Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Ukraine Humiliated Western Propagandists After Its Defense Minister Admitted It’s A NATO Proxy. Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov’s description of the Ukrainian-NATO relationship perfectly aligns with Merriam-Webster’s definition of a proxy. Their official website informs readers that “A proxy may refer to a person who is authorized to act for another or it may designate the function or authority of serving in another’s stead.”

The objectively existing military-strategic dynamics of the Ukrainian Conflict coupled with Reznikov’s candid admission therefore leave no doubt about the fact that Ukraine is a NATO proxy by definition.

The US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) has insisted over the past 10,5 months that President Putin is supposedly insane for considering Ukraine a NATO proxy whose close military ties with that explicitly anti-Russian bloc pose a serious threat to his country’s national security red lines. Their perception managers subsequently expanded upon their gaslighting operation to discredit Russia’s special operation on the false basis that it’s driven by so-called “imperialism” and not self-defense.

Every single one of the countless information warfare products that they’ve since created was just exposed as fraudulent by none other than Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov, who admitted during an appearance on national TV on Thursday that their country is indeed a NATO proxy.

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Something big is coming, and whatever it is, there’s now a heightened chance that the US will become directly involved.

The Pentagon confirmed that it’ll dispatch nearly 100 troops to Israel to operate one of its premier air defense systems, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), of which it only has seven in total. This comes ahead of Israel’s expected retaliation to Iran’s latest missile strike on the first of the month that it carried out to restore deterrence after the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Here’s what this latest US move signifies:


1. Israel Is Probably Planning Something Big

Rumors have abounded about what exactly Israel is planning, but it’s probably something big and will provoke at least proportional retaliation from Iran, hence why the self-professed Jewish State requested that the US deploy one of its few THAADs to help defend it afterwards.

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The trend of Israel striking civilian areas in Syria as part of its regional assassination spree threatens to further destabilize the Arab Republic.

Israel bombed a civilian district in Damascus on Tuesday in its latest attack against the Arab Republic. RT cited Saudi media to report that the target was “a Hezbollah official in charge of Unit 4400, which allegedly supplies the Lebanese Shia militia with weapons from Iran.”

Israel rarely strikes civilian areas in Syria, yet it’s increasingly begun to do so since the start of the latest Israeli-Lebanese War. Here are five takeaways from this development:

1. Israel Is On A Regional Assassination Spree

The past month has seen the Mossad leveraging its intelligence superiority over the Resistance to assassinate dozens of their members, first with pager bombs and then with airstrikes, despite predictable collateral damage to civilians.

The latest bombing of Damascus is the natural evolution of this trend and signals that Israel will go to any length, including endangering civilians, to take out its targets. The Syrian capital might soon be hit as frequently as the Lebanese one if enough targets are discovered.

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Estonia wouldn’t talk about blockading the Gulf of Finland without prior encouragement from the US.

Most of the discourse surrounding the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine naturally focuses on events inside that country. This nowadays includes the improvised “war of attrition” that’s being waged by both sides within it, false flag attack scenarios against its nuclear power plants, and what would have to happen for Russia or Belarus to use nukes in this conflict.

What most commentators have forgotten about though is how NATO’s northeastern flank can stir up a lot of trouble for Russia if the order is given.

Lithuania’s failed blockade of Kaliningrad in summer 2022 and this year’s efforts to build an “EU defense line” along the Polish-Belarusian border to the Estonian-Russian one, which would de facto function as a new Iron Curtain that could expand to the Finnish-Russian border, aren’t discussed enough nowadays. That might change after the Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces spoke last week about Tallinn’s plans to close off the Gulf of Finland. Here are his exact words as reported by publicly financed ERR:

💬 “Maritime defense is an area where cooperation between Finland and Estonia is set to increase, and we may be able to make more concrete plans on how, if necessary, we can completely block adversary activities in the Baltic Sea, literally speaking. Militarily, this is achievable, we are ready for it, and we are moving in that direction. If there is a threat and it is necessary, we are ready to do it to protect ourselves.”

That prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry to respond as follows according to Sputnik:

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

To paraphrase the famous saying, “Russians saddle slow but ride fast”, so it’s possible that everything might soon accelerate as a result of Russia finally adopting these tactics.

The Washington Post (WaPo) published a piece on Wednesday about how “Ukraine’s east buckling under improved Russian tactics, superior firepower” to coincide with Russia’s capture of the strategic Ukrainian fortress town of Ugledar at the junction of the Donbass and Zaporozhye fronts. According to them, Russia is now relying on assault teams as small as four soldiers each in order to evade drone surveillance. It also has much more equipment than Ukraine and is able to better coordinate its attacks as well.

An anonymous officer from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade that fought in Ugledar “for about two years with no relief” told them that “artillery volleys in the area sometimes reach 10 shells to 1 in favor of Russia and glide bombs launched unopposed from jets can destroy whole sections of a trench line and anyone manning them.” WaPo added that Ukraine still struggles to replenish its losses and has been distracted by its invasion of Russia’s Kursk Region, the latter outcome of which was predictable.

Another interesting tidbit from their report is that “The destruction of railways and bridges (around Pokrovsk) means it is effectively lost”. Readers can learn more about how that city’s capture can be a game-changer for the Donbass front from this analysis here, but it’s also significant that Russia is finally targeting Ukraine’s military logistics. It still won’t touch bridges across the Dnieper nor any of the railways connecting Ukraine to Poland, but at least it’s finally destroying those near the front.

While none of these tactics are novel, it’s the first time that they’ve been employed by Russia, let alone altogether. Dropping “meat assaults” in favor of small assault teams was long overdue, as was bombing Ukrainian trenches and targeting its military logistics near the front line. Russia has always been far ahead in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition”, but it’s only just now doing something other than relying on brute force by finally devising more effective ways to leverage this advantage.

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

These lessons are: 1) prioritizing military goals over political ones; 2) the importance of superior intelligence; 3) insensitivity to public opinion; 4) the need for one’s “deep state” to be fully convinced of the ongoing conflict’s existential nature; and 5) practicing “radical decisiveness”.

The latest Israeli-Lebanese War and the Ukrainian conflict are so different from one another as to be practically incomparable, but Russia can still learn some general lessons from Israel if it has the will. The first is that prioritizing military goals increases the chances of achieving political ones. Russia’s special operation continues to be characterized by self-restraint, which is influenced by Putin’s magnum opus “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, unlike Israel’s conduct in its war with Lebanon.

The expectation was that the lightning-fast on-the-ground advances during the opening stage of the conflict would coerce Zelensky into agreeing to the military demands that were made of him. The only miniscule collateral damage that would have occurred could have then facilitated the process of Russian-Ukrainian reconciliation. This plan was predicated on Zelensky’s capitulation, which didn’t happen. Instead, he was convinced by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to keep fighting.

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Israel’s intelligence superiority and the Resistance Axis’ reluctance to escalate are responsible for why the self-professed Jewish State is indisputably winning the latest war with Lebanon.

The latest Israeli-Lebanese War shattered everyone’s expectations. Hezbollah’s enormous missile stockpile made them all believe that “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) had been achieved with Israel, thus restraining both combatants’ actions in any future conflict, but Israel’s intelligence superiority and the Resistance Axis’ reluctance to escalate ultimately gave the self-professed Jewish State a major edge. The present state of affairs is such that Israel is indisputably winning the latest war with Lebanon.

Its audacious pager attack disrupted Hezbollah’s chain of command and operations, which Israel then exploited to hit their missile stockpiles while the group was reeling from this blow. Their chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who the IDF claims to have killed on Friday though Hezbollah has yet to confirm this at the time of writing, either still eschewed escalating due to his rational belief in MAD or he was literally unable to after what had happened. In any case, Iran could have escalated instead, but it refused.

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Russia is worried that the influence of hawkish forces inside the US’ “deep state” might be growing and could ultimately lead to a large-scale conventional strike against it, including by proxy through Ukraine, which Russia hopes to deter by reminding them that this would result in World War III.

The hullabaloo over Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine is misplaced since all that Putin did was explicitly confirm what was already self-evident to all serious observers. Nobody should have ever thought that Russia wouldn’t consider a nuclear response to any overwhelming non-nuclear strike against it or its mutual defense ally Belarus, nor that it would overlook those who partook in such a provocation by proxy. Here’s exactly what Putin told the Security Councilduring their latest meeting on Wednesday:

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Poles are waking up to the dark reality of contemporary Ukrainian nationalism.

Casual observers might be surprised that a World War II-era genocide of over 100,000 Poles by Ukrainian fascists has become a major problem in these two countries’ contemporary relations.

It happened several generations ago and they nowadays closely coordinate against Russia. Nevertheless, Ukraine has thus far refused to exhume and properly bury the remains of the Volhynia Genocide’s victims, which has enraged Poles and forced their government to escalate these demands for the following reasons:

1. Ukraine Is Behaving In An Incredibly Ungrateful & Disrespectful Way Towards Poland

Polish President Andrzej Duda recently confirmed that his country spent 3.3% of its GDP (approximately $25 billion) on multidimensional aid for Ukraine, yet it was then reported that Zelensky angrily rejected Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski’s Volhynia-related requests soon thereafter. Poles regard this behavior as incredibly ungrateful and disrespectful after all that they’ve done for Ukraine, whose stance shockingly suggests that it doesn’t consider the victims to be innocent, but that they deserved to be murdered.

2. Its Double Standards Towards Bucha Imply That Only Ukrainians Are Ever Victims

The aforesaid perception is reinforced by Ukraine’s double standards towards Bucha, which Kiev claims was a genocide despite the circumstances being much murkier, the number of victims much smaller, and their deaths much less grotesque than the Volhynia Genocide’s. The innuendo is that Ukraine believes in a hierarchy of victimhood within which its people are placed much higher than Poles, who can only be described as victims of genocide if they were killed by Russians, not Ukrainians.

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Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Such rhetoric should be taken seriously, not downplayed, but it also shouldn’t be exaggerated either.

Lavrov gave an insightful interview to Sky News Arabia in which he explained what Russia hopes to achieve by talking about its red lines. The Mainstream Media (MSM) is convinced that they’re meaningless and that all such ones can be crossed without fear of World War III, while the Alt-Media Community (AMC) interprets all such rhetoric as hinting at a nuclear response in that event. It turns out that they’re both half-right and half-wrong per what Lavrov revealed about his country’s calculations:

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