Eurasia note 100 - Toll Of Slavic Youth In Hundreds Of Thousands

NATO marks 1,000 days of war with call to conscript 18 year-olds

• Putin attends Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit in Astana

• Warns decision-making centres in Kiev could become potential targets

• Washington admits Russia is pushing back Ukraine on frontline and in Kursk

(2,600 words or about 12 minutes of your company.)

Tbilisi, Nov 28, 2024

U.S. officials are pushing Ukraine to lower the age for conscription to 18 from 25 — a grim way to mark 1,000 days of Russia's special military operation.

Former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalde said it should dispatch young adults to bolster its fighting forces.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has resisted such a move as it would be unpopular and potentially do great demographic damage to Ukraine.

The Washington official said, "The Russians are in fact making progress, steady progress, in the east, and they are beginning to push back Ukrainian lines in Kursk... Mobilization and more manpower could make a significant difference at this time as we look at the battlefield today."

Russia's military has made a significant advance on the Ukrainian front in the past week, seizing nearly 235 square kilometres, a record for 2024.

Reuters reported the figures based on data from the Ukrainian analytical project DeepState.

Collective insecurity

Russia will answer any strikes within its territory by U.S., British or foreign-made missiles, president Vladimir Putin told the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Its new missile, Oreshnik, was not a weapon of mass destruction, he said, but in multiple use its power was comparable to the use of nuclear weapons.

Russia has stepped up firing of missiles in response to Ukraine's strikes deep into its territory, 90 missiles and 100 drones on Wednesday night.

Ukraine introduced emergency power cuts after Russian missile attacks on electricity infrastructure in Odesa, Kropyvnytskyi, Kharkiv, Rivne, Lutsk and the Shostka community in Sumy region.

The temperature in Kyiv ranges from -1 C to -4 C overnight, about +1 during the day.

The Ukrainian Navy said on Thursday that the Russian Navy has deployed four Kalibr carrier ships to combat duty in the Black Sea with a total salvo of up to 22 missiles.

The best to you

President-elect Donald Trump nominated as his coordinator on Russia and Ukraine envoy the retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg.

Earlier this year Kellogg drafted a plan to end the war with Fred Fleitz, who was chief of the National Security Council in Trump's last administration.

The plan involved telling Ukraine that it would only receive more US weapons if it entered peace talks with Russia. At the same time, the US would warn Moscow that refusing to negotiate would result in increased US support for Ukraine.

Despite his campaign proposal to immediately end the war in Ukraine, Trump's proposals seem closer to those of the Biden administration, which is to continue arming the country.

Air warfare

The outgoing Biden administration is sending a further $725 million in military loans/aid for Kiev, including land mines, drones, Stinger missiles, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev did not rule out striking military hubs in Romania and Poland, if long-range Western-made missiles will continue to be used against it.

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly resolved on Wednesday that Ukraine should be supplied with medium-range missiles — under the former INF Treaty, these have a range between 1,000 and 5,500 kilometres — though the vote is not binding.

Such a medium range missile could only be the U.S. Tomahawk. Washington is also said to be considering providing the JASSM-ER air-launched missiles, with 1,000 kilometres range. In both cases such missiles require U.S. involvement in programming the missiles' flight.

Would the British go as far as providing nuclear weapons to Ukraine?

Boots on ground

If Western countries go ahead with threats to put boots on the ground, it could from even from NATO's perspective be too little too late.

French army is around 270,000 and the British have about 74,000, of which a brigade is already committed on the ground in Estonia. The amount they could deploy would be equal to Ukraine's losses this year. By intervening the countries would also render Article Five null and void.

They may content themselves with attacks on infrastructure, the British have long spoken of another attack on the Kersh bridge in Crimea.

Mind wars

While NATO worries about losing face to Russia, there is one consequence they are not talking about: the psychological and political effect on Ukrainians. Faced with a betrayal by the West, how would they respond? Some would entrench deeper into Banderite resentment, others may throw in their lot with Russia.

A significant number would remain out of the country, preferring their new lives in Western Europe.

Unfortunately this would provide the raw material for the centuries-long, British-led, contest with Russia.

Valeriy Zaluzhny, the newly-appointed ambassador of Ukraine to Britain, and former head of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, will rally Ukrainians in Britain as did the Polish government in exile during WW2 -- a long-term operation.

Pocketbook

Part of the motive is the profit of war.

Recall that U.S. secretary of state James Baker promised in 1989 that NATO would not expand eastwards and they lied. It was a bonanza for American arms sales, and they followed the money until their nose led them to Ukraine and bumped up against Russia.

The primary motive is the control of resources: “They're sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine,"as senator Lindsey Graham told CBS on June 10.

The problem for BlackRock and other eager investors in Ukraine is that the bulk of resources are in eastern Ukraine, the part that Russia controls: Crimea, which voted to join Russia in 2014, about 80 per cent of the Donbas — a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — and more than 70 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, according to Reuters.

Nutcracker

All you want to know about Oreshnik

Putin has sent an elegant message, with the explosions above the Pivedenmash (Yuzhmash or Southern Mechanical Engineering) plant in Dnipro.

There are conflicting claims as to the damage caused. The hypersonic ballistic may not have carried a warhead but have been a technical demonstration... What those familiar with Russia might with dark humour call a "technical break."

Russia revealed a new weapon the West didn't know about; a hypersonic superior to missiles that already the West can't match.

It wasn't bravado. Technology has no morality embedded, let alone anthropomorphic, boastful intent. It is a fact if you pursue scientific inquiry unqueered by emotion, which many in the West do not.

It was a “see what can happen” moment, more commonly known as FAFO. In high tech warfare there is no room for "say it ain't so."

The press in our part of the world continues to talk up the prospect of war over decades -- while claiming Putin is bluffing.

Well... is it one or the other, for both cannot be true.

Poker or chess