I Analyse The Ukraine War
I Analyse The Ukraine War
In-depth, and a lot of data
A poll on “Want Change? I Tell You How”, Ukraine War Analysis was highest voted. You can always suggest topics for The Daily Beagle to cover in the comments below!
The truth is…
Nobody Is Winning
Not America, not Europe, not Russia, not Ukraine, and especially not the civilians. And you might be thinking ‘but I heard reports Ukraine were pushing Russia back in Kharkov’ - and you did, and judging from information from both Western and Russian sources it is mostly accurate, but there is more to war than winning one battle. And everybody is losing.
First Loser: Europe
You’ve likely heard it here before. The energy crisis is so bad Switzerland are threatening fines and jail for any Swiss daring to turn up their thermostat above 19 Celcius (66.2F), France have turned out the lights on the Effiel tower (and street lights) with the Louvre and Palace of Versailles to follow, European steel plants have closed, 60% of British manufacturers face closure, even JP Morgan are considering moving as Europe’s major science project the LHC run by CERN looks to ‘idle’ (read: shutdown) due to energy prices.
One Danish energy operator informed production of electricity could not keep up with demand, with Italy’s government begging for an end to Russian sanctions, and Hungary aiming to recently block the EU’s Russian sanctions again. Mostly unreported on Western outlets is the EU aiming to reduce consumption (read: the public’s consumption) by 10% until 2023.
In the much earlier article Understanding the Oil Supply Crisis, I detailed why there was no simple or easy fix for oil supply, and I even covered the desperation of French President Macron begging US Joe Biden for assistance with the oil as production reached capacity outside of Russia:
The United Arab Emirates is already nearing the maximum output capacity, with Saudi Arabia in a similar predicament, a point which alarmed French President Macron to the point he interrupted Joe Biden to beg for assistance.
Macron’s desperation has to be seen to be believed, you can see him calling out and rushing up to Biden with zero collective ‘calm’ pretense politicians usually display:
Germany have recently seized Russian-owned oil refineries in desperate panic over the oil supply, however they’re already warning of a natural gas shortage as well, which anyone early into the war could have warned of.
The Problem Of Base Load
Why does this matter? Natural gas is used by electricity grid peaker plants. A peaker plant is a plant that comes online during the peak energy consumption period - usually some time between 12 noon and 2 pm - where everybody turns on their devices, either to cook food, boil water for tea and coffee, turn on televisions and computers, etc, and essentially consume more power than is available for the base load.
The base load is sort of the minimum generation average. Now you might be saying ‘Underdog, why don’t they just increase the baseload?’, but the problem is the peak power consumption demand is temporary, only lasting a few hours a day.
If you increased base load, for the other 20 or so hours, you’d producing too much power, which will overload/burn out the energy grid. It is a careful balancing act between energy grid consumers and producers to avoid waste and damage.
A peaker plant is a temporary unit, usually it comes on for a short period of time. In-fact, this is where most of your cost in energy generation comes from, because peaker plants are both inefficient and costly (they burn a lot of gas in a short period of time).
Gas Is Best Suited
Why not use some other fuel? Well, there’s also the issue of response time. So the peak period every day isn’t exact. People might start cooking an hour later due to a sports match, or ten minutes earlier due to a mis-scheduled ad break.
You can’t turn them on until there is sufficient demand for it, and when the demand comes, it comes quickly, like a cliff-sized tidal wave. So you need something that can respond - usually within seconds - to the sudden demand, and can scale rapidly (not all peak power periods are equal).
With the exception of a few things, like pumped hydro storage - which has limited capacity and is storage, not generation - nothing currently responds as fast as a natural gas turbine. Flow gas, ignite, spin turbine. Cut off gas, turbine goes off. In contrast, imagine how slow a nuclear reactor is to get up to power or shut down - you can’t rush such a thing.
Coal is a physical medium, and you can’t just ‘shut off coal’ as it will continue to burn with embers, which is a waste of precious fuel. Oil could, but it isn’t a fast moving medium and takes a moment to achieve heat (gas burns instantly; it is already vapourised), and if you’ve ever seen a hospital blackout, you’ll know diesel generator backups are not always a smooth transition and take some time to kick in.
So no gas, means no peaker plant, which means no capacity to deal with excess energy loads during peak demand, which in turn means either a brownout (insufficient power) or blackout (no power at all). So, Europe is a loser.
Second Loser: America
I’m going to be honest here, I have lost track of how many bills and finances America keeps sending to Ukraine. It seems like every 3 days to a week a new spending bill or wad of cash is introduced.
February: the US spent $54 million on Ukraine refugees, then followed up with $350 million in military aid.
April: $1.3 billion.
June: $450 million
July: another $400 million
August: even more, $775 million
September: literally just yesterday, sent them another $600 million.
Literally, a payment package every month, and these are just the obvious ones the media keep parroting. I hate to think how much is being spent behind the scenes (EG acquistions, logistics - I haven’t even factored in Europe’s expenditure). It is like they’re trying to drown Russians in US dollars.
To put the $40 billion in context, that is enough for $121 dollars for every man, woman and child in the US. That is more money than the yearly GDPs individually for 101 countries. That is more than Estonia’s GDP at a “mere” $37.2 billion. That’s enough money to pay for the installation of solar panels on 2 million homes (assuming installation costs a whopping $20,000). And the US keeps sending more.
CBS reported how 60-70% of aid does not reach the frontline (or as CBS puts it, ‘30-40% does’). Ukraine were so furious with the expose on corruption that they shot the messenger - CBS were forced to pull the documentary on it. 60-70% of over $40 billion being wasted. Unfathomable losses.
All to the detriment of American taxpayers, who are already paying in terms of inflation due to rampant government spending, only to get slapped in the face with the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ that doesn’t reduce inflation. It involves more spending. Pretty please forget the time we tried to beat your ass into submission with vaccine mandates and got you fired from your job, too.
But you might be thinking ‘hey, Underdog, thats okay, the US can print infinity dollars with no consequence’. Yeah, just one problem with that…
US Is Running Out Of Ammunition And Troops Too
One thing you can’t just infinity print is ammo. It seems almost inconceiveable (that word, you keep using it!), but they are running out of both.
In-fact, the information is so embarassing that Google will bury the original Business Insider article (always promoting the dubious Yahoo regurgitation), and won’t show it unless you quote the title and name the publication, at which point Google - oddly - screams that “SafeSearch is off”. What, have I left the pen already?
The US has zero domestic manufacturing capabilities for the M795 artillery shells it is sending to Ukraine. In-fact, it is so bad they are, per the Business Insider article, looking in Canada for alternative suppliers:
The Army recently put out a market survey to identify US and Canadian companies that can manufacture up to 12,000 M795 155 mm high-explosive shells a month.
12,000 a month? Exactly how many are they burning through over there? In April they declared they had sent 144,000 artillery shells (of which 60-70% aren’t arriving at the frontlines, remember). 144,000 would be exactly equal to 12,000 shells for 12 months. They certainly can’t match this rate.
The Pentagon admitted publicly that the weapons had been pulled directly from US active inventory, meaning they were using equipment they’re supposed to keep for themselves in the event of a war with another superpower, say… China, for example:
That means things such as Javelin and Stinger missiles, HIMARS rocket launcher systems, and Switchblade unmanned aerial systems, for instance, have been pulled directly from existing U.S. military inventory to be sent overseas.
Now, you might think this is a drop in the ocean for a country with largest military budget in the world (Congress did increase the budget to $722 billion back in December 2021). It dwarfs the combined military budgets of next 9 biggest spenders: China, India, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea.
Even back in 2019, it dwarfed the combined budgets of both China and Russia.
Per the Pentagon’s own report, they literally took from their own active military units (and not just merely the excess stockpiles) and are running so low they need to make more:
[…] so much gear has been pulled from U.S. military units, that equipment must now be replaced in order to sustain America's own readiness, and the Defense Department has already contracted with an array of manufacturers to give back to military units what was taken from them in order to support Ukraine.
The Guardian reported the US had dipped into their overall stockpile no less than 21 times:
The White House said it was the 21st time that the US’s defense department has pulled weapons and other equipment off the shelves to deliver to Ukraine.
Task and Purpose reported the US military had given Ukraine 1 million artillery shells, so that is a lot of stock. Barely two days ago, the US military awarded Raytheon with a replacement contract for Javelin missiles, a meagre $311 million (especially when you consider the US throws that in a single month at Ukraine). According to Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), each Javelin FGM-148 missile costs on average $107,500.
West Point - the US military academy - highlighted the fact Biden had, effectively, exploited Presidential Drawdown Authority in order to take the weapons directly from US stocks and supplies (relating to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act), and even they’re concerned about shortages of weapon supplies:
Since August 2021, the United States has executed 14 equipment drawdowns, including Javelin and Stinger missiles, armored vehicles, patrol boats, grenade launchers, machine guns, and, most recently, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to extend the range of Ukraine’s standard artillery platforms. The transfers are valued at over $5 billion.
During this, West Point basically all but admit the US is screwed on the supply chain, suggesting Raytheon might have to ‘re-engineer’ the electronics of the Stinger missiles due to the shortfall:
To account for the missile shortfall, for example, Raytheon may re-engineer the Stinger’s electronics to use more readily available parts. In conjunction, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment has announced that a portion of a $600 million Ukraine aid package will be used to fund incentive programs to “mitigate [defense industrial base] constraints to enable faster missile production in order to resupply U.S. stocks transferred to Ukraine.”
This sounds like fancy talk for ‘we got caught with our production pants down and we don’t have the manufacturing supply to replenish our stocks due to our overdependence on globalism’. Oops.
Even if we assume the $311 million given to Raytheon was 100% unit cost (no labour, logistics, other overheads), it’d be enough for a mere 2893 missiles. Defence Today says the true number is closer to 1,800. In contrast, Task and Purpose declared the US had sent over 17,000 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, with CSIS specifying over 8,500 Javelin missiles had been sent. It isn’t hard to see the US is sending out more than they’re getting back.
Even with the contract, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes reported back in July that due to labour shortages and supply chain issues, he didn’t expect normal supply until 2023 at the earliest, with 2024 being given as the more realistic year. Back in April he had already warned of issues in replenishing Stinger missile supply as well, confirming what West Point were saying. This was 2 years after Raytheon missile data was stolen by the Chinese back in 2020.
CSIS went on to comment that the odds are the US will run out of HIMARS missiles as well, to which retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling raised alarm about the rate of which Ukraine were firing off the missiles, essentially using it more like a machine gun than a precision weapon:
Smart planning consideration of our Department of Defense (& all the nations that are supplying MLRS) is this: How much risk do we take in giving UKR an exceedingly large # of our smart weapons? And...What if, in the near future, we face this or another enemy in a conflict?
The earlier CSIS article clearly notes that HIMARS launchers, Javelin missiles, Stinger missiles, M-777 howitzers and 155 mm ammo were all of limited supply.
Low on supplies and the enemy knows how your missile systems work? Not a good place to be.
Troop Issues
What about the US troop issues? I had personally predicted with the COVID-19 shot issues conjoined with the mandates would result in a one-two punch in US troop depletion.
The ones who took the shot would be injured or killed by it; the ones who weren’t somehow killed by roulette would be killed in a war instead, and the healthy, smart ones who didn’t take the poison shot would be discriminated against and fired. The US Air Force denied 99% of religious exemptions.
Anyone who hadn’t been recruited prior to this point in time would outright refuse to join because of the mandates and lack of health freedoms, and lead to staffing shortages, like it did in the transportation industry in Canada.
Despite the US military offering “recording bonuses” in July (just keep printing money), recruitment numers were still down.
I can’t stress this enough: Every branch of the US military is not meeting recruiting goals. The US military obviously can’t be that bothered because they cut off over 60,000 troops from receiving pay over their poison shot status.
Pharmaceutical d**k sucking Congress, on the other hand, is quite alarmed, with nearly 50 Congressional members saying to scrap the poison shot mandate as they face a loss of 8% of troops who will quit rather than take the poison shot. ‘Nearly 50’ “Representatives”, out of 435. Representative Democracy is Dead.
Bloomberg estimates a far higher percentage: a shortfall of 60%.
[…] the Pentagon is still 15% short of that goal, with the largest service, the Army, facing the biggest shortfall. Through the end of June, the Army had signed up 22,000 troops, 60% below its annual target […]
So whilst Western media brag and scream about Russian recruitment shortfalls for Ukraine, they omit the fact America and other NATO countries are facing the exact same crisis.
Third Loser: Russia
Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those Liberal ‘Russia bad’ 2 minutes hate, or one of those lame ‘balanced reporting’ faux pas where like some BBC fraud I try to pretend to be balanced and neutral.
People in support will likely eagerly point to Russia weathering out the sanctions well, their trade ties with China and India, and the success of the Mir payment system, and think ‘Russia must be winning’. Economically, yes.
But according to Substack Russian-reading, Russian commentator ‘Edward Slavsquat’, a man who hates the globalists even more strongly than I do, pro-war Russian hardliners were embarassed and disappointed by the handling of the Ukraine war. His views are a vital insight from the other side of the curtain.
Currently, the Russian front is propped up by an unusual mixture: PMC Wagner mercenaries (the Russian version of US’ Blackwater), coupled with Russian-speaking Ukrainian Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LNR) citizens who are reportedly under-equipped, paired with Russian soldier volunteers, a mixture of volunteer troops from Belarus, Chechnya, and even Syria, who are being supplied Russian military equipment.
Naturally, such a mismash collection of - effectively, volunteers and mercenaries - an army does not make. Putin’s response to Ukraine pushing back in Kharkov - admittedly obscured by the difficulties of machine translation into English - seemed oddly lacklusture and passive:
"The "special operation" plan is not subject to adjustment, operational decisions are being made along the way, the main goal is the liberation of Donbass, the offensive operation does not stop there, but we are not in a hurry."
It is kinda like a Joe Biden-esque denial of ‘there is no problem here, no I won’t change my mind’.
Rather than going ‘maybe I might want to send some extra equipment, troops’, Putin has a sort of Laissez-faire ‘we’ll just watch and see what happens’, as if Russian-speaking civilian lives aren’t on the line:
"The Kyiv authorities have announced a counteroffensive, let's see how it ends. Flag in hand."
If I was to give my own, unqualified opinion of the Russian government psyche, it seems to be they thought they could slap down Ukraine with their pinky finger (the so-called ‘Special Military Operation’; some mercenaries, volunteers) and then be home for tea.
The fact it hasn’t happened seems to be a bit of a cut to their ego (‘how could puny Ukraine be doing anything to us?’) and there seems to be a sense of denial on Russia’s part. To admit they need more supplies and troops would be to implicitly admit Ukraine is winning against Russia’s “pinky finger”. Putin even re-emphases the ‘pinky finger’ part as if that is any consolation to the Russian-speaking civilians:
"Russia is fighting in Ukraine not with the whole army, but only with the contract part."
Putin does not seem to be acknowledging the absurd amounts of money and equipment and ‘volunteers’ - everything and the kitchen sink - being thrown into Ukraine by the US and Europe. In-fact, Russia have only just recently acknowledged the fact Germany is complicit in sending Ukraine weapons.
The very fact that the Ukrainian regime is being supplied with German-made lethal weapons, which are used not only against Russian military service members, but also the civilian population of Donbass, crosses the red line
For everyone else, given the endless public declarations of sending weapons to Ukraine by Germany, their involvement was known since February. Why is Russia mentioning it now?
This is likely due to the Kharkov counter-offensive succeeding and they’re quietly angry. Russia’s military reputation - bragging how easy Ukraine would be to beat - is going to take a dent from this, even if the victory by Ukraine is temporary and comes at the cost of Europe’s crashing energy markets and America running out of ammo.
Fourth Loser: Ukraine
In the midst of this, it is easy to forget the Ukrainian people themselves, being exploited by NATO as a boxing glove sockpuppet to engage in RAND Corporation ‘bleed Russia dry’ underhandedness. As mentioned, the CBS report on 60-70% of equipment not arriving on the frontlines as mismanagement plagues the Ukrainian military.
Over 5 million Ukrainians were turned into homeless refugees, whilst Zelensky posed for Vogue magazine photoshoots. The Daily Beagle detailed the rampant corruption within the Ukrainian government that makes the US government look reserved in comparison.
In West Ukraine, Ukrainians face conscription (‘subpeonas’), in East Ukraine, Ukrainians already faced conscription. If Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine don’t get Russian passports, they can’t get any Russian money and they starve. But if they do get passports, they face jail from the Ukrainian government instead.
‘Join us or we kill you’ versus ‘join us or you die’ are not valid nor fair options. Meanwhile, the US sees Ukrainians as disposable pawns, to be tossed into the fire “until the last Ukrainian”. There won’t be a Ukraine left if they’re all dead.
Prior to the Ukrainian pushback in Kharkov, even the Guardian admitted back in June that Ukraine were suffering high casualties - estimated at 20,000 a month, for a war that started back in February - roughly 7 to 8 months - roughly 140,000 to 160,000 deaths. During this, Ukraine were forced to adopt WEF proposals.
With destroyed infrastructure, a torn country at war with portions of itself as multiple superpowers use it as a military testing playground, Ukraine, along with Russia, America and Europe, is just one more loser in this conga line.
Ultimately, though…
Final Loser: The Public
Civilians are the real losers regardless of which country you look at. Russian civilians are banned from visiting other countries, sports tournaments, and more as Europe engages in petty retaliation.
American taxpayers are paying out at a time of extreme financial hardship, if not in tax then in the unaffordability of goods, as their own get shipped overseas to prop up Europe.
Europeans are paying out for extortionate bills for a war they never even voted on, dragged into either freezing to death or paying eyewatering sums of cash. Ukrainians are exploited as pawns by all sides to be moved about like a human version of checkers.
Meanwhile energy companies see profits as costs go up but supplies go down, weapons manufacturers make ‘stonks’ on bids, politicians’ stocks and shares go up, as the standard of living goes down much to the eagerness of the WEF in Ukraine.
In war, everybody loses, except for the rich.
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China and the WEF are winning as Germany is de-industrialized with the CCP becoming the ascendant monopoly on manufacturing control courtesy of Russia.
This is a CCP-WEF-SCO Op.