BY Gaius Baltar.

[NOTE FROM LARRY — Introducing a new author, but not new to those familiar with the SAKER. Please welcome Gaius Baltar.]

Recently I heard an “expert” offer the opinion that Putin and the Russian Army had made a serious mistake when they organized the “special military operation” (SMO) in the Ukraine the way they did. It would have been far better to just send the army into Lugansk and Donetsk to defend them rather than make an ill-advised dash toward Kiev.

Instead of following this belated advice from that expert, the Russians chose to move fast into northern and southern Ukraine. Why did they do that? There are many theories; some good, some illogical, and some completely incoherent. I thought it might be a good idea to step back and look at the situation before the SMO from the Russian point of view. Russians tend to be practical and logical people and the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces probably more so than most. Their plan must have had logical reasons based on what they saw at the time. So, how did the Russians see the situation before the SMO, at the end of 2021? Let’s put ourselves in their shoes and come up with a theory. Note that this is not a theory of what did happen, only of what the Russians may have thought that might happen when they planned their SMO.

The defensive lines and the siege of the Donbass

The first thing the Russians must have noticed was the construction of the massive Ukrainian defensive lines around the Lugansk and Donetsk republics. The Ukraine Government had made no secret of their plan to capture the republics and the Ukrainian Army should have had an “offensive posture” rather than defensive. It makes perfect sense to construct defensive lines while planning an attack to prevent disruptive counterattacks, but the Ukrainian defenses went far beyond that. They were truly massive and built over a period of 8 years. We know how strong they were because it has taken the Russians more than a year to break through them.

The Russians must have taken a look at those defenses and reached the following conclusion: Their purpose is to contain the Russian Army if necessary – even if a large part of the Russian Army is used against them.

The second thing the Russians must have noticed was the absolute determination of the Ukrainians to attack the republics, even if this ensured a Russian response. We saw that determination when the Russian Government recognized their independence just before the war started. According to the OCSE artillery monitoring map, Ukrainian artillery attacks on the republics decreased right after the recognition of independence, but then increased again – most likely after having received orders from Kiev to keep going. At that point in time Russian involvement was ensured, but the Ukrainians still kept attacking the republics.

The Russians would have connected those two things; the determination to attack and the massive defenses. They must have come to the following conclusion: “They want us to attack through the Donbass, and then they are going to use those defensive lines to contain us. Why?”

The trap

Having observed all this the Russians must have started to think about the Ukrainian plans. They would have assumed that those plans were not just Ukrainian plans, but NATO plans as well. So, what were the Ukrainians and NATO planning?

The Russians must have made the following deduction: “The Ukrainians and NATO want us to attack through the Donbass and clash against those lines. Why would they want that? It must be because it is a precondition for some kind of plan on their part – some kind of larger plan. What is that larger plan?”

Then they must have thought about what it would take to confront the Ukrainian army in the Donbass and take on the defensive lines. What would that require? It would require a large force and a lot of time. That would mean that a considerable part of the Russian Army would be tied down there for quite some time. Was that perhaps the precondition for the larger Ukrainian/NATO plan? Was the whole thing perhaps about forcing the Russian Army to attack through the Donbass and taking on the defensive lines – specifically to tie it down – to keep it busy while the Ukrainians and NATO carried out the rest of their plan?

After having considered this, the Russians must have asked themselves the following question: “What do the Ukrainians and NATO want more than anything?” And since it’s actually the Americans and the British running the show: “What do the Americans and the British want more than anything?” The question isn’t hard to answer. What the Americans, the British, and the Ukrainians want more than anything is Crimea. Crimea is the key to “dominating” the Black Sea, and capturing it would be a dagger into the belly of Russia.

After having run through this logic, the Russians would have come to the conclusion that the Ukrainian attack on the Donbass republics and the defensive lines was a trap to tie them down. Then they started planning countermoves.

The Russian plan

The first thing the Russians may have thought about when planning the countermove was timing. How long after the war started would the Ukrainians move on the Crimean peninsula? They wouldn’t do it right away because they would want the Russian Army to be well and truly engaged in the Donbass before making a move. They would also not want to tip the Russians off by assembling a big force near Crimea before the Russians engaged the defensive lines in the Donbass. This would mean that the area north of Crimea, i.e. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, would be lightly defended for a while.

After having reached this conclusion, the Russians put together a plan to preempt the Ukrainian/NATO plan. The plan had one main objective and two secondary objectives.

Objective 1 (main objective): To capture Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts to create a buffer zone between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine. This objective had to be reached extremely fast while the area was still lightly defended. This operation was all-important at that point in time, far more important than anything happening in the Donbass or the Kiev area. Capturing Kherson was not enough to create the buffer zone because the Ukrainians had to be prevented from attacking the Crimean Bridge. The Zaporizhzhia coast line is only 150 kilometers from the bridge so Zaporizhzhia oblast had to be taken immediately as well.

Objective 2 (secondary objective): While a large part of the Ukrainian Army was positioned in the Donbass, there was still a large force kept back, possibly for the Crimean operation. This part of the Ukrainian army would have to be kept from engaging the Russian forces going after Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The only way to do that was to threaten something that had to be defended at all cost, even at the cost of the Crimea plan. There was only one location the Ukrainians would defend at all cost outside the Donbass – Kiev itself. The Russians therefore decided to advance on Kiev in an extremely threatening manner. The forces they used were not sufficient to take Kiev outright but enough to hold the area north of the city and seriously threaten it. The Ukrainians would have no choice but to take the threat seriously and move forces toward Kiev, including the forces intended for the Crimean operation. This would prevent the Ukrainians from responding to the Russian occupation of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

Objective 3 (secondary objective): To force Ukraine to negotiate peace on Russian terms. The Russians most likely assumed that if the Kherson/ Zaporizhzhia buffer operation was successful the Ukrainians might want to negotiate. They would want to negotiate not only because Kiev was threatened, but primarily because their main objective, the capture of Crimea, had been thwarted. This part of the plan was partly successful because the Ukrainians were ready to sign a treaty before the Americans and the British intervened.

The conclusion from this (perhaps dubious) mind-reading of the Russian General Staff is that the main objectives of the initial Russian operation were Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, not Donbass, Kiev, or a treaty with the Ukrainians. When the negotiations fell through, the Russians moved back to their contingency plan with the main objective of destroying the Ukrainian Army.

It is important to keep in mind that this is not a theory intended to explain what happened. It is only a theory to explain the Russian plan based on what the Russians may have been thinking at the time. It’s highly speculative and perhaps wrong, but it explains a lot nevertheless – including Ukrainian and Western reactions to the Russian operation.

The Ukrainian plan [WITH NATO AND THE US]

Let’s describe the theoretical Ukrainian/NATO plan before moving on. The plan, according to this hypothetical Russian pre-war theory, had three main objectives:

1. To tie down the Russian Army in the Donbass using the massive defensive lines and a good part of the well-trained and well-equipped Ukrainian Army.
2. To carry out a surprise attack on the Crimean peninsula, occupy it and turn the Black Sea into a NATO-controlled area – and putting massive pressure on Putin as a bonus. For this a significant part of the Ukrainian army was held back from the Donbass.
3. To bog down and bleed the Russian Army in the Donbass with the goal of engineering a regime change in Russia. The sanctions blitz was planned as an integral part of that goal.

It’s April 2023 and so far none of these objectives have been achieved. Let’s assume that this theory is correct and this was actually the plan – and let’s look at what the Ukrainians and the West have been up to since it failed.  Again, this is highly speculative.

The obsession with the plan

If we look at what the Ukrainians and the West have been doing in this war, a pattern seems to emerge: They still seem to be carrying out the initial plan, even though it failed. Almost every decision they make seems to be in accordance with the plan, or more specifically, in accordance with a pathological denial of the failure of the plan. Let’s look at a few examples:

The obsession with Crimea: The Ukrainians and the West are still planning to take Crimea, even though it is impossible. Still, the capture of Crimea is alive in their minds and a realistic option. Zelensky even at one point said that the Ukraine had started the liberation of Crimea … “in their minds.” Occupying Crimea was a part of the plan and abandoning Crimea means that the plan has failed.

The attack on the Crimean Bridge: Destroying the bridge was a part of the plan, and even after the Crimea was out of Ukraine’s grasp and the Russians had secured a land corridor to Crimea, the bridge was still a priority. It had to be attacked because that was a part of the plan. Now that itch has been scratched and they have, so far, not had the need to try again.

The obsession with Bakhmut: The Ukrainian Army has probably lost close to 40,000 soldiers defending Soledar and Bakhmut. The enclosed area is a kill zone for Russian artillery which the Ukrainians supply with endless cannon fodder. Even the Americans have doubts that hanging on to the city is the right option and the Ukrainians may even be willing to sacrifice their spring offensive to hold on to it just a little bit longer. More and more military experts are shaking their heads and talk about Bakhmut as a Ukrainian obsession, which it is. Holding Bakhmut prevents the last part of the plan from failing, i.e. to hold the Russian army on the other side of the defensive lines. If the Russians break through, the plan will have failed completely. Therefore Bakhmut must be defended.

The obsession with the sanctions: One of the biggest shocks of the war was the failure of the Western economic sanctions. The response of the West to the failure has been interesting. They didn’t cancel the sanctions or freeze them or rethink them. Instead they keep on sanctioning everyone and everything even though it is clearly pointless and even counterproductive. The situation is becoming increasingly surreal but they can’t stop. If they stop, the plan will have failed.

The initial panic

There is one other issue which the failure of the Ukrainian/NATO plan may explain. Every significant person in the West expected the Russians to invade the Ukraine before it happened. This was, in fact, what many of them wanted. One would have expected them to show indignation, to condemn the brutish Russians, and so on and so forth. The initial reaction in the West went far beyond that. There was extreme anger, panic and hysteria. There were even threats of using nuclear weapons. I always thought these reactions were far more extreme than the Russian invasion warranted. Why completely lose your mind over something you knew was going to happen? I suspect all the anger, the panic and the threats were because the Russians thwarted the Western Crimea plan. They were going to trick the Russians but the Russians tricked them instead. The Westerners were humiliated and nothing motivates anger and threats of nukes more than humiliation.

The anger and obsession with the failed plan in the Ukraine and the West are without doubt the result of the psychology and personality of the incredibly uniform Western and Ukrainian leadership class. They don’t accept personal failure easily, or the intrusion of reality into their plans. But that is a matter for another essay, and a long one at that.

Finally, remember that this is all speculation – a thought exercise if you will – but who knows…

READ MORE:

https://sonar21.com/the-planning-of-the-ukraine-invasion-from-the-russian-point-of-view-maybe/

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WE AGREE WITH GAIUS. FROM THE INCEPTION OF THIS INTERVENTION, WE HAVE EXPLAINED SEVERAL MAJOR POINTS, INCLUDING THE POINTS MADE ABOVE. THE MAIN POINT WAS THAT THE UKRAINIAN/NATO/US/EU/UK PLAN WAS TO DRAW RUSSIA INTO DEFENDING THE DONBASS, ONCE THE UKRAINIAN ARMY HAD ATTACKED THIS REGION. THIS WOULD HAVE RESULTED INTO WEAKENING RUSSIA BEING "ON THE BACKFOOT". PUTIN SAW THE TRAP AND DECIDED TO FALL INTO THE TRAP BEFORE IT WAS SET TO SNAP. 

FURTHERMORE, WE HAVE EXPLAINED THAT THE FORAY TOWARDS KIEV WAS TWO FOLDS: A) TO BRING UKRAINE TO A NEGOTIATING POSITION, FOR WHICH RUSSIA WAS PREPARED TO MAKE SOME MIGHTY CONCESSIONS. B) CREATE A DIVERSION TO FORCE THE UKRAINIAN ARMY AWAY FROM ITS PLAN TO ATTACK THE DONBASS AND DEFEND KIEV INSTEAD...

EITHER WAY, THE RUSSIAN PLAN WORKED, DESPITE THE "COLUMN OF (OLD) TANKS RUNNING OUT OF FUEL"... THIS AMUSED THE WEST, WHILE THE REAL DEAL WAS HAPPENING IN THE DONBASS. MEANWHILE, NATO HAS BEEN HURT, AND DESPITE POSTURING WITH NAZI ZELENSKYY, NATO WILL BE DECIMATED, WHILE UKRAINE WILL BE DEVASTATED SOME MORE — BECAUSE OF THE WEST REFUSAL TO NEGOTIATE... BORIS JOHNSON IS AN IDIOT. ALL THE NATO/US THINKERS ARE IMBECILES....

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

Sudan is exploding in intense conflict right after a visit from the Queen of Coups Victoria Nuland. Former CIA Analyst, Larry Johnson brings the history and facts and if CIA might be lurking and other geopolitical analysis. You can follow Larry here: https://sonar21.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8m__gu-V-I

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NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

EDITORIAL

The World is Not Enough for Crazy Western Warmongers… NATO Launches Biggest-Ever War Drills in Atlantic AND Pacific

The manic Western warmongering instinct is still viral and a potentially catastrophic danger.

In line with its fateful imperial implosion, the United States-led military machine known as NATO is desperately cranking up on all cylinders – in order to incite war tensions in both of the world’s hemispheres. 

The global picture is at once condemnable and outrageous, and yet consumers of Western corporate media are numbed with lies, sophistry, distractions and blandishments. 

Check out, for a laugh, this video of Canadian parliamentarians posing as concerned democrats by parading around in pink high heels. Seriously, is that their biggest concern? And as usual, the media follow suit making sure the Western public is saturated with such trivia.

In the coming weeks and months, the Cold War-era North Atlantic Treaty Organization is conducting its biggest-ever war maneuvers not only in its usual transatlantic domain but also in the Asia-Pacific. 

The war maneuvers in Europe are reportedly the biggest ever since NATO was formed in 1949 following the defeat of Nazi Germany. So too are the war drills in Asia-Pacific. Together, they confirm that China is in NATO’s cross-hairs along with Russia. 

But this provocative maneuvering – let’s just call it what is: aggression – is somehow normalized by Western corporate media. 

At a time too when the Western public is being brutally crushed by dictatorial economic austerity, as our interview discusses this week. 

Indeed, Western news media have become an utter embarrassment and affront to ordinary public intelligence and decency. Self-proclaimed bastions of journalism and public information, such as the New York Times and the BBC, are masters in the use of syrupy syntax to cover up the U.S.-led global war mobilization as “defensive exercises” when in reality it should be plain for most people to see that the nefarious purpose is to inflame tensions and assault global peace and security. 

It is criminally reckless for Washington and its allies to militarize the world’s hemispheres simultaneously at a time of already fraught tensions with nuclear powers Russia and China. And, it should be reiterated, those relations have been made fraught by relentless demonization of Russia and China as aggressive, expansionist powers when in reality it is the U.S.-led Western imperialist axis that is guilty of projecting its own depredations. 

Russia sought a political security arrangement before the conflict erupted in Ukraine last year. Moscow was ignored by the West. China has repeatedly advocated for an end to Cold War mentality and for multipolar dialogue and cooperation. Beijing is wantonly disparaged and caricatured by Washington and Europe as “autocratic” and a “security threat”.

The Americans and their vassals use narcissistic self-regarding rhetoric about rules-based order and world democracy while in practice they exploit every opportunity to ratchet up conflict. That’s because militarism, war, conflict, division and tensions – death and destruction – are the lifeblood of American-led capitalism.

NATO’s so-called Defender war drills start this month in Europe and will cascade into multiple other large-scale maneuvers bearing similarly corny names such asNoble Jump and Dynamic Guard (George Orwell eat your heart out!). 

It was the BALTOPS war games last June that provided the cover for the eventual blowing up of the Russian Nord Stream gas pipelines in September by U.S. navy divers, under the personal orders of President Joe Biden, according to Seymour Hersh. 

This year sees the biggest deployment of United States troops and aircraft to the European continent since 1949. The New York Times hails the “U.S. is back at the heart of European defense”. The sheer idiocy and gullibility of the New York Times and other Western media are staggering. 

The forthcoming NATO operations will stretch from Iceland in the North Sea to Germany and the Baltic Sea, all the way down to Romania and the Black Sea. The massive mobilization involves all members of the 30-nation NATO bloc plus partner countries. The purpose is declared by military commanders to be “offensive simulation” and forming a “war-fighting alliance”. And yet the Western media keep telling us it’s all about “defenses”. Such media are thus complicit in normalizing aggression.

Significantly, the NATO members are increasingly cohered under a single United States’ military command and key objectives are “interoperability” and “rapid deployment”. New member Finland is to participate which this year doubles the NATO force proximity to Russia’s northwest frontier. 

Germany is to serve as the fulcrum location for all the NATO forces during the coming drills. According to German air force commander Lt General Ingo Gerhardt, “a message is being sent to Russia”, as quoted by the U.S. Air Force Times.

What message could that be? A brazen and odious echo of Operation Barbarossa, the massive invasion by Nazi Germany of the Soviet Union in June 1941 which resulted in up to 30 million Soviet citizens dying.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the United States and its NATO partners are to hold record-breaking war drills in the Asia-Pacific. Surely, “North Atlantic (sic) Treaty Organization” should invalidate the mandate for such mobilization in the Pacific. But there you go. The world is not enough!

Those “war games” known as Talisman Sabre will involve the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany as well as Australia and New Zealand. Provocatively, military forces from Japan are also slated to join the maneuvers along with South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and others. Those games come on the back of Washington’s newly formed AUKUS alliance with Britain and Australia which will see the latter becoming a nuclear submarine hub for the United States in order to increase its targeting of China. The unprecedented maneuvers in the Asia-Pacific also follow a spate of statements by Pentagon commanders explicitly calling for readiness to fight a war with China. 

So, here we have two momentous military events occurring this summer involving Germany and Japan, the two defeated aggressor powers of World War Two which inflicted colossal death and suffering on Russian and Chinese people. China’s death toll inflicted by imperial Japan is put at 20 million. 

And yet these same two nations – Germany and Japan – with their despicable history of war crimes are featuring again in Neo-imperial aggression under the leadership of Washington. Any survivor of World War Two must surely be astounded by the horrendous déjà vu. Anybody in their right mind should also be horrified. 

The main impetus for this depravity is the death throes of American imperialism and its capitalist economy. The United States and its Western minions are all undergoing an existential crisis of historic failure in their capitalist societies. As in earlier periods of history, the way out of such recurring crises in the capitalist system is to wage war. The First and Second World Wars were the hideous outcomes with a combined death toll of up to 100 million people. 

Today, the U.S.-led capitalist Western nations are in the same dead-end situation. That is why the American executive of the Western capitalist system – the banks, corporations, oligarchs and so on – are dragooning their political and media flunkies to incite war at all costs. As in previous periods, war is much preferred to, say, a socialist revolution against the capitalist order. The question is though, this time the Western warmongers might not be able to execute their vile escape route because a) because Russia and China are too strong, and b) because this time political revolutions in Western societies might just materialize.

Nevertheless, the manic Western warmongering instinct is still viral and a potentially catastrophic danger. 

Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is increasingly seen as a disaster: militarily, politically and financially. The recent Pentagon leaks testify to that absolute debacle and bankruptcy of Western media propagandizing. Up to $200 billion have been splurged by Western states on this futile war over this past year while Western societies are falling apart from poverty and deprivation. 

Rather than pulling back from their abysmal error and criminal miscalculations, the U.S.-led war machine is doubling down to crank up tensions and aggression toward Russia and China. The war machine by definition doesn’t know of any other way. 

If the Western news media had a modicum of the independence and public service ethos that they endlessly boast about, they would be calling out the warmongers with obvious critical questions and observations. 

But the American, European and Australian media are part of the problem. They do not offer even a remote glimmer of solution. For such media organizations are bought and paid for by the Western oligarchy that runs the capitalist war racket. 

Here’s the ultimate proof. The U.S.-led NATO warmongers are all but waging war in every corner of the globe and yet the Goebbels-like media propaganda services are trying to tell us that it’s all for the noble “defense of the world”. They are exposed by their own abject absurdity.

READ MORE:

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/04/21/the-world-is-not-enough-for-crazy-western-warmongers-nato-launches-biggest-ever-war-drills-in-atlantic-and-pacific/

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