A quick update on my blogroll links. Gone are Larry Johnson and Andrei Martyanov. The former because once a CIA spook then always a CIA spook. The latter because while he does occasionally have interesting insights, for the most part his over the top rah-rah all things Russia have just got boring and inconsequential.
Added to the list is Gilbert Doctorow, who has I think has some of the best balanced and informed commentary on world affairs specialising in Russia and the Middle East.
His piece today on the ongoing saga in Kursk is a great example of this.
Klintsevich’s commentary lays the foundation for a dramatic Russian escalation of the proxy war into a hot war threatening to become WWIII. Why? Because the so-called Zelensky gambit in Kursk is fully enabled by the United States and its NATO allies, using skills, satellite and airborne reconnaissance, command and control resources in real time that are superior to anything the Russians possess. It also has Western including U.S. boots on the ground. And in conditions like this, the disadvantaged side faces a strong temptation to go for the great equalizer, nuclear arms, to defend itself and to assure its victory.
In other words, with the assault by Ukraine into the state of Kursk, the nations of NATO and the combined West have invaded Russia. As far as I know, nobody is talking about this. WWIII is right around the corner.
Klintsevich has further intimated that the two U.S. aircraft carriers and their escorts now in the Eastern Mediterranean may be there not to contain Iran but for an all-out attack on Russia using their jets to deliver nuclear strikes. I add to his analysis that this may explain the knock-out of Russia’s early warning radar stations in the south of the country by Ukrainian drones acting on orders from Washington.
So far, the Russian response to these gathering storm clouds has been two days in succession of massive missile and drone attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine. But let us not have any illusions: if the Russians sense that the United States is about to pounce on them, to use the assets in Ukraine and beyond not just against Russian planes, which have been moved back beyond the 900 km range of the JASSM and Storm Shadows, but on critical civilian infrastructure to disable the war effort, then a preventive Russian attack on NATO, on the continental United States. not to mince words, is entirely conceivable.
If the world had a lick of sense it would be holding its breath right about now.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
