Russian Soldiers Rape All Females Between 8 and 80

Russian butchery in occupied areas is likely to be even worse than war crimes that have already been uncovered, experts have warned.

Vladimir Putin’s forces have been accused of genocide after evidence of summary executions, torture and rape was found in areas formerly under their control.

Harrowing images from Bucha, on the outskirts of capital Kyiv, show bodies piled up in the street, with witnesses saying many appeared to have been shot while their hands were bound behind their backs.

A bombshell report by Human Rights Watch yesterday said Russian forces had carried out “unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence” directed toward the Ukrainian population.

Putin’s troops have been accused of carrying out a “massacre” that “could amount to genocide” in Bucha, while allegations of violence toward civilians have been documented across the country.

An Army of Criminals

This is an old, old story for Russian soldiers loose in foreign countries. If they see a female — no matter how old — they will rape her and perhaps further torture and murder her to boot. These are the actions of people without sympathy for anyone else.

In World War II, Russian soldiers raped any female on two legs no matter what country she lived in:

…rape victims were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for slave labour. “Liberated [Russian] girls quite often complain that our soldiers rape them,” he noted. “One girl said to me in tears: ‘He was an old man, older than my father’.” __ A History of Rape

BBC on Russian Massacre of Civilians

This War is Likely to Spread, and Last a Long Time

With every passing day of Ukrainian resistance, the positions seem to have hardened, especially on the territorial questions (the future status not just of Donetsk and Luhansk but also of Crimea). I can well imagine cease-fires that don’t hold, attempts to gain the upper hand leading to bouts of fighting — and all this going on for much longer than anyone seems to anticipate. That also means the sanctions on Russia will persist, even if they don’t get tougher. __ A Long War That Keeps Getting Bigger

This war is likely to last as long as Putin remains in control of the Russian totalitarian dictatorship. Almost every geopolitical analyst on the planet — except Peter Zeihan — expected Putin to threaten an invasion of Ukraine for the sake of concessions. That would have been the rational move, but Putin is not behaving rationally in any conventional sense.

Putin is Likely to Resort to Unconventional Weapons

As Russian stocks of conventional weapons are depleted, and as Russian commanders in the field continue to be killed — or kill themselves — Putin’s set of choices are diminishing.

Soldiers are said to be running low on weapons, while the withdrawal from Kyiv has meant dozens of tanks being abandoned.

Meanwhile, the likes of the T-72 tank, a key component in Moscow’s arsenal, needs parts said to be made in the eastern Ukrainian city of Izyum, which invading troops have failed to capture.

Some estimates suggest defending troops have taken or destroyed at least 2,000 tanks and armoured vehicles.

Running Out of Weapons and Supplies

Russian Commander Kills Himself When Learns 90% of His Tanks Useless

While reports suggest Russia is running low on arms, Ukraine’s resources are being bolstered by its allies.

To date, the UK has supplied almost 4,000 next-generation anti-tank weapons (NLAWs) and Javelin anti-tank systems, alongside anti-aircraft missiles.

Putin Still Has Unconventional Weapons to Spring On the World

Putin has exposed himself and his army to the world in a most uncomplimentary light. Russians at home are suffering, while Russian soldiers in Ukraine are dying, deserting, defecting, and committing war crimes. If only to save face, he may well feel he has to use unconventional weapons to stop the world’s laughter.

What will NATO do if a strategic nuclear bomb is exploded by Russia on the border of a NATO member country? Putin may feel compelled to learn the answer to that question.

China is Forced to Rethink its Taiwan Strategy

China has been watching the ongoing conflict with no small amount of chagrin. Chinese leaders are reportedly surprised and unsettled by the poor military performance of its Russian partners, Ukraine’s resistance, and the level of solidarity from the international community. The image of a much smaller state, against all odds, successfully resisting a larger neighbor surely sits uneasily in the psyches of CCP apparatchiks and PLA officials. It also counters the narrative of overwhelming force and grim inevitability Beijing has sought to instill in the psyches of the Taiwanese people. It is notable that early attempts by Chinese state media to capitalize on the Ukraine invasion in precisely this fashion, illustrating how the United States will surely abandon Taiwan when the chips are down, quietly ceased after the initial days of the war, when it became apparent that the U.S. was not, in fact, abandoning Ukraine. Beyond purely psychological factors, Ukraine also offers a blueprint for successful resistance via asymmetric warfare very similar to Taiwan’s proposed Overall Defense Concept, perhaps giving a jolt to a plan that most analysts agree offers Taiwan its best chance of success against the PLA but has stalled out in the face of bureaucratic resistance.

While China and the PLA will surely watch Ukraine closely and try to take away the correct lessons, there is one uncomfortable parallel which China may be unable to avoid by the very nature of its authoritarian system. The runup to the Ukraine invasion featured multiple strategic miscalculations by Putin, driven at least in part by him surrounding himself with the yes-men who inevitably cling to authoritarian leaders, eager to please and afraid to speak truth to power.

Xi Muses Over Ukraine, Taiwan

The only sanction that will touch Russia is the one that keeps Russia from selling its oil & gas to outside nations. Germany can posture and pontificate all it wants, but as long as free European nations continue to buy Russian fossil fuels, they will be financing Putin’s war. In fact, Germany is sponsoring Russian war crimes in Ukraine as long as it buys Russian fossil fuels.

The German reality today is that the pathetic country is closing all of its nuclear power plants and planning to close its coal power plants as soon as possible. It is not planning to stop buying Russian natural gas. Why not? Because Germany has put most of its energy eggs into the intermittent/unreliable wind & solar fiasco. Modern nations cannot survive on low quality energy such as wind & solar — they can only posture and preen to no real effect except national decline.