blockade and all the ra-ra-Russia cheerleading from a few weeks ago?

This is what it has come to.

VOANews:

A civilian cargo ship sailing from Ukraine reached Istanbul on Thursday in defiance of a Moscow blockade that sent tensions soaring after Russia open fired on a Turkish-owned ship.

The Hong Kong-flagged Joseph Schulte left the port of Odesa on Wednesday — the first vessel to directly challenge Russia's new bid to seal Ukraine's access to the Black Sea.

There was an Israeli ship before, but it wasn’t sent to Odessa.

Marine traffic sites showed it approaching its final destination in Istanbul after moving along a western route that avoided international waters in favor of those controlled by NATO members Romania and Bulgaria.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the ship was using a "new humanitarian corridor" Kyiv established after Russia last month pulled out of a wartime agreement to export grain along the Black Sea.

He was bragging on Twitter about it too.

As was I, but for different reasons.

The Joseph Schulte's mission came days after the Russian navy fired warning shots and boarded a Turkish-owned but Palau-flagged vessel that was sailing to the Ukrainian river port of Izmail.

The Russian attack put immense pressure on NATO member Turkey to stiffen its officially neutral line in the war.

The Turkish presidency broke a four-day silence on Thursday by announcing that it had "warned" Moscow about the need to avoid further maritime escalations.

But the Turkish statement stressed that it was technically up to Palau — a Pacific archipelago often used as a "flag of convenience" by global shipping companies — to lodge a formal complaint.

Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine's shipping infrastructure since pulling out of the grain deal mediated by the U.N. and Turkey.

Ukraine's decision to confront Russia over sea access comes with world attention focusing on ways to secure grain export routes in time for this autumn's harvest.

Ukraine and Russia are major exporters of grain and seed oil.

New US push

Last year's grain agreement helped push down global food prices and provide Ukraine with an important source of revenue to fight the war.

Ukraine is now using the Danube River to ship out its grain.

Much of that traffic flows down the river and ends up reaching the Black Sea at Ukraine's border with Romania.

The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. officials are holding talks with Turkey and both Ukraine and its neighbors about increasing traffic along the Danube route.

An unnamed U.S. official told the paper that Washington was "going to look at everything" — including the possibility of military support for the Ukrainian ships.

But a Turkish defense official appeared to push back against Washington's initiative on Thursday.

"Our efforts are focused on making the grain corridor deal active again," the unnamed defense official told Turkey's NTV television. "We are not working on other solutions."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to meet Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin this month for talks focused on the Black Sea.

Now, what happened the last, oh I don’t know, ten times that Kiev or Washington violated one of Moscow’s red lines?

..

..

.

That’s right: absolutely nothing.

You’re free to make a prediction that Russia will, idk, retake Snake Island or assassinate Zelensky for running the blockade or start shooting Turkish ships or whatever, take your pick.

But, based on previous non-responses, I feel comfortable predicting a wave of flashy drone and missile strikes and counter-retaliations and little else. Seeing as this has already occurred, we can check part of my prediction immediately. A wave of strikes was unleashed ostensibly as part of a response to the continued drone attacks by Kiev, including the naval strikes and never-ending bridge drama.

In response to Kiev’s attempts to attack peaceful Russian cities and another provocation in the Black Sea, Russian forces launched another wave of strikes on military facilities throughout Ukraine.

On August 18, a Ukrainian unmanned boat attempted to attack Russian patrol ships in the southwestern part of the Black Sea. Like the previous attacks, this one ended in failure and the Ukrainian drone was destroyed.

On the same day, Ukrainian drones targeted Russian rear areas. However, it will not be possible to find out where they were going, since four UAVs were intercepted over the Russian state border.

A few hours earlier, one Ukrainian UAV was suppressed by electronic warfare means in the Moscow region. As a result, several more windows in a skyscraper in the Moscow City quarter were knocked out by the wreckage of the Ukrainian drone.

On the night of August 19, the Kiev regime also ‘attempted a terrorist attack with an anti-aircraft missile of the S-200 air defense system converted into a strike version on the territory of Crimea’, the Russian Defence Ministry reported. Russian air defense systems timely detected and destroyed it in the air. There are no casualties or destruction.

On the morning of August 19, the Kiev regime carried out an attack at a military airfield in the Novgorod region, using quadrotor UAVs. The UAVs were destroyed with small arms. As a result of the attack, a fire broke out in the aircraft parking lot, which was promptly eliminated by fire crews. One aircraft was damaged, there were no casualties as a result of the incident. The attack could be carried out by the local sabotage group.

Before you get too excited about the latest round of strikes, keep in mind that the Odessa grain silo strikes came and went and were forgotten without any change to the frontlines, just like every single mega strike wave touted before them as well.

I wrote last time that the Odessa strikes were done to drive up the price of grain and that there weren’t proof of any serious escalation on Moscow’s part. There is still no proof that anything has changed. But that doesn’t stop people from making stuff up to raise flagging spirits.

ZAnon has been claiming that a big Shoigu counter-counter-offensive to surround the UAF in Lugansk is about to begin soon. Please consult the map below with the arrows:

There hasn’t been a large Russian offensive since the SMO ended back in April, but that hasn’t stopped ZAnon for claiming that there would be one last fall, last winter, last spring, this summer, and now by the end of this summer. So, I expect that this is more of the same. The swine masses keep giving attention, money and adulation to the people promoting these narratives and so all they’re doing is giving the people what they want, really.

It also helps that the masses literally do not have long-term memory! I do mean this quite literally! They can’t even name their first grade teacher if you asked them!

Back in the real world, there still haven’t been strikes on critical infrastructure supplying weapons from the West to the East, there haven’t been strikes on the infrastructure that transports Russian raw materials to the West and to Ukraine and from the West and Ukraine to Russia. Oligarchs on both “sides” are making a tidy profit, of course.

PBK-Ukraine reports that Ukraine has continued to sell Russia titanium that it needs for its rockets and planes.

Everyone knows that modern wars are a racket, but, for some reason, every single time that a new war breaks out, it takes at least 2 years for people to remember that thing that they thought that they knew. By that point of course, it is already too late, the damage done, the profits made, and it is in the interests of the elite to de-escalate the conflict by that point anyways, so they allow for “reasonable” voices to start emerging when before that they would be imprisoning these people.

This Not-War isn’t ever going to be more than a managed conflict, but, if it ever were allowed to become more than a money-making operation for the oligarchs and a systematic cull of the Slavic population, you’d know it from the following signs. That is, if:

• the bridges in Ukraine were blown, finally (Kiev can blow Russian bridges, can’t they?)

• politicians, spooks and high-ranking officers in Ukraine were targeted by Moscow

• mobilization in Russia occurred

• people like Shoigu or Nabiullina or Mishustin were dismissed

• the digitization Agenda 2030 plans were dropped

• oligarchs stopped selling raw materials to NATO + Ukraine

• Strelkov was released

• the blockade was enforced and Snake Island taken back (rejecting previous backroom diplomacy)

People are strange.

Even though I haven’t really changed my arguments for almost a year now, it seems like some of what I am saying is starting to sink in only now. Few talk about Kiev being taken anymore, even though after Bakhmut, ZAnon told everyone that Dniepr was next.

So, we’ve already, quietly, come to accept that Kiev won’t be taken, mostly.

Some still think that the remainder of Donbass will be taken though and I can see why this would be an important psychological stepping-stone coping mechanism on their part, but, again, this won’t happen because to make it happen, Russia would need to mobilize new armies. Russia has simply been defending and making do with what they have since pretty much last summer.

At the very least, following the successful defense of the first big push towards Zaporozhye, we know that the Russian army can fight if they are allowed to do so. Frankly, the SMO showed that the Russian army can move fast and take on daring missions if the will is there to do so as well. But whatever will there was is spent now, clearly.

Meanwhile, there has been more of the same back and forth grind in the south. One river beachhead there, a village there, a retreat, an advance. In other words, nothing has changed, but the fields are littered with corpses as a result.

We’ve had a slow month of news coinciding with the August summer break. It feels almost as if this down time was itself timed. I’ll post more political and philosophical essays while the extent of the news is a village or two switching hands back and forth. Unlike ZAnon, I don’t have the luxury of hyping up fake mega-offensives to keep readership and engagement and sub counts going up. You should sign up as a paid sub anyways. I could use the encouragement.