It’s been about a week since Ukraine’s shock incursion into the Kursk oblast of Russia which appears to have achieved little in terms of strategic advantage. Sure it has presented propaganda moments, such as 102 Russian solders surrendering, but when the reverse is playing out every day, you don’t hear a damn thing.
The invasion of Kursk took place with the use of British Challenger 2 tanks, which is interesting because I don’t remember the public being consulted on this. The UK says it has greenlit the use of British weapons inside Russia (with the exception of Storm Shadow missiles), meaning we are taking part in the invasion of a nuclear power.
US Bradley and German Marder armoured infantry vehicles were possibly also used by the Ukrainian forces. There is even talk of European-supplied F-16s being used inside Russia, but it seems unlikely Ukrainian forces are ready to deploy them, unless I’ve missed something.
The Kursk invasion was probably a PR stunt to take a lightly-defended area and show the West, Ukraine is not finished, but this is surely fooling no one, other than the four people who think the Kyiv Independent is a real publication. While war propagandists are hailing the invasion as a victory, they overlook that Russia has only deployed a fraction of its forces in Ukraine and bulked up its numbers with conscripts.
About 100,000 Russian citizens (out of one million who live in the Kursk region) have fled their homes due to the invasion. Ukraine claims it controls 74 towns and villages over an area of 386 sq miles, and this is not as large as it sounds. Northumberland has an area of 1,936 sq miles, so we’re talking about one fifth of a British county. Still, that could be enough to infuriate the Russian public.
We can hardly take the moral high ground here because if someone invaded genocidal Israel, we would be starting World War III. If someone invaded US territory, every city in that country would be levelled in a day.
While Ukrainian gains may be small, the risk of escalation has increased dramatically. Ukraine’s war effort has been premised on this being a war of self-defence, whereas Russia’s war effort is premised on a hostile military alliance representing an existential threat. From a propaganda perspective, Ukraine’s invasion feeds right into that narrative.
The Russian public might have been growing weary of this war, but Putin can now mobilise troops by telling the public the motherland is under attack. This invasion makes it easier for Putin to sell this as a war of self-defence. Any Russian troops who wondered what they were doing in Ukraine will now feel they are fighting for their country’s survival.
The Ukrainian military, on the other hand, does not know what it’s doing in Kursk and its commanders are begging for more troops to hold the empty villages. Meanwhile, the suggestions from the British press are becoming increasingly deranged. One Daily Mail article suggests Ukrainian forces could be targeting the Kursk nuclear plant. This follows Ukraine’s repeated outrage about fires on the roof of the Zaporizhzhia power plant, only their allegations never made sense. Why would Russia bomb the one Ukrainian power plant it controls and not the three it doesn’t? Strategically, they would have nothing to gain.
It’s not just a nuclear power plant the Daily Mail and others are talking about. The salivating warmongers are talking of striking Putin’s palace next, as well as the residence of Medvedev. Just imagine another country talking of bombing Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street. How long do you think it would take us to ready our Trident submarines? They’re even talking of attacking the Kremlin, for god’s sake. This is exactly why Russia was so nervous of Ukraine joining NATO and it’s exactly why NATO membership should never have been considered.
While the NATO left might be salivating at the idea of conquering Moscow, the rest of us live in the real world and could die because of their stupidity. How do they not see a blowback from this?
“You're ready to send your children to war to decide which side of a line Kupiansk lies on, when it's been in four countries in 100 years?” George Galloway once asked Piers Morgan. I still haven’t heard a sensible answer to this question.
The Ukrainian army is aiming to swarm the Russians with one million drones a month. Meanwhile, Russian forces are doing what some of us warned about: deploying the big guns. For example, they’re using thermobaric bombs which are just one level below tactical nukes in terms of their destructiveness with a blast radius between 300m and 2km.
Ukrainian troops will be vaporised before they even know what happened and you could argue they’ll be the lucky ones, given the horrors their brothers will face. How many more unwilling boys must be kidnapped from the streets and flung into the meat grinder? I will keep repeating this point: this thing only ends with peace negotiations.
If you would prefer peace negotiations at a later date, you are arguing we should sacrifice tens of thousands of Ukrainians in the hope of securing a better negotiating position. Why are you placing so little value on the lives of men and boys? Given the Afghanistan war ended with the Taliban still in charge, it’s plausible this war ends with Nazis controlling a failed state. At such a point, Ukraine would simply be forgotten, and we’d be receiving propaganda for the next war.
The western media is barely talking about Ukraine anymore, which is weird because ordinarily, the media loves nothing more than war. The role of the media is now to stay silent until a propaganda opportunity presents itself, or they’re needed to cover up something embarrassing.
For example, they are dutifully reporting that a privately-funded rogue team of Ukrainians blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, like the Seymour Hersch story never happened. If you believe the CIA’s crap, I’ve got a Kerch bridge to sell you.
This war is only still going because we refused to accept a peace agreement that meant Ukraine would never join NATO. Well, they are now saying Ukraine is too corrupt to join NATO, but they’re fighting for freedom and democracy?
Perhaps the scariest part of this whole situation is the US essentially has no president at the moment we’re invading Russia with a proxy force, leaving us to ask who is in charge?
Perhaps it’s the people who see Ukraine as an investment opportunity: Ukraine has the biggest deposits of lithium (the stuff Elon Musk wanted Bolivia for) in Europe.
Perhaps it’s the people who are using Ukraine as a testing ground: the Ukrainian military is now using those terrifying robot dogs on the battlefield, which will be coming to a law enforcement unit near you soon.
If we don’t even know who is calling the shots, how can we seriously say we live in real democracies? Ukrainian Nazis are marching through Germany, waving SS flags while pro-Palestinian protesters are arrested for opposing genocide. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is doing everything in his power to scupper peace talks with Hamas, and if he starts another war, we will surely come to his rescue. We are invading Russia and Gaza and could end up invading Iran, and none of this is in the interests of our people.
Do you understand what is happening yet? Fascism is taking hold and I’m far more concerned about what our own leaders are doing than what Putin is doing. They are by far and away the biggest threat to our safety.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
Re: NATO is invading Russia by proxy and our media is not telling us how insane this is
on August 15, 2024, 5:23 pm