The Russians have elevated the command over the Ukraine operation to the level of Gerasimov, who is the chief military commander of the Russian Federation (above him are only the defense minister Shoigu and President Putin), which means that, for all intents and purposes, this is elevated to full strategic level and the entire might of the Russian army is behind it now.

The warships and submarines departed from Novorossiysk, which probably indicates something significant.

There is a cold spell in Ukraine and the ground is frozen everywhere except on the Black Sea shore.

The Ukrainian equivalent of the Maginot line in Soledar and Bakhmut is broken. The last 500 Ukrainians who failed to evacuate from Soledar were killed by Wagner. I don’t know what’s the exact situation in Bakhmut, but the last I’ve heard sounded like complete disarray and its fall is imminent.

If I were commanding the Russian forces, I would use the momentum to completely demoralize and crush the Ukrainians, because this kind of a thing is contagious and you need to press the advantage once you achieve such a breakthrough. I expect they will use a synergy of energy denial, winter, demoralization and overwhelming force. I don’t know about the timing, but I would say that the breakthrough in the Bakhmut area looks like something that has been intentionally delayed in order to coordinate it with “something”, and too many preparations have been going on for that “something” to be anything less than a decisive blow.

I recently heard something I need to correct.

An American military analyst said that high precision weapons eliminate the need for nuclear weapons, because the nukes would be used to spread the circle of destruction and thus increase the probability of the target being destroyed, and the high-precision weapons make it possible to hit bullseye each time and thus destroy the target in one hit.

While this may be true for some types of targets, it is far from being universally true. Yes, the yield of nukes was reduced as precision was increased, so there obviously is some truth to it, but let’s say you want to destroy a big target – an enemy base that spreads across several square kilometers. Let’s say you want to hit it at long distance, even inter-continental. You need very sophisticated, expensive rockets, and if you give each under a ton of conventional explosives, you basically need dozens, if not hundreds of very expensive rockets, to destroy non-pinpoint targets, such as an airfield with assets dispersed over a large area. Also, if you want to sink an aircraft carrier, the best way to do it is to strike it under the water line with a several kiloton yield nuke, or strike it directly from above with a hypersonic missile with a kiloton-range nuke that detonates inside. Also, if you have enemies in WW1-style trenches, striking them with precision weapons would take an immense number of precision weapons to eliminate individual small-value targets, which is extremely expensive and a good way to bankrupt your side. Honestly, once you are in the situation where warfare is massive enough, the precision attacks at pinpoint targets no longer serve any military or political purpose. You need weapons of mass destruction, in order to cover a wide area of enemy’s deployment. Building very expensive carrier missiles that carried a ton of explosive each was how Hitler accelerated his defeat, because the Germans poured enormous resources into weapons that basically killed more Polish prisoners of war during their construction, than they killed the British at the receiving end. You absolutely need extreme destructive power of the nuclear weapons in order to produce effects with modern weapons, because otherwise you end up with the equivalent of paving roads with iPads instead of asphalt.

Of course, the argument against that is that any use of nukes releases the genie from the bottle, and makes total nuclear exchange almost certain. My counter-argument is that when you come to the point in war where you need to destroy cities in order to eradicate stubborn enemy resistance, and the enemy is a client state of a nuclear superpower, you are basically at the point where not using nukes encourages your geostrategic enemy to push you further, because you’re obviously not willing to draw a line. Also, when you come to that point, reducing your methods of warfare to conventional weapons makes you less effective than the WW2 air raids, because modern sophisticated weapon systems are designed to deliver less explosive to the target because post-WW2 warfare was seen in terms of either solving small regional conflicts, or going all-out with nukes. Destroying big enemies with conventional weapons is something modern armies are not designed to do, and, if attempted, it would be so expensive it would bankrupt the side that does it.

So, using Tu-160 “White Swans” to carry conventional bombs produces almost negligible effect at the target, and using them to fire those precious cruise missiles to carry a ton of TNT is like hammering nails with graphics cards. If you need to actually destroy something big, you need to arm those precious, super accurate cruise missiles with something that actually makes a big enough boom at the target to make it worth while.

I am looking through several scenarios here. It would take me a long time to dump all of it into a written form, so I’ll just do an abbreviated version.

Low-probability option, war fizzles out because America runs out of time, and Pentagon decides against the nuclear option for some reason. Funding for the CIA political control projects worldwide runs dry due to total economic collapse. The opposition to the installed and controlled politicians and media grows and grass-roots political options form, but the populace is mentally and emotionally weakened by the Internet hypnosis and is not capable of reversing the fatal economic trends quickly enough to avoid collapse. Welfare financing of Muslims and Africans in Europe ceases due to economic collapse, and they enter a state of perpetual riot outside of the rule of law. Collapse of the petrochemical industry leads to the collapse of the food supply, energetic sector and transportation. America and Europe descend into chaos, with various degrees of kinetic conflict and a paradoxical combination of anarchy and totalitarianism. Russia pacifies Ukraine, and it turns out that without America, all the current hot-spots of conflict suddenly cease to be a problem. Israel is in a desperate situation of either brokering a harmful peace or being destroyed. China replaces the USA with the rest of the world as a market, but the volume of trade scales down significantly due to deindustrialization and impoverishment of the major centres. Taiwan was only ever a problem because of America. Japan suffers a terrible economic collapse. South Korea reintegrates with the North. America and Europe are violent, poor, vicious shitholes sidelined by history.

Low probability option, war escalates to the point of ten million dead but then shock and panic force America to de-escalate. Russia establishes total victory in Ukraine. Poland enters the conflict with 300k troops. Russia responds with an extremely vicious counter-attack, inflicting over 70% casualties on NATO within the first week. American bases in Poland and Germany are destroyed. America responds by attempting a decapitation attack against Russian leadership. This results in several high military officers killed, and the Russians respond by destroying the entirety of American military with nuclear strikes. All the Ohio nuclear submarines are sunk, all the shipyards are destroyed, all the military bases are destroyed, all the aircraft carriers are sunk, CIA HQ and Pentagon are destroyed, America launches an attempted nuclear response, Russia takes down 90% of the ICBMs, Russia loses several major bases and industrial cities. Russia issues an ultimatum, requesting American unconditional surrender or total nuclear retaliation will ensue. Since most of the Russian nuclear forces are intact and most of American nuclear forces are destroyed, America stands down and surrenders.

Extremely low probability option, something unexpected happens and disrupts everybody’s plans – supervolcano, aliens, asteroid, supernova, extreme onset of the ice age or whatever. Since the parameters are unknown, precise modelling isn’t possible.

High probability option, same as above but the Russians are more heavily compromised and shaken, and launch total nuclear retaliation without even attempting a political outcome. Several hundred warheads of 100kT or above pepper American cities, industrial and military installations. Tens of millions dead within days, hundreds of millions dead within the year. Russia and China lost most military and industrial installations and all major cities. UK is completely devastated and its population dies off. Several major points in Europe suffer the same fate. Total collapse of the Internet, total collapse of world trade and finances. Predictive ability past this point lost due to chaos.

Cumulative probability of “good outcomes” is below 10%, but those include totalitarian governmental/corporate/AI control over the populace and a complete loss of freedom, so “good outcomes” might be a misnomer. Probability of Western economic collapse within the timeframe of 5 years is over 99%. Probability of Western civilization recovering to pre-2019 normal is zero. Probability of nuclear exchange within the timeframe of a year is over 80%. Probability of nuclear exchange within a month is over 20%, but then starts growing as several parameters simultaneously converge to the critical points. The main critical point is the collapse of American control over the global economy, and resultant loss of American military budget, creating a “use it or lose it” situation for the people behind this entire mess. In this scenario, it is over 90% likely for them to use the nuclear option to degrade the rest of the world and give the collapsed America a chance of recovering ahead of others, according to the original plan. The likelihood of them proceeding with the plan is exceedingly high because we’ve been living in this scenario since at least 2008, and likely longer.

America (but I can’t eliminate the possibility that sources of power in UK, Israel and elsewhere participate in the problem) still controls the entire roadmap, but approaches the point where they aggravate other actors to the point of no return.

Probability of the sudden global glaciation is showing a non-null percentage within the timeframe of a century, so that too is a “dark horse” to be mindful of. This is due to extreme winter events in North America and indications of permafrost melting in Siberia, which indicates climate approaching the conditions in the last glacial phase. Also, the Sun has been acting strangely, departing from its usual 11-year cycle, which still doesn’t feature significantly in my analysis but it’s something I’m keeping an eye on.

I frequently see Western press qualify the war in Ukraine as Russian aggression, where Ukraine is seen as the “good guys” based solely on the premise that the war is waged on their territory which they are defending.

Strangely, I would have normally accepted such a premise without much discussion, because in the assumption that one side is peaceful and the other side invades it, the invader is the bad guy. However, in the case of Ukraine, you need to have a really short memory and attention span for that to make any kind of sense.

Let’s see what the territory actually is, historically. The entire war is waged deeply within the confines of the Russian empire. Also, the entire war is waged deeply within the confines of the Soviet Union. The war is waged by NATO forces against the forces of the Russian federation, at the territory that was formerly Soviet Union. By those standards, this is a military and political aggression of the West against Russia, waged by hybrid information/political/military means, at the territory that is historically Russian. Suddenly, the term “aggression” changes direction.

“But wait”, you will say, “Ukraine is a sovereign and independent state”. No, it isn’t. First of all, validity of its statehood is questionable since it was declared contrary to the wishes of the people declared on the 1991 referendum. 71.4% voted to remain in the union with Russia. Let’s compare this to the results of Slovenian and Croatian referendums for independence from Yugoslavia, where over 90% voted for independence. There is an obvious difference, and therein lies my first objection to Ukrainian statehood – it is illegitimate, declared against the wishes of the people by a nationalist political clique with their own agenda. My second objection is that the Maidan coup in 2014 basically ended the existence of Ukraine as a political entity with any kind of legitimacy. Since then, it has been a fascist shithole under complete American control, with North Korea-like brainwashing of the populace, teaching children to hate the Russians, and so on. Furthermore, the part of the populace that declares as Russian (which is over 50% of the people on the post-Soviet borders of Ukraine, which is why pro-Russian politicians almost always won the elections, and which is why the Americans decided to finance the insurrection to overthrow the legitimate government) was openly persecuted after that point.

A more legitimate interpretation of the war is that the Soviet Union dissolved due to various economic and political reasons we won’t go into at this point, and the vacuum was filled by nationalists who promised the people all kinds of unrealistic and illusory ideas, such as being part of the “West” and going away from those primitive Easterners and so on. Since the Ukrainian economy was completely integrated with the Soviet Union, any degree of separation from Russia resulted in serious degradation, and any attempt of joining the West always resulted in fraudulent and corruptive activities between the Ukrainian oligarchs and the Western intelligence services and the “NGOs” that work for them. As things got worse, the politicians found it expedient to always blame the Russians. As the Russians themselves, under Putin’s expert leadership, got to the other side of the 1990s nightmare, and rebuilt their economy and country in general, Ukraine languished under Western-sponsored corruption and thievery, where the oligarchs nominated the politicians to serve as their sock puppets, and the West called that “democracy”, the only required quality of that being subservience to America and hostility to Russia. After 2014, when Ukraine basically dissolved as a state, Crimea and Donbass having declared independence and desire to join Russia, the Kiev junta started openly killing Russians; there were over ten thousand dead over the years just in Donbass. Also, the Americans used the failed-state status of Ukraine to install all kinds of nefarious shit there, such as biolabs researching covid-like bioweapons based on SARS-type of coronaviruses and what not, trying to figure out how to preferentially kill Russians and use birds or similar natural contagion vectors to spread it into Russia. Basically, they tried to figure out how to exterminate the Russians while being safe from their nuclear retaliatory strike. At some point, the Russians had enough of this, and decided that limited open war is preferable. If the Americans continue on their present course, the Russians will decide that unlimited war is preferable.

So, basically, it’s a much more complex situation than “the Russians are invading Ukraine”, since the entire war is waged on Russian historical territory that has been, mostly fraudulently, converted into hostile political entities in the 1990s, and weaponized against Russia by a hostile military alliance of NATO to the point of representing a direct military threat to Russia. Also, the majority of the people of Ukraine consistently voted for the governments that would keep the relationship with Russia friendly, which lasted until the Americans simply created an astroturf coup and took the country over by installing their proxies, who turned out to be Nazis. I’m not calling them “neo-Nazis”, because that would be wrong. They are old-school Nazis, because they are organized in units Hitler would recognize as his own, and if alive, he would issue them orders which would have been obeyed. This is devoid of any kind of political legitimacy and represents an obvious element of evil and chaos, and if not for the risk of open confrontation with America, the Russians would probably have taken over in 2014 and would have been perfectly justified in doing so, since this is an open revision of the outcome of the second world war.

So, having in mind the actual situation on the ground, this is in fact an aggression, by America and NATO, upon historical Russia, waged on the territory of the former Soviet Union, with the goal of spreading American total dominance by nefarious means of false propaganda and corruption, and eventually kinetic warfare by using Nazis as a proxy.

Russia just issued an ultimatum to Ukraine, which is of course a mere formality; they expect the Americans – pardon, Ukrainians – to respond in their usually arrogant fashion, to which they will shrug and start the long-prepared winter offensive.

This seems to answer my question from the previous article: they will cease their present, highly effective “meat grinder” strategy and wipe out NATO and the local fascists from Ukraine, because they assess that this situation, where the entire NATO is accumulating forces that perform probing attacks so close to the Russian border is an unsustainable strategic vulnerability and they basically need to end this failed experiment with “Ukrainian statehood”, which started illegitimately and against the wishes of the majority of the people, and everything went downhill from there.

What am I talking about? Soviet Union referendum, 1991. Question: “Do you consider it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of a person of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?” Result: Ukraine 71.48% “Yes”. Regardless, independence of Ukraine was declared due to the fact that the west-Ukrainian (Galician) nationalists pushed for Ukrainian statehood. Ukraine since then fell into a vicious circle of corruption and Western influence feeding it, and eventually became a failed state directly controlled by America in the Maidan coup of 2014. This failed state outlawed all non-fascist political parties, implemented an open reign of terror, propagandized its population with lies, and continuously killed Russians in Ukraine for 8 years, and the fact that America calls this “democracy” is very revealing, regarding American definition of democracy.

Also, the very idea of “Ukrainian nationality” before 1918 would be completely unknown; there was no such thing, and this BTW is the answer to the Croats who for some reason identify with the Ukrainians; no, those two identities have nothing even remotely similar or common. Croats are an ancient people who were already known as such between 6th and 7th century. “Ukrainians” are a political artifact of the 20th century; this identity is historically unknown prior to the 1st world war. Basically, it’s a political invention of Lenin, later enforced by Hitler and the Banderists as an instrument of fighting Russia, and this worked because the western Ukraine is a mixture of so many different national identities and groups, that telling them they are their own special thing, which is defined by being opposite of Russian, apparently worked, because weak and insecure people are always easily convinced to hate. That’s another difference between Croatians and Ukrainians – it’s interesting how the Croats in the 1991 war never hit back at Serbia. The entire war was fought on our territory, and when we got the Serbs to fuck off, the war ended. It was never a “civil war”, it was never “you hit us, so we hit you”. It was Serbs trying to secede parts of Croatian territory, Croatians taking the territory back, and Serbs fucking off, and then there was peace. We didn’t hit Belgrade, or Niš, or Pančevo. The very idea would be seen as insane here in Croatia – why the fuck would we do that? We just don’t want them fucking with us, but other than that, we have no interest in hurting them or anything. There was a joke during the war of building the great wall of China at the border between Croatia and Serbia, and that basically summarises that “fuck off” sentiment; we don’t want them being able to invade us or try to convince us that we are some kind of Serbs, but other than that they are perfectly free to do their own thing, as far as we are concerned.

The “Ukrainian” defining quality of hatred for Russia and trying to be part of “the West” is an element of inherent instability that causes them to seek conflict and acts like some kind of a virus that tries to convert Russians into hate-Russians, which is why Ukraine would be more accurately and appropriately called “Haterussia”. Such a hate-based national identity would not be unheard of, but what makes this one particularly dangerous is that it is weaponised by America, which is systematically feeding the most malignant nationalist elements in all post-Soviet and former Warsaw-pact countries, feeding the sentiment that everything bad that ever happened to them was caused by the Russians, and in order to be free, progressive, democratic and “Western” one needs to hate Russia, which explains why “Haterussian” identity transcends Ukrainian borders.