Radio War Nerd Episode #353 — Ukraine War Update: Escape From Kherson
Recorded: November 15, 2022
Nine months into Russia's disastrous war on Ukraine, we try making sense of Putin's strategy as Russian forces abandon Kherson and the right bank of the Dniepr, just weeks after Putin declared Kherson was "forever" part of Russia. Defeat & failure, somehow we always wind up on those themes.
Total time: 1:31:21
Comments (44)
Dolan failed to mention his Bernie guy admonished those recalcitrant dems for daring to demand peace in Ukraine.
Look, Bernie is the best politician the U.S. can produce right now at the national level. He still totally sucks in a ton of different ways, especially on foreign policy, but at least he champions improvements to our dismal health care system. Politics in the United States are fucked up, sorry.
Nato wierdo? LoL. The former east was *always* going to end up as foreign labor in the European Museum, because demographics and poverty.
The increase in Ukrainian resistance after the savagery of the Russian occupation was "unexpected" LoL. In reality, there is going to be no real trials and no real way to get the criminals responsible- ultimately showing the Western Concept of retribution for war criminals to be hollow indeed- just look at the level of cruelty and craziness in Mexico and it has been going now for decades?
Geez, the atrocities are real, because the Russians consider everyone with a cell phone a potential resistance fighter for calling in artillery. Which they do. The detailed f#cking torture and burials are beyond anything we imagine in our safe world. KIlling people with sledgehammers and torture is a lovely way to fight for hearts and minds. Meanwhile, Gaslighting our stupid media is an easy target- some of it is imagined, but so much is beyond stupid.
Allen M Really thinks that Qaddafi was giving his troops viagra to rape ppl. Pretty sure forcefully conscripting your entire population so you have well rested troops that can keep switching while the other side is using the same tired troops has more to do with it. Than and an unlimited weapons budget and western intelligence. Did you forget the ethnic cleansing you NATO weirdos were backing before this war started? Not saying it justifies it but you’re way too insane to be smug. Neither side has to capacity for a total win and this will drag down both economies. Ukraine will sell off its industrial capacity to pay back the weapons lent to them. Expect a foreign labor worker economy.
Ukraine is a graveyard of common sense. Love you guys, have been listening from nearly very beginning, even met in person. You’ve been doing a great job across centuries and geographies … until this war started. If you could just say, “we will not cover Ukraine leaving it to others because it’s impossible for us to be objective”, that would have served you well. Instead of a cold logical analysis of the events we get a psychoanalysis of the worst kind - Mark reading Putin’s mind. I understand it’s entertaining, a little bit, but it sounds more like astrology. I don’t understand how you were able to get Syria so well, yet get Ukraine so poorly. Mark, I get it that Putin closed your paper, though he likely is completely unaware of that, but it’s time to let it go - it was 15 years ago! You keep saying how disastrous this war has been for Russia, but mostly make emotionally charged arguments to support this claim. Isn’t it well established by now that Ukraine planned a massive attack on Donbass in mid-March early April, as their ticket to NATO? Didn’t they originally plan that for April 2021? Didn’t the State Department create a “tiger team Ukraine” in September-October 2021? Didn’t F-the-EU Nuland visit Moscow then (they had to remove her from the no-entry list temporarily) and demand from Russian MoFA to stop the support of DNR/LNR, allegedly cursing in Russian in the process? Didn’t AFU start artillery prep on February 16th, as was reported day by day by the OSCE? If the attack on Donbass of the accumulated 160K-180K AFU forces was inevitable, Russia faced two bad options - let it happen or hit preemptively. The first case would obviously let them overrun the 50K or so of LDNR troops, cause mass civilian casualties in the cities, and lead to urban warfare where Russian firepower superiority would only cause higher losses, both military and civilian. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Steven Cohen predicted the war, so did Mearsheimer, so did many others. Yet you present it as if it’s just Putin got carried away with himself. You quoted Limonov in a very creative way, and completely omitted him predicting back in 1992 that this war would inevitably happen. Even shortly before his death he was saying, “take back Kharkov, and Northern Kazakhstan while at it.” Instead of psychoanalyzing Putin, friend of the show Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate interviewed Jeffrey Sachs who explained very succinctly what is going on and why. His explanation is consistent both internally and with the Syria story. You for some reason completely forgot White Helmets and eagerly took the B***a story at face value, before any facts were presented about it. As if you wanted to believe it. I’m sorry, but “atrocities happen in wars” doesn’t cut as an honest justification for such an eager belief. Isn’t it clear by now which side commits atrocities, and even brags about them, and which is actually trying to minimize civilian losses? By the way, Sachs was very clear about who bombed the pipelines. 94% of Germans think it was the U.S. Only Mark believes that it’s Putin’s 4D chess despite a complete absence of logic. It is somewhat understandable that the blowup of pipelines can trigger a cognitive dissonance if one believes in the unprovoked attack on European elves by the Asiatic orcs. You keep talking about the disastrous attack on Kiev in the beginning of the war as if that’s the only explanation of what happened. The professional view of Van Riper’s group is quite different - [https://www.imetatronink.com/2022/08/a-former-us-marine-corps-officers.html](https://www.imetatronink.com/2022/08/a-former-us-marine-corps-officers.html). I’m not saying they are right. But such a view at least is worth a discussion. Ulysses Grant saying that the objective of the war is to destroy enemy’s army - genius. Russian military command trading empty square kilometers of steppe for tens of thousands of AFU losses - stupid Asiatic hordes. Do you not see these contradictions in your own words? “I don’t understand what Russian are doing at this point.” Well, AFU and NATO are nearly out of Soviet heavy equipment. NATO is scraping the bottom of their own artillery, MLRSs, Javelins, Stingers, and, worst of all, 155mm shells. They have no industrial capacity to produce even 5% of what is being used. Demilitarization of NATO is happening in front of our eyes. Yet you are somehow not seeing it. While Russian AD keeps shooting 80%-90% of MLRP and supersonic ballistic (Tochka-U) missiles, NATO AD is pretty much non-existent. The emperor’s got really good new clothes. I was surprised you didn’t know where Bayraktars went. Did you not know that they are only useful against an enemy with no AD? But then you had an “expert” - Sam Bendett - who claimed that AFU shoots done 75% (?) of Shahed-136s? And you didn’t laugh at his number, come on! In general, your guests on Ukraine episodes were mediocre, I’m sorry. Except Seth Harp who only talked (and wrote) about what he saw and didn’t see. Seth is great. Please, please stop covering Ukraine. You are not doing a good job about it, sorry. Please cover the rest of history and locations, as you’ve been doing so well for years, just leave this one alone. I’m begging you. With love and appreciation of the rest of your work.
Chomsky recently used the following quote in an interview: “The “utter corruption” of the media, Fuller writes, is one of the most disturbing features of the current crisis: “In the midst of a virulent anti-Russian propaganda barrage whose likes I have never seen during my Cold Warrior days, serious analysts must dig deep these days to gain some objective understanding of what is actually taking place in Ukraine.” ( https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-humanity-faces-two-existential-threats-one-is-nearly-ignored/ ) I don’t think RWN have realised exactly how deep this “utter corruption” in the MSM goes. I’ve never seen such a barrage of lies in the western MSM in my 50 years. Russia’s killing its own supporters in Ukraine in places like B***, Russia’s shelling its own nuclear power plant, its own pipelines, its own troops. Russia is supposedly “deliberately targeting civilians” and then after a barrage of dozens of missiles they report 2 or 3 civilian deaths, as this is not clearly evidence of precisely the opposite of their claim. This nonsense is being reported not just without any evidence, without any critical analysis but against all reason and common sense. It’s a complete collapse of the intellectual authority of bourgeois, but previously generally reliable outlets like the NYT, the Guardian etc. Yes, they gave credence to the propaganda lies when necessary (e.g., lies about Iraqi WMD) but there was always space for critical voices. No more, as John Pilger laments in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9pEotvlW-s&ab_channel=SouthChinaMorningPost I’m also coming from a place of deep appreciation of RWN’s work, and I feel bad about how things have turned out, as I was one of the people asking for RWN to start covering Ukraine more. However, I don’t think RWN should stop talking about this, I think they should take Chomsky’s advice and “dig deep these days to gain some objective understanding of what is actually taking place in Ukraine.” Interview some people with radically different views to you and hash it out for example.
They'd fight the khokhols two to one who only fought for boo-oo-ty, but when the ukrops came along it was "legs, do your duty"
I have not listened to this episode just yet. But i personally wanted to tell you that “POILU”. Is the best primary account of conflict I think I have ever read . Thank you for the amazing content and recommendations. Hope this finds you well
Wow that was a great episode. Really leaned into the RWN "wheelhouse": - Exile era Russia stories - Limonov - Irony of western elites - Harsh reality check: Admitting Russia is FUCKING LOSING this war bad - Bringing it back home for some dumb ass American antics (Q-Anon)
Dunno what you guys think of Jeffrey Sachs, but I think itd be cool if you interview him. Certainly has some heterodox views these days and knows a lot about history.
I have really mixed feelings about Sachs, generally negative. He's been very eloquent for a pedigreed academic speaking some shocking truths on Occupy and the Syria war. But he's got this weird giant brain worm when it comes to his culpability in fucking up Russia (and the world) with his shock therapy reforms that he hustled. I've had a brief back and forth about that and he absolutely refuses to take any responsibility for it and places all the blame on the US and West for not accompanying his shock therapy reforms with hundreds of billions of dollars in aid.
I love when Mark starts talking about Limonov, Nemstov, etc
The Russians (Or I guess the LPR/DPR/Wagner) are still on the offensive and take smaller towns and villages, it's just they're going real slow and all of their offensive momentum is aimed at two heavily fortified towns. The Russians say they're ready for this war to last years, but god only knows how true that actually is. Edit: I wouldn't say "Putin had no choice" but I do think the West did everything they could to make sure he only had bad choices in front of him; last year Zelensky started yammering about invading Crimea and Russia wanted to talk to NATO about solving this Donbass shitstorm, and NATO just stonewalled and told them no. Not even talking. That's my understanding of events from the 2nd half of 2021 onwards, but if I'm wrong then I'm fine being corrected.
54:10 Here's another theory why "nobody's really talking about [Ukraine] anymore, nobody's really celebrating" the retaking of Kherson. Yes, Mark, it is a bummer, but for the opposite reason to what you said. I am speaking here as an American liberal, a registered Democrat who reads the Guardian and supports Ukraine. Ukraine may have gained a little territory, but the people of Ukraine are losing. Their infrastructure is in ruins due to the Russian air campaign. Their economy is, what, a third its previous size? Tens of thousands of civilians will die this winter. There is nothing to celebrate, and in the big picture, no good news. Ukraine will not "win": it cannot retake Luhansk within a year's time, let alone Crimea, in any conceivable future. Any further reporting on Ukraine only reminds me that the people I cheered and supported will be slowly killed off by artillery, drone strikes, cold or starvation – because I cheered and supported them. Meanwhile, our allies in Europe are screwed too, as a result of their choice to commit to supporting Ukraine. There's no cause to be anything but depressed, and so I'm more and more likely to tune out.
It's almost like the Ukrainian people are incidental to this conflict, and maybe comfortable Western liberals should be forced to experience a taste of the hardship they've been dishing out to the rest of the world since the dawn of the liberal era. Maybe then they'd stop creating the context for atrocities like this to happen all over the world all the time. Not ragging on you personally, Lojban Chauvinist. It's just very depressing to think that all of this could have been avoided if the West hadn't spent a century or so fucking around and finding out all over the world, and now some of those chickens are coming home to roost.
"The worst thing that happened Jan 6 is someone dared to touch a LEO" If by touch you mean 'gouge out the eye of and sever a finger' haha. My thinking is that if far right nationalists can mutilate officers and actually succeed in the murder of elected officials in the seat of elite power (which is what they bragged about on camera) the civil war is officially go because who could keep municipal leaders alive under an invigorated fascist insurgency. But that's just my take
I remember one of the earlier episodes this year where RWN compared the bumbling initial Russian actions in most wars versus the later carefully planned redos. That was a great prediction. This war, Ru's opponent seems too motivated and well supplied to get defeated by a second Ru offensive, but who knows?
it's anybody's guess, because from what I can tell, UKR is taking much higher losses than the russians, but they have a larger army. With the power grid steadily collapsing and the RUS force more or less tripling in size by January, I have no idea how long UKR can hold on. Word is that Germany's lack of constant warfare has left them ill-prepared to repair PzH2000s as they break down, among other things that are constantly spun out of the internet
I live in Emilia Romagna and it’s cold as hell but there are still those damn midges! All my work colleagues are baffled. I feel your pain John
No I was being dramatic. If I remember correctly they were saying something about Russia being split into 9 parts. My main impression was just how defeated they were in their attitude
The RWA guys ha ha. After the Kherson withdrawal: Well I guess we are pieces of shit...Russia will be broken up and divided now but it's probably better that way... I know Mark and John RWN dont align politically with RWA but damn if there was a show together I think it would work for the comedy very well....who can be the most doomer....that would be so interesting but it would have to be a free flowing discussion perhaps best aided by alcohol
You’re being a little dramatic with what the RWA guys said on the Kherson sit -rep episode. Or perhaps I missed what you mentioned? Have any time stamps?
It's like listening to an Atlantic Council podcast
I was going to say something to disagree with you, but then I got distracted by wondering what exactly an "Atlantic Council podcast" would actually sound like. Who would the hosts be? Would they have music breaks? If so, what kind of music? There are probably podcasts that could be described as mouthpieces for various interests aligned with the Atlantic Council, or at least who accurately represent that viewpoint, but now I'm wondering what it would be like if The Blob just had its own podcast. Like, would they disseminate propaganda? Or would they reveal the truth about certain incidents throughout history they were involved in, to sort of give curious people a peek behind the curtain? Like, "In this episode, we interview the shooters who did the Euromaidan false flag operation." Or "This is Part 3 of our series on 'How the Saudis and the W. Bush Administration Did 9/11 and We Covered Up Their Involvement,' with our guests Brace and Liz from the TrueAnon podcast."
I appreciated Mark's discussion around US/EU's subjugation and enslavement of The Ukraine as a land of cheap labor and regulation-free money laundering. (The US Trade Rep was just pushing for more Ukrainian labor law "reform".) Add to that picture of paradise: The Ukraine will also be a free-fire weapons bazaar and maybe even an open air bioweapons research lab. Hard to imagine that anyone in Russia or Belarus will wish this fate. I don't imagine anyone is going to emerge as undisputed champion from this 8 year old conflict, a la the US in 1945. But one point of comparison now would be: Russia's economy is likely to contract 4-5% this year, while The Ukraine's is contracting over 30%. Over time, it's going to be difficult to convince Europeans that EU/NATO membership for Kiev and inviolate Ukrainian statehood are worth steep continent-wide economic decline and mass impoverishment, the end of the welfare state, international refugee crises, the appearance of $billions of untracked NATO-gifted weapons across Europe (perhaps in violent attacks), explicit subjugation and humiliation of Europe to a dysfunctional US, scandal and corruption galore, and the spiraling threats of broader conventional and even nuclear war as Kiev's carnival barkers grow evermore desperate. I take back the original point, partially, perhaps. Some people say China will come out on top of the Russia-US/NATO/Ukraine conflict.
Nah... I think NATO is winning. None of the bad stuff affects the United States' ruling class, and they're getting pretty much what they want. From NATO's perspective, that's all that matters.
On another note - not really true that Ukraine is fighting as the poorest nation in Europe if the military resources available to it far exceed what Russia can pay for.
yeah, I have to wonder if we're judging this war based on the idea that blitzkrieg is the only way to properly do a war. So far all I hear from the Russian side is how they're "in it for the long haul" and Putin claimed in August that they hadn't made a hard commitment yet. Ukraines' last mobilization wave was drawing from women and 45+ men while Russia has only called up another 300,000 so far(assuming what I get from the internet isn't 100% psyops). If this is the best Ukraine can do after 9 months fighting an overstretched army, how will they fare when the rest are fully integrated? Another thing I don't see people talk about is how the USA is basically the only country on earth that can actually wage war the way they do, given that we consume 30% of our entire species' resources. Maybe we have to use something other than MOOSEMUSS to understand the Russian mindset on this.
Re: blitzkrieg: It's the military version of being a technocrat - "this combination of planes, tanks, and missiles should perfectly overwhelm the enemy in the shortest amount of time." Seems little different to the rhetoric about "targeted reforms" and the like. It is an excellent point, though, that the only country to wage large scale conflicts over the last two or three decades is the US and what they think influences most of the top militaries of the world. A giant "groupthink" trap basically
Curious about your take on Ukraine's missile to Poland and Zelensky being called out for lying about it.
Mark Ames on Twitter says: "Far as I know, those 2 Poles accidentally killed by the Ukrainian S300 missile are the first Poles killed by Ukrainian armed forces since the UPA and the Waffen SS Ukrainian 14th Grenadier Division exterminated over 100,000 ethnic Poles & thousands of Polish Jews in 1943-44." So, Mark says it's an accident and with 1/50,000th of the lethality of the last Ukrainian-Polish interaction.
What Russian Federation did in the beginning was nothing like what USA does for "shock and awe". No blowing up power plants, sewage treatment plants, water supply infrastructure, food distribution infrastructure/warehouses. No blowing up civil infrastructure?!
I remember facing black flies while doing fieldwork in the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire during late October. It was me and one other undergrad tromping through acres to locate 18 marked trees for sampling. Maybe an 7h endeavor. Neither of us knew there would be flies and so we had no protection. By the end we were passing into insanity. Hooting and gasping through our teeth at 3 second intervals. That's too close to torture for me.
I read papers about fluvial geomorphology and riparian vegetation from Hubbard Brook when I was a geography undergrad. I never visited myself, though.
From what I gather the Russians are trying to hold the line while they reorg and rearm for a war-ending campaign. Ukraine appears to be suffering from terrific casualties and huge losses in material which, despite the billions being promised, are not easily replenished. Rumors are that the French army has 4 days of ammunition on hand. The west has now become concerned about how many military resources are being used up by Ukraine. Russia kind of has all the time in the world to accomplish their next step - Ukraine is the country that's suffering from energy blackouts and a lack of basically everything. The economies of the West are the ones really suffering. Russia is getting what it needed - in fact Japan was just reported to have huge increases in sales of medical supplies and computer chips, etç, to Russia in the last quarter, iirc. Russia is making gains in Donetsk, pushing to the administrative borders but it's not hundreds of kilometers. They will have close to 700,000 soldiers (line + support) to bring to bear on a significantly weaker Ukraine which will be short on men (despite mercs from Romania and Poland), material, and morale, after freezing for several months in the famous Russian winter. Fucking stupid that I have to say this but I'm not a "Russia fan" either. Ignore easily gathered facts if you want to - you don't even have to believe any of this. It literally doesn't matter. This is a story that fits the 'facts' such as can be known
I don't know... The western 'democracies' can ignore public opinion more easily than Russia, and they seem like they're happy to accept any consequences in exchange for continuing the war, possibly up to and including the end of the world. And casualties are a funny thing, as has been noted many times before on RWN. Generally speaking, as long as the people are willing to keep fighting, they can absorb seemingly catastrophic losses of life without losing effectiveness as an army. And I don't know if 'undermanned' means anything against the Russian military anyway, which doesn't appear to actually have any soldiers except on paper. It really seems to me like the harder things get for the Ukrainian people (the ones who haven't fled, anyway) the more it will steel their resolve. All they have to do is continue to demonstrate to their western backers that they're a good investment and they should receive at least enough weapons to fight a defensive war. The Russians get to pick when and where they attack, but they really don't seem to have a lot going for them. They can't blockade Ukraine, their morale is terrible, their leadership is totally incompetent from top to bottom, the Ukrainians seem to have way better intelligence... And if they do take territory, so what? Do things get better for them if the Ukrainians transition to an insurgency strategy? Honestly I feel like at this point Putin's best bet would be to stage a coup d'etat, fake his own death, and appear to the public wearing a fake mustache disguise as "President Bladomir Rutin" and announce that the former regime's disastrous war will end immediately. I still don't understand what he was hoping to accomplish by invading Ukraine in the first place.
This war fully fits the Gibson Paradigm of the Jackpot- a disaster war yet to be followed by a peace that might end up even worse for both Russia and Ukraine. And Russia might just end up destroyed by this war that is fast turning into a morass that makes Afghanistan look like a walk in the park.
It was objectively the correct decision to make from a tactical point of view and they seem to have taken very few losses during the retreat, but it closes off likely forever any chance of taking Odessa. The war is effectively lost. What a tremendous waste in lives
I am curious how the radio war nerd pro russian commenters is going to cope now.
Nobody is pro-Russia you freak. Pro-peace. We don’t want you freaks using Ukraine as a weapons testing lab.
Something something mao lose land keep men, retake land
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