Dear friends

While there are not official confirmations (that I know of) from the Russian military, it appears that Lavrov is the first, and so far only, Russian official who declared that the 2nd phase of the operation has begun.  Truth be told, pretty much everybody else thinks likewise.  Considering the intensity of Russian bombings and artillery strikes overnight, which were reported by numerous sources, it certainly appears reasonable to me to conclude that this 2nd phase has indeed begun.  For example, the Russian defense ministry reported on Tuesday morning that its troops had delivered artillery strikes at 1,260 Ukrainian military targets overnight, including 1,214 locations where Ukrainian troops amassed their forces.

How long this phase of the war will last is anybody’s guess.  Optimists think a week, pessimists a month, but in reality nobody really knows because the outcome will be determined not by maneuver like during the first phase, but by logistics, specifically fuel and ammunition, in other words by mobility and firepower.

I remind you that the Ukronazi forces in the eastern Ukraine have been in a de facto “cauldron” (as I explained, you can be physically surrounded or you can be “blocked by fire”) since over one month, and that the Ukrainians were not able to meaningfully resupply them while the Russian side has quasi limitless fuel and ammo (in spite of the Pentagon’s hallucinations).  Russia also has air supremacy and very heavy weapons, neither of which the Ukrainians have.

In other words, while the Nazi forces in the eastern Ukraine get slaughtered, the US administration in Kiev will have to change the narrative about “the glorious Ukrainian military is winning” to “Russians are killing babies” (without ever wondering WHY and HOW civilians and even kids ended up inside the Avtostal complex, assuming the recent photos of kids hiding there are real and not made in Kiev).

Nobody really knows how many Ukrainians are still in the Donbass cauldron, and neither do we know how their morale and determination to stand and fight to the end is.  For all these reasons giving even an approximate timeframe for this battle is impossible, at least for me.

This week is Passion Week for Orthodox Christians and I will be leaving tomorrow to attend the church services in our parish, about a 4 hour drive one way, so I will stay there until very late Sunday evening.  In other words, my presence at the blog for the next 6 days will be minimal, I will travel with a laptop, but I will mostly be busy with the preparations for, and the celebration of, Holy Paskha.

So I leave you in the tender care of my colleagues Amarynth and Herb who will continue to post guest posts and keep you informed.

For daily reports, I suggest you follow the (excellent) situation reports written by Nightvision.  Just please keep in mind that due to the nature of this second phase, there will be less maps of troop movements and that moving one or two kilometers against the very heavily and deep defenses of the Ukrainians might mean much more than moving 10 or 20 kilometers on open terrain.

By the way, the Empire of Hate and Lies knows the true score, and they are massively freaking out.

They are now even declaring war on old Russian musical instruments.  As for “Ze” – he has now become a UN National Hero:

Will these infantiles ever grow up?

I doubt it, if anything, their antics “by infantiles – for infantiles” combined with the most massive exercise in world history to “cancel” any “wrong” information, show both how desperate and helpless these folks are.

As for the Nazis occupiers, they just passed a law allowing foreigners to work for the Ukrainian “intelligence” services.  What a surprise, at least for those who had not realized that the USA has been running the SBU, and everything else, in Nazi occupied Ukraine since the Euromaidan (and even before).

In conclusion, I just want to end with a reminder.  This is not a war between Russia and the Ukraine.  This is a war between Russia and the united West, the latest one is a series going back at least a thousand years.  Russia has been singled out for “cancellation” and we don’t want to be canceled.

While for eight years Russia did all she could NOT to get involved, the Empire of Hate and Lies did successfully force her into an open military intervention in the Ukraine, and now that Empire will do all it can to prolong that war and have it result in the maximal loss of human life and the total destruction of the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, exactly the OPPOSITE of what the Kremlin wants: to disarm and denazify the Ukraine with the minimum of human loss of life and with as much of the civilian infrastructure preserved as possible.  These goals are as asymmetrical as can be, and it is much MUCH easier to destroy than to preserve.  Please keep that in mind when the next propaganda Tsunami hits.

One last request: unless this is both urgent and important, please do not email me between today and next Monday.  I will have very little time to reply, and I rather stay focused on the spiritual matter during these sacred days.

Many thanks and kind regards

Andrei