What Happens after Kiev’s Much-touted Counteroffensive Fails?

It’s hardly breaking news that Russia has been fighting off a crawling invasion by NATO (aided by America’s global vassals and satellite states) for well over a year now. The Neo-Nazi junta would’ve lasted mere days had it only been a Moscow vs. Kiev scenario and this fact is not Russia’s claim, but one by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat (although his skills in diplomacy are highly questionable at best).

It’s precisely this that makes Russia’s ability to withstand Western aggression all the more mind-boggling, particularly when considering the sheer discrepancy in population size, nominal military budgets, size of Russia’s economy in comparison to the combined financial and economic strength of the US-led political West (to say nothing of its geopolitical influence), etc.

It should be noted that the virtually direct involvement of the political West has resulted in a strategic stalemate with tactical back and forth, as both sides made gains somewhere or were forced to concede areas elsewhere. However, the notable difference is that Russia is doing that for strategic reasons, particularly in order to avoid heavy casualties (both civilian and military), while the complete opposite is true for the Kiev regime (Bakhmut/Artyomovsk being the case in point).

This is because the Neo-Nazi junta’s main goal is optics and keeping the narrative alive. And the narrative is that Russia is supposedly “weak” and “incapable” of defeating the US/NATO puppets in Kiev. However, the massive casualties suffered by the regime’s forces are a clear indicator of just how much of a reverie this narrative is.

Perhaps the best proof of this is the ongoing counteroffensive of the Neo-Nazi junta forces. Although experts have already predicted how it would go (and that’s precisely how it’s been going for approximately two weeks now), the Kiev regime is forced to keep up with it, because its puppet masters don’t really care about Ukrainian casualties as long as they can portray Russia as supposedly “weak” and “incapable of winning”.

The stakes are as high as they could possibly be, so the belligerent thalassocracy needs to ensure that the Neo-Nazi junta at least doesn’t lose the aforementioned narrative, as the prospect of actually defeating the Russian military is all but impossible. To accomplish this, the US-led political West is ready to engage in a sort of nuclear brinkmanship the world has never seen, including during the entirety of the (First) Cold War.

To this end, Washington DC is already resorting to what some experts call “nuclear blackmail”. To prevent a complete defeat of its favorite puppets after Russia eventually launches its own counteroffensive, the US has placed additional nuclear weapons in Europe in order to increase pressure on Moscow and keep most of its forces on standby in case the ongoing Cold War between Russia and NATO turns hot. Poland, one of Moscow’s archenemies, has been particularly insistent on having American nuclear weapons deployed in its territory.

Coupled with Warsaw’s ambitions to build probably the largest and most advanced land force in the European part of NATO, as well as station as many other NATO troops as possible, such aggressive actions have pushed Russia to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, as well as reinforce its Kaliningrad exclave.

Specific moves to ensure Russia’s safety include the expansion of its already massive military-industrial capacity, additional deployments of its state-of-the-art hypersonic weapons (which the entire political West lacks altogether) and the overall change in its deterrence policy, which now includes the aforementioned deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in allied territory, specifically Belarus.

However, Minsk will not merely house such weapons, but will also be able to use them in case the political West escalates its aggression against Belarus itself, which has been under a crawling attack for several years now. Worse yet, the belligerent thalassocracy has never given up on trying to conduct yet another color revolution in Minsk, as it still insists that President Alexander Lukashenko is supposedly “illegitimate” and that the opposition is the “actual government in exile”.

The Kremlin has correctly anticipated virtually all moves by the US and NATO and has revised its strategic posturing towards them, making it perfectly clear that it’s ready for any “unexpected” developments. And while Russia is certainly not the one that wants to be the first to use a nuclear weapon, the political West is doing everything in its power (short of direct war, for now at least) to push Moscow to do exactly that.

The latest warning by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Washington DC is pushing the transfer of nuclear-capable F-16s to the Kiev regime illustrates this perfectly. And while the mainstream propaganda machine insists this is “Russian disinformation” and “baseless fearmongering”, Lavrov’s no-nonsense bearing and the sheer magnitude of his credibility in the diplomatic world say otherwise.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. Read other articles by Drago.