Balance of power shifted in Ukraine war after Biden lifts restrictions

Hey everyone, Peter Zion here coming to you from Colorado. In the last 36 hours, we had the most significant shift in the balance of power in the Ukraine war of at least the last year. But first the backstory. Two cities in play Belgorod on the Russian side of the border, which is a big logistical hub and population center, and Kharkiv on the Ukrainian side of the border, which based on whose numbers you’re using as either the second or the third most populous city in Ukraine. Early in the war, forces originating from Belgrade launched a massive assault on Kharkiv and nearly captured the city and only with some very clever maneuvering. And in a couple of counter offensives about a year into the war, were the Ukrainians able to fight the Russians back to the border. Of late and the last few weeks, the Russians have made another try using walls of T 62 tanks, which are technically outdated, but still, you know, can kill you. And just coming over in huge numbers trying to overwhelm the Ukrainians who were occupied elsewhere in the country. They have been stopped, and the Russians have been facing some really horrific casualty ratio somewhere between five and six to one versus the Ukrainians. But the Russians have the men despair, and an attitude that numbers are equality all their own. What’s going on is that the Russians have been counting since the beginning of the war on Western weapons provided to Ukraine not being able to be used on the Russian side of the border. So from Belgrade, they’ve been launching wave after wave of artillery and missile attacks targeting Kharkiv city, not just the military assets, but the city itself. They’ve definitely killed a lot of people. They’re going after the power grid, they’re going after logistical hubs and is triggering a lot of hardship for the population that has managed to survive these assaults. The Ukrainians are screaming for the Western restrictions on weapons to be used on the Russian side of the border would be lifted. And what’s changed in the last 48 hours is those restrictions have been lifted at least as far as the Kharkiv axis happens to be. And in the last 24 to 36 hours of the Ukrainians have opened up targeting everything of military significance in the Belgorod area, not simply going after the artillery that is attacking them, but air defense sites, ammo dumps, fuel depots, rail yards, everything. Three things come from this the first the tactical, the Russians have put everything that they have free into the assault on Kharkiv. And now their logistical hub behind them is getting obliterated. So we will probably probably probably see a significant Ukrainian counter offensive in the next few days, two weeks, that with the goal of just chopping up this group completely, and not turning them to casualties, turning them into full on fatalities, and talking about a significant liquidation of Russian military firepower. Because they’re not going to be able to get the men to reinforce the equipment, the ammo and the fuel, they will be stuck, they will have to run back to the border with Russia. That’s part one, part two, this was always going to happen. If Ukraine is ever going to win, Russia has to lose the ability to launch a new assault and Belgorod is the population center is the logistical hub that is closest to the Ukrainian border, and has always always always been a primary military node for the Russians. And so if Ukraine is ever going to emerge on the other side of this as an independent state with any degree of security Belgorod has to be neutralized, and it’s in the process of getting hit very hard right now. Will the attacks this week be enough to do that? I doubt it. But this is probably the best that the Ukrainians can do without actually crossing the border with ground forces. And as far as I can tell that as well beyond them at the moment. Second, this isn’t the only logistical hub. Pretty much everything on the southern front and the southeastern front. It comes through a place called Rostov on Don, which serves the same role for Belgorod, but to the southeast of Ukraine and sensitive to the northeast. The problem from the Ukrainian point of view is that Rostov on Don is a lot further from the frontline than Belgorod. In fact, most of the successes the Russians have had in this war so far have happened in the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, places that the Russians actually grabbed some territory from Ukrainians 10 years ago in the last Ukraine war. And it’s not clear that the Western weapons being provided are exist in enough number and especially enough range in order to meaningfully target raw stuff. That’s that’s going to be a crisis for another day. But if raw stuff can be removed from the equation, then Crimean peninsula almost instantly falls back to Ukrainian support, because that’s where all the support all the ammo, all the equipment, all the fuel, ultimately come from is from Ross off, either over a bridge or a ferry or a rail line into Crimea. So the reason that we haven’t gotten here yet, is that the Western nations were always concerned that if their weapons were used directly on Russian soil that the Russians would retaliate. But one of the things that I pointed out In a video that we did last week, is that the the messenger has recently changed. And instead of Putin being the one that make all the threats, or somebody from the intelligence directives, or somebody from the military, most of the threats have come from a guy named Dmitry Medvedev, who the best way to think of him is Russia’s equivalent of Tucker Carlson, someone who just simply takes all of his marching orders from Putin reads exactly what’s put in front of them. He’s not a serious personality. He’s just a mouthpiece, and one that is used to test out ever more outlandish statements before more serious people say them. And like I said, just like Tucker. And since Medvedev has been the one who has been threatening retaliation, the Western capitals came to the collective conclusion that it was the nature of the war at its current form. The Russians really weren’t serious about it. And it was okay to do it. Now that that seal has been broken, you can count on the western nations liberalizing the restrictions on the Ukrainian use of Western military equipment to basically target Russian military assets whenever and wherever they happen to be. Now, will that happen tomorrow, probably not. But before the end of the year, almost certainly. And by the end of the year, we will also have some Western troops, most notably French, operating within Ukraine itself. So there has been this realization so far this year, especially in Europe, that if this war is claimed to have come to a conclusion, that involves something other than the European ceding European territory, that this war needs to be taken more seriously, in terms of finance, in terms of equipment, in terms of policy, and above all else in terms of deployment, and what we’re seeing right now is the beginning of that transition