What game is the US playing?
Chess and Go
The SMO is just a battle in a larger war.
It is playing out as military chess, with pieces are taken off the board one at a time. The “pieces” are military assets of different kinds — fortified towns, weapons, infrastructure, and military formations. A very big board, a lot of pieces. The battle is over when the Kiev regime is checkmated
Beyond this battle is the War— against the American empire. It is a different strategy game — is more like the Japanese game of Go (Chinese Wei Chi).
Go is about territory and domains of control (or so I am told).
So we see the Russians building alliances worldwide, domains free from the hegemon. It is strategic, like chess, but much more subtle and requires a different mind set.
Putin, as you know, is an Orientalist. But as a Russian, he is grounded in both universes—West —and East .
The Ukrainian Game goes on
The Russian advance continues inexorably in Donetsk, while Ukrainian forces in Kursk are dismembered, surrounded and destroyed.
As I predicted when the Kursk operation started, this incursion was military suicide for the Ukrainian Army — although the fault really lies with NATO advisors.
By the end of the operation, Ukrainians will have lost 20,000 men-- two thirds of their forces in the sector. Kiev is losing more and more pieces on the grand battle board.
Right now the official casualty rate is just over 13,000, according to the Russian MoD The Russian MoD is conservative. It does notk, for example, count casualties caused by 3000 kg bombs which blow Ukrainian soldiers into small pieces—they count only more or less intact bodies. So at this moment the real number of casualties is probably closer to 15,000.
Russian losses? Less than 1/10th. No more than 1000.
In the Donetsk, the UAF, weakened by transfer of its best brigades to Kursk, is losing almost everywhere.
Chasov Yar, a critical logistics center, is about to fall.
As is the logistics center Provosk—and the UAF's linchpin base in Southern Donetsk, Ugledar. Taking these towns is not about “territory”— that's a different game — it's about removing pieces from the board, like knights or rooks, or bishops.
Once these centers fall, the RuAF have a lot of options for continued advance.
Ukraine's Maginot Grid (as I call it) is a web of fortifications connected logistically. Besides being a war of attrition, therefore, this is also a war of logistics.
For this reason the Russians have what amounts to several armies, that is, military formations, each tasked with securing a different area and and cutting lines of support and communications, isolating the nodes of the grid.
Group Forces North and probably the Chechens are driving the remnants of Ukrainian forces back to Sumy— and will perhaps take that city. Sumy is also an important logistics center.
Kharkov is a very big city – so the Russians would be smart to avoid attacking it and opt for securing the area and cutting lines of communications and transport.
To the south, the Russians have a fresh army of 130,000 if they want to cross the Dniepr in Kherson and take Kherson City—just a hop, skip and jump from Mykolaiv and Odessa, which are big cities and can only be taken by cutting lines of supply and putting them under siege. To do that you need to take a lot more pieces off the board.
Checkmate?
This requires destroying the military potential of Western Ukraine. Destroying equipment, starving UAF forces of supply , and of course killing soldiers. Maybe even accelerating demographic changes.
A population that once welcomed the neo-Nazis is down from 42 million to just 19 million. Further defeats, air strikes and a cold winter should see massive migration to the West Western Ukraine, so population numbers could be reduced even more.
But Putin cannot get what he wants by just wiping out all the pawns. He must liberate the occupied territories, at the same time allowing the NeoNazis to show their true colors and discredit themselves, exposing the really important pieces.
What happens after checkmate?
While Zelinski sips cocktails with his Hollywood friends, Ukrainians who remain in Kiev and other cities will just want their lives back now that the American dream has turned out to be a nightmare, and Europe has proven itself decadent and incapable. Everything they were told turned out to be a lie. And the cemeteries are full.
Ukraine has enormous debt, with foreign companies having invested heavily in the country.
As the Grayzone reports, Zelensky has literally sold Ukraine to Blackrock.
Failure of the Ukrainian state is a kind of Debt Jubilee. Suddenly the country will be debt free. That's billions and billions of dollars-- or rubles or yuan. The Blackrock deal will be dead.
Economically, it will be a new beginning for a new Ukraine. A new kind of game— although I am nor sure what kind.
Russia can offer those who remain in Western Ukraine a better future such as the the life that people in Russia are now enjoying . The West can offer them only poverty and death.
It is clear therefore that Putin does not want victory too fast since he doesn't want negotiations that would inevitably leave the West with a foothold in a debt ridden rump state, with Washington waiting for an opportunity to start round two.
As I said, Ukraine is the Battle — the US is the War. And a different game. This one is about territory — or territories — economic and diplomatic. It is the US against the world.
In January 2025, the US will have to deal with the very very different geopolitical and and economic situation. Not just Ukraine and the Middle East but BRICS. deindustrialization, debt, governance. What will happen? It's obvious.
The country lost the game a long time ago and didn’t know.
For the Record
I am the world's worst chess player so I shouldn't be using this analogy. And Wei Chi (Go). The first time I saw those little black and white things I tried to eat one and almost broke a tooth.
Coffee Time
Talking about chess, Putin famously said " negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, craps on the board, and then struts around like it won the game". 😂
It doesn't look like their chess skills have improved much since
"Ukraine has enormous debt, with foreign companies having invested heavily in the country".
Splendid. I hope they all go broke when the Kiev mob stiffs them. Especially Blackrock and the vampire squid. I would particularly enjoy seeing them come, hat in hand, to Moscow to beg for a little of what they think they are owed. Mr Medvedev could be given the enjoyable task of telling them the latest addresses of Mr Zelensky and the rest of his clique - and what they can do alternatively.