Just a few pointers from the Saker

Dear friends,

I am dealing with some "back office organizational issues" which are taking up a lot of my time, so I still cannot write a real full SITREP today.  Hopefully I will do that during the week-end.  Still, I wanted to mention a few interesting things to you, just short pointers, which I think are important.

1)  We are constantly dealing with propaganda, counter-propaganda and counter-counter propaganda.  And yet, there are a few rock solid indicators of the overall picture of the war in Novorussia.

You all heard that Iatseniuk has resigned.  But did you know that the Ukie KGB (called SBU) is investigating three top military commanders for state treason?  Yup, the blame game for the disaster at the southern cauldron has begun in Kiev.  In fact, if you want to read a detailed assessment of how bad things are for the Ukies there, and if you read Russian, just click here (If you do not read Russian, use your favorite online machine translator).  Keep in mind that this is written by a Ukie who called the Resistance "terrorists" and compares Russia to the Nazi occupier of WWII.  And yet the image one get's from his report from the scene is one of a total military disaster.

Guys, if the Ukie were winning there would not be these resignations, blame games and reports.  All the signs are the Banderastan is collapsing under the weight of its own stupidity and blind hatred.

2)  It appears that NATO is freaking out and fears that the Ukies might be rolled back far to the West.  NATO, using its favorite central European slave colony, is now considering building an advanced HQ in Poland for a power-projection into the East, i.e. the Ukraine.  I don't agree with them, nobody is going to invade Banderastan, and for my reasons consider my next and last pointer today.

3) Did you notice some potentially major, if not crucial, actor completely missing from the action in this war?  Can you guess whom I am referring to here?

Where is the rest of the Ukraine, especially East of the Dniepr?   What is happening in the Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhie, Nikolaev, Kherson and Odessa regions?  What about the Poltava, Chernigov and even Kiev regions?  That's right - nothing. No local insurgency, no guerrilla, no civil disobedience, no protests, no sabotage, *no nothing*.  How come?  Well, of course, this is largely due to a very effective terror campaign, especially in Kharkov and Odessa.  In both cities a full-scale terror campaign his had hundreds of people jailed, kidnapped, 'disappeard', tortured, threatened and murdered.  But so what?  Does anybody really think that Kolomoiskii's death squads are more ruthless or more effective than the Nazi death squads in WWII?  And yet during the entire Nazi occupation there was a constant and very effective partisan movement in all of the Ukraine which inflicted *huge* damages on the German military.  So far, the only acts of sabotage I know of are the couple of blowing ups of the gas pipeline from Russia to the EU and that was most likely done by the Right Sector.  So the fact is here: most of the Eastern Ukraine is not joining the Donetsk and Luganks insurrections.  What that means in practical terms is that given the choice between resisting the Nazi junta and joining the Resistance or hoping to survive in Banderastan, most of the Eastern Ukraine chose the latter.  That, in turn, severely limits the scope of a possible rollback of Ukie forces.  If Russia does not believe that at this point in time a military intervention in Donetsk/Luganks is needed (and facts on the ground seem to support that) and that covert aid is enough (and, again, the facts on the ground seem to support that), then you can be darn sure that Putin is not sending the Russian tanks to Lvov, or even Kiev.  As for the Novorussian leaders, they can continue to write "to Kiev" on their tanks, but this is not happening without Russian military support.

Of course, with the Ukie economy now clearly crashing (officially, the money will run out on August 1st!), there are bound to be protests and even insurrections in the rest of Banderastan soon.  But I personally would not advise anybody in Russia or Donetsk to conflate the national liberation movements of Novorussia with the economic discontent generated by the crisis in the rest of the Ukraine.  I am sorry to have to say this, but if appears that if the Nazi junta in Kiev had the wits to create some kind of economic miracle, then most of the Ukraine would not object to living in a Russia-hating Nazi state.  That is a disgrace for these people of course, but it is also a sad reality-check for Russia: while most Ukrainian do probably not like the Nazi junta very much, they don't care about Russia, they just care about their economic well-being.  Given enough money, they would turn away and do nothing while the Nazi death-squads would terrorize and murder those who have still kept a Russian identity.  Novorussia, if it happens, will probably not be much bigger than the Luganks-Donetsk regions.

Thats' it from me for right now.  I need to go tackle a huge amount of work (in virtual space and in meat space).  I will be back online later this evening.

Kind regards,

The Saker