Updates on the Current Status of the Conflict in Ukraine
Spoiler: the bloodshed and profit continue.
A bit of a preamble before we get to the news: My articles have been slightly less consistent recently, for which I apologize. I’ve been channeling my literary drives into poetry, which, while out of character, is a response to the ever-frustrating and increasingly hopeless geopolitical situation the world has found itself in. The world is coming to a state in which writing poetry might actually be more a more worthwhile endeavor than drafting ill-fated diplomatic resolutions for the Fourth Reich’s Security Council.
Now let’s zoom in and analyze the situation in Ukraine: It’s a safe bet to assume that the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have received the latest batch of Western weapons. The word from the ground says the situation around Bakhmut is once again at high heat after a brief comparative lull in the wake of the failed “counter-offensive”—aren't all offensives counter-offensives at this point? I decided to reach out to my connections in the conflict zone to get an idea of the state of affairs.
Russian advances in and around Avdeevka have been confirmed; however, the AFU continues to hold enough of the territory to launch attacks targeting Donetsk. Unfortunately this escalation is unlikely to trigger a significant change in the state of the war. If anything, it serves as an example of NATO’s shameful willingness to create and feed off senseless violence caused by their decisive and reckless international operations. In the past 24 hours alone (November 5, 2023), over 13 Storm Shadow and Neptune missiles have been successfully intercepted over the conflict zone.
It goes without saying that international attention has been diverted from the Eastern European front, though the political value of such a diversion is quite clear. Outside of the Special Military Operation (SMO) that began in 2022, Russia’s main military focus of the past decade has centered in Syria, in the form of large-scale counter-terrorism operations. It isn’t unreasonable to contemplate the timing of the recent military outbreaks in the Middle East with respect to their potential effect on Russian military resources. Not that leaders in Israel or the United States would ever jeopardize the lives of their own citizens in order to keep the war machine running.
Additionally subservient to this point are recent operations of Russian forces targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure that lay the many expensive, fancy weapon systems to waste without ever having been used. This is a huge loss for the Ukrainian government and military but not for arms manufacturers, who get to line their pockets regardless. Such is the global racket of modern warfare.
-The Shultz Report by M. Shultz