Commentary
-
Our commentary partners will help you reach your own conclusions on complex topics.
Hi, everyone, Peter Zion here coming to you Vancouver. No backdrop today I just got up. The news that happened in the wee hours of the morning, which unfortunately woke me up at two in the morning was that the Russians have announced a what they call a partial mobilization of about 300,000 troops. So I just wanted to get this out there real quick. So you guys understood the context and the why. So, first touch background, the Russian space is incredibly low value. The agriculture that exists there is very poor by global standards. So they’ve never been able to generate the amount of capital that’s necessary to have a real road network. If you want to get anything moved from A to B, it’s going to almost exclusively go by train, which is part of the reasons why logistics in the Russian army had become so poor, especially in the Ukraine conflict, and why the Ukrainians were able to take a couple of rail depots in eastern Ukraine in Kharkov a couple of weeks ago, and the front just collapsed. In fact, there’s signs that we might be seeing a repeat of that elsewhere in the Donbass as the Russians are now discovering that they’re actually outnumbered locally, and that with all the captured equipment, the Ukrainians actually now have more artillery and more ammo. So if you take a poorly trained, conscripted force in Russia, that is badly equipped and put up against some very motivated and enlarging force, it is getting better training from abroad and better equipment from abroad. In addition to the captured stuff, all of a sudden, at least, for now, the balance of forces has really changed. And the only way that the Russians have ever been able to fight that sort of wars with more numbers. So they’ve had about 100 150,000 troops in area plus the Chechens plus they’re mercenaries. So let’s just call it an even 200 for rounding, they’re now going to add another 300. This doesn’t mean that the nature of the war has fundamentally changed. It means two things. Number one, this is the sort of the Russian of war the the Russians know how to fight just throw bodies after it. The Russians have always had a larger population than any of the countries that have gone to war with and so they’ve always tried to win by numbers. And when they have won, that’s usually how it has happened. Second, this isn’t a fundamental break. Yes, the Russians need these troops, and they need them badly. But when you’ve only had 150,000, in theater, and you’ve been fighting for six months, more or less nonstop, and your logistics have been a mess, three and 1000 troops doesn’t turn the tide, it just means you’re going to be able to cycle in troops to replace the ones that have become exhausted. So this doesn’t give the Russians fundamentally more troops in theater. It allows them to rotate troops through the theater and continue fighting the war and more or less the way that they have been now which is to say poorly. Obviously, it’s still bad news for the Ukrainians. But ultimately, this is getting to one of the core issues that I’ve been talking about since the beginning, the Russian demographic is horrible, and between guts or massive increases in the death rate or massive decreases in the birth rate, or both because of World War One famines, World War Two, the Brezhnev mismanagement, the post cold war collapse, there’s these deep gouges out of the population structure across the Russian system, with the deepest one in people aged roughly 15 to 30. Because you’ve got a stacking up through the generations of bad things that happened in World War One and World War Two and post cold war. That’s where all these troops are coming from. So we’ve already got about 200,000 men in theater who are in their 20s, we’re now adding another 300,000. And we’re starting to get to the point where the Russians just aren’t going to have any more men in that generation to throw at this at all. And I don’t know if you guys were aware, but people in the 20s are the ones who do she’ll have kids. So we’re taking what is already the most demographically fragile demographic, and putting them into an open ended war, which makes it very difficult for them to Father or raise children. This is this is a potentially a country killer. Before I thought that this was Russia’s last war, now I’m certain of it or at least the last word they can find with conventional forces. Now, will the Ukrainians be able to repeat the feats they’ve been doing? It’s entirely possible but keep in mind the scale of what needs to be done here with the size of the territory in question. The Ukrainians need to pull off what they’ve done in the first two weeks of September another 20 times. I’m not saying that’s impossible. I’m just saying that that is the scale of what is going on here. So expect the Ukrainians to do two things number one, continue to hammer as many logistical points that the Russians rely on as possible. Anything they can do disrupt the flow of men material and especially food supplies to the frontline is something that is going to crush the Russian demographic that is responsible for the soldiers and responsible for
sort of looking for propagating the Russian condition in the first place. Second, look for them to reach for specifically for transport nodes, not just ones that are near the front line, but ones that might seem a bit of a Hail Mary not to strike but to capture the one I am mo just interested in of course is Maria poll because if the Ukrainians can reach miriah Pull, they basically isolate Russian forces throughout southern Ukraine. And then you’re talking about 100,000 Russian troops that are just stranded with no hope of resupply at all. If the Ukrainians are going to win this war, they have to take massive bites out of not just the Russian army, but the Russian demographic, and doing that destroying the Kurdish state bridge, isolating Crimea from the rest of Russia. That is how that is done. And now that the Russians have obliged to throw 100 Other another 100 another 300,000 troops in the grinder. We may be seeing the beginning of the Russians and here it is still, the Russians word lose. But they’re following the playbook and that makes them a little bit easier to predict. Okay, that’s it for me. Until next time.
-
Hurricane Helene hits US coast, Appalachia and beyond
Hurricane Helene hit Florida and Georgia overnight between Sept. 26 and 27 as a Category 4 hurricane, and accompanying storms will continue reaching deeper into the continental United States today. Dangerous flash flooding from the hurricane, known as storm surge, was some of the worst flooding that the Tampa Bay area has ever seen, and… -
Israel holds upper hand against Lebanon, Hezbollah and Iran
On Wednesday, Sept. 25, Hezbollah launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv in retaliation for Israel’s explosive pager attack that blew up devices across Lebanon. Although Israel’s defense systems intercepted the surface-to-surface missile, the attempted strike on Tel Aviv marked a significant escalation by Hezbollah. Since the siege on Gaza began, shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023,… -
The Sinaloa Cartel civil war
Fears of a civil war within the Sinaloa Cartel are growing as violence between competing factions within the cartel continues. The Mexican Army has dispatched around 600 elite troops to Sinaloa to help quell those fears, in addition to roughly 2,200 regular soldiers and National Guard. Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor… -
New Ukrainian weapons hit Russia where it hurts
Ukrainian drones struck a major Russian ammunition depot, triggering a massive explosion that was captured on camera. According to the Ukrainian military, 2,000 tons of munitions had arrived at the depot before the attack. Over the past two years, Ukraine has significantly increased its domestic drone production, allowing it to scale up attacks on military… -
Weighing social costs vs. economic benefits on immigration
Global human migration is one of the defining elements of our current historical era, according to the United Nations. Migrants face both the incentives to leave — forced out by climate change, crime and corruption, extreme poverty or violence — and incentives for where to go, based on available job opportunities and so on. Migration…
Popular Opinions
-
In addition to the facts, we believe it’s vital to hear perspectives from all sides of the political spectrum.
Latest Opinions
In addition to the facts, we believe it’s vital to hear perspectives from all sides of the political spectrum. We hope these different voices will help you reach your own conclusions.
The opinions published in this section are solely those of the contributors and do not reflect the views of Straight Arrow News.
Latest Commentary
We know it is important to hear from a diverse range of observers on the complex topics we face and believe our commentary partners will help you reach your own conclusions.
The commentaries published in this section are solely those of the contributors and do not reflect the views of Straight Arrow News.
Dr. Frank Luntz
Pollster and Political Analyst‘Have a little compassion’: Americans talk high holiday prices, anxiety
‘System is rigged’: Black Americans on the American Dream
‘Extremist’ or ‘phony’: Americans share who they voted for and why