Daily Report from the Ukraine Field for 2022-11-29
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Great unsaid in US election: Love for ‘forever war’ is what cost Democrats
Sunday, 20 November 2022 8:22 AM
by Ramin MazaheriIt is an American rite of passage to realize that the Democratic Party never achieves what they claim to want to achieve.
Some Americans achieve this realization at 13, whereas the truly insufferable - because they lie about the past and are forced to deflect from those lies with aggressive self-righteousness - can persist in this self-harming delusion even past 63.
Losing control of the House of Representatives means the election was a major loss. Democrats are spinning the idea that “We could have lost worse” actually represents a positive outcome, but only committed Democrats are able to delude themselves into thinking that such pathetic logic is actually believed by the average person.
Democrats might also lose the Senate, but it’s already a done deal: the United States will be stuck in two years of gridlock, with each party voting down each other’s legislation. An America badly in repair will have only have bipartisan agreement on the usual: increasing military spending. Republicans now have the ability to introduce and discuss legislation that Democrats greatly fear, such as the handling of the coronavirus, the anti-Trump efforts of the FBI, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, etc.
It’s true that the sitting party’s president almost always loses Congressional seats in the midterm election, but what really cost the Democrats was their commitment to the American Dream of “forever war”.
The Pentagon just announced that they will be in Ukraine for “as long as it takes” and unveiled a new command center in Germany to help train and equip Ukraine’s military. Goodbye Afghanistan, but hello Ukraine.
What cost the Democrats on election day is the failure of the economy, and while Americans might have passively stood for another two years of inequality, poor wages, and precariousness (what’s 2 more on top of 40?), Washington’s choice to reject diplomacy and fuel war in Ukraine is what sent the economy into a tailspin at warp speed. The economic crisis was the number one issue for voters, and this pain was self-inflicted by the warmongering Democrats.
Just as the economic sanctions on Russia have rebounded so awfully against the West, so did the Democrats’ war drive rebound in their own sanctioning at the ballot box this week.
They did do better than expected, so just imagine how Democrats might have done if the economy was merely stable, instead of the current awful? They could have kept the House and won true control of the Senate - not the often-useless 50-50 split they eked out in 2020.
It’s completely accurate to say that the Democrat-led war drive in Ukraine is the reason why Democrats lost control of Congress, but it’s forbidden to say such things in the Western media.
What drove Democrats to be so reckless with the well-being of the everyday American?
Some will say it’s Russophobia, just as Islamophobia after 9/11 smoothed public opinion for a 20-year murder spree across the Muslim World.
You can’t demonize a nation every night on MSNBC and every day in The New York Times for 5+ years and then be surprised when their readers and leaders exacerbate a war with the object of demonization. Those are Democratic Party mouthpieces and not Republican ones, which can have very different ideas on Ukraine. Democratic Party leaders are obviously driven by an unjust need for vengeance against Russia - whom many Democrats falsely blame for influencing the 2016 election - and to hell with the costs on the working-poor class.
For Democrats, this vengeance is the highest display of political morality, just as vengeance towards Muslims was the highest display of political morality after 9/11. The war campaign against Russia took longer to work, but there was no bloody flag to wave to rally Americans around the president’s latest war - Russians killed no Americans.
However, going back six years is a very short measuring stick. America has been at war since always. The world used to consider Democrats brave for saying that out loud, but it is no longer the 1950s - this is now common knowledge among the new generation.
Now being a true progressive certainly must include a desire to end civil and foreign violence. That latter seems to be the domain of the Republican Party in 2022, as they have actually threatened to cut funding for Biden’s Ukrainian quagmire.That the Republicans are the “peace party” makes no sense, of course. The “CIA Democrats caucus” (Democrats in the House of Representatives who worked in intelligence, the State Department, or the military) has expanded to at least 15 people and that makes no sense, either.
But since when has American politics made moral sense? America has always been a deeply reactionary country - its founding revolution was merely against foreign control and not in favor of a progressive reordering of society - and thus its politics has always been defined by hypocrisy, zero memory, and even less understanding of this thing we share called human history.
The Democrats’ Russophobia made Russia the target, but the Democratic Party’s truly autocratic and anti-democratic commitment to “forever war” is the root cause of their undeniable electoral defeat this week.
Democrats are more committed to war this time, but it’s absurd to believe that even if Republicans don’t totally back this war that they won’t back future American wars. Simply refer to how France didn’t join the Western coalition against Iraq only to join all the following Western imperialist coalitions, and also spearheaded their usual imperialist domination across the Sahel and West Africa.
What’s the root effect, and the one which is most historically important? 2022 has shown that the US cannot handle its forever wars like it used to - not militarily, not politically, and obviously not economically.
That’s the biggest change Americans have to grapple with, and their solution is peace: A top foreign policy poll recently showed that 79% of Americans want peace with Iran, for example. Of course, despite all the insistence in the US and also Iran that a Democratic victory in 2020 will end America’s “forever war on Iran” Joe Biden has obviously disproved that, as well.
However, all the American people could do was punish the Democratic Party - it’s not as if any composition of Republicans and Democrats will actually implement the will of the average American.
The Democratic Party cannot and will not ever grapple with its inability to handle forever wars, which has been laid bare in 2022, because that’s not how Western Liberal Democracy works: it requires forever wars, both foreign and domestic.
Many incorrectly believe that the Democratic Party can somehow save Western Liberal Democracy, but not that many Americans engage in such wishful thinking - simply look at the vote results after two years of Democratic control of Washington.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He is currently covering the US midterm elections. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His latest book is ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values’. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’.
Ukrainian losses in Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) have increased tenfold
Daily losses of the Ukrainian army in Artyomovsk have increased tenfold over the past week: instead of dozen dead and wounded a day, the number of KIA and WIA has reached 100 or more.
There is data that since November 20, due to bad weather and problems with medical evacuation, the brigade artillery group and two mechanized battalions of the 30th Ukrainian Separate Mechanized Brigade defending positions near Kleshcheevka (9.5 km south of Artemivsk), as well as the OUN-UPA special purpose company—Immitis of the 71st AFU “Ranger” brigade, which the Wagner PMC is knocking out from the northern outskirts of the city—have sustained the largest losses.
Total personnel losses in these units are approaching 500. From the radio intercepts of the AFU it became known that the Wagner PMC troops maintain the pace of the offensive and continue to destroy the AFU units despite the muddy terrain and bad weather.
High losses of heavy armored vehicles in Artyomovsk have force the AFU to use ambulances as improvised armored personnel carriers, ammunition transport vehicles, and assault vehicles.
Conventional ambulances cannot reach the wounded, and their use in an active combat zone is very risky.
The MT-LB C specialized medical APCs and British AT105 Saxon armored vehicles are used by the AFU to transport mortars and shells, which has raised the problem of transporting the wounded to a critical level. The shortage of quick help has already led to multiple purulent-septic pathologies. AFU soldiers, without waiting for evacuation, are dying of painful shock and sepsis right in the trenches.
Wounded AFU soldiers are forced to wait hours for evacuation in flooded and muddy trenches. The time for qualified medical aid varies from several hours to a day, and the opportunities of the so-called golden hour, when the wounded can be given the most effective help, are not used.
As a result, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are facing massive blood poisoning and hundreds of cases of deadly inflammation in wounded soldiers, even with minor wounds.
The number of corpses increases every day, and local morgues can no longer cope with the workload.
Because of the influx of bodies, since November 25, dead Ukrainian soldiers have been sent 30 kilometers from Artyomovsk to morgues in the neighboring town of Konstantinovka.
In the coming weeks, the Ukrainian Armed Forces expect the situation with the wounded to worsen: heavy precipitation (wet snow and rain) and above-freezing temperatures are predicted in the Artyomovsk district until mid-December.
Instead of rescuing the wounded soldiers at the front, the Kievan regime is preoccupied with securing Western air defenses to protect the government quarter...
Source: @polk105
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[ Photo ]
Conflict Situation Report
(open source information review)
Ukrainian sources also confirm the loss of Klescheevka.
In Maryinka, the Russian Army is plowing through the remaining positions of the Ukrainian forces. Situation for the AFU is critical, and there are indications that the Ukrainians may retreat from this settlement as well.
Meanwhile, Zaluzhny has reported to Zelensky that the Russian Army purportedly has switched to using artillery barrage methods of leveling Ukrainian positions, which means that previously defensible Ukrainian fortifications are being systematically erased.
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[ Photo ]
The Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) - Dzerzhinsk section continues to devour Ukrainian reserves: after the redeployment of AFU mechanized brigades here in October, the Ukrainian army managed to somewhat halt the Russian advance. Now, it appears that the reserves have worn down again, and the Russian forces were able to occupy the Andreevka-Kurdyumovka-Ozaryanovka section. Now the main question is how many reserves the Ukrainians will bring in for slaughter here.
The subsequent actions of the Russian Army here include an assault on Kleshcheyevka [GB: newer information suggests that the settlement has been taken] and the adjoining suburbs sector near the Mariupol cemetery (southwest of Artyomovsk) and the suburbs sector near the highway to Chasov Yar and the military garrison A-4176 (west of Artyomovsk).
Second, forcing the Seversky Donets-Donbass channel opens up the possibility of covering Dzerzhinsk from the north, as well as splitting the single AFU defense line into four sections: Dzerzhinsk, Konatantinovka, Chasov Yar, and Artyomovsk. The prologue to this will be the battles for Belaya Gora and Dyleevka.
Source: Vladislav Ugolny, @Zola_of_Renovation / https://t.me/zola_of_renovation/3689
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Soledar Sector Situation Report, as of 15:00 on November 29, 2022
Wagner PMC assault units and DPR People's Militia troops have broken through Ukrainian defences south of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), taking control of Kurdyumovka and reaching the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal.
🔻In the Bakhmut area, amid the collapse of the AFU defensive lines in Kurdyumovka, the Ukrainian command is reinforcing positions north of Opytnoye and near Kleshcheyevka to the south of Bakhmut. Engineering units are erecting additional fortifications.
Up to ten M777 howitzers with Excalibur guided ammunition are being urgently redeployed by the Ukrainian army from Zaporozhye to the Bakhmut area.
▪️To counter a possible Russian offensive from Kurdyumovka and Maiorsk, 40 mobilized men are being transferred to the Toretsk (Dzerzhinsk) area to replenish the 5th Separate Assault Regiment of the Ukrainian army.
🔻In the Soledar section, units of the 4th Brigade of the LPR People's Militia have regained control of Spornoye to the west of Lisichansk. This success was the outcome of prolonged positional fighting.
🔻In the Lisichansk sector, fighting continues in the vicinity of Belogorovka. The settlement is in a "grey zone" and neither side can claim control over it. A company from the 81st Airborne Brigade of the Ukrainian army has arrived in Serebryanka.
🔻 In the coming days, we should expect active fighting to start in the vicinity of Kleshcheevka and Opytnoye near Bakhmut. Their liberation will make it possible to completely cover Bakhmut from the south and essentially cut off the Ukrainian group's supply from Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka.
In addition, the liberation of Kurdyumovka will theoretically make it possible to advance towards the heights near Belaya Gora and take under fire control Konstantinovka and Chasov Yar, as well as to develop an offensive in the direction of Toretsk.
Source: @Rybar / https://t.me/rybar/41575
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The Bakhmut Meat Grinder
In light of the Russian successes of recent days in the "Bakhmut meat grinder," we can note that the tactic chosen in storming the city was not that of a straightforward frontal assault from the east (especially since the Russian forces had already entered the industrial zone of Artyomovsk in the summer, where they fought along the Patrice Lumumba Street), but to push through the enemy defences on the flanks, in order to encircle the Ukrainian grouping defending the city.
This has already led to the fact that the Russian troops occupied Otradovka to the south of the city, and then not only engaged in fighting for the fortifications in Opytnoye and Ivangrad (the latter has already been taken), but also began to develop an offensive on Kurdyumovka, which breaks the integrity of the enemy front between Artyomovsk and Dzerzhinsk. With the loss of Kurdyumovka, as well as Andreevka, Zelenopolye, and Ozaryanovka, the situation for the Ukrainian forces in this area sharply worsened, and the Russian Army was able not only to develop offensive operations south of Artyomovsk (including in the direction of Chasov Yar), but also to increase pressure on the Ukrainian units near Dzerzhinsk, as well as to expand the zone of control toward Konstantinovka.
An important role in achieving the results of the offensive is played by overwhelming artillery fire (including through competent work with drones and fire correction) and skillful use of assault group tactics, which are characterized by a bypassing nature of the forward advance: threatening the enemy's flanks, and thus minimizing own losses and maximizing enemy losses, as confirmed by both Western and Ukrainian sources.
Hence the appearance of the term "Bakhmut meat grinder." In essence, in this section of the front, the Artyomovsk grouping of the AFU and the foreign mercenary forces attached to it are being methodically ground up, making the battle very costly for the Ukrainian army and forcing the Ukrainian command to move more and more reserves into the Artyomovsk and Chasov Yar theatre to reinforce the units and subunits that are being consumed in the battle.
The enemy has been presented with a choice: either continue to suffer the current level of losses while Wagner PMC assault groups envelop the city from the south, or gradually withdraw from Artyomovsk, accepting all the operational consequences of such a move.
Source: @Boris_Rozhin / https://t.me/boris_rozhin/71572
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[Forwarded from Song of Oil and LNG]
🇪🇺 ❄️ Winter outlook for Europe
🔺PART 1
(https://t.me/songofoil/54)▪️Can EU manage this energy emergency with LNG terminals?
It can be a solution. But there are some problems. The price of LNG at the Henry Hub (https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_price#:~:text=Henry%20Hub%20Natural%20Gas%20Spot%20Price%20is%20at%20a%20current,from%204.83%20one%20year%20ago), for instance, is hovering over the $2000 level, peaking sometimes to $3500 per 1000 cubic meters of gas. It can hardly be called affordable (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/macron-accuses-us-of-trade-double-standard-amid-energy-crunch), especially in comparison with long term pipeline gas contracts. But there is competition for LNG even at these prices. Asian market has been traditionally relying on LNG, while EU faced this situation for the first time. Germany (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-11/germany-india-in-escalating-tussle-over-canceled-lng-cargoes) won the battle for some LNG with India, but later China (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/qatarenergy-signs-27-year-lng-deal-with-chinas-sinopec-2022-11-21/) took all Qatar LNG signing a multi-year contract. Egypt (https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/112722-egypt-boosts-lng-exports-by-14-in-2022-more-volumes-go-to-europe-minister) can increase supply to Europe just by 8 million mt/year. Finland (https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2387478-estonia-drops-plans-for-stake-in-finnish-lng-terminal) has to share an LNG terminal with Estonia. In Italy (https://t.me/songofoil/53) local social movements are opposing to terminal construction. Terminals in Spain (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-08/spain-plans-to-ease-german-gas-crunch-with-revived-lng-terminal) are too distant from the main consumers in Germany. France and Germany (https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/france-germany-sign-joint-declaration-on-energy-solidarity/2748467) are trying to strengthen energy cooperation exchanging gas for electricity. But it cannot help to fix overall EU energy balance.
▪️New pipelines?
Algeria (https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/algeria-europe/) needs investment and time, as well as other African countries to increase gas supplies on the EU market. Sea gas exploration on the Israeli and Lebanon (https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/israel-allows-totalenergies-eni-search-gas-offshore-after-lebanon-border-deal-2022-11-15/) shelf has just been started. And gas from there will go to Egypt facilities to make LNG. Azerbaijan (https://eurasianet.org/azerbaijans-russian-gas-deal-raises-uncomfortable-questions-for-europe) is pushing hard on supply increase via its pipeline system, but the disposable gas volume is still relatively small. Poland (https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/launch-baltic-pipe-2022-sep-27_en) is trying to control Germany through Baltic Pipe. This project can hardly cover needs of both countries. Local pipeline projects in the Baltic states are dependent either on LNG supplies or on the Baltic Pipe gas reverse.
But there are still couple of options. First is to persuade Norway to provide more gas to the EU market at lower prices. This definitely will not make happy Norway people and government, but it's worth trying. The second option is to put into operation the huge Groningen gas field (https://www.europeangashub.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-dutch-groningen-gas-field.html). A side effect is uncontrollable seismic activity in Western Europe.
▪️This brief review of the situation in Europe gives quite a pessimistic outlook. Although in South Europe the effects of structural problems can be mitigated, the situation is far from being under control. The EU governments right now are making hard decisions on de-industrialisation. Main energy consumers are industrial plants. And there is no way to save both industry and people. Blaming Putin for our mistakes is not the way out. More professional approach is needed. If the problems above are not addressed now, the situation will remain the same in the coming years.
#Europe #enegry #winter
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[Forwarded from Cyberspec News]
Zelensky administration is actively discussing a plan for military "offshoring" of the Ukrainian defense industry.
It is planned to accelerate the construction of Ukrainian defense plants in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic for the military needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It is planned to deploy there the production of ammunition, the assembly of "drones", armored vehicles, various missile systems, and so on.
Now Kiev is convincing its patrons in the United States of the reasonableness of such a plan, that the Russians will not allow such production facilities to be deployed on the territory of Ukraine and that it is more profitable to create them on the territories of neighboring states on the principles of extraterritoriality, Accordingly, they will not pay taxes, rent, etc.
Electricity and materials are supposed to be obtained at the expense of loans allocated by the United States and the European Union. The equipment should be partially exported from Ukraine from specialized factories, and partially purchased in the West from the same loans. It is proposed to recruit working personnel from Ukrainians who went abroad earlier, engineering personnel, as well as highly qualified specialists, should also be exported from Ukraine.
The authors of the plan claim that the first such "ersatz plants" can start producing products in the spring. But so far, the governments of the countries on whose territories such construction is supposed to begin are not very eager to meet Ukraine on this issue. Such "extraterritoriality" does not imply any profit. And this does not suit them at all...
At first glance, the idea seems absurd, but when you study the topic, its absurdity no longer seems complete.
The creation of" temporary " defense enterprises with extremely low production costs and outside the zone of destruction of Russian weapons is quite justified and logical. Moreover, there are those who will pay for it - Americans and Europeans.
source: @ramzayiegokomanda
