Letters from Vienna #109
The Variety of Perspectives
In the same way that different sources provide different perspectives (a case in point is the account by Field Marshal von Moltke of the Franco-Prussian War and Zola’s novel: La Débâcle (“The Debacle”) (1892)) so we’re presented with a vast array of sources when it comes to documenting the current conflict in the Ukraine.
We can watch videos of men being crushed to death by armoured personnel carriers moving in reverse gear, grenades being tossed from drones at stretcher-bearers, prisoners being tortured or simply shot, fire fights in towns or forests, landscapes laced with trenches and pitted with shell-holes reminiscent of the First World War and insane duals between individuals and tanks. Or we can listen to a whole array of analysts, such as Gonzalo Lira[1], Dima at the Military Summary Channel[2], Brian Berletic at the New Atlas[3], Douglas Macgregor[4], Alex Christoforou[5], Eva Bartlett[6] or Alexander Mercouris[7], to name but a few.
Ultimately it’s of little matter as to who is who and which side the figures in the videos are on: the result is much the same: death on an industrial scale. We don’t even know how many have died. Ursula von der Leyen recently said that 100,000 Ukrainian officers have been killed.[8] As a rule of thumb there are four wounded for every dead soldier, which means that c.400,000 Ukrainian officers have been wounded. It seems that the rank and file are of no importance. When it comes to the “grunts” no-one counts the dead.
One Westerner (a 37-year-old American, code-named Doc) recounted his experiences as a foreign fighter to a journalist working for the New Yorker: “Paranoia about spies and infiltrators was acute. The previous day, Russian cruise missiles had targeted the main training camp for the International Legion, in Yavoriv, a Ukrainian city about an hour’s drive away. Though no foreigners had died, dozens of Ukrainians were killed. A friend of mine — a Canadian Army veteran who’d joined the Legion — had survived the attack. When I’d reached him by phone, he’d described the scene as “a bloodbath.””
“Of the hundreds of foreigners who had been at the facility when it was hit, many had returned to Poland. According to my Canadian friend, this was for the best. Although some of the men had been “legit, values-driven, warrior-mentality” veterans, others were “shit”: “gun nuts,” “right-wing bikers,” “ex-cops who are three hundred pounds.” Two people had accidentally discharged their weapons inside his tent in less than a week. A “chaotic” lack of discipline had been exacerbated by “a fair amount of cocaine.””
“Over the spring and summer, two members of Doc’s unit were killed and several injured. Others went home. When we met in Kyiv, his team had dwindled to five men, and the contraction reflected a broader trend.”
“The ordeal of weathering modern artillery for extended durations is distinct from anything that Western soldiers faced in Iraq or Afghanistan (where they enjoyed a monopoly on such firepower). “Once you’ve been dropped on heavy—ninety per cent of people can’t handle that, even if they’re combat-experienced,” Doc told me.”
“In lieu of major advances, the two sides vied to extend their presence by exploiting a network of parallel and perpendicular tree lines that divided up the no man’s land, or “gray zone,” between their fortified garrisons…The team’s primary responsibility in Donetsk was reconnaissance: sneaking through the underbrush, probing the gray zone, locating the forwardmost Russian trenches, and establishing new positions for Ukrainian troops to backfill.”
“The first phase of the mission was to conduct aerial surveillance of the tree line — a duty that fell to the team’s thirty-year-old drone operator, Herring. After five years in the U.S. Army, Herring had become a deckhand on a purse seiner off the coast of Maine. He had the callused, knotty fingers typical of that trade, along with a shaved head and narrow, dark eyes that glinted with a readiness for mischief or danger. His nose had been slightly crooked since June, when it was broken in a blast in Kyiv.”
“A few days after I arrived at the house, I accompanied Herring to a forward position within drone range of the target tree line. He was joined by Rambo, the leader of the Ukrainians who lived with the foreigners. The Ukrainians belonged to a reconnaissance company in the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, which was responsible for the area around Pavlivka, and to which the foreigners were officially attached. Rambo was thin and scrappy, with a sly grin that seldom broke into laughter. He’d served three years in the Ukrainian Army directly after graduating from high school, in 2005. As a civilian, he’d been a pipe fitter for an engineering company that sent him to Europe, Africa, and the United States, where he’d learned rudimentary English.”
“All across Ukraine, the proliferation of affordable, user-friendly drones has radically altered the battlefield. Herring had flown drones for hundreds of hours in Donetsk, dropping explosives on Russian positions and identifying enemy coordinates for Ukrainian artillery. Russian forces use commercial drones, too, but to a lesser extent. They rely more heavily on Orlans—military-grade, fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles that can be flown for longer periods of time. The limited battery life and transmission range of commercial drones preclude their pilots from operating them too remotely. Moreover, the pilots must avoid any type of shelter, such as a house or a bunker, where the signal might be obstructed.”
“The Russians and the Ukrainians employ two main countermeasures against each other’s drones. One is a futuristic-looking contraption, fired like a rifle, whose transmissions force emergency landings. The other is a signal-jamming system that scrambles, over a broad zone, the satellite networks on which drones depend for navigation. Herring had run up against the latter, which had triggered an automatic response in his drone to race in the opposite direction, depleting its battery. He eventually retrieved it—correcting its course with small flicks of the joystick—and we returned to the air shaft. Although multi-rotor drones are relatively inexpensive, thermal ones are not, and Herring could not risk losing his.”
“The 72nd Mechanized Brigade had assumed control of the area in August. Before that, the foreigners had worked with another brigade, the 53rd, which had fully integrated them into its operations and had furnished them with coveted Javelins. On near-daily missions, the team had pushed forward Ukrainian positions, ambushed enemy tanks, and planted mines behind Russian lines.”
“The 72nd had shown less interest in collaboration. Before coming to Pavlivka, the brigade had been stationed in Bakhmut, another city in Donetsk, where an enormous number of soldiers had died, and even more had been wounded. The trauma of Bakhmut had unnerved many of the survivors, and they now seemed wary of outsiders.”
“While the 72nd was settling in, Doc had gone on vacation, to the Spanish party island of Ibiza. Before his return, the team had undertaken to secure a tree line where, Herring’s drone surveillance indicated, Russian soldiers occupied a trench system. The foreigners left Pavlivka late in the evening. Although they had briefed the 72nd on their route, a Ukrainian unit opened fire on them as they approached. The team shot back. “We won, they didn’t,” Turtle told me.”[9]
As in most wars the conflict in the Ukraine is ultimately a Catch-22 style situation. A tiny minority is making a vast amount of money while the majority suffer:[10] [11]
“Of all the Caesar guns that were supplied to Kiev, it turns out that three were destroyed in air strikes on Kurakhovo, one was destroyed on the Kubanski peninsula in the Odessa region and two were sold for the ridiculous price of $120,000 each!”
“For information, a Caesar self-propelled gun is worth about 7 million euros! So, France supplied two Caesar self-propelled guns for 14 million euros, which were resold for 240,000 dollars…”
“It is likely that the guns were sold to an intermediary (armed group or arms dealer) who in turn sold the self-propelled guns to Russia, which can now dismantle and analyse them. What is of interest to Moscow is the guidance and fire coordination system of the Caesar self-propelled gun.”[12]
International Monetary Fund
“A new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reveals that the Ukraine has become a thieves’ paradise in which corporate loan defaults are written off; embezzlement from banks is not traced; the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) no longer audits the country’s bank liabilities and reserves; and the IMF admits it cannot tell how much of the $35 billion in foreign cash grants and loans promised to Kiev has been disbursed, or to whom.”
“Disbursements of all committed funds over the remaining months of the year is urgently needed and will make a difference,” declares Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF Managing director since 2019, “especially in light of the recent horrific damage to energy infrastructure.” Georgieva was speaking in Berlin on October 25.”
““In a best-case scenario,” she added, “we estimate that Ukraine’s financing needs would be about $3 billion per month. When we incorporate some additional financing for higher gas imports and some repair of critical infrastructure, we quickly reach $4 billion per month. The recent missile attacks, which have clearly caused much more damage, not only confirms the validity of these estimates but leads us to consider $5 billion upper range.””
“However, in a 32-page IMF staff report on the state of Ukrainian budget finance and the risk of system-wide financial collapse, the Fund experts have concluded that “large-scale forbearance with a delayed recognition of NPLs [commercial bank non-performing loans] and the suspension of NBU enforcement actions and audits of financial statements make a comprehensive assessment of the impact of the war difficult and uncertain.””[13]
The Monaco Battalion
“While Ukraine has undergone a general mobilization affecting all men under the age of 60, many former and current high-ranking officials, politicians, businessmen, and oligarchs have moved to safety abroad – mainly to the EU.”
“The mass flight of Ukrainian elites started even prior to the armed conflict. On February 14, 2022, 37 deputies from the Ukrainian president’s parliamentary faction “Servant of the People” suddenly went “missing.” Had MPs not been banned from leaving the country the very next day, others would’ve definitely joined them. Meanwhile, former officials and oligarchs enjoyed more freedom to move around. According to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, 20 business jets took off from Kiev’s Boryspol airport on the 14th as well.”
“Tycoons were at the front of the line. Entrepreneur and MP Vadim Novinsky, businessmen Vasily Khmelnitsky and Vadim Stolar, Vadim Nesterenko, and Andrey Stavnitzer all left the country on charter flights. Millionaire politician Igor Abramovich booked a private flight to Austria for 50 people – taking relatives, business partners, and fellow party members aboard. Oligarchs flew from Kiev to Nice, Munich, Vienna, Cyprus, and other EU destinations.”
“Another group of businessmen took off from Odessa on private planes. The owner of Vostok Bank departed for Israel, while the head of the Transship group flew to Limassol. An ex-governor of the Odessa region, Stalkanat’s Vladimir Nemirovsky, also left the country.
In the summer and early fall of 2022, ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ prepared several investigative documentaries about fit-for-service Ukrainian billionaires and officials spotted vacationing on the Côte d’Azur during the war. A movie with the ironic title “The Monaco Battalion” shows Ukrainian oligarchs resting at their villas, mansions, and on yachts. In the first part, we see businessman Konstantin Zhevago, who is included on Interpol’s wanted list, relaxing on his private yacht worth $70 million. The yacht graces the shoreline of the Côte d’Azur as Zhevago’s family disembarks. Kharkov entrepreneur Alexander Yaroslavsky, who promised to sell his yacht and transfer the funds towards the restoration of Kharkov, can be seen sailing alongside.”[14]
There are also a lot of different agendas in play:
“One only has to look at the website of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to see the various agenda items they are actively promoting, including openly using the war as a springboard to bring Ukraine into the EU.”
“They are also planning to make Ukraine their ‘beta testing ground’ for Klaus Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution and Smart City digital control grid.”
“Unbeknownst the most Ukrainians, the former comedian turned president is scheduled to hold talks with BlackRock Investments to negotiate the private-public partnership takeover the country’s postwar ‘reconstruction’.”
“But this is only the beginning. As trillionaire sponsors of the WEF and private owners of the large swaths of western wealth, BlackRock, are planning to ‘buy-up’ Ukraine, piece by piece, and integrate it into western fold, and allow the US and NATO to use it as a beach head to antagonize Russia and maintain a geopolitical strategy of tension.”[15]
Destroying Europe
“India purchases 1.7 million barrels of Russian oil per day. This oil is first refined by Nayara Energy and Reliance Industries, and then resold legally to the United States.”
“In practice, this means that Washington’s economic war does not hurt Russia, but solely its allies in the European Union, who are the only ones deprived of Russian hydrocarbons. This observation should be placed in the context of the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, cutting off the European Union from its main source of energy.
This shows that Washington is fully aware that Moscow has not invaded Ukraine but is there chiefly to enforce Security Council resolution 2202. All the Atlanticist propaganda accusing Russia of the most egregious crimes is, therefore, not aimed at mobilizing Western forces against it, but at manipulating the Europeans into accepting an economic recession…”[16]
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUnc496-PPmFZVKlYxUnToA
[3] https://www.youtube.com/c/thenewatlas
[7] https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexanderMercourisReal?app=desktop
[9] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/trapped-in-the-trenches-in-ukraine?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned
[12] https://www.donbass-insider.com/2022/06/30/russia-has-recovered-two-french-caesar-self-propelled-guns-resold-by-ukraine/
[13] http://johnhelmer.net/thieves-paradise-in-kiev-imf-admits-it-doesnt-know-how-much-ukraine-has-received-of-35-billion-in-promised-foreign-cash-or-where-the-money-was-spent/?fbclid=IwAR0JOCvBQYgJujRzm93B9HT95LLRfg8WWuJ8MQe5721_o6RSySQ9h-q24B8
[14] https://www.azerbaycan24.com/en/as-westerners-send-aid-ukraine-s-corrupt-elites-are-profiting-from-the-conflict/?fbclid=IwAR2nQYtqu3U9KwzKqXvb2n5wQ4-nCc6HYDdKMb-kCoyxTuVTwMhZQdiY65A
[15] https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/12/30/zelensky-prepares-for-wef-and-blackrock-private-public-takeover-of-ukraine/
[16] https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/contrary-to-what-it-claims-us-is-massively-importing-russian-oil/?fbclid=IwAR2_eNoPLia7qs2UHZRCnyrTZAKLP3nTonM2rEfnhreHioQwmSY1ftWPZxI
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-the-world-blood