2022.4.26【SONAR21】Larry Johnson

Western military leaders are doing a poor job of hiding their growing consternation about the progress of Russian in achieving the “de-militarization” of Ukraine. Following Poland’s announcement it was sending T-72 tanks to Ukraine Russia upped the ante:

Russia has suspended gas supplies to Poland under the “Yamal contract” – Polish portal Onet

According to the newspaper, the Russian Federation did not inform the Polish side about the reasons for the suspension of supplies. A crisis group has already been urgently convened in the Polish government.　This is not only a blow to Poland but to other European countries who rely on the gas the travels throught the pipelines in Poland. I think the Germans and French will be taking more cold showers in the coming days. Even in the summer, icy water is not always refreshing.

Besides turning the economic screw on Europe, Russia is sending a clear message with bombs and missiles–the Russians blew up key railroad junctions west of Kiev, effectively cutting the ability of moving any tanks or heavy equipment to the east. ・・・There are three ways to move military materiel to the Ukrainian soldiers getting pounded in the Donbas–air, railway and trucks. Ukraine has no air assets to move such equipment. So scratch that option. Rail transport was a possible option until today. But the eight rail road junctions suffered serious damage and are inoperable for the near term. Can they be repaired? Sure, with time and the necessary material. But Ukraine and NATO have yet to come up with a solution to stop the Russian aerial onslaught of cruise missiles. If we rebuild it the Russians will destroy it again. That leaves trucks. Forget about it. The Ukrainians do not have enough trucks to carry out a significant resupply and any sizeable column of trucks will face the same fate as the railroad junctions. They will be destroyed enroute. The only hope for Ukraine is that Russia runs out of precision guided missiles. If that happens then Russia will have to rely on dumb bombs. But that silver lining is not so shiny. Trucks are still a big fat target and are not accompanied by mobile air defense systems. The Russians still have de facto air supremacy in Ukraine.・・・

the Russians are cutting key lines of communications (i.e., roads) that are needed for trucks hauling needed supplies. Desperate me do stupid things. The Russians do not appear desperate to me. The same cannot be said for the Ukrainian troops in the Donbas.

2022.4.25【SONAR21】Larry Johnson

I am not sure if the media reports in the west claiming that Vladimir Putin is crazy is caused by gross ignorance or part of a desperate propaganda campaign. Just take a gander at Putin’s speech today to a gathering of the General Prosecutor’s Office・・・ . Read this snippet and tell me if that sounds like a crazy paranoid:

Joe Biden is incapable of giving a speech like this even with the help of a teleprompter. One thing that captured my interest immediately was the measured tone of the speech・・・. Vladimir Putin neither ranted nor raved. He was direct, concise and clear. I found his comments regarding the CIA particularly interesting:

I take Putin at his word. The Russian intelligence service has compiled a list of key CIA officers working in Ukraine and will hold them accountable. Unlike the Soviet era when the United States genuinely offered disgruntled KGB and GRU officers a clear alternative to the lies that shored up the rotten Communist system, the west today has become a caricature of the old Soviet Union. We now imprison political prisoners in the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania for daring to support Donald Trump and trespassing on the U.S. Capitol. In fact, there are more political prisoners incarcerated by United States than are jailed in Russia.

How about a free press? America is now a global joke. The corporate media has turned into Helen Keller when it comes to investigating or even questioning the fraudulent votes that gave the 2020 Presidential election to Dementia Joe Biden. With the exception of Tucker Carlson, the mainstream media refuse to give air time to analysts like Doug MacGregor and Scott Ritter who can authoritatively challenge the Ukraine narrative that Russia is evil and Ukraine is an innocent victim. Anyone who goes on social media and tries to provide an alternative view is cancelled. The American media is now behaving as the Soviet Pravda on steroids.

The CIA, which has the mission of recruiting and managing spies in Russia that will provide crucial intelligence about the true intentions and plans of Putin and his Generals, now are fully castrated. If you were a Russian officer dissatisfied with Russia’s current course of action would you trust the CIA to protect you? I believe that answer is a firm no. Especially because the U.S. has now thrown its full support behind a Ukraine that is rife with NAZI ideology and adherents.

We know from the history of the Cold War that the CIA targeted Russian diplomats and military attaches working in foreign countries as a means to get spies into the Kremlin’s inner circle. With the United States pressing all countries in the world to punish all things Russian, not just the government, but the people, the opportunity for U.S. intelligence officers to befriend and recruit a Russian is more difficult than at any time since 1947. This means the United States will be blind in terms of being able to generate its own intelligence and will become more reliant on foreign intelligence services to provide us with their nuggets.

I pity those U.S. intelligence officers who still have some measure of integrity and have a comprehensive understanding of Russia. Any who try to offer alternative explanations for why Putin and the Russian people are engaged in Ukraine will face strong headwinds and possible accusations of being a “Russian sympathizer.” If you believe in the maxim, “knowledge is power”, then the United States is now entering a phase of being powerless. Ignorance and ideological fanaticism in the intelligence community is a recipe for disaster.

2022.4.24【SONAR21】Larry Johnson

As Andrei Martyanov has frequently and correctly noted, the U.S. Army and its legacy officers are demonstrating remarkable incompetence in assessing the Russian military. The latest in this parade of clowns is Joel D. Rayburn, a retired Colonel and current fellow at the New American Foundation. I think Andrei would agree that Rayburn is a poster child for the grandiose fecklessness of retired U.S. Army officers. Why focus on Rayburn? He was recently interviewed by a New Yorker correspondent and offered up an astonishing analysis that is the product of either gross ignorance or deliberate misinformation. You judge for yourself his motivation. Here are Rayburn’s key points from his interview:

Let’s give Mr. Rayburn credit for one thing–he admits he has no expertise on events in the Donbas over the last eight years. That is evident. He ignores the glaring fact that the Ukrainian Army failed to conquer the territory and that local militias with support from Russia held off a NATO trained force. That is a cold, hard fact. I am shocked by his grotesque ignorance of Russia’s air-defense systems and their precision-guided munitions and ballistic missiles. According to Rayburn, “But those all failed.” Really? Someone needs to tell him about the repeated strikes in western Ukraine around LVIV that have destroyed Ukrainian military bases and weapons depots. Just this week, Russia carried out multiple successful strikes in Dnieperpetrovsk, Kremenchug, Druzhkovka, Poltava, Kharkov, and Odessa using sea launched Kaliber’s and KH-101 Missiles from Tu-95MS’s.・・・

The United States and its western allies are sending a large amount of material equipment and weapon systems to Ukraine and, shortly after they arrive and are being assembled, are blown up with missile systems that Rayburn insists do not work. If Rayburn’s conclusions reflect the thinking of U.S. military leadership then we are in big trouble. It is not Russia’s air defense systems that are failing. It is the NATO systems that have proven worthless to stopping hypersonic missile strikes.

I am amused by Rayburn’s conclusion that the Russian military leadership is corrupt:

Thank God we have military giants like Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was promoted for reasons other than his military accomplishments (soldiers I know who served with him in combat theaters charitably describe him as a “dumb ass”), in charge of our national defense. As I recall he left the military to make mega bucks working for one of the Pentagon’s largest defense contractors by helping win new defense contracts for his private sector employer. Nothing corrupt there, right? I think that Rayburn is engaged in the psychological act known as PROJECTION. We are what he says the Russian are.

The delusional thinking on display in Rayburn’s interview is best illustrated by the following quote:

Do you recall the 40 mile column of Russian armor that sat north of Kiev for more than a week prior to withdrawing from the area? It was neither seriously damaged nor destroyed. It was used as a decoy to pin down Ukrainian units. The entire length of that column was accompanied by air defense units that prevented what was left of the Ukrainian Air Force from striking and destroying the stationary column.

The video evidence emerging from the war in Ukraine is rife with images of bodies of dead Ukrainians and tons of captured weapons and military supplies. If Russia’s Army is a paper tiger, it is doing a remarkable job of grinding the Ukrainian military capability into dust.

2022.4.23【SONAR21】 Larry Johnson

The cards keep falling Russia’s way so far as it moves west to consolidate territory and the United States and some key members of the European Union backed away from sanctioning Russia’s oil sales.

Let’s start with the latest photographic evidence that Russia is pushing the Ukrainians out of territory inhabited by a pro-Russia from Mariupol towards taking control of Kharkov. The Russian flag was hoisted over the town square of Nova Kakhovka–they are headed for Kherson. ・・・

Major General Rustam Minnekaev, the Deputy Commander of the Central Militaray District, made some news today in a speech to the annual meeting of the Union of Defense Industries. He said that, “control over the south of Ukraine will give the Russian armed forces one more outlet to Transnistria, where there are facts of oppression of the Russian-speaking population.” The folks at the Institute for the Study of War apparently have not seen this photo. They made this absurd claim today:

• Even if Russian forces did seek to resume major offensive operations toward Mykolaiv and on to Odesa, they are highly unlikely to have the capability to do so.

Mykolaiv is 140 km (87 miles) west of Nova Kakhovka. Russia absolutely is moving that direction and western analysts would be well advised to accept this claim as genuine. Beyond identifying taking control of the southern coast of Ukraine and opening a corridor to southern Moldova as a key objective, General Minnekaev reaffirmed the importance of the mission in Donbas: 

• “Since the beginning of the second phase of the special operation (it has already begun, literally two days ago), one of the tasks of the Russian army has been to establish complete control over the Donbass and southern Ukraine,” .

This is not a rogue officer doing punditry. His speech had the blessing of his chain of command. Otherwise his career as a General would be ended quickly if he was divulging state secrets. The Russians also raised their flag in Kherson in late February, although there are still Ukrainians fighting as guerrillas instead of an organized military force. What you need to understand is that the Russians are not sitting on their haunches waiting. They are moving steadily to the west towards southern Moldova and control Ukraine’s seacoast via naval and ground forces.

Six hundred kilometers northeast of Nova Kakhovka sits the key city of Kharkiv. And 90 kilometers southeast of Kharkiv is the city of Balakliya. ・・・Russia scored a major coup there this week with the capture of an enormous underground weapons depot and has cut the road to Kharkiv. ・・・Here is Intel Slava Z’s report on the capture of the arsenal: 

• In addition to Soviet-made ammunition, mines and Western-made shells were stored in the bunkers. (I corrected the English translation in this sentence–LJ)

This is a substantial seizure and it does not appear that the Ukrainians put up much of a fight to defend this massive store of weapons. ・・・Now to the sanctions debacle. You should check out Andrei Martyanov’s justified belly laugh over the absurdities of the reaction of the United States and the Europeans at the G20 to calls for an embargo on Russian oil:

During my days at CIA we called a comment like this, “No Shit” analysis. It is right up there with, “If you put your hand in the fire you’ll get burned.” Duh!! The German role in this clown show is particularly hilarious. They are going to stop importing Russian oil by years end. Honest to God. But guess what? THEY ARE STILL IMPORTING RUSSIAN OIL AND GAS AND PAYING RUBLES. If Germany goes for an alternative source eventually (remains to be seen if they can pull this off), it means they will be paying a higher price. Higher price for fuel in Germany will reverberate throughout the German economy and will tick up prices in the rest of Europe.

There is no magic oil genie・・・in wings that is going to produce a new, cheaper source of that will suddenly pump out a bounty of petroleum at a lower price. ・・・Europe is acting more like a meth addict who is vowing to quit the drug in 8 months but still wants his fix today. Good luck with that. There is no economy in the history of the world that grows and prospers while having to pay higher prices for oil. Those costs are not confined to just the oil industry. Anything made with oil or transported by oil based products will increase in price as well. That is called inflation. I seem to recall that the Weimar Republic in Germany had a go at inflation 100 years ago and that did not work out well for either Germany or the world.

Instead of statesmanship and diplomacy, the United States, Canada and Europe are acting like spoiled children angry at not getting what they want out of Russia. Rather than accept the reality that Russia is better positioned than any of the so-called First World nations to operate a self-supporting economy that can produce food and technology, the west persists in its delusion that it is pushing Russia to the brink of collapse. Psychiatrists have a term for this mental state–it is called PROJECTION. Look it up.

2022.4.21【SONAR21】Larry Johnson

・・・Russia announced it has secured all of Mariupol with the exception of the Azovstal Steel Plant.・・・ Here is how the ISW dealt with the claim:

I am struck by the phrase, “Russian forces will attempt to starve out remaining Ukrainian defenders.” Precious. The Ukrainian force that tried to prevent the takeover of the city of Mariupol numbered at least 8,000 men at the outset. About 1500 of that number have surrendered to the Russian force. There are reportedly only 2500 Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the steel plant. For those of you who are math challenged, that means at least 4000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in action.

Putin’s decision to not send his forces into the steel plant to root out the surviving remnants of the Ukrainian force is sound. The Russians will secure the perimeter and continue to bomb the facility. While it is true that the missiles and rockets that will pepper the plant will not kill the Ukrainians who are hiding in the cavernous tunnels and underground bunkers beneath the plant, they do not have have limitless supplies of food, ammunition and medicine. This is not a 21st Century version of the Nazi siege of Lenningrad (now St. Petersburg), which lasted for 872 days and caused the death of up to 1.5 million inhabitants of the city. The people huddled in Lenningrad faced starvation but managed to hang on thanks to Russian resupply over the frozen lake during the winter months.

The Ukrainians have no source of resupply. There is no secret route for smuggling in the necessary resources needed to sustain 2500 soldiers. This is a simple math problem–they will run out of food and medical supplies. Ammunition is largely useless. If a soldier is going to use it he must go above ground and try to get a shot off at the Russian forces who control the perimeter. Russia only has to park one or two drones over the facility 24-7 and identify targets if they appear outside one of the plant facilities.

Here is the key point. There is nothing that small force can do to disrupt the return to normal civilian life in the remainder of Mariupol and Russian relief efforts to that community are flooding the zone.

The ISW offers its key “Take Aways” for the situation as of 3pm on 21 April 2022:

Let’s take a closer look at each of these judgments.

Wrong. The redeployment has begun and Russian units are moving north and east. The Ukrainians hunkered down in the steel plant are the equivalent to a Japanese regiment on an isolated island with no means of resupply by air or sea. One option for the remaining Russian forces is to mine the entire perimeter of Azovstal. That move makes it easier to create checkpoints that can be manned by smaller units. Here is one unit, the Somali Assault Battalion, headed out of Mariupol:

I call this faith based analysis. “Likely heavily damaged?” “Degrading a substantial Russian force?” How about some facts? If you have watched any of the videos emerging from the battle of Mariupol the Russian soldiers show no signs of “being degraded.” ・・・

• Russian forces continued offensive operations in eastern Ukraine but made only marginal gains.

This is meaningless nonsense. Russia is using artillery and air strikes to bombard Ukrainian strongholds. The Russians are neither stupid nor fanatics. They will not move in force until they have reduced the ability of the Ukrainians to sustain a fight. They are seizing key lines of communication (i.e., major roads and transportation hubs). Here is some video evidence near Kharkov (you can see the road signs in the video). For example, the road from Kharkov to Luhansk is now under the control of Russian forces. This eliminates Ukraine’s ability to resupply its forces. No supplies, no ability to continue fighting.

Another meaningless conclusion. What I see taking place is that Russia is positioning forces while using its control of the air and its mobile artillery to pin down Ukrainian forces. At some point in the next few weeks, Russia will encircle the Ukrainian units and either accept their surrender or destroy them.

One important military activity ignored by the ISW are the Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian military and logistics centers in the western half of Ukraine. Now I engage in reasonable speculation–it appears the Russians are destroying the western military supplies being sent to Ukraine. Russia is acting firmly to destroy this materiel before it has a chance to make it to the front.

2022.4.19【SONAR21】Larry Johnson

Unless you are a student of the history of World War II, you probably do not appreciate the role that DECEPTION operations played in pinning down German forces and the relevance of such operations to what is going on in Ukraine. Allied commanders trying to figure out how to invade France with the greatest chance of success relied on two major deception operations–Bodyguard and Fortitude. Bodyguard came into existence in early 1943 after Eisenhower and the Brits agreed that the invasion of Europe would happen in northern France. Bodyguard was: 

Accordingly, with British intel in the lead, intel was fed to the Germans that made them believe the allies were planning attacks in those regions. In response, the Germans reinforced their garrisons in those regions. One of those troop re-deployments moved German soldiers from the Russian front, which provided some tangible relief to the Soviet forces who were fighting the bulk of the German Army. The other key effect was that it froze the German forces in a location far away from the true target–northern France. As 1943 came to an end and the build up of U.S., Canadian and British forces in the United Kingdom became obvious, the Brits came up with operation FORTITUDE.

• Allied intelligence services came in, principally the British. They developed a plan called Fortitude by which; they would create two phantom army commands—one in Scotland to threaten an invasion of Norway, and the other in East Anglia and southeast England to threaten the Pas de Calais. The latter operation, known as Quicksilver, would establish an imaginary army group designated the First US Army Group (FUSAG). The commander of this ghost army had to be a general renowned enough to make the operation seem thoroughly credible to the Germans—a real blood and guts general. Lieutenant General George S. Patton

Quicksilver was accomplished with inflatable tanks and artillery pieces and a flood of military communications going back and forth between non-existent army units. With the help of a double agent with the code name GARBO:

• Garbo, a Catalan named Juan Pujol, had begun his spying career as an amateur, deceiving the Germans with false intelligence he cooked up himself. The British found out about him and brought him from Spain to England, where he went to work for the Double Cross Committee. Garbo gave the Germans the impression that he had gotten a job high up in the British government and was the spymaster of a network of 14 agents placed throughout the Allied high command and British government. He sent frequent and detailed reports on the growth and intentions of FUSAG. Those reports fooled the highest echelons of command—up to and including Hitler.

Okay. So what does this have to do with the Russian military operation in Ukraine? The United States and NATO intelligence services have been quite confused about the specific intentions of Russia’s military plan and have failed to accurately predict Russia’s moves. Early on, as Russian forces were approaching Kiev from the north, government sources were telling the media that Russia appeared intent on capturing Kiev. A significant portion of Ukrainian military forces deployed in the outlying suburbs prepared to battle the Russians to the death. And Russia made steady progress moving into positions to the east and west of Kiev. Yes, the Russians suffered losses but we saw some very odd things. Remember the 40 mile column of Russian tanks and mobile artillery that sat in place for several days to the north of Kiev. The Ukrainians failed to attack that fat target because the Russians had castrated Ukrainian air power and artillery. And then, without suffering a major defeat on the battlefield around Kiev, the Russians started withdrawing. In the lead up to this withdrawal, U.S. and NATO military commanders puzzled over why Russia only deployed a small portion of the force it had positioned on its western border. In addition, Russia held back its most sophisticated tanks and mobile artillery. Why?

Well, looks like Russia was feeding the western allies a big load of bullshit. Remember the breathless media reports that Putin was being deceived by his inner circle? Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misled by advisers and doesn’t know how badly his own war is going, a US defense official said on Wednesday. The struggling strongman is being lied to by his inner circle about everything from military losses to the economy, an unnamed US official said, citing recently declassified intelligence. US intelligence suggests that Putin was unaware of the extent to which his army was relying on — and losing — conscripted soldiers, the official told The Associated Press. The Russian leader has also been given an unrealistically rosy assessment of Russian markets as his advisers downplay the effect of Western sanctions on their economy. That tidbit of “intel” collected in Russia somehow apparently convinced senior American and NATO military leaders that Putin was on the ropes and was painted into a corner. Yet what happened? Russia moved into Mariupol and began the destruction of Ukraine’s southern army acting on orders to hold that port city at any price. Seven weeks later that Ukrainian force is eviscerated.

The Russian re-deployment to the Donbas went off without a major hitch. We have seen zero video evidence of Ukrainian forces attacking and destroying columns of Russian tanks, mobile artillery and trucks pouring into the region. But we are now seeing evidence of Ukrainian entrenched positions in the Donbas suffering relentless bombardments from the ground and the air. While Russia has been moving its forces around various parts of Ukraine without much opposition, it has enjoyed supremacy in the air. It has continued to hit and destory,key Ukrainian military facilities, weapons storage depots and fuel storage sites with missiles, both sea launched and air launched.

On the economic front, the Russian ruble has stabilized and has not been damaged by western sanctions. It is as strong today as it was prior to the invasion. It is the west that is scrambling to figure out how to replace key Russian exports such as fertilizer, oil, natural gas, nickel and palladium.

In light of the events that have transpired in Ukraine since that “intel” was leaked to the western media about alleged chaos in Putin’s inner circle, it may be time to consider that Russia has pulled off a minor variation of Operation Quicksilver. As Russian forces withdrew from Kiev the Ukrainian commanders, in tandem with their NATO advisors, did not launch an offensive against the “retreating” Russians nor did they start moving large numbers of their soldiers to the east to bolster the defenses of the Ukrainian army dug in throughout the western edge of the Donbas. Why? This will be grist for future theses of War College students on the effectiveness of deception in war.