Ukraine War 2025: Mid-Year Review Of Putin's Faltering Campaign
The harder Putin's orcs fight, the worse they perform. Attrition alone does not win wars, and the Muscovite bet that Ukraine could be ground down over time has been a bad one.
2025 is half gone , and Putin’s seemingly endless grind in Ukraine has achieved precious little of military value in exchange for around two hundred thousand casualties - maybe a full quarter of a million. It remains as strange as ever that the Ukraine war gets portrayed as a stalemate in the foreign press when a country with about a tenth the resources of the invader is holding so firm.
And unless I’m badly mistaken to a degree I have not yet been since Putin’s onslaught began in 2022, Ukraine is winning the struggle to build up sufficient reserves to mount a successful and extensive counteroffensive this summer and fall. At the strategic level, Ukraine now has the Muscovites right where it needs them to be - assuming the plan is to push Putin’s orcs to overstretch ahead of a determined counterstroke, like an elastic band snapping back.
War isn’t all that complicated. Exploit a power asymmetry at one place, level, or domain to gain advantage in another. Every action is a bet, an investment of power that must pay off on average over time to achieve victory.
Trouble is that hope and belief too easily substitute for scientific certainty in most minds, because it’s always a matter of degrees, not absolutes. And so the particular actions taken in past wars are misunderstood as the essential elements of victory in all conflicts, with catastrophic impacts on the side worst affected by the attractive delusion. And that’s assuming the historians didn’t screw up the interpretation of always scarce hard evidence.
It’s standard in postmodern thought to adopt a post-materialist frame of mind where words trump matter. The thinkers who have gone down this road ultimately embrace pure mysticism, pretending that anyone who can construct an argument has a point - but that those with power make the truly important ones. This functional nihilism is nothing but a mirror image of the Christian theological authority that secular scientists fought so long to break free of.
I don’t have any problem with theology, except when it poses as science. Different sets of standards apply when it comes to evaluating evidence, making the two approaches difficult to square. Science is about reliable prediction, while faith is about catharsis and aesthetics. Intersections are limited.
Nowadays, a certain theology of warfare predominates in American and most allied circles that is all but certain to get a lot of good people killed before the errors are proven in the fires of defeat. There exists a total inability among the American military intelligentsia to comprehend that exchanging a couple hundred casualties to gain a square kilometer a day in Donbas does not equate to a stalemate. Ukraine has made a conscious choice to fight this way, building up capabilities to use at scale when it counts, ignoring every effort to badger the country into fighting someone else’s way. Ukraine is very fortunate that the Muscovite enemy is, much like American professional military types, dominated by a form of theology and not proper science.
This week’s post will come in three parts. First up, a brief on the past week’s movement on the active fronts. After comes a broader look at what Putin’s orcs have accomplished over the past six months. Finally, since the political landscape is now pretty fixed for the next couple years, most of the final section will focus on describing my plans for new, subscriber-focused section of the blog. Later this year I’ll start taking people’s money to power the start of something so pointlessly ambitious it’s even silly to try. But the world being what it is these days, I figure why not build an organized force capable of fighting to keep it alive?
No existing government, corporation, or charity has the capability or strength of will to do more than wage war in pursuit of their own petty concerns. The broader war to preserve humanity from its own blindness remains unfought. That can and must change. There are more than enough resources on the planet to avert some very dark times. They’re just poorly organized.
But once a system is understood, it can be managed. The objective? Maximum freedom for the greatest number.
Overview of the Fronts: Week 26
By the numbers, Putin’s summer push isn’t any stronger than the ones in winter or spring. Upwards of two hundred recorded attacks cost the empire about a thousand casualties and gain maybe five square kilometers of ground.
Yet the overall intensity of the fighting still somehow seems to be rising. Probably because of the rapidly growing population of drones on and over the battlefield. Both sides are beginning to use drones previously focused on deep strike to go after battlefield targets in another development that doesn’t surprise me at all.
If you’ve essentially got a flying artillery or mortar shell or anti-tank rocket, it only makes sense to figure out how to assign a target in real time. As much as everyone talks up AI and robots, in the short term it’s allowing humans to see what the drone sees that’s key to matching up the right warhead with the target.
In any case, both Moscow and Ukraine are giving every sign of preparing for offensive operations, shaping the landscape as they can. When and where will Ukraine mount a major counterattack this summer? We’ll know a few days after it begins. Until then, well, key details had better remain a surprise, or it won’t go well. Either where, or when - even one is enough if it’s done right. Doesn’t matter to me if they’re American. I only am officially anymore.
Northern Theater
Both Sumy and Kharkiv are in a similar place right now. Moscow has just enough personnel deployed to pose a real threat, but not enough to break through a competent defense. Both fronts are mainly about tying down Ukrainian forces by threatening to make bombarding Kharkiv and Sumy too easy.
That isn’t to say that Moscow wouldn’t love to advance, only that it isn’t the priority right now. Putin is as worried about Ukraine surprising his orcs with a counteroffensive again as he is taking Donbas, otherwise the shape of his campaigns would be very different. Ukraine’s ability to rapidly shift personnel between fronts means that the orcs can’t take any of them for granted. The natural solution: try to advance wherever possible to keep the Ukrainians from feeling comfortable enough to attack.
Ukraine’s strategy for defending against this in Sumy and Kharkiv is, rather ironically, a mirror. By harassing the Muscovite flanks with constant attacks, Ukrainian fighters aim to make the main push less powerful. Whether this harassment can intensify into a sustained assault remains unclear, but Moscow is worried about it.
It appears that the Ukrainian operation on the southeastern flank of the ruscist grouping pushing on Sumy has quietly ended, Ukrainian troops no longer contesting Demidovka and Popovka. But the effort to clear Tetkino continues - or rather, the Ukrainians are enjoying letting the orcs try to get supplies and replacements to positions down the road from Glushkovo.
That’s one nasty tactical trap the orcs have to deal with. Instead of taking the town, the Ukrainians might just enjoy the shooting gallery, scoring kills on vehicles heading in from Glushkovo along the Seym.
Eastern Theater
The Kupiansk front remains tense but stable, the latest orc expansion of the bridgehead north of the town coming a week ago amounting to a roughly 4 kilometer extension of ruscist control along the west bank of the Oskil. Much the same can be said for the Borova and Lyman fronts - Siversk too.
Substantial fighting is underway, but the past week has seen nearly every ruscist assault stopped cold. After leaving this sector somewhat starved of personnel for a long time, Ukrainian command appears to have dispatched reinforcements. This sector, especially the Borova-Lyman portion, where the top-notch Third Corps operates, could be brewing a sneaker Ukrainian push. Given the need to inflict a serious battlefield defeat on the enemy, first and foremost, considerations like severing logistics to the entire Southern Theater by striking to Volnovakha may well be secondary. Or that could be round two of the counteroffensive, kicking off when all eyes are on Luhansk.
There are definitely some interesting possibilities to explore north of urban Donbas. Even on ruscist home turf east of Belgorod.
Moving south to the Kostyantynivka front, Muscovite forces have made precious little progress towards the city over the past week. Only northeast of Toretsk, where the orcs are trying to bypass Ukrainian positions on the outskirts, has the situation deteriorated.
Ukraine has rushed in strong reinforcements to block ruscist efforts to surround Kostyantynivka from the west, 82nd Air Assault Brigade among them. It remains an open question whether this portends the rest of the corps building around the 82nd arriving on this front. If so, that could suggest an imminent and very sizable Ukrainian counteroffensive.
In a month or so, if the enemy has exhausted available resources trying to advance between Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk, a counterattack along the T-0504 highway could be devastating. It is unclear whether Moscow has been digging in to captured territory with as much gusto as it took to set up the Surovikin Line. During the Second World War, the Germans under Manstein after the disaster at Stalingrad became exceptionally skilled at pulling back to let a Soviet offensive wave peter out before mopping up disorganized surviving elements with a focused, limited counteroffensive.
My assessment of Ukrainian military strategy over the past couple years is that this approach was identified early on as the most efficient available. In a war where operations unfold in slow-motion thanks to drones, it seems reasonable to expect that the Ukrainian pushback could begin at any time. While the Muscovites can keep throwing raw bodies into the fight, depletion of supporting gear is rendering them less effective every day. A tipping point appears to have been crossed.
The front in Pokrovsk remains well frozen, though the orcs haven’t stopped testing whether they can break through. But apparently understanding that they can’t hope to storm it head on, Muscovite command is banking on the effort to outflank Ukraine’s defense by pushing to the Solona river further west to reverse the situation.
They are, however, seeing their biggest successes on this front south of Novopavlivka where the Mokri Yali, Solona, and Vovcha rivers come together. Here the breakthrough along the south bank of the Vovcha last week continues to worsen, and the orcs have actually attempted to enter the village of Piddubne, an important defensive node in the area.
This and additional ruscist advances further south could force the Ukrainians back towards the Vovcha, which while not a serious setback would still be concerning. Despite the forested plantations on the west bank - the Vovcha curves back north-south here - offering Ukrainian forces plenty of cover, ideally the orcs will be held five to ten kilometers away to avoid motorcycle rushes slipping a few into places they can hide and gather.
Ukrainian sources claim that the entire Dnipro district border has been heavily fortified, so the orc advance may end soon. The Muscovites keep pulling cruel stunts where a couple disposable orcs are sent into a village just on the other side to wave a flag before they get killed by drones. Only serves to demonstrate how much stock Putin’s empire places on information war operations.
Which itself is a sign of weakness, in the same way Trump and Netanyahu insisting that Iran’s nuclear program is dead and done means they accomplished precious little but further entrench the mullahs’ power and guarantee that Iran goes nuclear in a matter of months. Good luck fostering domestic resistance against a regime that just came under attack and can credibly claim to have fended off worse damage by threatening to kill Americans stuck in their bases spread across the Middle East. Because colonizing the area has worked out so well for foreign powers over the past hundred or so years…
Regardless, Muscovite efforts to advance on this front are meeting with more success than is the case elsewhere, something that has been true all year. A concern I’ll address more below. For the time being, Ukrainian forces are still set to withdraw some more before the lines stabilize.
Southern Theater
Even more than the north, the south is presently of secondary importance for Moscow. So small orc teams continue to contest the Dnipro delta, making Ukraine worry about a surprise crossing attempt, though one actually working out well is improbable. Attacks just large enough to keep several brigades in the area are periodically mounted on the Zaporizhzhia front, where frontline towns Orikhiv and Kamianka are technically vulnerable enough that Ukraine can’t risk their fall. And more probes are continuing towards Huliaypole, more likely to protect the flank of the grouping pushing north towards Novopavlivka than a real fear of Ukraine going for Volnovakha.
All in all, more of the same: gone are the days when a major surprise landing on Crimea or even the Kinburn spit at the mouth of the Dnipro was conceivable. Anything like that now would have to be preceded by a whole lot of drones taking effective control of a target area as a first step to seizing a beachhead. Sorry, United States Marine Corps, but both you guys and most of the Army have got to rethink your institutional paradigms before it’s too late for a lot of good people.
Oh wait, change is death to a weary institution run by people who care more about appearances than capabilities. Got it. Have a real nice time fighting China now, you hear?
In any event, Moscow may advance a bit in the south over the coming weeks, but the effort is ancillary and insufficient to do more than threaten Kamianka and possibly Orikhiv. Unless a lot of reinforcements appear without Ukraine noticing. Hasn’t happened on a large scale before, but there’s a first time for everything. The enemy can get lucky too.
Aviation Duel
Ukraine lost another Viper this past week, the pilot heroically (I don’t throw that term around, either) going down with the aircraft while trying to divert the jet away from populated areas. The cause appears to be damage taken during a drone intercept. The seventh of his final mission, apparently, suggesting that it was a guns engagement. Most Vipers have been pictured carrying six missiles - though more are definitely possible - and numerous Ukrainian pilots have recorded gun kills on record, so I don’t think presuming the seventh to be a gun kill is unjustified.
Additionally, a few Ukrainian aircraft have been lost as a result of hitting wreckage after a gun run. As Shaheds are designed to explode, the risk of shrapnel damage is high as it is. Gun engagements likely need to be banned outright to avoid future losses - eventually Moscow will try putting warheads on Shaheds designed to damage aircraft that intercept them. Laser-guided rockets ought to be integrated on Ukrainian combat jets, particularly Vipers and Mirages. Of course, since so many got shipped to the Middle East because of the danger that Iran would couple mass drone and ballistic missile attacks, there might not be many available. Effing CENTCOM. And an “alliance” with Israel that brings nothing but grief - and complicity in genocide, not that America has done more than cry crocodile tears about that unless it happens to fit in with a convenient political narrative.
Ukraine has enough active jets to destroy a couple hundred drones every day, but this is not the most efficient use for combat aircraft, even Soviet-era models. Better that they sling glide bombs in support of ground troops while Vipers try to ambush orc Flankers. Hence Ukraine investing heavily in drone interceptors, which appear to be proving even more successful than hoped. Replacing the ground-based drone hunting teams with drone interceptor operators is a priority. That’s the immediate and probably medium term future of drone defense - and an excellent way to get more women in the forces.
Incidentally, women are a massive underutilized military resource in almost every country, purely because of maladaptive institutional values. The Danes have it right: if you’re going to do conscription, draft women too. From each according to their ability, to the enemy by target priority. War doesn’t care about genital configurations. That goes for transgender personnel too.
In happier news, a recent Ukrainian drone strike managed to catch five Su-34 bombers on the ground. That’s a heavy toll for a single attack, and a couple dozen fewer glide bombs Ukrainians will have to cope with every day. I see great things for using strike drones to go after soft operational type targets, especially if operators can periodically log in to transmit new instructions or lock on to targets.
Another attack on an airbase, this one in Crimea, knocked out several helicopters. Part of Moscow’s growing air defense problem is the threat that drones pose to the radars that SAMs require to track targets. Ukrainian attacks on air defense systems in Crimea manage to hit several systems every month, with larger radars naturally more visible and vulnerable.
Strike Campaigns
Ukraine and the Muscovites continue to offer a stark contrast in applied strategic bombing theory. Putin’s orcs are mostly imitating the Germans and British in World War Two: hit what military-related industrial targets you can, but mostly destroy civilian infrastructure and even homes in hopes of damaging morale. As was the case with the Germans, whose targeting policy was driven by Hermann Goering’s emotions and ambition, for Moscow this is a doctrinal screwup: missiles are supposed to be reserved for high-value targets. You flatten whole cities with artillery, because it’s cheaper. Unable to send overwhelming strike packages into Ukrainian airspace the way Israel and the USA are Iran, Moscow uses its jets as heavy artillery.
Ukraine’s limited stock of modern precision missiles is reserved for high-value military targets, like command centers or ships under repair. Supposedly a major Storm Shadow strike following the destruction of lots of ruscist air defense kit in Crimea killed the commander of 8th Combined Arms Army at his headquarters in Donbas just yesterday, but as this technically happened this week, not last, and details are unconfirmed as of now, I’ll save a deeper analysis if one is warranted for next week. The point about variance in targeting practices stands, though.
Unfortunately, despite sanctions, Moscow has Iskander missiles to spare thanks to substantially expanded production lines. More effective than Kinzhals - probably because Ukraine always knows when carriers are in flight, offering advanced warning of a potential attack - Iskander production now exceeds global Patriot PAC-3 interceptor output. Which somehow hasn’t ramped up dramatically yet despite over three years of proven need - the American Military-Industrial-Media complex at work. Profit over all.
Anyone who doubts that Moscow was hoping for the Middle East to burn these past couple years and is just as closely allied with Israel as the USA needs to examine the material evidence of mutual interest. It doesn’t take a conspiracy for ruthless leaders to spot a chance at advancing their interests, even if that means sacrificing a declared ally. Israeli, American, and Muscovite leaders all hate Ukraine, openly or in secret, for the same essential reason: the whole world can bear witness to a rare example of a truly moral, ethical, just, and necessary fight. This creates a stark and highly unflattering contrast with the sort of wars Tel Aviv, D.C., and Moscow choose to fight. Israel’s brutality in war also stands in sharp relief to how Ukraine fights.
Fortunately, the best solution to Iskanders, short of having plenty of interceptors, is dispersal and early warning. Pretty much anything mobile can escape the impact area of a ballistic missile if it has at least five minutes of warning. And if it isn’t mobile but is too important to lose, it should be underground anyway. That’s just the standard in this kind of war.
In addition to lots of Iskanders, Moscow is also churning out Shahed/Geran drones at scale. About half wind up jammed, but the other half still have to be shot down, and the relative cost of a Shahed compared to everything that goes into knocking it down isn’t pretty for the defender. The impending ability to loiter over an area and target anything selected by an onboard AI or remote user logging in over a satellite connection stands to make them even more dangerous.
While Ukraine is able to produce a small number of Iskander-equivalent missiles, when it comes to strike drones the Ukrainians appear to hold edges in both quality and quantity. Hundred-drone attacks hit Muscovite territory every other night, often striking targets in multiple districts. While Ukraine faces real challenges hunting down drones entering its airspace, Moscow’s are magnified by the size of the area it has to cover. The task might be impossible. Ukraine is also banking a lot on miniature cruise missiles that can be fired in a batch to overwhelm air defenses near the target rather than having to rely on drones to create a distraction before a few big, expensive weapons fly in.
As with missiles, Ukrainian and ruscist targeting strategy with drones stand in strong contrast. Muscovite Shahed strikes increasingly kill civilians nowhere near anything military that a Shahed could hope to get at. Ukraine sends groups at specific targets, with a few now and again going awry or being shot down by enemy air defenses over a populated area, leading to injuries and fatalities. It follows that Ukraine’s hits on Muscovite industry appear to do more damage, crippling entire facilities. Even when damage is repaired, nothing stops more drones from coming in again.
Naval Matters
It’s been another fairly quiet week on the Black Sea front, reasons unclear. Weather could play a factor - I honestly have no idea what the weather does on the Black Sea in summer.
It’s also possible that an unspoken ceasefire remains in effect, though I doubt it. Ukraine is more likely to be preparing another run at Novorossisyk or the Kerch Strait. There’s not as much open source information available about the naval side of the fight, but I expect it to be little different in a practical sense than the struggles Ukrainians deal with in every other domain. More of the right resources are always needed in the right place and time. You manufacture as much luck as you can, then trust the gods to grant an opportunity to put it to the test. Sometimes you sink a missile cruiser named Moscow.
Leadership & Personnel
The corps transformation continues, but only scattered bits of news are ever available. For the most part, a notable stiffening of the Ukrainian defense on several fronts may be attributable to the corps initiative. More are forming up, and some are exchanging brigades, seemingly to align with front line assignments.
There are still problem areas, however, the Novopavlivka front chief among them. This week the respected DeepState project alleged that official reports from this area… let’s say deviate rather strongly from reality. The tactical grouping responsible for the front has had trouble with accurate reporting before. That it’s also the one which seems to struggle the most against odds other Ukrainian groupings have routinely dealt with would seem to track.
I can only hope that the corps forming up to cover the southern half of the front, where the worst losses have been suffered lately, is getting control of the situation. It would be a shame to have what is shaping up to be exactly the crisis Ukraine needs the Muscovites to cope with this summer squandered. If the line cannot hold here along the Solona and Vovcha, something is very wrong indeed. Yes, the terrain is open and so likely more vulnerable to motorcycle rushes than some areas. But there has been plenty of time to prepare better defense lines.
As an aside, one of the reasons that I’m deeply skeptical of the narrative about Syrskyi directing everything that happens down to the location of individual fighting positions remains the variation in performance between fronts. The course of the fighting these past months suggests that some fronts continue to be overseen by senior officers who lack a clear picture of the situation. It’s apparent that the entire corps transformation is designed to bypass a level of the military hierarchy that is no longer performing.
Could be why ex-president Poroshenko is in the media talking about Zelensky being a dictator. In Ukraine, some powerful interests long closely aligned with key partners in D.C. and Berlin have been looking for an excuse to assert more control over Ukraine. They are the source of all that Muscovite propaganda about Ukraine being controlled by the big bad West, the seed of truth that makes it plausible across the neutral world. And one of their greatest ambitions is to recruit dissident military officers who will claim that Zelensky is mismanaging the war effort.
Some degree of incompetence is to be expected - history does often rhyme, but the particulars of each verse are different enough that everyone learns as they go. What counts in my book is that Zelensky and Syrskyi have led Ukraine along what from my perspective appears to be the best, perhaps only, trajectory leading to true victory. The minority of Ukrainians that want only to be colonized by D.C. or maybe Berlin because of their business concerns desperately want Zaluzhnyi to demand that Zelensky face him in elections, despite the challenges of doing this while under constant attack.
I am not Ukrainian except perhaps in spirit, so have no say or even right to an opinion about internal Ukrainian affairs. I can only point out the source of the smoke my vantage point allows me to see: a colonial offshoot of the same spirit that led to escalation becoming a convenient excuse to stop Ukraine from getting weapons that could have won this war long ago. It’s the spirit of Vichy and Quisling, of Isengard and Dolores Umbridge. Oppose Zelensky and Syrskyi as hard as you like, just beware of those who speak the language of freedom and peace but hide shackles behind their backs. They aren’t Putin, but represent some of his most crucial enablers.
2025, Part One: A Futile Muscovite Grind
Over the past six months, a number of predictions made by savvy observers of the Ukraine War have borne out. First off, the critical depletion of ruscist armored vehicle stocks has substantially reduced the chances of Moscow achieving a real breakthrough anywhere in Ukraine. Second, Ukraine now fields up to two full squadrons of modern multirole combat jets, substantially closing a longstanding capability gap that the Muscovites have leaned hard on these past two years. Third, casualty rates on the orc side have risen while Ukraine’s have been shrinking, with drones making it possible for the front to be held with fewer soldiers on the zero line.
A fourth important factor is the dramatic increase in Ukrainian deep strike capabilities, evidenced by nightly raids hundreds of kilometers across the international border. I’d consider Ukraine’s corps reform a vital fifth, and the steady increase in European aid thanks to the USA’s ongoing self-immolation represents a sixth.
No war is ever won without bringing the enemy’s combat forces to battle and defeating them in the field. Though the postmodern fad in scholarship that has so terribly impacted the production quality science over the past generation now prefers to pretend that battles are insignificant, that’s a function of so few members of the community having experienced a real fight in their lives. Words are not weapons, nor do they have any inherent power. They’re signaling devices, nothing more, and the fact that everyone alive experiences their own unique reality in some real respect does not override raw biological needs that render us all more or less the same, scientifically speaking.
Victory in Ukraine will only be won, and the war with Muscovy over at last, once Putin’s physical ability to occupy parts of Ukraine is destroyed. He’s not backing down now, and in fact has no practical choice now but to expand the war and attempt to destroy the NATO alliance before he dies. The ruscist economy is already past the point of no return, and hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers returning home is guaranteed to lead to serious social unrest and questions about what the hell so much blood from an already shrinking population was shed for. Only by distracting his people with an eternal holy war can Putin put off paying the price for his imperial delusion in Ukraine.
As difficult as drones and networks have made offensive operations, Ukraine has no choice but to conduct them at scale. Muscovite forces will keep coming until the frontline soldiers starved of food, water, and ammo in their holes surrender while their officers behind the lines start surreptitiously relocating their headquarters far from Ukraine. Putin won’t even realize the front has collapsed at first because the entire orc chain of command will tell outright lies to evade his wrath.
That’s a natural hazard of fielding a mercenary army. No longer do orcs fight because they share Putin’s mania for their mythical russian world: now it’s all about earning quick cash, according to POW interviews. The mighty ruscist army has become a lottery fueled by people with no prospects hoping to get lucky and live to see a payout. Their loyalty will shift the moment someone offers them a better deal - like life - when the orc officers who herded them into the fight are out of contact and resupply is cut off.
Muscovite forces can still slowly advance, it is true, but the pace is insufficient to break Ukraine’s lines. And most of the two to three thousand square kilometers that Moscow has seized over the past six months is functionally worthless ground, in a military sense: areas where the proximity to occupied urban Donbas makes it relatively easy for the orcs to generate and sustain meat waves. That’s not where Ukraine can get the greatest return on applying scarce combat power. As Ukrainian forces fall back to a set of defensible water lines, the orc advance looks set to culminate everywhere but a few select sectors where the Ukrainians will savage any enemy bridgehead from three sides, like they’ve been doing in Kupiansk for half a year now to great effect.
Long story short: in my estimation, Ukraine has deliberately maneuvered the orcs these past six months - eighteen, really - into a position where one or more fronts will have insufficient resources to hold out against a sustained Ukrainian counteroffensive. The primary objective of this assault will be not seizing territory for the sake of it, but isolating and destroying a major orc grouping, ideally an entire combined arms army tens of thousands of personnel strong.
Success would tear open a hole in the orc front and put paid to all talk of a battlefield deadlock, allowing subsequent operations to build off the initial success. But timing is everything, even more than location. And rapid action is also essential: the orcs won’t be surprised by the counteroffensive itself, but can be shocked by its intensity. Ukrainian troops will have to move quickly to initiate a new round of attacks than Moscow can rush in reserves.
The core principles are ancient and universal; as any sergeant can tell you, it’s the execution that’s all too often lacking. Timing is one of the most important components of execution because it encapsulates the process of generating a combat power mismatch. For Ukraine, the broadest parameters governing timing are tied to how much quality equipment and how many trained personnel can be concentrated at the place where the enemy’s lack of both generates a systemic vulnerability.
It’s been the task of most of Ukraine’s fighters for almost two years now, Krynky and Kursk being the big exceptions, to do as much damage to Moscow’s combat power and potential as possible while Ukraine builds up its own. In 2024, Ukraine showed that Moscow can still be caught off guard, but also that it still possessed sufficient reserves to adjust.
In 2025, shortages of critical gear - namely armored vehicles, but effective artillery is a big one too, with air defense systems a close third - stand to leave Muscovite reserves too badly depleted to withstand a Ukrainian push. The orcs have, unfortunately, been able to put about ten thousand more people into uniform every month than Ukraine has been able to take out, despite the monthly casualty toll staying between thirty and forty thousand. Many wounded return to service, and by offering almost no training - a couple weeks at most - to assault troops, Moscow is able to churn bodies through mobilization centers.
The trouble that Moscow is already running into is that the motivated fighters are mostly dead now, thanks to the callous way they’re treated. So orc officers resort to brutality to motivate successive waves of assault troops. And even more experienced soldiers who have managed to get themselves posted anywhere but an assault platoon are constantly killed and wounded by drone, artillery, and air strikes behind the front line.
So despite Moscow technically having a strategic reserve, one technically sizable enough to seize a small chunk of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, or Finland, if it were to go into a NATO country the consequences would be rapidly terminal. Thanks to Moscow’s production of new armored vehicles only covering half recent loss rates - and this while the orcs are actively conserving what they’ve got left - only a portion of Putin’s army is even properly mechanized at this point. This means that long-feared operations like seizing the Suwalki gap are simply no longer feasible for Moscow. Not so long as the orcs remain committed to fighting Ukraine.
As ugly as attrition fighting is, it’s always an essential component of maneuver warfare. Everybody forgets that all those brilliant German blitzkriegs were made possible by old-fashioned infantry divisions covering the flanks and moving up to cover logistics routes behind. After Hitler forced so many troops to to hold scattered and isolated positions during the Red Army winter counteroffensive of 1941/1942, his army was never the same. Mobilization in 1943 after the losses at Stalingrad further reduced the efficiency of the average German formation.
Just a reminder that simple binaries like maneuver/attrition or offense/defense are nearly always faulty. They create analytical scaffolds that historians can argue over forever and pretend they’re doing useful work, but are only a trick of cognitive framing and a sign of severe intellectual laziness.
Putin is making all the same old mistakes, visibly relying on historical precedent to structure how he prosecutes his war. This is very fortunate for Ukraine, because there are Muscovites capable of being as innovative as any other variety of human. If they could be snapped out of their national delusion, they might be salvageable. But for now, sometimes the orcs are going to manage to come up with an innovation that the system doesn’t squash and scales despite all the corruption. Fiber-optic drones are one. Incorporating control channels into strike drones, even if signals come at a delay and intermittently, could dramatically improve their ability to strike all kinds of targets.
Despite some dangerous innovations emerging as orcs try to cobble together a workable approach to fighting under contemporary circumstances, the Ukrainians are still moving much faster in this regard overall. That has made the first half of 2025 a true nightmare for any orc unfortunate enough to serve within twenty kilometers of the front.
Over the past six months, Moscow’s progress in Ukraine hasn’t been zero, but it certainly doesn’t look like a collapsing front in Donbas. A near-constant maximum effort push for half a year has resulted in marginal gains. The fall of Velyka Novosilka and Kurakhove on what became the Novopavlivka front mark the most substantial enemy gains, but put in perspective this is a far cry from the sort of campaign required to take the rest of Donbas before the decade is out.
It bears pointing out that the light green areas are what Ukraine reclaimed in about half a year of fighting back in 2022. At this rate, the orcs will still be trying to surround Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk by 2026 - the latter was considered all but lost by many commentators in late 2024.
Looking at a zoomed-out view of Moscow’s progress is useful for putting the active fronts in perspective. Only if you lack the context offered at this scale level does the seemingly substantial movement of the red blob over Ukrainian territory reveal itself for the abject failure of military art it represents.
First up is the most positive story for the orcs: the reclamation of Sudzha and most of Free Kursk. Here they scored an unambiguous win - after months of frontal assaults that cost the enemy tens of thousands of dead and forced Putin to call in reinforcements from North Korea. While capable soldiers, drones and artillery made short work of their antiquated tactics until they adapted. Another tale of generals who refused to heed the signs until it was too late for thousands of their people.
Following Ukraine’s withdrawal across the border in February, the orcs decided to try taking a buffer zone that would let them hit Sumy with artillery and drones. A predictable move that was apparently supposed to happen in 2024, until Ukraine punched into Kursk, Ukraine let the orcs push into a fortified area then stopped them cold, initiating counterattacks in June.
The Kharkiv front is similar - not much point in a map because nothing has really changed in half a year despite ongoing orc probes and even assaults, mostly in the Vovchansk ruins. Some local Ukrainian counterattacks have pushed the enemy out of a forest here or village there, but all in all the Kharkiv front is frozen. The enemy is resorting to shelling Kharkiv often, though. Reports of fiber-optic drones with a 40km wire tether are concerning, as the outskirts of Ukraine’s second-largest city could soon witness scenes like the ongoing drone safari targeting civilians down in Kherson.
Fortunately Kharkiv is also one of Ukraine’s most tech-heavy areas. I suspect that technical solutions to drones will emerge here sooner than most places.
Kupiansk continues to be a difficult front for Ukraine, though constant ruscist attacks from their steadily expanding bridgehead over the Oskil still haven’t made it safe for heavy equipment to cross over. Even though Moscow keeps what are ostensibly some of its better forces here, that hasn’t sufficed to do more than advance up to a kilometer every month.
Here again - and closer to Kharkiv - Ukrainian forces have run successful tactical counterattacks on the flanks to hinder enemy progress. Forward ruscist units are in some danger in the area, as a concentrated Ukrainian counterattack could cut off the entire Dvorichna bridgehead complex and perhaps even cross the border, targeting Valuyki. Ukraine’s own bridgehead east of the Oskil remains remarkably intact.
The Borova-Lyman-Siverski sector is another that has seen a slow ruscist spearhead extend west in a clear effort to divide the Ukrainian groups covering this arc of front. Moscow also managed to push into Bilohorivka on the Siverskyi Donets, the veteran 81st Airmobile forced to fall back after nearly two years of holding a large mining complex here.
But across this sector overall orc progress has been extremely limited. The ten kilometer push over the Zherebets is definitely concerning, but little has been revealed about the cost, which is likely every high. Supplying forces over a river means relying on a limited number of crossing points that Ukrainians are sure to be hitting hard. This advance looks a little bit like a trap for this reason. Ukrainian counterattacks have been very limited and tactical in nature.
Heading south to the Kostyantynivka front, the situation these past six months has deteriorated, but to nowhere near the extent most observers expected last winter. Moscow began the year with footholds in both Chasic Yar and Toretsk, with these important strongholds covering the approaches to Kostyantynivka expected to fall in a matter of weeks.
Except that isn’t what happened. Instead, through a combination of stubborn defense and vigorous counterattacks at opportune moments, it took months for Moscow to merely claim the majority of both now-ruined towns. Ukrainian troops on the outskirts hold such strong positions that lately Moscow has turned to trying to bypass both by attacking between.
The movement on the Kostyantynivka front this past six months has mostly come in the latter two, with ruscist forces finally figuring out (a year late) that they have to go around Ukraine’s positions southwest of Toretsk. After a long fight along the T-0504 highway that links Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka, the orcs finally managed to break through using relentless wave tactics. This forced what was always likely a relatively weakly-held front to pull back towards Yablunivka and the large Kleban-Byk reservoir.
But Moscow’s advance here has still not gained sufficient momentum to threaten a serious operational breakthrough. The orcs pushing to secure a ridge of high ground between Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka came as no surprise, and here again their logistics have to cross a water line to sustain further advances. Provided that Ukrainian troops in the area have prepared a solid line to the northwest, taking shelter in the stream courses feeding the Kazenyi Torets, this attempt to build a pincer capable of threatening the envelopment of either Kostyantynivka or Pokrovsk ought to become another costly orc error. The time for this was a year ago: instead, Moscow tried and failed to take Pokrovsk. Now, the orcs are much weaker, and fighting farther from their supply base.
The Pokrovsk campaign has gone rather poorly for Moscow since last year. Only the extension of the new eastern pincer has altered a broadly deteriorating situation. Ukraine’s defense, as expected, has become much stronger the closer the enemy gets to Pokrovsk. The logistics routes into the town are vulnerable to enemy drone strikes now, but they aren’t closed off. Moscow’s troops have to be supplied down rail and highway routes stretching forty kilometers to Donetsk City, with Ukrainians able to spot and target vehicles and trains the entire way.
It remains to be seen is whether Ukraine can mount counterattacks large enough to throw the enemy back on one or both fronts. If Ukrainian troops could break through to Selydove, both pincers would be outflanked and vulnerable. Regardless, Moscow has struggled for six months to effect a breakthrough that is taking weeks to come together. It is difficult to conceive of the orcs mustering enough bodies close enough to Pokrovsk to take it by storm without immediately losing anything gained to counterattacks - and the same goes for Kostyantynivka.
Throughout the year, the Pokrovsk front has attracted around a third of all ruscist attacks every day, sometimes half. Moscow has probably thrown away at least fifty thousand bodies to accomplish almost nothing. Again, the time to surround and take Pokrovsk was back in the middle of 2024 when Ukraine was desperately short on 155mm artillery shells. Putin’s forces continue to be a year behind the curve.
Only on what became the Novopavlivka front over the course of the past six months does the score in terms of territory look remotely favorable for the orcs. It is functionally ancillary to the Pokrovsk front and has likely been a distraction from it on the whole. However, with the orc attempt to envelop Pokrovsk from the west blocked by Ukraine, it has become necessary for the enemy to cross the Solona river further downstream, likely targeting Mezhova.
A substantial road runs to Mezhova through Novopavlivka, making it an attractive crossing point. After Velyka Novosilka and Kurakhove fell earlier in the year, it became possible for the orcs to consider a push in this direction. Though Ukrainian troops on this front have put up a hell of a fight and evaded numerous near-encirclements in the process, portions of the line keep breaking, forcing retreats.
On this front alone has Moscow’s progress approached anything resembling a true operational success. The irony is that of all the fronts, this is the one where Ukrainian forces falling back forty kilometers in six months does the least damage. From the beginning I believed it best to accept the area as lost and maximize ruscist casualties during a deliberate phased withdrawal. Only now that the writing is on the wall is that actually happening.
As was the case in Pokrovsk, the most likely outcome of the orc push on this front is to stall out as soon as the front approaches an area where Ukraine can hide large quantities of people and gear. The forest plantations and towns along the winding Vovcha should bring the enemy to a bloody halt. I originally forecast that this would happen by April, but in March had already extended the date to July. At this rate, orc progress on this front should cease by August along the lines I expected.
My sincere hope is that ruscist forces will be so exhausted that collapsing their flank in a major counteroffensive will trigger a general retreat. There aren’t a lot of places for the orcs to take shelter on the road north from Velyka Novosilka or west from Kurakhove. The loss of strength gradient is definitely a thing.
Elsewhere the orcs have managed some minor tactical progress here and there, but nothing worth mapping in detail. Operations near Kherson and in Zaporizhzhia have been tried, but all have failed with little ground gained. This looks to be the way of it for the rest of the year, though there are some signs of more orc activity near Kamianka lately.
Six months from now I expect that most fronts will look much as they do today. Yet Putin’s forces will have taken another hundred thousand casualties in a bid to tie down and stretch out Ukraine’s. It is my expectation that Ukraine is doing a better job at doing this to the invader than the other way around. If so, a counteroffensive in the next three months could very well be the extended battle that wins the war. Of course, historians will then argue over whether it was a battle at all, because what is a battle, really?
This sort of thing is why it so often bugs me that both historians and physicists get PhDs. The latter long ago decided to stop worrying about whether electrons are really particles or waves and go with whatever construct is more useful for their purposes at the time. Somehow ignorant of the futility of arguing over false binaries despite allegedly being a kind of scientist, the historians proceed to turn themselves inside out trying to prove points in a game they created themselves.
Institutions are built on incentives, so it’s probably a mistake to evaluate professional output by volume instead of quality of applied impact. Just saying. I may be picking on historians, but the critique applies to most academic disciplines these days. Small wonder the world seems to be run by zombies.
World System Brief - And A New Project
Though there isn’t any shortage of global news these days, the situation has reached a point where there’s actually precious little worthy of deep analysis. Now that the Postwar Order’s core assumptions have been shattered, politics is almost purely demonstrative as hard power rises to the forefront of all calculations. The world is on rails, and the ride is what it is.
Broadly speaking, Europe is rearming, the process irreversible and bound to feature strong military investments in Ukraine. European leaders aren’t as ignorant of clowns as most American; they keep sucking up to Trump in a misguided effort to make the process easier, but he’ll soon say or do something stupid that brings relations back to square one. Which is his strategy of course: be as annoying and demanding of attention as possible. That way nobody is sure what he really cares about.
Trump is an open book if you speak the right language: he is after more power for the sake of it, and that’s as far as it goes. He’ll say anything if he thinks it brings him a modicum of gain, so can’t be trusted as far as his tubby behind could be thrown by his average supporter. Foreign leaders know this, so simply string him along, the trouble of fighting him not seen as worth it. Except all that does is set a precedent, making him lash out even harder when he’s ready to pick a fight - or cause some trouble just to keep everyone on their toes.
The best strategy is to ignore the fool and terminate talks. Let America stew in its own rancid juices until it burns out or falls apart.
World politics is now on rails: America is determined to pretend that it has the guts to fight China, demanding that Europe play along in exchange for the US not cutting aid to Ukraine or removing too many capabilities from Europe. That’s what the interruptions of aid to Ukraine is all about now: making Europe damage its own interests by joining America’s silly crusade. Article 5 is dead so far as the USA is concerned, so American means little to Europe now anyway. Europe has to rush to build a drone shieldwall stretching from the Arctic down to Turkiye.
Also, every orc ship at sea should be actively tracked by a submarine with orders to ensure it has an accident in the event of any serious incidents happening on NATO territory. Pain for pain is unfortunately the only language that matters in Putin’s world. Negotiations are just a way to figure out what the enemy is afraid of. And kinetic action is another form of negotiation. The only reason that Putin doesn’t bomb a country in Europe is because he fears the consequences. Nobody needs America to threaten those. In fact, D.C. will always hold everyone back, playing both sides if the Beltway hacks are able.
Looking further afield, the ever-deepening alliance with North Korea is an incredibly dangerous situation, especially with Iran now fully dependent on China, which is probably a lot less concerned about Iran having a small nuclear arsenal than Moscow, which has always had imperial designs on Tehran. North Korea-Iran nuclear sharing is, funny enough, a scenario that I and some classmates explored during a simulated non-proliferation treaty negotiation a professor at Berkeley had his class go through a couple decades ago. I was on the North Korea team, and boy did we make the Americans mad as we nuclearized most of the Middle East in exchange for oil. It could happen now.
The Middle East remains the Middle East: full of hypocrites and liars, Western hatred of anything Muslim because Christians can’t handle a rival monotheist faith (Jews included, in the long run, something Israelis seem to not get) is just one issue among many. Then there’s the insane conflation of Moscow with anti-imperial causes in the Global South that the editorial board of Al Jazeera (among others) loves to push every other day. Funny, because if you want to talk about hatred of Islam, talk to a russian orthodox priestling I happen to know down in Rostov-on-Don some time…
Speaking of, can an orc conscription board go make my thirty-something brother-in-law properly prove his adoration of Putin’s russian world already? He was such a patriotic Trump-loving American that, like Trump - and Biden and Obama he never got around to wearing the uniform, not even for a single year, like I did. Only fair that such a macho tough guy as him actually spends a few months on the front line in Ukraine.
In any case, the world is what it is. The only politicians that matter are the few who have the ability to understand just how bad it is out there - and what needs to happen now to mitigate the damage.
First step is to dump a good portion of the existing corpus of military and diplomatic science used by most in the so-called West. It has all become a professional academic language utterly divorced from the realities of the battlefield. It leads to nowhere good. Pragmatic, systems-based thought is required.
Wars are won or lost through the effective application of power, and in conflicts like Ukraine’s fight for freedom raw combat power is eventually all that matters. Combat power is a function of raw capabilities multiplied by an efficiency factor. You’ve got to have enough material, but also know how to use it. In ecosystems, the organisms which are better able to utilize resources over time tend to outlast the opposition, all things being equal. Ukraine has spent over three years proving this principle, relying on technology to maintain the necessary edge.
The Ukrainians have also demonstrated something extremely important about the state of military science around the globe. That is to say, a dangerous lack of anything resembling a truly scientific approach to contemporary problems renders every military professional around the world a liability to their own people at this point.
Yes, I’m aware of how hyperbolic this sounds. In an age where anyone and everyone makes grand claims, it’s becoming standard for professionals to hedge every statement. Everyone is afraid of being caught out wrong and mocked on social media.
That’s why it pays to be truly independent. As an analyst, my overriding objective is to identify scientific principles that can be applied to bring Ukraine closer to victory. I lack the professional baggage that is now acting as a set of blinders preventing the majority of military and intelligence types to comprehend the trap they’re in.
For about twenty years, I’ve made the study of military science and history a sort of personal mission. My wide-ranging academic background is largely a function of looking for theories and methods that could address longstanding questions. In every break between courses I would dive into every library text I could get my hands on. I’m absolutely certain that a doctorate in war studies or something of that nature would be no trouble, were I ever to discover a unicorn scenario where I could work remotely from rural Oregon and still get paid.
My often sardonic tone when writing this blog is the way it is for a reason: it has to be at least somewhat entertaining for anyone to pay attention. I’ve also authored nine books which have been read by thousands of people - narrative is just another method if you get right down to it. Deep down, though, all my work is connected by a single vital thread: doing what I can to prevent today’s military leaders from making the tragic lunacy that defined the First World War.
Then a generation of young was ripped from the heart of Europe, the demographic and social impact echoing to this day. Deep down, they were all sacrificed to a cruel man-made god: the delusion that every now and again a society is doomed to go through this kind of hell to prove itself. Naturally, most of the good peace-loving Christians who proclaimed this belief didn’t have to pay the blood price themselves.
Across Earth today the scattered echoes of this mostly-discarded ideology are congealing again. Already the thought leaders who imagine that they influence the powerful are talking about mass mobilization of society to defeat malevolent threats nobody can ever seem to fully define.
Compounding the banal tragedy of history rhyming yet again is the strange fact that so little serious scientific analysis of the fighting in Ukraine breaks through the din of nonsense spouted by media talking heads. The same tired tropes get invoked over and over, the essence of what’s happening ruthlessly ignored, all involved determined to pretend that what’s been happening in Ukraine is somehow isolated and unique, not a taste of the very near future.
A veritable industry has emerged built on the need to translate lessons from Ukraine into a language that the American-dominated Military-Industrial-Media complex can comprehend. Over the past thirty years this iron triangle has created a veneer of professionalism around the ability to use the right key phrases on command, stuff like dominance, lethality, multi-domain, and other fun jargon. Never mind that the actual performance of US and allied forces during this period have been dismal, only able to accomplish limited objectives like blowing up a regime’s vital assets to help give rebels a fighting chance or pave the way for friendly troops to topple the regime then fail to cope with the aftermath.
The MIM doesn’t give a damn about defending democracy, freedom, or America. It’s a gigantic monopolistic leech soaking up tax dollars without ever having to prove the value of the services provided. Those who look on Putin’s ruscist empire and scoff at how easily it sends mobilized forty-somethings to die in meat waves should hope their leaders never feel a need to prove they are winning by sacrificing a couple hundred casualties per square kilometer. Shareholders at Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, Anduril, Palantir (gods I hate the startup ones who abuse Tolkien. His estate should sue), and the rest will never care so long as the value of their shares is guaranteed.
An alternative to the lot of them is required. Probably most established military institutions, too. There’s a very good reason that the most effective units in Ukraine tend to have formed outside the established armed forces system and grown organically.
Institutions are living systems, and so also subject to the adaptive cycle. Some become so maladapted that they do not survive when times change and with it, the environment. The story of 1914-1918 was one of first the Allies, then Germany, discovering that they’d mostly have been better off shooting 90% of their senior and probably even mid-level officers at the start. Every aspect of how war was fought had to be re-thought, results of the process emerging only after hundreds of thousands of soldiers had perished proving the futility of the old ways.
Technology is often credited with breaking the deadlock, but plenty of new industrial horrors were applied before what was later called combined arms warfare did the trick. Poison gas was a novel innovation, and despite real shock effect when first employed on a wide scale by Germany, the Allies adapted. When it came to aviation, both sides were able to match developments.
Every few generations the natural way to organize and deploy combat power is relearned. Effective simulation and wargaming can point the way forward, but only now is computing technology sophisticated enough to truly explore what is possible.
So in the past one era of warfare has given way to another time and again. The essence of the thing is always the same: policy brings institutions into conflict, assumptions fail, then institutions adapt or die. So long ago across most of the planet simple mobs gave way to warbands, then these gave rise to militias when settlements became more permanent. Dedicated warrior castes arose in the first cities, with larger armies filled by conscripts and mobilized called up when required, then the domestication of the horse added a new element to combat power. Siege weapons, gunpowder, sailing ships, steam power - all created new possibilities that innovators would soon explore.
And it’s a very safe bet that at each stage there were people who had spent their lives immersed in a particular way of doing things who saw any and all change as the death of everything they had worked for. Institutions are living things, because their base constituent elements are always people. One of the most persistent failure points across all institutions is the tendency for speaking the right language to be mistaken for actual ability to comprehend what makes them tick.
Putin’s orcs have failed to conquer Ukraine and will continue to do so, regardless of how hard they fight, because the ruscist military institution is literally incapable of changing to the degree it must without falling apart first. For Muscovite officers to accept that their doctrine and training is fatally flawed is to commit professional suicide. The same is probably true of too many of their equivalents in the Pentagon. And that’s a problem, because while China’s system has many flaws, it’s still in a phase where true innovation can happen.
To compensate for the decay in professional competence that has to be expected from global security institutions developed over the past century demands novel solutions. It’s past time to build an independent institution capable of accomplishing what the United Nations has proven manifestly unable to: actually enforce at least the rudiments of what is usually termed international law.
I guess it’s up to me to get it started. I’ve decided to call it Earth Forces, taking inspiration from a 90’s era science fiction series that Star Trek always overshadowed: Babylon 5. In the B5 universe, the 23rd century has seen a fragile Earth Alliance take to the stars, bringing humanity’s political struggles with it. Unlike most sci-fi of its time, Babylon 5 was meant to be a direct reflection of the political context that prevailed in the 1990s, an exploration of power and how it shapes people’s lives.
In the B5 narrative, Earth was able to go to the stars only after most of the planet agreed to accept the authority of an independent governing body, the Earth Alliance, with Earthforce enforcing international - eventually interstellar - law. What was especially compelling, when compared to the more utopian world of Star Trek, was Babylon 5’s vision of an Earth that had become no less dirty or political, because humans will always be humans. The role of Earthforce was about like that of the military in Trump’s America: officially apolitical, but aggressively exploited as a partisan prop by various interests, with its constitutional position concomitantly eroded.
And here’s the hard truth: since the Second World War, it’s been an unspoken fact that everyone knows just such an institution is required to prevent humanity from tearing itself apart in another orgy of violence. We’re witnessing the start of the cycle today, commentators finding every excuse to gin up feelings for profit, with the easiest emotions to provoke in humans being fear of the Other.
To save the world from this and other human-induced cognitive delusions demands a truly independent force accountable both to a certain ideal and material obligations to members. Since I’m unaware of anyone else making any progress on this front, I figure I’ll give it a try.
So, starting this summer, I’ll open up a separate, subscriber-only part of the blog titled Earth Forces Bulletin. It will publish monthly and cover an array of topics related to establishing the decentralized network of collaborating communities required to one day respond to the full range of global threats. The objective is simple: attract subscribers interested in either passively or actively supporting the work.
Over the past two years, Rogue Systems Recon readership has doubled every year. More than fifty people and counting have gone out their way to pledge five dollars a month just for coverage of the Ukraine War and other global events. RSR will always be free and publish weekly (most of the time), and content won’t be mutually exclusive - in fact, I consider everything I publish open-source, for the record. Only fair, since the images I rely on are - or at least, I use them that way, making sure that the source is identified.
Earth Forces Bulletin will be focused less on Ukraine specifically and more on broader concepts like organization, doctrine, training, and policy systems. I’ll also spend some time each week working through comments, as this project is obviously way too big for one person to handle on their own if and when it gets going. Once able to generate enough income to justify the time I put into the project, my plan is to hire help to expand beyond Substack.
The first step in even the most impossible plan is the same: gather resources. You need money to make money. We always require more Vespene Gas.
But even if the end of the road is so far distant even the thought of starting the hike looks objectively ridiculous, sometimes it’s best to say why not? and proceed. The deed needs to be done. And I bet there are enough people around the world willing to participate that a collective can get something interesting going.
More on that to come. Just wanted to give fair warning to anybody who has pledged in the past. The first Earth Forces mission will be Victory in Ukraine, so there’s definitely overlap. But that’s only the beginning of a global fightback against the self-inflicted tragedies of history. Neither governments nor corporations can ever be allowed to have total control over global security matters. That doesn’t mean some won’t try. They must always encounter a hard wall to curb their ambitions. Or the road to hell is already half paved.
Concluding Comments
Not much to say beyond that this week! Though as I go to publish, Ukrainian media is abuzz with the news that, just as I suggested was the plan a week ago, the USA is using the fact that nothing has been truly resolved in the Middle East as an excuse to mess with Ukraine aid flows. The duration and overall impact remain to be seen.
But that the USA is no reliable guarantor of anyone’s security, even it’s own, should be accepted as a proven fact at this point. Partisan judges appear inclined to decide that presidents are basically monarchs who can do whatever they want, so the USA’s fate is all but sealed thanks to the inevitable internal kaboom partisans seeking total power will produce in this fragile federation. When the Constitution means whatever some idiot with connections wants it to in the moment, it’s done.
An alternative is required. So it must be built. 250 years is a good run for a country as artificial as the USA. The world will be fine without it. After some turbulent times. May the Earth Forces rise! Perhaps they already have. The Ukrainian Forces are showing us all the way. With the benefit of their experience, maybe the rest of us can avoid some costly mistakes.