The Belgorod Rorschach Test
Rolo goes to see a shrink
As we already know by now, people are interpreting this war in whatever way they see fit and no discussion is possible, really, between the “pessimists” and “doomers”, no matter how many olive branches are extended.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: I Am Offering A 5D Amnesty!!!
As dedicated readers know, I have gone hard against bloggers and content creators who have promoted what I call “5D narratives”. I use this term to mean narratives that seem to always put the “good guys” on top, or 5 steps ahead of the bumbling Hollywood caricatures of mindless villains and that always find a way to spin what looks to be a defeat or a s…
The commenters who dryly quipped that even a scenario in which Russia ended up getting nuked would still be spun as a victory against Satan were right. This latest episode is just further proof of how absolutely detached from reality our friends on the other side of this debate are, to say nothing about the pro-NATO people, of course.
We simply see two different realities as starkly as a mentally-disturbed patient sees demons in blots of ink, where another patient might see bunnies. One of the main reason for this extreme disconnect is partially because the goals and victory conditions behind this farce of a war are as unclear today as they were when the SMO was launched.
Since I cannot debate any of the 5Ders because they run from me like I’m the grim reaper or something, I’ll just have to simulate a debate in my own head. And you, as the psychiatrist in this scenario, you just lean back and scribble some notes down as you observe Rolo lose his mind.
OK, here we go.
Doomer Rolo: we don’t understand why this Not-War was started or what its goals are.
5D Rolo: the goals were de-nazification and de-militarization and the SMO was started because Ukraine wanted to join NATO and because they were building ethnic-specific virus biobombs to exterminate Russians and because they had massed an army with which to attack Donbass.
Doomer Rolo: OK, but Finland joined NATO and the Kremlin didn’t utter a peep! Also, where is the proof that ethnic-specific virus bombs even exist? How would they distinguish between Ukrainians and Russians and Poles? How can we tell when Ukraine has been de-nazified or de-militarized? Who is a Nazi and who isn’t? Are all Ukrainian males Nazis? If “yes”, which, OK, let’s work with that definition - then that means that the only way that the Kremlin can put up a “Mission Accomplished” banner is when the entire male population of Ukraine is dead, no?
5D Rolo: That is absurd, Doomer Rolo, you are making a strawman! No one said that all Ukrainians have to be killed! The Ukrainians are a brotherly nation and Russia is a moral superpower which is why they graciously sell Ukraine and NATO energy and make humanitarian retreats from places like Snake Island and Kherson even though they could conquer all of Ukraine if they wanted to.
As for who is a Nazi or not, once someone is drafted into the Ukrainian army, they become Nazis. If you do not understand this alchemo-political reaction, you are probably just a Nazi yourself. Russia is trying to liberate Ukraine from Nazis like Kholomoisky, Zelensky, Shmyhal, and all those other Fascists with Israeli passports. Everyone knows that Adolf Hitler had one testicle was actually secretly the maternal grandmother to Zelensky.
Doomer Rolo: So are you saying the goal is to liberate the Ukrainian territory then?
5D Rolo: No, the goal is to wage a war of attrition where the Ukrainian army is ground up to a pulp and spat out! Russia has already killed so many Ukrainian men at this point that Kiev is desperately trying to “squeeze blood out of a stone”! There simply aren’t any men left in Ukraine!
Doomer Rolo: If territory isn’t the goal, why bother celebrating the taking of Bakhmut?
5D Rolo: Bakhmut is the beginning of the end for the Kiev regime. They lost hundreds of thousands of troops in the meat-grinder and now the entire Ukrainian front will collapse as Russia follows up with an offensive straight to the Dniepr river now that the last and most formidable fortress in Donbass has been taken. By the end of the summer, Russia will have won.
Doomer Rolo: And what does victory look like? Taking Kiev and installing a pro-Russian or annexing most of Ukraine?
5D Rolo: The goal is de-nazification and de-militarization. Once the Ukrainian Nazis are all dead and NATO has run our of equipment, Russia will not only win in Ukraine, but will usher in the beginning of the multipolar world built on the ashes of US world hegemony.
Doomer Rolo: But if the goal is to destroy the Ukrainian army, not take territory and the Ukrainian army just keeps on recruiting more men, getting more weapons and slugging it out with Russia in the cities and trenches of Donbass, then literally millions of Ukrainians will have to die before Ukraine is de-nazified. Also, you claim that 14 Ukrainians die for every Russian, which, even if we accept this number, means that Russia will lose hundreds of thousands of men as well. Is this a reasonable strategy? How long will this take? It seems that the only people who gain anything from Russia fighting the war this way are the US and China.
5D Rolo: Look, the goal of this operation is clear and has been explained multiple times: de-nazification and de-militarization. The Ukrainian army has already been destroyed 2.5 times and this is a new Satano-NATO army that Russia wasn’t expecting to be facing in the Ukraine. Russia is now being backed to the hilt by China, which is going to de-dollarize the world in two months. You simply just don’t understand geopolitics. Things are going on behind the scenes that you and the Western elite are too stupid to understand. Me (5D Rolo) and my internet blogger buddies have figured it all out though. Stop demoralizing and listening to Strelkov, who is a Nazi, actually.
Doomer Rolo: Ok bu -
The gaslighting continued on for quite a while in my head as I rocked back and forth gripping my skull and cracking my molars from the strain of trying to restrain myself from killing 5D myself. As I spiraled closer and closer into a rage-induced coma, the psychiatrist snapped his fingers and I came gasping back to reality. As I wiped sweat from my brow and reeled from the stench coming from my armpits, the psychiatrist took out some cards and showed me what was on them.
“Let’s talk about Belgorod next. Tell me what you see,” he said:
“I see that, yesterday, the UAF waltzing across an inexplicably undefended Russian border near Belgorod that should have been locked down by the FSB, killing the guards, terrorizing the population, and humiliating Russia yet again before retreating,” I said.
The shrink nodded slowly and smiled so reassuringly that it caused the hair on my skin to stand on end.
“And what does 5D Rolo think?” he suddenly said, snapped his fingers and cackled.
I tried to rise up from my chair to run, but locks that I hadn’t seen before snapped around my ankles and wrists and I began to thrash and writhe as 5D Rolo began to reassert himself against my will.
“ITS A PUTIN 5D TRAP TO ATTRITION THE KIEV NOTHING EVEN HAPPENED PROPAGANDA NAZIS PROVES NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING!!!”
And then I suddenly woke up in bed, screaming for solid minute straight.
After I changed my bed sheets, I rushed to the computer to type this all up.
**
Sorry if you were looking for a more “serious” analysis, but what can I even say about Belgorod other than that it is clearly just more of the same insanity or inanity that we have been seeing over the course of this entire Not-War.
Consider: Literally every other Telegram analyst figured out that Ukraine would launch more raids into Belgorod, and, eventually, even a full-fledged incursion. Hell, even I wrote about it multiple times. Arestovich, when he was fired, said that Kiev would try to use Belgorod as a bargaining chip all the way back in February.
And yet, the authorities in Russia were caught with their pants down, again.
Sure, the raid was small (up to 400-500 men!) and so they had to retreat eventually, taking some losses (actually, according to the acting governor, the situation there is still in flux as of 3 hours ago). But is this really a victory for Russia? Sadly, I can see the spin already gaining momentum: “this desperate attack simply proves that Ukraine has run out of men, munitions and will to resist after the fall of Bakhmut.” And then the smug chuckling, always with the smuckling. These people think that they can smuckle others into believing anything, it seems like. And they are right.
Now, I hate to drag religion into this, but it really does fit into the discussion.
Consider: Can you ever really convince a devout Christian that Yahweh isn’t a good and just god who loves and supports him and his side? What could happen, in theory at least, to undermine their theological faith? Well, nothing. Literally nothing can (or should, in theory,) be able to shake a true believer’s true belief. It is impossible to use logic to do so if the faith has solidified in their minds. So, if Yahweh lets the true believer’s nation lose a war and get genocided into near extinction, then that is just further proof of His love. See, he punishes only because he cares, using evil as his rod of chastisement. Or, it is was all part a necessary sacrifice, all part of the plan to bring about the end of the world and the return of his son, which means it was a good thing. Losing your whole family in a freak flood? A test of faith and a blessing in disguise. At no point is a re-examination of assumptions allowed. Humans, being religious creatures, use these theological pre-positions to make sense of the rest of the world, and literally every single event can be treated like a Rorschach exercise which reveals more about a person’s presuppositions than objective reality. Sure, objective reality exists, but clearly, this doesn’t concern most people, whereas jingoism is treated the same way that a missionary might treat his mission to spread the Gospel to ignorant third world savages or something. “God loves us more!” they cry out. They will always do so. It will always be this way.
My position is that, clearly the attack was done for a reason, and it demonstrated that Kiev could strike into Russia proper. It very much seems like they are trying to prove that they can do so with impunity for a reason. Either to humiliate Russia or to threaten them.
Either way, it doesn’t look good for the Kremlin. Sure, propagandists will spin it, but you have to assume that serious countries not run by stupid peasants having fun on the internet are able to see the true implications of what happened here and what is happening on the larger battlefield. The propaganda aimed at convincing you that all is well and that Russia is winning using its moral superpowers won’t convince China, or people who live in Donbass and now Belgorod, for that matter. Believe what you want and spin it all you like, but you are only deluding yourself. Sane people understand that serious countries don’t allow for such incidents to occur with increasing frequency, intensity and with TOTAL IMPUNITY.
Yet another red line has been crossed in the chernozem, no?
So, what will Russia’s response be? To lob a few more missiles at electric transformers? Is that really all it takes to satiate the slop-loving swine? Will Russia even do that?
I love reading the conversation you had with yourself, but I wonder why you showed us that violent picture of two mirror-image puppies eating two bathroom sinks.
So here’s my 3D theory of the situation and comments to 5D Rolo.
1. Re the rationale for the SMO: NATO expansion that includes Ukraine is vastly different from Finland (which for Russia is also undesirable). In particular, Ukraine is bigger in size and population (esp west of the Dniper closer to Russian borders - and Moscow) and filled with rabidly anti-Russian zealots. Keep in mind that while “Nazis” are now sold by the West as solely being anti-Jewish, Hitler was as scathing towards the Russians who he also considered untermenschen. The modern west decries attacks on Jews but increasingly overtly supports the centuries old European view that Russians are genetically, culturally inferior to Europe (being an Asiatic polluted race as per their worldview). What Hitler had got wrong, in this view, was in clubbing the Jewish people together with the Russians for extermination instead of just the latter which Europe would have been fine with. This indeed is the current position which is why discrimination, terror, deaths of ethnic Russians in Ukraine doesn’t excite comment let alone sympathy in the West where as even perceived criticism of Jews is cracked down hard. And the guys who are going to “solve” Europe’s centuries old “Russia problem” is the rabid Galicians and their overt anti-Russian philosophy. This is also why the Israel Govt and much of the Jewish diaspora (who hate Russians as well) support the Galicians (as long as they don’t attack Jews as well of course). This is why for example the West finds it horrifying if Nazi symbology is used in the west (because it is directed against Jews) but approved against Russia (because it is against Russians)
2. The Kremlin’s calculation - which they got wrong (everybody did) - was that a show of force (versus actual force) would get Kyiv to the table to be neutral. And in fact by end March 2022 that seemed to be the case. But the UK - which institutionally loathes Russians back to when they were both Empires - stepped in and pulled Zelensky back. And the neocon/neolib elites who run the West saw this as the perfect opportunity to wage war against Russia without losing their own troops even if it meant economic losses for the masses.
3. Everyone acknowledges that Kyiv would have surrendered - even now - without NATO arms/ISR/command. When it became clear to Russia that (a) Kyiv would not surrender (b) was willing to conscript millions (including ethnic Russians) backed by NATO arms to fight even if they died in huge numbers, Russia had to devise a plan B.
4. This involved retreating to defensible lines closer to supply chains, reluctant partial mobilization, cranking up arms and preparing for not just a localized conflict but an all out NATO war aimed at dismembering Russia (one that the Kremlin had hoped to forestall with the pre-emptive action). They also had to fix (and still fixing) a host of operational and supply chain issues an all out war would entail. This includes mitigating if not rooting out systemic corruption present in all armed forces worldwide and building up industrial capacity in greater numbers.
5. At the same time the Kremlin had to ensure that Russia would not only not collapse economically but even grow. A war won militarily but that devastated the economy and demographics is a Pyrrhic victory. For example Ukraine whatever happens is ruined owing the West billions and with its male population depleted further accelerating a downward demographic spiral it had been on.
6. All this meant that Plan B is, for now, an attritional warfare where preserving Russian army life (vs militias) takes priority over land acquisition which looks good on maps but is very costly when it comes to urban areas in life, economics and defense & maintenance post-conquest.
7. I don’t think Russia has a deep 5D Plan - it is impossible to predict how this will go. An event can happen that can tip the scales: elections, coups, economic realities, deaths (whether natural or induced), exhaustion and so on. The Kremlin believes that time is on their side. Using a chess analogy, Russia is playing like an Anatoly Karpov absorbing blows while systematically wearing down the opponent and improving its position slowly as well as playing within its capabilities vs loud trash talk. This may not be flashy or exciting (and I ironically preferred Kasparovs play which was bold and fun to watch) but seems rooted in Soviet doctrine.
8. This does not mean that the Kremlin is all knowing and playing 10 steps ahead. In Chess for example, one creates positions (or patterns) that are favorable for success later on but the exact sequence of play depends on the opponents play (who is also similarly trying to create patterns). The Kremlin seems to believe this is the optimal play at this point. (Critics insist that the Kremlin is in a zugzwang but unlike chess, here one can choose to skip your turn and react to your opponent which sometimes can be good. Perhaps this is Putin’s favored Judo strategy)
9. What pro-Russian critics call out the Kremlin on - the corruption, the sclerotic bureaucracy etc - are valid but that’s part of the constraints that even the most honest leader needs to struggle with to optimize.
10. Finally, not declaring a concrete end goal or rather not deviating from the party line is or now the optimal move. It is lofty enough to provide a motivating force but vague enough to leave room for compromise.
11. And re Belgograd: it is virtually impossible to guard the entirety of the vast unpopulated border. While there are clear signs of intelligence failures, incompetence, the Kremlin seems to prefer to react to where the fire is rather than spend resources on fire prevention. Not sure whether this is a deliberate strategy or a compromise to the ground realities of present Russian capabilities.