SITREP 9/24/24: PR Tour Sours as Ukraine’s Lackluster ‘Victory Plan’ Met with Doubts – Simplicius
Wed 7:52 am +01:00, 25 Sep 2024 Israel continues to pummel Lebanon, proving itself to be the only country in the world that can literally bomb and invade all of its neighbors at will without serious international consequences. Note I said consequences, not ‘condemnation’. There’s plenty of the latter to go around, but it doesn’t lead to anything tangible because all global institutions are co-opted, captured, and compromised by the Hydra, and as such only pay lip service to tragedies perpetrated by their clients and masters alike. Isn’t it interesting how—just to take one small example of many—the Chess world’s FIDE organization has banned not only Russia but even Belarus merely as offhand accomplice, yet Israel, for an actual holocaust it’s committing on its neighbors, has not been banned. The same goes for the Olympics, EuroVision, and other contests; it’s quite incredible when you think about it. What has Belarus done that is worse than an actual holocaust being perpetrated by Israel? I noted last time that I don’t foresee much being done from the Resistance axis, and there continue to be signals that this reading is accurate. One of the most notable signs of this is the rather startling news that Iranian Masoud Pezeshkian has suddenly taken a very pro-Western approach in the hopes of easing tensions. This was most poignantly demonstrated when he appeared to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the UN podium: The problem: Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi immediately refuted the above quote attributed to the president, claiming it’s fake:
What to believe? There are other reports like this one, though take it with a heavy grain of salt: Now there’s a controversial video going around of a Mideast commentator explaining this puzzling situation. I’m not saying he’s definitively right—thus the controversy part—but he could be making some good points: What he explains is that Iran is more concerned with fortifying its directly-regional influence, particularly in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, rather than expending all its resources on a fight with Israel, which is not its top priority. It’s a little contradictory because Israel is in fact central to the Syrian situation, given that it is Israel chiefly destroying Iranian assets with strikes as a major barb in Iran’s side there. However, he may be right in a more generalized sense of Iran not being keen to shift its weight entirely to the Israeli situation, which plays again into the ‘long game’ I mentioned. However, that’s not to say Iran has “abandoned Russia” or back-stabbed it. Most likely these are just signals Iran is sending to convey that it is ready to ease tensions with the US. One gets the feeling that the US and Iran have a mutual understanding behind Israel’s back that Israel wants to pull them both into an undesirable war against each other. For instance, Shoigu just left Iran recently, where he met with the president himself and signed a major deal. The latest is likely Iran’s need to appear ‘consistent’ in its call for peace—after all, one cannot with a straight face call for peace in Palestine-Lebanon while ostensibly supporting the Ukraine war. At least that’s my read of the situation, for now—but with new information, things could change. Furthermore, Reuters now reports that Iran has brokered secret talks between Russia and the Houthis, to transfer anti-ship missiles, which allegedly could include the P-800, or Yakhont export version:
What we’ve been saying all along: This of course would be a nightmare for the US, which regime media had previously reported with great trepidation:
Here’s one final interesting analysis:
— In the meantime, the US is sending troops ‘just in case’: And in line with our last report, Israel has threatened that if the current track does not return fleeing Israelis back to the north, then a ground operation in Lebanon will be considered: This confirms what we wrote last time: that the surface-level justification behind the ongoing strikes is to keep Israel’s economy from collapsing due to the uprooting of workers from the agriculturally-important northern regions. By the way, while sending troops to the region, the aging US fleet highlighted a major problem when its only Navy oiler in the region was knocked out of commission:
On the Ukraine front, Zelensky has begun his grand tour by speaking at the UN and presenting his long-awaited [war is] peace plan. Unfortunately, it fell on dubious ears as officials were already quite skeptical and underwhelmed: It didn’t help that his messaging was totally confused, with Zelensky repeatedly calling for more “war” in order to create “peace”, as per usual NATO doublespeak: His grand “peace plan” was described by allies as merely a “wishlist”, with nothing ground-breaking presented. That’s not to mention the wishes themselves are all unrealistic. Increasingly, Zelensky appears convinced the end is near for him. Almost everything out of his mouth has switched gears to the war coming to an end.
The front is going catastrophically, with major Russian advances continuing day by day. Ugledar is now close to falling and the latest ‘rumor’ is that Zelensky has instructed his commanders to postpone Ugledar’s fall at any cost at least until the end of the UN dog-and-pony show. Zelensky merely requires that he not be ‘humiliated’ with the fall of such a key city during his big public PR tour, as it would lend itself toward deflating any last remaining hopes for the AFU’s prospects. Unfortunately, that postponement is costing lives, with bad reports streaming out of Ugledar from the Ukrainian side. At present, Ugledar looks like this, and Russian forces have now entered the city proper from the eastern dachas side: It appears it’s mere hours from falling, with reports of mass surrenders already happening as shown above—but we’ll see. Big Ukrainian sources believe the AFU may soon pull out from several large, key city-centers, which would be a devastating moral blow: The problem is, the lines are buckling everywhere, including the north: Ukrainian reserve officer and analyst Tatarigami is despondent: A Ukrainian unit even wrote an urgent public appeal:
It goes as follows:
— A new WaPo article again confirms what we’ve been writing for weeks—read very carefully: — Now Zelensky has announced that Russia plans to target the last three remaining Ukrainian nuclear plants this winter at the UN, not withholding from implicating China for good measure—that’s what good will’s for, after all! Having just sent up its latest Kondor-FKA advanced spy satellite last week, Russia apparently still needs ‘Chinese satellites’ for the gig. In light of this, Zelensky met with a host of “corporate executives”and USAID’s Samantha Powers to bolt together some kind of plan for Ukraine to ‘survive winter’.
This brings to fore the big question of what exactly will be the game plan for the Ukraine narrative the next few months, now that it’s pretty much a done deal that Zelensky’s big “peace plan” tour will be another huge disappointing failure, like all those vaunted NATO summits before it. The Ukrainian state and its military runs on the fumes of scheduled morale-boosting spectacles which are ever on the horizon and seem to always promise some big game-changing policy “soon to come”. But now that the current one will end a failure, and Ukraine faces a disastrous winter with disastrous current ongoing developments, it’s hard to imagine what new gimmick they’ll use to sell the public on a continuation of the war over the next few months. We can only assume the big “long range strikes” gag will be drawn out a little more, to buy Ukraine another month or two of false hope, but then what? According to the above, Zelensky was hoping to create a kind of peer pressure campaign to merely browbeat Russia into acceding to talks. But both Lavrov and Peskov again released new statements reaffirming that Russia has nothing to talk about with Ukraine, and that all Russia’s goals will be achieved in the SMO. What he’s saying is, either Ukraine surrenders and accedes to Russia’s demands, or whether Russia takes those demands by continued military force, either way the objectives will be met. The only thing one can think of is Ukraine attempting more big PR hits, like taking down the Kerch Bridge to tide the morale over for the next few months. — Legitimny channel reports the following about Ukraine’s potential use of long-range NATO missiles in Russia:
Food for thought. Meanwhile, controversial Rada MP Mariana Bezuglaya says Russia plans five major ‘bridgeheads’ for this fall, including Zaporozhye city, Dnipro, Kharkov, Kherson, and Sumy: — All the while British yellowpress continues shoveling slop to its glaze-eyed audience: — I’ll leave you with these thoughts from Russian analyst Older Eddy:
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