"Budanov Speaks, Abrams Arrive in Ukraine, Lavrov's Speech to UNGA & the Death of MAD, US Salami Slicing Escalation to Armageddon"
Interview Faultlines, September 25, 2023 (June 25, 2023)
https://marksleboda.substack.com/p/budanov-speaks-abrams-arrive-in-ukraine?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=1083041&post_id=137393268&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_medium=email&r=5bli1#details

4:29 [combined arms warfare] is not going to work. ...

. . .frozen confict not to Russia's advantage

12:58 “Lavrov said that “Western politicians have been so blinded by their feeling of impunity that they’ve lost their sense of self-preservation.” One could only do so much without risking all of us dying in a nuclear annihilation. With the fall of the Cold War, the U.S. simply forgot this. There was a unipolar moment when they exercised their military power and changed governments around the world willy nilly as they saw fit when Russia was undergoing the chaos of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and then recovering afterwards with China still on the path of their massive re-industrialization and development. So the U.S. had no challenger.

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14:33 Mark Sleboda: “MAD relied on respect and fear of the opponent.

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15:56

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16:47 “the technique of ‘Salami Slicing’ tactics. The idea is you escalate by small degrees and slowly over time you boil the frog. How can you react to this, it’s so small, again and again and again? And we see the erosion. Western officials, U.S. officials say repeatedly:

17:12 “They do not believe in Russian red lines. This is the idea. They believe that Russia is sane and rational enough that they will not resort to either nuclear weapons or even any kind of direct strike on the U.S. or NATO country no matter what they do, no matter how obviously they are participants in this war, blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, etc. Because Russia is sane and rational, they do not want to start down a path that might lead to nuclear annihilation. And we can rely on that.

17:56 “So we don’ t need to be sane and rational, and we can continue poking the Bear with ever bigger sticks. That is presently the state of international relations today. And as you pointed out, it’s not just about Russia. The exact same thing is going on with China.

18:19 And, in fact, Antony Blinken gave a speech to Johns Hopkins last week, an absolutely insane speech, where he basically, with giddy relish, he talked about the idea of being at war with both Russia and China at the same time, as if that would be the penultimate experience, the reason for the U.S. Not the Cold War realist logic of Divide and Conquer that allowed Nixon and Kissinger to split Russia from China and “win” the first Cold War by many peoples’ estimates. But to take them both on, actively, at the same time, and that is foreign policy madness.”

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20:50 “The Kiev Regime has not made any significant progress in the last two weeks.

21:33 “... They moved into a lowland flat area surrounded by heights where Russia’s defensive positions lie. And this essentially on the outskirts of Russia’s first defensive line. It doesn’t even reach Russia’s first defensive line to get past Roboye. They’ve been there for two weeks. It’s a kill zone.”

22:02 “… They’ve stopped mostly using Western weapons and vehicles, the Leopards, the Bradley’s because it just gets people killed. It immediately becomes a target. So, they are relying completely on human wave attacks. And it’s not even right to call it human wave attacks, because even a platoon-size unit, anything of any appreciable size gets them targeted by Russian artillery and drones. So they’re seriously using a ‘trickle tactic’ or ‘mosquito bites’ of two-to-three men basically sent far back from the front line in the direction of Russians where, like, “Just go. You guys go that way in small groups of two-to-three to avoid being targeted. And then you march miles and miles and miles through enemy territory. And then, right in front of Russia’s defensive lines try to build a critical mass using one of Russia’s own anti-tank ditches – which is big and open, not really a trench – to gather a critical mass of those of you who survive, and then storm Verboye.” That’s what it is.

23:19 “Everywhere, the Kiev Regime has stopped using Western vehicles. They just get destroyed. They’re on human waves. Russia calls them ‘meat assaults’. That’s where they’re at now. It’s not doing any better for them. It hasn’t made any significant progress. They keep crying: ‘We’ve made significant progress.’ And you’re like: ‘Where? Show me on a map. It doesn’t exist.’

23:43 "You zoom in and you zoom in and you see that Russia is actually on the counter-attack in the very areas that the Kiev Regime has taken in the weeks before in the last month or so. No. They have not penetrated Russia’s defensive lines. That is completely false. They have not made any significant progress. And a lot of times, what they’re talking about when they say they’ve gotten past Russia’s first defensive lines, they are redefining Russia’s Screening Zone now. It’s a throw-away territory in front of Russia’s defensive lines where they ran a fluid defense that had some mine fields. That’s where all the fighting has taken place for the last nearly four months. They are now selectively redefining that into Russia’s first defensive line so that they can present it as some kind of ‘success’ that they have moved up to, within seeing distance of the first defensive line, the first of five, six, or now even seven echelon defensive lines."

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25:39 There is no surprise. There is no strategic surprise. Both sides have access to satellite information – the Ukraine, of course, through the United States – Russia through its own. Both have reconnaissance drones all over the battlefield. It is hard even to get tactical surprise because of the prevalence of drones on both sides of the combat lines and the satellite data. Two rules of this conflict (1) Surprise is very hard, impossible I would say, on anything greater than the immediately tactical. And (2) Offense is very hard, whoever you are in this near-peer conflict between Russia and NATO or NATO proxy army armed with NATO weapons and tactics. And you are always going to incur extremely heavy casualties in these offensive operations. Which is why so much of the combat resembles World War One attrition combat of trenches and artillery.

27:05 Faultlines on Headline in the Daily Mail: “Putin rains hell on Odessa during Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kippur.” It doesn’t get into the logistics of what’s really happening but they had to throw in that business about “Jewish” …

27:28 Mark Sleboda: “Take your pick of any holiday. The war has been going on for over a year and a half. Now lots of holidays have been attacked on all sides of this conflict. ‘Oh, my god. The Kiev Regime attacked on the Winter Solstice, a crime against the Neo Pagans.’

27:52 Faultlines: "You know why. Because Zelensky is the greatest Jew ever to walk the face of the earth."

27:55 Mark Sleboda: “He’s not Jewish. He’s not a practicing Jew. His daddy was Jewish. That doesn’t even make him ethno-Jewish because they have a maternal bloodline. I’m sorry. He’s not Jewish in any way, shape, or form. Not religiously. Not ethnically. He’s nothing. … And there are no Nazis in Ukraine, as Zelensky, with his fist raised and the entire Canadian Parliament and President cheer a Waffen SS veteran . . . It’s such a metaphor for this entire conflict. ‘There’s no Nazis in Ukraine’ other than the Ukrainian Nazis we’re celebrating that Zelensky reifies as heroes.”