“In a move of staggering stupidity and hubris, Lithuanian banned the transit of Russian goods to Kaliningrad effective today, June 18, 2022.  Kaliningrad, which is wedged between Poland on the west and Lithuania on the east, is home to almost a half-million Russians and the headquarters for the Russian Navy’s Baltic Sea force.”

Please see the first comment for a link with more of this story.

What is Europe going to look like after the Ukraine war Ends?

“Gonzalo Lira Appears to be right on the money as he is in the same position to see and hear firsthand from the war zone and his informers with first-hand knowledge. There appears to be talk of leadership change in Ukraine for Zelenskyy is not popular and his General is.”

“An ongoing U.S. bioweapons program in Ukraine was one of the Top Three reasons that led to the launch of Operation Z, side by side with preventing an imminent NATO-managed blitzkrieg against Donbass and Kiev’s desire to re-start a nuclear weapons program. These are Top Three red lines for Russia.”

You may view this as Russian propaganda or something the US MSM does not want you to know. Your choice.

“So now we are 50 days into this Special Military Operation (SMO) and right in between the end of the first phase and the beginning of the second one.  So, I want to begin by listing a few things which were unclear/ambiguous/misunderstood and which now are becoming clear(er).”

“Still, we need to remember that all wars are political in nature and that while the military “pain dial” is turned up quite high for the Ukrainians, the US PSYOPs are still telling the Ukrainians that they are winning and soon the first Ukie tanks will enter Moscow.  The de facto fall of Mariupol (as evidenced by the desperate attempts to evacuate the Azov leaders by helicopter) is already a major blow for the Ukrainian narrative.  But this blow pales in comparison to what will happen when the best forces the Ukraine has will simply disappear from the maps of the Donbass.  At that point, no amount of hot air, grand statements or other lies will make a difference – such a defeat is impossible to conceal, it will make the news.”

“It took the Russians just a few hours to break up the united Ukrainian armed forces into many smaller chunks.  This was achieved by basically taking out Ukie command and control capabilities.  Then, rather quickly, the Russian invaded from several directions, quickly bypassed the fortified Ukrainian defenses, blocked the units which refused to surrender, and when further.  As a result, cities such as Kharkov or Sumy found themselves deep inside the Russian rear, unable to be resupplied and no hope to evacuate.  In a few special cases, the order was given to gradually tighten the noose around Nazi concentrations while liberating the civilians' neighborhoods, this is what is going in Mariupol.”

“For four weeks now we have been discussing the Russian special military operation in the Ukraine and most of what we looked at was happening either in the Ukraine proper or near it.  I did mention plenty of time that “this is not about the Ukraine, this is about the future collective security arrangement of Europe“, which is true.  But even that does not show the full picture.”

This is more about what is going on in Russia.

“In purely military terms, the picture we see now is simple: the Ukie military as a strategic instrument basically died in the first 24 hours.  Then the Russians used a small force to bypass and block main cities.  With some very notable exceptions (Mariupol) they did not try to enter them.  Why?  For 3 crucial reasons:

they did not have the manpower needed (in Mariupol the force correlation is about 1:1 when it should really be 3-5:1 in favor of the attacker)

they wanted to kill as few Ukrainians as possible and

they did not want to flatten cities only to have to pay for their reconstruction.

So where are the rest of the Russian forces and what are they doing?

They are mostly in their permanent deployment bases and they are ready for a war against the US+NATO.”

“No matter which one of the levels in the Battlespace (Tactical, Operational or Strategic) of this War (or Combined Arms Police Action, as of Mr. A. Martyanov’s definition) Is impossible [to analyze] because there is the fog of war, the information we are receiving is old, compromised, unsure. We do not have the full of it in real-time (not even the Staff in the High Command of the contending parties have it) nor are we able to separate that quick the relevant from irrelevant, or real from fake, propaganda from whatever.”