Yesterday Kiev gave up the 'Avdeevka Strong-Hold', the fortress-city that was built with the help of NATO after the 2014 defeat of their army, facing the 'rebel-held' city of Donetsk. That city is now part of Russia after a referendum which has not been 'recognised', but no referendum ever is these days. The facts 'on the ground' are still the facts though. A similar fate to what happened in Mariupol and Bakhmut. So now what? The mud has returned, making it difficult for mechanised equipment to advance, or retreat, when using unpaved surfaces. The losses on both sides are likely significant, and there still are Ukrainian troops underground in the area of the chemical plant, in tunnels and compartments, much like in the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. But here it is more likely that the Russians will proceed to bomb the complex instead of waiting for them to emerge like they did in Mariupol, I guess, since they don't want to be exposed to attacks in their back as they proceed to secure the area.
Meanwhile the Russian 'opposition leader' Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison in Northern Siberia. That news overtook the news of the fall of Avdeevka in the western media, and on 'X'. I'm no fan of Navalny, since his openly racist, fascist ideology does not appeal to me, at all. And I cannot comprehend how anyone who is not a racist and fascist can speak of the man in admiration. I wrote several articles about him in the past, and even this label of 'opposition leader' is unbecoming, given the fact that he never succeeded in his attempts to get elected properly. Even in Moscow, where he created an impossible alliance in an attempt to become mayor of the city, he failed. In Moscow there are plenty of decadent Russians and bored, spoilt youngsters who flirt with anything they associate with us in the west. And it is the city where they organise a 'Russian March' every year, with plenty of openly Nazi-sympathisers, in which Navalny participated when he was still a free citizen. I feel strongly that his true friends should have saved him from himself.
It is not my intention to spend much time and energy on him, or his death, in the face of yet another Russian victory, and these upcoming elections. I do understand that his sympathisers point to Putin as the one who probably ordered a 'hit', but that doesn't sound very likely if you ask me. And that is the problem with all those alleged murders they connect to Putin. I can't see why Putin would kill these people he is supposed to have killed, since they were no threat to him, and in some cases the timing is clearly stupid, or so it appears to be to me. Instead, the timing often suggests a desire to create a martyr, using an individual who has served his purpose in most of these cases. But you can't argue with blind hatred, so I won't try to convince those who want to remember him as their favourite extreme-right-wing thug, as long as you won't deny he was one.
Zelensky is doing the rounds to sign 'security agreements' with European governments, after Sunak flew to Kiev to offer one. Germany signed on, and now France. What are these countries offering Ukraine? Are they trying to prolong the suffering of the Ukrainian people, or what? As with the US, offering Ukraine weapons and ammunition really is about subsidising their own weapons-industry in those countries mentioned. One contract mentioned delivering 220.000 shells for $1.2 billion. $ 5.500 per shell. Gold-plated? No, plenty of 'overhead'. The money is not going to Ukraine, but to the producers of weapon systems, creating 'jobs' at the cost of corpses of Ukrainian men and woman, and dead Russians, obviously. This is why one politician after the other insists that these billions spent on Ukraine are actually a 'cheap' way to 'defend our freedom'. And line their pockets.
That strategy won't sink the Russian economy, as it was originally designed to do, 'bleeding Russia white', and I claim that it will sink our economy instead, as well as that of the US, because we can't afford it. We need to 'invest' too much to just keep the fire burning. On expensive raw materials we don't have. Labor which will have to be diverted from other endeavours. Energy which is already scarce. And don't get me talking about the effects on the 'Climate' which we'll have to 'compensate' for by killing our consumption of everything pleasant. While the Russians have more than enough energy resources, and their factories producing weapons and ammo are already up and running, so they have a head start. The people in Europe and in the US are told to support the effort, and it is true that even political parties which were not all that negative about Russia are changing tack to serve the brain-washed electorate, but what if this whole thing explodes in our faces, and we are told that we need to implement the plans for a 'Big Reset', going back to being rationed on everything, forfeiture of all our personal possessions to help us win the war, accept censorship, 24/7 surveillance, living on minimal 'social credit' and…….
O! Wait! Wasn't that the plan from even before Covid?
Though the Russian position is much stronger from the outset, and Ukraine is running out of people to send to their death, 'bodybags' returning from the frontlines are not going to be popular in Russia for long. Less so if Putin insists on letting Ukraine live as a country, as the remaining people unleash waves of drones killing Russians from the safety of their 'control-bunker', underneath the hospital, with Ukraine set to receive one million drones from Europe for this purpose. Not to win any war, because the war is already lost, but to kill Russians, and damage anything the Russians build. Is that a flaw in the Russian plan?
Drone-warfare, using robots to kill and maim, and destroy, saving human lives, as long as the other party isn't as 'advanced', has been the subject of many dystopian novels and movies. I saw Russian soldiers now equipped with 'Electronic Warfare' packs on their back, which are reportedly jamming the signals to the drones, and the electronics inside those drones, causing them to crash without doing any harm. Dropping from the sky like flees. I'd say that the radiation emitted is likely to 'fry' a few cells in the body of the person wearing such a pack as well, so it can't be too healthy, but it beats being blown up by a drone.
But what on earth are we doing? In one century from now, what will the people left by then tell their fellow brethren? Every effort, every dime is going into building more sophisticated drones and more sophisticated backpacks to fight 'the other', because at the start of the century there was a conflict over who could rule over a stretch of land they called 'Ukraine'. To say it in French: 'Je crains que ce soit stupide'. Mighty stupid. But here we are, and there we go. We've got people who claim to be 'Left Wing' cheering for racists and fascists in Russia and Ukraine, and head-choppers in the Muslim-world, while they call me names for pointing out to them that they are barking up the wrong tree. I'm running out of arguments to bring them back to earth.
'Beam me up, Scotty!'