By: Joaquin Flores

Understanding the Astounding Novorossiyan Victories

heatrical fusion into actual-real events in Novorossiya and Ukraine have progressed such that informed readers and analysts alike were unprepared for the ‘Astounding’ reversal of fortune suffered by the KJ.  Often retrospectively are critical moments in the evolution understood as fundamentally revolutionary.  In anthropology these are punctuations within punctuated equilibrium theory.

In common parlance, used to describe similar within the sphere of War, is the term ‘game changer’.  But in 4G warfare especially momentous events encapsulate qualities of a carefully pre-planned and staged phenomenon, whose timing and efficacy are calculated using a formalization process derived from fields of strategic modeling such as in game theory.  There is no surprise to the simulated turn of events which characterize the two uninterrupted weeks of Novorossiyan victories. Witnessed were the total encirclement into cauldrons of more than a half-dozen battalions, totaling most of the KJ’s ready and equipped fighting force.  To understand why the western public as well as analysts were prone to misunderstand the real situation, and instead situated their view upon pending doom for  the NM and the Novorossiya project, is to understand some important concepts in the strategy of stage management of the news cycle and the creation of the simulacrum within which the publicly consumed false paradigm is rooted.

Novorossiya Militia can take Mariupol

This is a political reality, not just a military one.  At the time of publishing, NM forces are just minutes from Mariupol.  This much is understood by everyone.  Mariupol is basically ‘undefended’ by KJ forces, but the local population by in large wants the NM to liberate them.

However, what is happening in the news cycle could not be better for the NM initiative. Rather than Western leaders calling upon Putin to stop the march of the NM into Mariupol, instead the news cycle is focusing on whether 1000 or 5000 Russian soldiers have entered Donbas.  It really matters little whether it is 1000 or 5000, there is lacking any prescriptive measure from the west attached to this accusation.  Lavrov has already explained, and provided evidence, that the ‘footage’ showing these movements are in fact CGI, ‘video games’, in his words.

Now the west has backed itself into a corner, because it latched onto more bad intel, even though its true that thousands of volunteers from across the Russian Federation are fighting alongside natives in Novorossiya.  It wants to report an ‘event’, a weakness in western reporting, when in fact what has been going on for nine months is partly a gradual phenomenon coordinated in part and publicly by Russian NGO’s.

The most prudent thing, however, would be stage the spectacle of a Novorossiyan ‘uprising’ in front of government buildings, use older women and children with balloons: once enough NM fighters have bled into the city in plainclothes under cover of darkness, and emerge to defend the protests while simultaneously the actual operation takes place to take the city.

 

The Past and Future Course of the Conflict

Novorossiya has been winning this whole time, and we have been consistent about that.  It should be sufficient for our reader to understand that the apparently prolonged nature of the conflict was not operationally necessary on the Russian part in simple terms, but only necessary in terms of the role of major extra-territorial actors (such as EU and US) have and for Russia to better understand Ukraine’s real nature and capacity, and in being able to demonstrate this real nature to the Eurasian integrationist segment of the EU’s industrial, and to a lesser extent financial, bourgeoisie; and to generate support worldwide from mass-publics, and to shift the popular discourse towards a sympathetic orientation towards Donbas people; and to change the political landscape of Ukraine.  Russia operationally, even acting through its ‘revolutionary’ proxies in Novorossiya, aided and funded through Duma approved private NGO’s, could have steamrolled an operation clear through Kiev and had resolution in June.  However, the following tasks would have been unfulfilled:

1.) Using rational choice theory to demonstrate to EU allies that Ukraine is under foreign, specifically US, occupation.  This is also important under international law, because Russia’s interventions are not of an aggressive invasive nature, but of a liberatory one.  The fact that the day before yesterday the US began to float a line that Russia ‘had invaded’ Ukraine with ‘two columns of tanks’, as reported by the outsourced to Al Thani state department paper of record ‘Al Jazeera’.  Interesting to note here the total distortion of reality, almost intended to disqualify the entire article.  Twice now the US has attempted to use Novorossiya’s pretending to be losing against it: that Putin now desperate is ready to do anything.  They tried this, to no avail, with the Malaysian Flight downing.  Now they are trying to say that Novorossiyan losses are the reason why Putin must act.  But in fact we know that the Novorossiyans have all but destroyed the entire KJ force, in the south, encircling and routing them.

Simply saying that the US is in control of Ukraine is insufficient for EU allies to trust in Russian intelligence personnel.  Intelligence is sufficient for Russia to trust in its own personnel and findings, but once this becomes a marketed good to a foreign government, that government will be reasonable in assuming that Russians are faking evidence to skew understanding of the European ally.  If Ukraine is not acting in its own self interest, then it is acting in the interests of another.  The unknowing/irrational actor model does not fit the rest of the known facts.

Thus, the Russians must show Europe, using rational choice theory or game theory, through the actions of Ukraine’s government that they are not acting in the best interest of Ukraine.  Ukraine’s best interest is rather simple to understand: a unified federal state at peace with its neighbors, and gas on for the winter.  They would have accepted the Chinese and Russian $15 billion bailout back in December 2013 whose terms did not include the austerity and privatization required by the IMF.  They would have worked to modify terms of the trade agreements in a way which were amenable to the Russians and Europeans, closing tariff or tax free loopholes that worked against the Russians one sidedly, and would have not destroyed the relationships with both (not just Russia) as we have recently seen.

 

The three party and four party talks would have produced a lasting agreement.  This did not happen, and despite popular headlines in alternative media blaming all European elites, it is only true that a large portion of the EU elites support the US plan.  While they are more prominent publicly, and also have more control over media and finance, they do not decide things on their own entirely.

We do not see what does not happen, and things that do not happen do not capture headlines.  What many do not understand is that Germany among others have already ruled out any NATO intervention, have ruled out further sanctions of any meaning, and has called for a ceasefire based upon the August 23rd positions, which essentially recognizes a Novorossiya with a united Lugansk and Donetsk.  The 500 million euro loan is quite minimal when speaking in terms of economies of scale, and not at all close to what was needed by Ukraine.  To put it in perspective, the 500 million is less than half of the cost of the interest on the loan of 15 billion from the IMF if 7%; if that was a one time simple interest and not compound interest.  But make no mistake, that 500 million is also a loan too.

Conclusively, this prolonged course has given European analysts sufficient reasons to see that Ukraine is doing what is in the best interest of the US, is pursuing not its own foreign policy but rather the US’s.  Additionally because this follows a coup which ultimately led to the installation through illegal elections of Poroshenko, who was revealed by the limited hangout wikileaks to be the mainn ‘star’ of the US’s ‘Our Ukraine’ program (or OU), there are increasing facts which irrefutably point both to the fact that Ukraine is presently under foreign occupation, and that Russia’s efforts thus fall under a combination of R2P and past precedents codified in Geneva Convention norms.  This has been the solid position of Glazyev

2.) Allowing a victimological narrative to be developed favoring Novorossiyans based upon civilian areas being shelled and the forced exodus of innocents, including the deaths of women and children.  This is the hardest thing for people sympathetic to the Russian position to understand.  The shortest way to rationalize this is to understand that avoiding this would cost more lives in the future, especially since a loss for Russia in Novorossiya would be the beginning of a decade or two long process which would ultimately see destruction of the Russian Federation, but moreover the division of Russia itself into about ten mutually hostile statelettes, leading to a US backed disastrous war between them on the Eurasian continent, ultimately drawing in China and Germany, and costing between perhaps 100 million to 1 billion lives.

Russia is not a country with a border, but a civilizational mode and concept which historically has been able to expand and contract.  Under conditions of late modernity and post-modern warfare, such a contraction would be unlike any in the past, and would signify a period of prolonged war and global strife of which humanity may not recover for centuries to come.

Russia’s resilience historically is rooted in being able to withstand attack, and sacrifice its own people for the collective good.  This was done successfully in the Patriotic War of 1812 when Alexander I of Russia ordered the Cossacks to burn and destroy Russian villages which Napoleon had planned to support the supply line.  Then of course are the 14 million Russian civilians who died as a result of the German invasion in the Great Patriotic War in the early 1940’s.

3.) Allowing a large front and ‘meat grinder’ by which the largest possible number of ultra-right wing Pravy Sektor fanatics can be sent off to die, and their organizers permanently dishonored, thus forever changing the future political landscape of Ukraine and in so doing creating the possibility of a more manageable, at least neutral to positive, smaller Ukraine space in the rump state still called ‘Ukraine’.  There is still a possibility, perhaps during or after the winter, perhaps sooner, for another revolution to take place in Kiev.  Not of the Pravy Sektor Majdan 2.0 initiatives we say today which are symptomatic of the larger collapse of the present Ukrainian trajectory, but a post-collapse Ukraine revolution.  For it not to be thwarted or commandeered by the Pravy Sektor, they must have already been killed on the front in Novorossiya.

That is what is happening now, and so we can already say that this has had a positive impact on the future of the Ukrainian rump, whatever it shall be.  The longer that there are hostilities, the more of them are permanently removed from any future equation.  So far the casualty ratio is something around 20 KJ fighters for each 1 NM.  With a 20 to 1 ratio, the Novorossiyans can afford to keep their meatgrinder in business and grinding.

LPR militia “Ghost” brigade commander Alexei Mozgovoy speech about what is Novorossia fighting for and how, adressed to former Donetsk and Luhansk officials who have fled UA and participate in forum dedicated to problems with building Novorossia

Putin: Ahead of the Curve

Seeing clearly that the US in the last 48 hours is trying to use Russia’s victimological narrative against it, is continuing on with the line that Russia also used which is that Novorossiya is hanging by a thread.  But Russia is ready to switch gears, and has outgrown the narrative of losing.   They got the most assurances that they could get from the Europeans regarding non-interference.  What they got was expected given the political and economic climate in Germany.  Addressing the world, Putin essentially reveals that the KJ in the south is defeated and in need of humanitarian aid.  Poroshenko wants to pretend they are winning, and will let the surrounded troops all be killed if need be.  Later he will accuse the dead and captured of having gone AWOL as has been consistent Ukraine policy since the start of hostilities.

 

 

Novorossiya Wins the Battle:  NATO Escalation?

Though it is correct to state  with some qualification that both sides in this conflict had placed much on a good result from the battle over Donetsk, the odds were on the side of the NM.  This whole effort has been the NM’s to lose from the start.  This much has been stated repeatedly in every relevant piece and podcast from the CSS.  The economics and politics of this war, if it does not spread, in most ways point to a Russian success and has since the start.  While the conflict is not close to being over, this phase’s end is in sight.  The liberation of Mariupol may be the final page, or other cities may also be liberated from the KJ before either a significant NATO escalated response or capitulation.  Western capitulation may come fast or slow, but we are confident that as with US failures in Syria, Iraq, or Venezuela, it will be veiled in the language of bellicosity.

NATO will likely escalate in some way.  It may not be in the Ukraine theatre, it may be elsewhere in Eastern Europe or the Balkans. One strong possibility we have seen signs of is a staged escalated class and national struggle of Bosniak “workers” to marginalize the pro-Russian Serbs in B&H.  It will escape the thinking of both western press and Bosniaks that the Serbs count among them also a laboring class, and also have national-liberatory aspirations.   The escalation may be in Syria with the US bombing ‘IS’ holdouts in, ridiculous as it may seem, Aleppo or Damascus (where in fact Syrian forces will be struck).

The Pacific theatre may also be stoked, perhaps the US pushing upon Japan to become increasingly bellicose over symbolic islands.  Chinese pressure may ramp up again over the failed Fukushima Daiichi cleanup hoax.  We have also seen the early stages of an Arab Spring/Color Revolution tactic in Venezuela, but US moves are also possible in any of the so-called ‘Pink Tide’ states of Latin America.

Recall that US President Obama already effected a coup in Honduras, ousting the anti-imperialist and capitalism-skeptic government of Manuel Zalaya.  Recall also that credible evidence exists that Chavez was given cancer by US agents as an oncovirus.

This escalation may never end and it can not be dismissed that  WWIV is close at hand. However, the course of escalation by NATO may have disastrous blowback.  If Poland is tapped to increase its role beyond allowing mercenaries to seek employment by private armies, this could lead to an implosion of the Polish political establishment and a return to the ‘Russia neutral’ type of coalition which ruled in Poland until NATO brought down the plane containing the now deceased Polish leadership in Smolensk.

And likewise, in the above listed possible theatre, blowback may ultimately lead to the collapse of the US effort.  We cannot forget that world markets increasingly are minimizing their reliance on the dollar as the ‘world reserve currency’, relevant markets respond positively to Russian successes, and significant punctuated events like the creation of the BRICS New Development Bank are Brobdingnagian factors in this regard.

Thus to understand the Russian position and Grand Strategy requires some background in the metaphysics and metanarrative.  Required is a discussion of both the ontological and epistemic factors particularly surrounding the information war.

The US does not want a direct conventional war with Russia; it wants to push the EU to sever its economic ties with the rest of Eurasia.  If this requires a massive Europe and Eurasia war, costing the lives of many millions, but retarding the economic development of both spheres by decades, then their aims have been met.  Otherwise the tendency of the economic and cultural development for Eurasia to develop along a parallel and ultimately singular trajectory with Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

 

What has frustrated the Eurasian effort?

As we have covered, this  development is a natural and historic trend which the US and its imperial predecessor, the UK, had kept from becoming a reality.  It has done this for 100 years.  During the cold war the Russian difficulty was both geostrategic but ideological, and could not bring Europe into a larger economic development zone spanning from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

 

That would have required the 1.) peace-movement to have succeeded, but instead was thwarted by the escalation of cold war rhetoric and neo-liberal economic policies in the 1980’s, and the rise of the Reagan-Thatcher axis.  It may have before required 2.) an electoral success of communist and socialist parties in Western Europe; but the continued success of Trotskyism, Maoism, Social-Democracy, and anti-Stalinism in general split apart the communist support for the Russian initiative.  Initially it had gambled upon 3.) the spread of pro-Soviet worker’s revolutions, but the problems on what Marxists called the ‘superstructural level’ confounded those efforts even where the ‘objective conditions existed’; hence giving rise to Gramsci’s theory of ‘hegemony’ (expanding upon on Lenin’s theory of ‘false consciousness’) and in some way also the general rise of the so-called Frankfurt School ‘cultural Marxists’.

The Russians worked their plan from ‘3‘, and after the failure of ‘1‘ realized they would have to pursue another line.  From 3 to 1, each contingency marked a profound deescalation.  Thus a new plan was hatched.

This plan we are all now familiar with – rather than changing the European political sphere to make it compatible with the Eurasian, they aimed to change the Eurasian to be compatible with the European.  This integration into the Europe of markets and republicanism was also the European integration into Eurasia.  It was much more complicated than this however, and the betrayals of Gorbachev and the group around Yeltsin were real.  The destruction of much of Eurasian society by the oligarch criminals was also an actual phenomenon.  These were necessary to endure, and there was no guarantee that the hermetically sealed deep-state which found leadership in Putin would be able to re-emerge as the state itself.  The simulacrum of defeat was holographically projected over every real sign of an actual defeat.

To understand on the macro level the use of simulacrum, with whole broad historical periods as narratives appearing as something other than what they were, is to give us a key insight into how this synthetic reality is manufactured on the micro level of the news cycle, as it revolves around a context specific phenomenon exemplified within the conflict in the former Ukraine.

 

Stagecraft, Simulacrum, Holograph

From this we view that our discussion forwardly centers around the Russian use of synthetic reality, while different than the West’s version as descried through consumerism and the entertainment industrial complex, is generally also based upon the  sciences of cognition and social psychology.

Beyond that which we ourselves can experience through the five senses, there are several layers of cognition required for the human mind to assign an order, reason, understanding of an event or phenomenon which we come to understand through presented accounts.

When we rely on presented accounts, and without a simultaneously running cognitive process which filters all presented information with the aim of understanding the simulacrum itself, we become ensnared in the simulacrum by its planners.  This phenomenon partly explains why those reporting and analyzing the Novorossiyan initiative have been unable to read this script.

The larger synthetic bubble which encapsulates not only the minds of the people and its leaders, but the functioning of the entire modern western civilizational project, is itself liberalism.  It has both a pre-modern, modern, and post-modern form.  But in speaking of liberalism we do not mean the theory, but the reality as internalized through the cognitive processes of its subjects.  It is an entire schema, with its own weltanschauung.

 

Liberalism’s view of epistemic matters is greatly lacking and involves a process of double-think.  On the one hand it suffers from a naive skepticism with regard to both epistemic and ontological matters, and tends towards a Popperian ‘critical rationalist’ view of the sciences and cognition.  Yet it is neither critical nor rational, but rather reasonable. Reasonableness is an emotional state like anger or infatuation, and like anger or infatuation is blinding in that it clouds judgment.

Like anger feeling like ‘righteousness’, or infatuation feeling like ‘genuine need’, reasonableness feels like ‘being rational’.  The blinding nature of reasonableness is that it lulls the subject into believing that their thoughts and subsequent actions have been blessed by the gods of rationality.  Much of the British Empire after the Enlightenment was justified by the sense of ‘reasonableness’ held by its leaders and supporters.

On the other hand it largely takes for granted the wrong view that the synthetic bubble surrounding their manufactured environment is entirely natural.  The western simulacrum is based upon liberalism, but to use such a word is not entirely descriptive by itself.  More to the point, like much of democratic theory, it is based somewhat on giving individuals various doses of narcissistic supply, flattering them by telling them that all what they see is theirs and that all what they have is real.  It informs them that they, without putting tremendous work or directing their skepticism in the right direction, are already equipped to understand the world as presented.

Rather, the liberal individual is encouraged to direct his skepticism at those who are skeptical of the entire schema, and those real skeptics are called ‘cynics’.  But the world as presented to them is a manufactured holographic program which the ruling class has built (and inherited) using all spheres of media, education, ideology, ‘common sense’, and so-called civil society.  Thus the totalitarian myth of pluralism proceeds from that cognitive error, and can only understand itself through its own language – which is no way to understand something thoroughly, at all.

Once ensnared in the spectacle of the simulacrum, the observer experiences a number of realizations, thoughts, and conclusions which were generally partly arranged by the planner. They are experienced on every level as their own thoughts and conclusions, and they cannot distinguishing between ‘why’ they think and ‘how’ they think something is.  In Freudian terms, while far from perfect, we can understand that in the liberal mind the super-ego and the id have fused into one, or perhaps it is the id parading as the super-ego; it is a base rooted animalistic desire to sit upon the pedestal as moral judge and jury. Actually being right may be an objective or intersubjective matter, but wanting to be right is a base instinct likely rooted in human evolution and animalistic hierarchy.

In the process of waking from a dream, we often hear a sound which is being produced from our non-dream reality, but in the dream it is coming from some source in the dream story. Strangely upon waking we realize that this sound has just started to happen – a car horn, garbage truck, alarm clock, telephone.  But in the dream this sound originated farther back in the story, minutes or hours before within the dreamer’s experience of time.  It is also a different sound, and as all sounds are hallucinations on some level, is interpreted as another sound.  The real phone ringing in the dream is a bird or a song or words from a person, etc.

What we understand from this is that the cognitive process exists in time, but does not give us a real sense of linear time.  The experience of linear time in cognition is not the same as the actual external world of sequential cause and effect.  Rather the cognitive process in real time can assign to the consciousness an atemporal or anachronistic experience.  Our experience of sequence and the actual sequence are not united nor unilaterally determined.  Also revealed are that it is our minds that do the hearing, not our ears.

The dream experience of sounds, sights, and time is much more like our waking cognitive experience.  We see and hear things we expect to see and hear, even to the point of misjudging or mischaracterizing the actual things we are seeing and hearing.  And so we can extrapolate from this that cognitive processes and our even our very sense of self both mirrors and is ensnared within the entire schema of the subject’s society.

Therefore, in understanding the holographic reality, we can see the ‘Ukraine vs. Novorossiya’ phenomenon as something simultaneously real and yet at the same time projected over.  It is a reality, a dream, and a holographic projection all at once. The way we remember events and their significance, and the actual order and meaning they had when they occurred are not the same.

Many people are intelligent and suspect that something is wrong with the false narrative of Novorossiyan events being projected through news and information sources, and others take it further and understand somewhere deep inside that something is wrong with the entire western materialist and consumerist paradigm.  When intelligent people receive obviously wrong information, they underestimate the ability of others to understand that it is obviously wrong information.  Thus the official, though obviously wrong, view becomes assigned in their mind’s cabinet as not only the official view, but probably also what ‘everyone else’ thinks, and as such – as social beings – becomes the ‘polite view’.  It is also the reasonable view, or at least in politely examining the official view they would like to remain in the reasonable emotive state.

Thus much of the liberal simulacrum is held together by good people not wanting to offend, and thoughtful people wanting to be rational.  Among others, reasonableness is the emotive state used in liberalism to justify hierarchies – the more reasonable, the higher the status. So it is produced together: 1.) reasonableness-as-morality, 2.) conformity, 3.) submission. The simulacrum however projects over those three productions the following emotional states: 1.) rationalism 2.) individualism 3.) freedom.

The Russian planners and thinkers who work in this realm of cognitive science have been working closely to inform Putin and is advisers.  They understand the above set of complex relations between actual reality, thinking, and projected reality, and understand the way the western liberal mind functions, and how it interacts with the news cycle.  Most of these experts were of adult age when the USSR still existed, and Soviet society, while ultimately destroyed by liberalism, was not a liberal society.  It’s entire schema was different, and produced a different – though still modern – weltanschauung.

These factors help to us understand why these men and women do so well what they do.  They now live in a variation of the simulacrum of the liberal form of modernity, forcibly imposed onto the former Soviet Union, but they did not come of age in it. Because of the pre-90’s experiences of today’s leadership, among them are the living memories of a different society that had a different schema. Thus not only are they aware that another schema is possible in the abstract, they actually originate from one that was different and have that real life experience.  Russia is still a combination of pre-modern and modern society, with the technologies and foreign memetic influences of western post-modernity often projected over it.  Russia, in a manner similar to that described by H. Marcuse in ‘One Dimensional Man‘, (or Pan-Arabists like Michel Aflaq) has it is disposal the possibility of diverging from the modernist western course and either returning to or creating for itself an entirely separate civilizational direction and course sui generis.  This would also have the effect of promoting global diversity and multi-polarity.

Now that we have explored some of the theories of cognition which help to understand the simulacrum, we can present a general overview of the specific tactics which the Russian leadership are presently employing in order to manage the perception and actual experience of reality.

 

The General Propaganda Strategy: Turn the Opponents Lies into Truths and Vice Versa

Tactics:

1.) Utilize the ‘truth is in the middle’ cognitive fallacy

2.) Employ the ‘agreement of opposed interests equals truth’ fallacy

3.) Exploit  ‘reports from the field’ fallacy

4.) Expose and Confront Hoaxes and False Flags

The Russians have followed their plan in playing the western news cycle and media game. They have also demonstrated a profound understanding of the machinations of the liberal mind as it grapples to rationalize news and information.  While a majority of people are aware that official news and information is erroneous, this does not mean that news consumers do not have some ‘system’ of understanding and working through information which may be faulty.  Two methods normally used: “the truth is somewhere in the middle” (a common fallacy) alongside: “if both sides claim it, it’s probably true” (another common fallacy).

1.) Prior to the aid convoy, the Russians have publicly claimed, using plausible deniability, that they are not at all involved formally in the Ukraine conflict.  The Ukrainians and much of the far west has claimed that the Russians are entirely involved.  The liberal mind takes these two conflicting accounts and assumes that the Russians are probably involved in some way, but not extensively: “the truth is somewhere in the middle”.  Of course most liberals are supporters of the western project, but there are also left-liberal ‘fellow travelers’ and ‘conservative’ liberals who have concerns about ‘liberalism’, in the realm of anti-imperialism or ‘traditionalism’ (not Guenon), respectively, and are sympathetic to Russia.

These left-liberal and right-liberal fellow travelers have been prone to ‘lash out’ at the Russian state and Putin for not being involved enough.  The more loudly they do this, the more they help create the simulacrum – echoed now on several sides – that the Russians are insufficiently involved.    We already covered the strengths and problems of this when alternative media overestimates the scope or nature of their audience, and affects the wrong audience in Analysis of July 5 Slaviansk Developments

We wrote then:

The underlying belief that one takes from this line is that Russia is not formally involved.  This noble lie allows Russia’s allies in Europe to place more pressure on media, public and on the pro-NATO side of Europe (inner politics) and increase the fissure between the EU Atlanticists and the growing EU crypto-Eurasianists. But when criticism of Russia is directed at pro-Russian population in Ukraine, it can have a demoralizing effect. But of course what is more demoralizing is the shelling of civilian populations.

It can also confuse those on the fence; but at the same time the popular opinion of the majority of people are only significant in their relationship to shifting the mainstream view within a select audience of certain nations.  For example: popular opinion in the US and England are much less relevant than that of Germany, Poland, etc. Actual NM commanders and leaders like Gubarev and Strelkov are clear that the movements of militia out of Slavyansk are of tactical significance and not significant of ‘defeat’.

 

2.) Both sides, for different reasons, claimed that the KJ was winning and that the NM was losing.  Because of this apparent agreement of the condition, the liberal mind is prone to believe it to be true.  Just as ‘the truth is in the middle’ (and not at either extreme, or moreover, somewhere else entirely) in cases where there is disagreement, the Russians also understood the western predilection for believing that agreement on a thing by otherwise opposed sides means that the thing is true. This was manipulated for several purposes, as previously covered.

Contrary to the simulated reality,  Russia was deeply involved and always was, even before the beginning – Donbas Republic movement was supported by the Eurasian movement for many years in the last decade, involving ‘far right’ and ‘far left’ groups such as Varyag, RNU, ESM, EoT, KPU radicals, and others.

In actuality Russia manipulated the west’s need to report victories – especially the Kiev Junta – and rather than stating the opposite (leading the liberal mind to conclude a stalemate, part of the western disinfo plan), instead agreed.  This allowed the entire humanitarian crisis narrative to be more audible and credible, and created general sympathy for the Russian position among at least target European audiences.  The west then tried to generate its own synthetic ‘stalemate’ narrative where hoped for conflicting Russian claims were lacking.  Because the intended audience generally believes that ‘the truth is in the middle’, generally the Russian narrative tended to push the ‘limited engagement’ idea in the western mind towards the ‘limited’ end of the spectrum and away from ‘engagement’ end.

3.a) Mao once famously said ‘Defeat after defeat until final Victory’, and such an inspiring expression might otherwise be used to describe the general sense among NM fighters. Reports from the field buttressed this sense.  Except that on the operational and command level, such was not really the case.  For intelligence and morale reasons, it was important for NM fighters to to have an alternate narrative which was based in the ‘limited engagement’ narrative regarding Russian involvement.

In actual fact, NM fighters understanding the control over the events which the Russians had, could lead to possible morale and cohesiveness issues.  We will leave aside here the issue of the necessary spectacle of the Novorossiya revolution being autochthonic, though this is also a factor.  Primarily, being unable to divorce their innate human desire to save the Donbas people from the KJ’s punitive shelling of civilians and subsequent ‘lustration’ and conscription while under hostile occupation, knowledge that the Russians were allowing this to happen – though necessary – in order to create both European sympathy and to justify the movement into the pre-planned defensible positions, may not have been morally acceptable even though operationally, tactically, and strategically necessary.  In reality, the movement from Slaviansk, as we previously clarified, was not the abandonment of a position, but the end of a strategic operation which gave the time needed for the real consolidation of the NM positions seen on the week of August 4th. It also produced the necessary amount of contrived concern which led ultimately to the consolidation of the various NM’s into something of a NAF under the central command of Zakharchenko.

In the piece Novorossiya: The Propaganda War – Methods and Framework, we attempted to explain how the information war is used in Fourth Generation Warfare – 4GW – alongside of 3GW methods developed in past conflicts. We were right in previously pointing to the fact that KJ defeats on the Novorossiyan front would lead to further and sharpened divisions in Kiev.  They also created space for further uprisings needed in places like Kharkov and Odessa.  In that piece we explained that:

Reports from the front should continue that the situation is bad and without good supplies.  NM soldiers in the field must be inoculated from such propaganda as it ramps up.  They will be told what to expect from their commanding officers, and will rely more on that trust than the various and conflicting reports coming through the internet and MSM.  Units will be held together by the charisma of the immediate officer, and the positive development of the growing cult of personality around Strelkov and Gubarev.

Reports of weakness are used in the following way:  It entices the Kiev Junta (KJ) to attack insufficiently and prematurely, or cause delays based in false confidence which results in delays in following up on actions.  Those delays give time for NM to take further initiative.  Resulting defeats of KJ on increasingly significant scale while Russia is maintaining sufficient relations with EU bring the pragmatists over to the now newly realized practical approach – support for further escalation of the pressure on the Junta in general.

Leaving aside that it can be seen in retrospect that our summary and prognoses from months prior have come into fruition; reporting and coverage of war leaves much to be desired, and much of the information creates epistemic disorder.  This is because it is ‘data’, it creates the wrong impression of knowledge development in the area: misinformation and disinformation are worse than no information.  Even when the subject is aware that information is faulty or contains errors, the cognitive processes of the mind, (which inherently involves faulty reasoning and can be based on impressions made on the subconscious level) allows the subject to understand on the intellectual level that information is untrustworthy while on level of the subconscious in fact falls ‘victim’ to the intended epistemic disorder.

The Russian tactic will change now, and will for the time being allow more of the real facts to emerge that the NM is winning.  Its victories are such that they are becoming impossible to hide.  The 280+ humanitarian trucks were the last page of the last chapter which told the tale of losing.  The page has been turned now.  Still, the Russians will probably send more aid in another convoy.

3.b)  One must also include a brief review of a part of this ‘reports of losing’ tactic which we have pointed out on our social networking interface when asked.  Supporters of the NM had been misled by Russian propaganda numerous times.  The pattern that was observable to CSS as far back as May 1st was this:  Russia would engage in some maneuvers which it would either leak or allow to be spun unchallenged as being indicative of a possible Russian capitulation.  Then, at the critical moment, Russia and Novorossiya emerged with the upper hand.  There are more examples of this available than at the moment of this publishing, but we implore the reader to recall at least the following:

I.) The slaughter at Odessa leaves more than 50 dead.  Before May 11th, on May 7th Putin asked the Donetsk and Lugansk people to not hold the election.  There was question as to whether it would be held, and Russia allowed unchallenged the idea to be spread that it was looking to cut a deal that recognizes Crimea.  What was forgotten is that Europe already essentially okay’d the Crimean referendum and the expansion of the Russian border.  Reporting indicated Russian weakness, but then after May 11th it was clear that the referendum’s happened anyways.  Nevertheless, we heard then that the sky was falling.

Russia surprises with strength: Very professional looking ‘volunteers’ popped up in the two break-away oblasts, as well as other factors including the actual personalities leading DPR and LPR, and it was clear to those following that there was some increasing degree of actual Russian support.

II.) From May 11 forward through the 19th, there was question as to whether Putin and the Duma would take up the question of ascension into the Russian federation, per the request of the PM’s of Donetsk and Lugansk.  The fact that he did not was taken once again as a sign of capitulation in the face of Kiev’s threatening to start the ATO.  Word was that Putin would capitulate in the face of the threatened ATO.  Then Russia on May 19th pulled back from the border, signaling capitulation once again.  June 3rd, NATO indicates its willing to help Ukraine.  We heard again that the sky was falling.

Then Russia surprises with Strength the Duma created a ‘super NGO’ charged with the coordination and supervision of all the major NGO’s involved in bringing in both ‘defensive’ military and humanitarian supplies to the DPR and LPR, mostly through Rostov.  June 4th, rebels take two more bases in Lugansk.

III.)  June 13th, KJ takes Mariupol, the rest of the month fighting seems like attrition, and ultimately on June 25th the Duma revokes Putin’s authorization to use soldiers in Ukraine.  Then on the 27th, Ukraine signs the association agreement with the EU.  July 5th, the NM leaves Slaviansk.  The sky has definitely fallen.

Russia shows Strength:  July 13th through Putin goes to Cuba, forgives the debt. July 14th, NM takes down a large transport plane killing 50 or so KJ fighters.

IV.) July 17th US and Ukraine take down the Malaysian plane over Novorossiya, attempt to pin it on Russia. The situation looks bad for Russia

Russia shows strength, the same day proceeds to sign the BRICS New Development Bank deal with $50 billion start up capital.  Proceeds to hand over all intel on the plane to European and Malaysian authorities, holds a press conference showing that a fighter was in the sky behind the Malaysian flight, and that the NM did not have a Buk system in place.  US still has not offered any evidence of NM or Russian involvement in the downing.

V.)  July 30th – The EU and US announce new sanctions against Russia, focussing on Russia’s oil sector, defense equipment and sensitive technologies.

August 3rd – Ukrainian forces claim to have surrounded the city of Lugansk. The city’s supplies of power and water supplies run low and communications are down.

August 5th, Donetsk surrounded.  Situation critical

Russia shows strength – Putin hits back against Western sanctions, with a “full embargo” on fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, milk and dairy imports.  Affected European countries begin to pressure Brussels to roll back the sanctions.

VI.) Through mid August -Western reports that NM in Donetsk are fleeing positions.  All hope is lost

Russia shows strength – Mid August onward – first cauldron, border with Russia finally secured.  August 22nd almost 300 humanitarian aid trucks roll into Novorossiya.  The tide changes.  That same week the cauldrons consume 6 whole brigades, KJ likely loses 4 to 5 thousand fighters in several days of fighting and operations.

This had been the pattern, it was detectable early on.  This was the model we used to understand reporting.  At every juncture, the same people were taken in by the western media spectacle again and again.  Even though the pattern and tactic was obvious, people following western media reporting were largely unaware of each showing of strength and resilience which followed the feigned set back.  Western and liberal audiences only were exposed to or retained the news of setbacks.

Thus, the obvious and steady Russian and Novorossiyan victories, whether in Ukraine or on the global stage, were forgotten or not understood in proper context.  This meant that when the massive cauldron victories went public, those same people were stunned and ‘Astounded’.  Herein lies the essence of the ‘astounding’ Novorossiyan Victories.  They were obvious and expected.

The post July 5th positions taken by the NM were not random, arbitrary, or forced by circumstances resembling defeat or capitulation.  These were the best positions in the theatre to occupy.  By mid July it was obvious that the KJ was engaged in a series of uncoordinated attacks.  As we mentioned on July 6th in our article then,  it was important to keep the July 5th ‘fall’ of Slaviansk in perspective.

As we wrote in Analysis of July 5 Slaviansk Developments,

Basic Military Principle: “Do not confuse strategic removal for the loss of a position.” Attention must be given to the 4th generation warfare where real-time information, shared by our own friends and supporters can be used to demoralize our camp […] In three months of low to medium intensity fighting, where popular Novorossiya militias (NM) have had to defend known positions, the KJ has gathered all its available might and resources in order to ‘displace’ (more on that in the below) parts of the NM from one small city with a population of about 130,000.  It is necessary to reflect on the significance of that fact alone, and what it says about the inability of the KJ to project power.

4.) As we wrote in Strelkov Predicts Next False Flag & Malaysia Hoax: The Power of Crazy, Russians effectively confronted and exposed the attempt by the US to use a random false flag/hoax to disrupt the successful consolidation of the Russian operational position in the weeks following the movement out of Slaviansk after July 5th.

The real signifier of the then coming punctuation was the US July failure to control the narrative of the now exposed hoax/false flag of the Malaysian plane downing.  Western media has gone entirely silent on this issue, and the Malaysian government has stated publicly that Russia was definitively not the culprit.

Strelkov took the further initiative of inoculating the public from another use of this tactic by the US in forewarning its use again, this time regarding a chemical plant.  If this was actually planned, then Strelkov’s exposure was also preventative.

The US was relying upon the success of this tactic; its failure led to the consolidation of the preferred and pre-planned operational positions which essentially summarize the events of August.  The US’s strategies are often easy to unravel for reasons we have previously explored, and thus the US relies on the ‘Power of Crazy’.  We used this term partly to have resonate an otherwise banal description of the ‘stochastic outcomes’ (Osborne and Rubinstein) game within a game theory based on non-cooperative zero-sum games.

 

Game Theory: Zero Sum Game and the Thalassocratic Power

Generally the telluric power engages its soft border neighbors on the basis of positive sum, but the thalassocratic tends engage its would be colonies on the basis of hybrid (blend of zero and positive) or zero sum, and mostly engages the telluric on the basis of zero sum, which in the case of the latter ultimately leads to prolonged conflict, war, and perhaps an infinitely long game.

Standing above strategy are positions, and as such von Neumann equilibria allows planners to formalize (operationalize and quantify) the relevant factors involved in strategic planning as the positions are known.  There are a limited set of strategies that can be employed to arrive at a desired position.  But if that position is not known, then the set of possible strategies increases exponentially.  The goal of the US is to disrupt Russian ability to quantify US long-term goals (positions) into the usable theoretical models which is the formalization process.

The known position desired or held can give away the strategy, and the strategy used can give away the position desired or real position held, but in general strategy the aim is to deceive and avoid.  Thus adding unpredictable and random events into the mix makes it much more difficult.  Fortunately, with the advent of computers it is possible to formalize a model based upon Markov’s decision process.

In a sense this ‘Power of Crazy’ acts much the same as ‘acts of God’ or ‘acts of nature’ as described in stochastic outcomes game, where the unknown ‘x’ factor makes the standard von Neumann zero sum equilibria difficult to formalize.

The Malaysian Plane incident was the first time in the 21st century that the US attempted to frame the Russians for an atrocity against civilians, and it was also the first time, perhaps in history, that Russia publicly exposed a standard US hoax/false flag.  The long term ramifications of this are still unknown, but we may speculate that the manner in which the US and UK official press essentially made an about face and ‘came forward’ with the James Foley beheading hoax was not only historically unprecedented but perhaps connected to Russian work behind the scenes.

 

Much More than ‘Plan A’ vs. ‘Plan B’: Contingencies Cubed

The state of economics and mathematical science of war is such: almost every possible situation, battlefield, theatre – whether optimal, sub-optimal, pessimal –  is planned for and around at every level.  At every decision point mapped out along the way is planned at minimum a half dozen of contingencies (much more complex than ‘plan A vs plan B’).  To emphasize, there are not only more than a half dozen contingencies built into the general strategy (supporting a given position) but rather this is multiplied exponentially.  For every possible situation requiring a modification of, implementation of ‘tactic’, there are developed a half dozen contingencies.

Thus, there are scores of contingent plans with scores of contingencies built into each contingent plan. Through this lens, the tremendous industrial and bureaucratic effort of war can be better appreciated.  This is performed years in advance, and of course when the real situations emerge they play out in ways which may combinations of any of the variable situations, and therefore rely on another set of skills.  Those combinations are not always predictable in full detail.

This is entirely commensurate with the teachings of Sun Tsu in the Art of War – 1.) the outcome of a war must be known before it begins.  Those not knowing the outcome are those likely to lose it.

Also connected to understanding Russia’s grand strategy: 2.) To win a position without using force is better than to win a position with using force.

Russians are also following the maxim: “he who excels in defeating his enemies triumphs before his enemy’s threats become real”.  

Positioning is also critical, which can help us explain the present position of the NM in its overall bleeding-defensive strategy.  The decision to position an army must be based on both objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective beliefs of other, competitive actors in that environment.  

However, while Art of War is still studied in most military academies around the world, it is by no means the final word.  The changes in warfare which alter the way this work should be understood have been significant.   For Sun Tsu strategy was not planning in the sense of working through a set of contingencies, but rather were quick responses to changing conditions. Though planning works in a controlled environment, in a changing environment competing plans collide which create unforeseeable new situations.  Technical progress has moved in two directions simultaneously, but tend to favor the utility of contingencies; while war is faster in terms of involving rockets, jets, the motorized cavalry ‘blitzkrieg’ and ‘shock and awe’, information and data analysis technologies have evolved even further and are even faster in comparison.  But more to the point, it is important to distinguish between general strategies and ‘quick responses to changing conditions’, which ought to better be understood as ‘tactics’:  tactics being employed on the fly in sub-optimal conditions in order to pursue a given general strategy. 

War is a microcosm of life itself, and everything which can characterize life itself is intensified and pronounced through war.  Life is struggle – the class struggle, the national struggle, historical struggle, existential struggle, internal struggle, spiritual struggle.  War is life’s struggle unleashed.  Thus many things in life as in war which appear as incidental, arbitrary, random, coincidental, unplanned, mysterious, surprising, and unknown are not – rather they are the opposite.

Indeed they are foreseeable, mitigated, planned around, planned for, required, caused, effected, affected, and expected.  In 4GW all of the of the technical, scientific, and humanities sciences are brought together syncretically; the generalist brings together the master specialist and must as well himself be highly proficient as a specialist in each of the areas he coordinates.

 

Novorossiya: “Losing” Until Victory

In connection with the socialist and nationalist revolution and war taking place today in Novorossiya, we can better sketch out how our hypothesis of the Russian Grand Strategy has been confirmed by each batch of new facts.

From the start the Novorossiyan, or more correctly the Russian, strategy has been to manipulate several prominent factors of the way the NATO powers generate news and public information as we discussed in greater detail in sections above.

To recap, the first is that western news agencies are eager to make the Ukrainians appear to be doing well, and are always willing to make Putin seem unpopular, scheming, conniving, and uncommitted to the Novorossiyan efforts.  They are eager to create the false view that Putin’s days are limited and that public discontent is high.  They were also eager to create the sense among their readers that the NM was on its last leg and hanging by a thread.  As we explained, the NM’s published version of Situation Reports (usually from Strelkov) exploited this tendency, and so the NM also reported that their position was weak.

The 6th Column also can be brought out of the woodwork this way; once the belief that the position is weak is promoted, the 6th column are first to jump at the opportunity to begin ‘suing for peace’.  Like starving a tapeworm, once their head emerges, the whole body can be pulled out and disposed of.

But the 6th column works both ways.  Recall that in the first weeks of the conflict, whole groupments were sent by Kiev to fight the NM, but instead either surrendered their equipment or even switched sides.  This happened at the level of ground command, and even the navy switched sides when Crimea went over.  Fears still abound that many KJ officers are traitors within the rank and file.  The Ukrainian army cannot explain the rapid speed and efficiency with which the NM advances, knowing when and how to be at the right place at the right time.  FSB assets in the SBU are probably numerous and placed high up.

As we have also been clear about, Kharkov in the north of Novorossiya and Odessa in the west are critical.  When rumblings of partisan/rebel action in these areas was reported, we consistently reminded our friends and readers  that this was a necessary part of a larger plan.  Previously we had formulated, before the use of the cauldrons maneuver three or four times over in the south of Novorossiya, that the efforts would need to spark in Transdniestra supporting Odessa, and Kharkov almost simultaneously in order to draw the KJ away from the then encirclement around Donetsk.  It is not clear now whether this will be necessary.

However, what will be necessary in Kharkov is the ‘communist’ angle.  Kharkov is not majority ethnic-Russian, but it does have a sizable pro-Russian population if the alternative is Banderism, because they have a large Communist Party membership in this oblast.  This is also true of Odessa.  While located on opposite ends of the former Ukraine, these after Mariupol may be the next major targets.

 

Conclusion

It is clear that the methods of propaganda and messaging are decipherable, and can be understood by the attentive analyst.  It is not necessary to remain neutral about the desired outcome for this conflict, but it is necessary to remain objective in analyzing and reporting on the developments.  If many sympathetic to the Novorossiyan initiative were unnecessarily pessimistic about the developments, this may be in part because they listened to Eurasian and NATO propaganda which, for differing reasons, both exaggerated the extent of Novorossiyan losses.  Social psychology, classical military strategy, criminology, textual induction and inference of media, and game theory in the field of Geopolitics and International Relations can be formed into a larger syncretic field which is interdisciplinary in nature and provides a good framework for understanding complex phenomenon such as the war in Ukraine and Novorossiya.

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