The New York Times has been reporting since February that Russia are losing badly in the Ukraine, that the Ukraine, with advanced US weapons, easily defeated the entire Russian invasion force with their "outmoded and inept" weapons, so almost all the invaders are dead, and the survivors only hold a few undefended villages until the Ukrainian military arrive and evict them, finding the civilians brutally murdered and the villages destroyed. At the same time, the sanctions totally destroyed the Russian economy, based entirely on selling oil and gas to the West and using the money to buy everything Russia need from the West. So regime change has predicted to be about a fortnight away since April, when a new government like that of Gorbachev who would let the US break Russia up into a bunch of small states, e.g., Chechnya and Dagestan would be independent states, run by Muslim monarchs and hating all their Christian neighbours, the independent states would be at war with each other and not able to challenge the US in any way, shape, form or fashion.
Then the Ukraine recaptured the huge Oblasts of Kharkov and Kherson. How, when the Russians only held a few villages? So the New York Times reported that the US had given the Ukraine very precise artillery but of limited range, while the Russian artillery, not precise at all but longer range, had enabled the Russians to take the two Oblasts, but then the US gave the Ukraine longer range artillery, and with the new artillery, much longer range and much more precise than Russian artillery, the Ukraine quickly recaptured more than 55% of all the territory illegally seized by Russia and, in about a fortnight, would have recaptured the rest, followed by regime change.
That was more than a month ago that the Ukrainians recaptured the eastern part of Kherson, and not much has happened since.
Those sanctions that devastated the Russian economy managed to destroy the European economy that can no longer afford to run any factories, since the cost of energy, now six times as expensive, would more than double total costs forcing Europe to sell at double the price, which is not competitive, so most factories must close and Europe must deindustrialise. Very green, going back to living as they did in the 15th century. Or maybe they might make it as far as the 19th century when everything ran on coal. So that's good progress, the US do not need any competition from Europe.
The sanctions also made life somewhat harder for Americans: the US factories have energy only 50% more expensive, not 500%, and little competition with Europe closed, so the factories remain open, and people have jobs, but inflation has significantly reduced real wages. So the sanctions have done more damage to the US than to Russia, but a lot less damage than to Europe.
Still, the plan was always to destroy Russia (and then the PRC) without a nuclear holocaust. Russia would be provoked into a war in the Ukraine and the PRC into a war in Taiwan where, in both cases, those advanced US weapons would enable the Ukraine to destroy the Russian military and Taiwan to destroy the PLA, and sanctions would destroy the Russian and PRC economies forcing regime change. And if one reads the New York Times, the plan is going very, very well and will succeed in just another fortnight, and anyone can put up with a few minor inconveniences for a fortnight to save Democracy.
One must blame Churchill, whose autohagiography demonised Chamberlain, saying the UK could have easily defeated Germany in 1938 in Czechoslovakia with very little loss of UK lives, but Chamberlain's Appeasement resulted in WWII, the defeat of the BEF at Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain that destroyed a lot of British infrastructure and killed many, and then the years of war where far too many British soldiers died unnecessarily because of Appeasement.
So now Putin is said to be trying to recreate the USSR, then the Warsaw Pact, then annex Western Europe, then the US and Canada, so he must be stopped in the Ukraine, or this Appeasement will be much worse than Chamberlain's horrible mistake at Munich in 1938.
Waugh wrote that, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, war became inevitable, but war in 1938 would have been the wrong war for the wrong reasons with the wrong allies. So Chamberlain did the right thing, buying time for France and the UK to get ready. Didn't go all that well in France in 1940, but at least the UK had the Miracle at Dunkirk that saved almost all of the BEF and the radar shield that ensured every German bombing raid had unacceptable losses for the Luftwaffe, neither of which would have been possible in 1938 when Germany would probably have been able to win the war against Czechoslovakia and the UK, force the surrender of the UK, and then the US would have had nowhere to station their troops and could not have participated in the European War (but they would still have nuked Japan).
As Waugh wrote, this is the wrong war for the wrong reasons with the wrong enemy. Putin feels obligated to protect ethnic Russians under attack in former Soviet states. With former Soviet states that give ethnic Russians human rights, Putin does not wish to do anything.
But, of course, the real reason for this war is that, after the collapse of the USSR, the US became Global Hegemon, and, as Graham Allison wrote in 2012, Hegemons, ever since Sparta in ancient Greece, usually fight tooth and nail to keep their hegemony. Allison predicted war with the PRC, but then Russia got uppity, so both Russia and the PRC must be destroyed. And it looks like the US will stop at nothing to destroy Russia and the PRC. Only, except in all the Western media, this destruction of Russia does not seem to be going all that well, doing far more to destroy Europe and weaken the US than it is damaging Russia.
So things have been pretty quiet for the last six weeks or so, but Winter is Coming, the season when the Russian military usually do their best. So we'll see what happens after Orthodox Christmas, 7 January.
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