You read it here first via the Institute for the Study of War.

Putin’s latest talking points will be out there momentarily, quoted as facts by the usual “Can’t Learn From History” Buchananite sources.

See? I can save you the trouble posting in the Comments all about how the West is running out of arms to send to Ukraine and Russia is going to get right to work and out-produce us.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the predictable next information operation to discourage Ukrainian resistance and disrupt Western support for Ukraine as Russian offensives culminate and Ukraine prepares to launch counter-offensives in an interview with a state-owned Russian news channel on March 25.

Putin claimed that the West cannot sustain weapons provisions to Ukraine and exaggerated Russia’s potential to mobilize its own defense industrial base (DIB) to create the false impression that further Ukrainian resistance and Western support to Ukraine is futile. Putin claimed that Ukrainian forces expend up to 5,000 shells a day, while the United States produces an average of 14,000–15,000 shells a month. Putin alleged that planned Western defense production increases will not match Russian planned increases. Putin announced that Russia will build over 1,600 new tanks by the end of 2023 and that Russia will have more than three times the number of tanks as Ukraine at that time. Putin likely seized the opportunity to advance this narrative based on The Financial Times’s March 19 report that European arms manufacturers are “hobbled” by an explosives shortage. Putin argued that continued Western weapons provisions to Ukraine are merely an attempt to prolong the war.

Putin compared the state of the Russian wartime DIB with current Western military industrial outputs, stating that the West would need to make significant sacrifices to civilian projects to increase military production to support war in Ukraine. Putin added that unlike the West, Russia does not need excessive militarization of the economy to expand its DIB capabilities. These claims are not supportable. Read the rest of this entry »

Some Putin-worshipping Paleocon morons were recently posting on FB Russian Defense Ministry claims that Russia is winning the war in Ukraine.

Well, here’s a Vodkapundit posting that addresses just how well Russia’s doing. The orcs have lost so much armor, they are reduced to sending out early 1950s tanks to the front. And Russia has joined a Chinese New World Order basically accepting the role of vassal to China in exchange for rather limited Chinese support! So, tell me, Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkeys, who is it that’s losing the war?

Having lost more than 3,000 capable main battle tanks from the late-’60s vintage T-64s through fully modernized T-90s, Moscow was pulling far less capable T-62 medium tanks out of storage.

Well, if the T-62 is a museum piece, then the T-54/55 series — whose development began before the Cold War officially began — is practically an archeological exhibit. And yet those very same tanks, first built when toddler Boomers were grooving on the first season of Howdy Doody, have been spotted on railcars moving west towards Ukraine from Soviet-era depots in the east. …

Firepower is firepower. If a 75-year-old design can be used for infantry support (it wouldn’t last a hot minute in the main battle tank role), then those foot soldiers are better off with a T-55 nearby than without one. …

Xi was in Moscow this week for high-level talks with Putin, and those talks have already gone a long way towards establishing that new New World Order — one very friendly to Chinese interests. Much more important than the phony-baloney peace plan Xi put on the table earlier this week is the trade deal just announced between Beijing and Moscow.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the summit “produced 14 agreements on topics from soybeans to atomic energy.” Chinese tech will help Russia ride out Western sanctions and carry on the war in Ukraine, and Russian natural resources will help make China less reliant on vulnerable sea lanes. However, Reuters said, the agreement “did not yield the big prize Russia wants: a deal on a new gas pipeline.”

“There are two likely sticking points: who will build the 2,600 km pipeline and how the gas will be priced. China is well placed to drive a hard bargain, as Moscow needs the deal more,” and so the bottom line is that “China has powerful leverage to secure advantageous price terms.”

A Financial Times report quoted Maria Shagina, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies: “It’s hard to hide the fact that Russia is now a junior partner.” China has two kinds of foreign relationships: Trade partners and vassal states. Putin’s stupid war is demoting Russia from partner to vassal.

RTWT