What you will not read in today’s New York Times but need to know before heading for a bomb shelter

Yesterday I had the pleasure of chatting for some 20 minutes with Natali Morris, who hosts an interview program  called “Redacted” that is widely viewed on youtube.com.  The starting point for our virtual meeting was her recent discovery of my 2015 book Does Russia Have a Future?, which surprised her for the prescience of some of the essays in the book warning about a U.S.-NATO confrontation with Russia such as is now playing out before our eyes.

I explained to Natali, and now to you, that I never sought to take the mantle of Cassandra, that over the past eight years I have not been walking the streets wearing a sign-board declaring that “the end of the world is nigh.”  However, at moments that I have considered critical, I have periodically sounded the alarm. We are in the midst of such a critical moment, as you know.

When the interview is posted, I will add a link to the bottom of this essay.

*****

Russian state television does not broadcast news worth repeating on this platform every day.  And for that reason I do not take the time of readers until and unless there is something they should know. Today is such a day.  What I am about to share is news and analysis that I harvested on the morning edition of Sixty Minutes (there is also an early evening edition) and on the 14.00 o’clock Vesti program.

One featured item was the latest news from the front lines about the status of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, which has become very active in recent days and is likely to further increase in intensity in the course of the week remaining before the start of the NATO gathering in Vilnius on the 12^th.  Kiev’s receiving further substantial military and financial aid from its Western sponsors depends directly on the regime’s ability to demonstrate that the investment made so far has paid off handsomely and that it can push the Russians out of the territory they occupy if given sufficient resources.

As reported today, the Ukrainian forces continue to gain no ground and to lose enormous numbers of personnel and military hardware. They are now going well beyond exploratory moves of small number of troops such as characterized the first two weeks of their counter-offensive and are fielding at least on one location of the front in the south of Donbas a force numbering 6,000.

The Russian fighters interviewed by state television war correspondents and backed up by video footage explain that they are able to repel all Ukrainian efforts to achieve a breakthrough on their lines thanks to heavy support from artillery and now from fighter jets.  We were shown clips of these jets hugging the terrain at a height of 25 meters off the ground while flying at 1,000 km per hour, delivering lethal strikes against armored personnel carriers, tanks and trenches occupied by Ukrainian infantry.  The results of their work are recorded by reconnaissance drones.  In sum, the Russians maintain that the loss ratio for Ukraine is an order of magnitude higher, meaning 10 times higher on the Ukrainian side in the present fighting.

READ MORE