Russian Lancet strike
3 Likes
hey, everyone remember the sabotage of Nordstream 1 & 2?
Story came out a few days ago, that it was the US and Norway who were working together on it. Quite a read, and the right-wing anti-Biden cowboys are all over it.
Google Translate so iffy English
A strategic mistake
Russian military power has gotten stuck in Ukraine. The invasion has exposed fundamental weaknesses in Russia’s ability to wage war. Poor intelligence, insufficient understanding of the situation and a weak cooperation system in the military forces have contributed to Russia not being able to achieve its objectives with the invasion. What Russia originally described as a special operation has developed into a grueling, defensive positional war along a front of 2,500 kilometers.
Despite the setbacks, Russia maintains its overall goal of overthrowing the government in Kyiv, destroying Ukrainian military capability and securing political control over Ukraine. For Ukraine, the war is a battle for the nation’s survival. Without significant changes in the course of the war, there is no prospect of real negotiations. The war will continue to be characterized by brutality, high casualty figures and great suffering for the Ukrainian civilian population.
Ukraine’s progress last autumn was a major loss of prestige for Russia. The war will continue to weaken Russia’s military capability through 2023. Poor leadership, inadequate equipment and extensive battlefield losses contribute to poor morale among the forces and weakened conventional capability.
About half of the original Russian invasion force of 200,000 soldiers are dead or wounded, and although Russia has sought to compensate for the losses with partial mobilization, the ground forces still lack offensive power. Russia has lost approximately 5,000 armored vehicles, including over 1,000 tanks, and over 100 aircraft. In addition, Russia has used up large quantities of ammunition and other material, and is now turning to Iran and North Korea, among other things, to secure additional supplies.
Although the land forces are greatly weakened, Russia’s air and naval forces are largely intact. The stock of precision weapons has nevertheless been greatly reduced.
The war has significant political and economic costs for Russia. The invasion has rallied the West and driven Sweden and Finland to seek NATO membership. The West trains Ukrainian soldiers and supplies weapons to Ukraine. Russia is subject to extensive political and economic sanctions, and has lost access to Western markets for the foreseeable future.
There are still no signs that Putin is changing course in Ukraine. In the absence of military progress, Russia has changed its strategy, aiming its precision weapons at Ukrainian critical infrastructure, with the aim of weakening Ukrainian resistance. Russia is still willing to take heavy losses in exchange for progress in the war, and has the ability to escalate, both in Ukraine and against the West.
Western military support remains crucial for Ukraine
Ukraine’s will and ability to resist the Russian attack was decisive in the first phase of the war. The West’s political and military support, in the form of arms deliveries and training, is now crucial for further development. Already in the run-up to the war, Russia tried to deter the West from getting involved, and at the same time put pressure on the West by throttling gas supplies to Europe. Russia has not succeeded in this strategy.
It remains a Russian goal to weaken the West’s willingness to support. The Kremlin remains in confrontation with the West, unwilling to compromise. The pressure campaign against Europe’s energy supply will continue, also with new measures.
The situation will remain unstable. As long as Russia does not make progress in Ukraine, the danger of escalation remains. Moscow will continue to create uncertainty about the use of nuclear weapons. Russian strategic signaling and deterrence will persist, in the form of threats and deployment of strategic and conventional forces on NATO’s flanks. This is also important in Norway’s nearby areas.
Russian Nuclear Doctrine
Russia’s nuclear weapons doctrine is a partly public framework for when and how Russia will be able to use nuclear weapons. The doctrine has two central criteria for use:
if others use nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies, or
if a conventional attack threatens the existence of the Russian state.
The Kremlin deliberately creates uncertainty about Russia’s willingness to use nuclear weapons. If a conflict escalates into a regional war involving NATO, Russia will be able to use nuclear weapons on the grounds that the war threatens Russia’s existence. In such a case, the so-called demonstrative use of tactical nuclear weapons could be a possibility.
Deployment of advanced weapons systems
Russia has long threatened to deploy long-range precision weapons and hypersonic missiles in the border areas with NATO. In August 2022, Russia announced the deployment of three MiG-31 fighters equipped with the Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missile in Kaliningrad. According to Russia, the purpose was to ensure strategic deterrence against NATO in the region.
Norway’s immediate areas gain increased importance with NATO expansion
The prospect of Swedish and Finnish NATO membership has created a security policy problem for Moscow. The Nordic region’s geographical location is central for Russia in a possible conflict with NATO, as the region is close to Russia’s core areas in the west and north-west. A NATO expansion leads to the Baltic Sea region becoming more important. The expansion means that Russia’s land border with NATO more than doubles, from 1,200 to around 2,600 kilometres. This has implications for the Western Military District and the defense of the strategic base complexes on the Kola Peninsula.
After extensive losses in Ukraine, Russia today has few land military forces available to meet a NATO expansion, but for the time being can regroup personnel from departments in other regions and strengthen the border guard. However, this will not mean a real strengthening of Russia’s overall defense capability. The fact that Russia has chosen to send ground forces away from Russia’s entire border with NATO shows that the Kremlin does not consider the threat from NATO to be imminent.
In the meantime, Russia will nevertheless be able to resort to demonstrations of military capability, deterrence and powerful rhetoric to communicate its strategic interests in the Nordic region and the Baltic Sea region.
1 Like
It’s a good site Meduza (Meduza — The Real Russia. Today.) for anything Russia related , so good in fact that Putin has banned it.
1 Like
Yupp, I am aware. In Norway it is quite famous.
1 Like
Be aware that Seymour Hersh doesn’t appear to be whom he once was - he shopped that article around, and for many it did not pass the smell test. His claim that Stoltenberg has been cooperating with US intelligence since Vietnam should probably be viewed with a grain of salt, considering Stoltenberg was 16 years old when the Vietnam war ended - not to speak of his political views in the 1980s that called for Norway to leave NATO. Those two would make for fairly deep cover, I guess.
I don’t think it is much of an accident that the first major outlets to cover his self-published piece were Russian.
4 Likes
The report is much longer by the way, but there are limits to how much I translate and post. You can translate if you are interested. Next chapter is about “Expected political development” and so on.
2 Likes
It’s totally crazy and written by someone who does not know how Norway functions or what Norwegian intererests are. His secret source speaks of this being a Norwegian idea to blow it up and yada yada yada.
And this segment ???
Back in Washington, planners knew they had to go to Norway. “They hated the Russians, and the Norwegian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had generations of experience in highly profitable deep-sea oil and gas exploration,” the source said. They also could be trusted to keep the mission secret. (The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe.)
And the fiction goes on, lol:
Sometime in March, a few members of the team flew to Norway to meet with the Norwegian Secret Service and Navy. One of the key questions was where exactly in the Baltic Sea was the best place to plant the explosives. Nord Stream 1 and 2, each with two sets of pipelines, were separated much of the way by little more than a mile as they made their run to the port of Greifswald in the far northeast of Germany.
The Norwegian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.
Anyway, there is not a single NATO state who had better relations with Russia than Norway prior to the war, lol. This is exceptionally bad science fiction. Totally news to me that we have hated Russia and Russians.
Anyway, I never intended to post anything about this (but of course I have seen it). It is now after the UFO’s many magnitudes more likely that we are currently as I write this undergoing an Alien Invasion than what Seymour writing being actual facts.
Also, if you read more in that article, this is a Pan-Scandinavian (argh, yeah, we hate the RUS!!!, lol) conspiracy and Norway even planned it all and got the Americans to tag along with Sweden and Denmark, because of course that is plausible.
1 Like
I wonder how many of the right wing loons in the US are directly owned by Putin’s boys - either direct payment or kompromat.
There’s a documentary on Channel 4 at the moment about the Conservative “Friends Of Russia” group. I don’t think that there’s too much that isn’t public knowledge but it’s interesting to see how many people are involved.
1 Like
I remember these claims being trumpeted by the far-right and conspiracy theory brigade all across social media just after the event. I wrote it off as nonsense at the time and now that Seymour Hersh is repeating it only confirms my original take. This guy has never surfaced since falling down the rabbit hole years ago.
" Hersh’s reporting was heavily criticized by other journalists.Eliot_Higgins, the founder of investigative journalism group Bellingcat., said that Hersh was unable to get his article published in a reputed newspaper and that his reporting would only impress the likes of people who support Putin and al-Assad." - Wiki
3 Likes
The masses are just, I think, stupid/extremely ignorant and automatically anti-anything-Democrats-are-for. I really don’t think the Russians have infiltrated them that well and pupeteer them. It’s enough with Tucker Carlson and all his imbecile audiences and the other spin doctors in MAGA culture.
Then again, you can be Fifth Collumn without being controlled by the enemy. Many have sympathies and like Putin and Kreml. Because they are "tough, strong, anti-gay, Christian, white, speak from liver, Anti-Woke (important to them) and so on.
This is all many need.
What I think anyway.
2 Likes
He’s been nuts for years now!
1 Like
Yeah, and it is sad. Because A) he was once a good journalist. b) he is dangerous because some think he is still a good journalist and so a very good source. Bit of a tragedy.
The caption means this is Vulhedar again
If you look at what i posted above (Rochan Consulting picture) you can see where this is from the satelite image.
1 Like
The Wagner SU-24. It is not taking off again anytime soon.
Yes, it is a big problem and if Russia wins, gods forbid, this will be the reason:
2 Likes
1 Like