Militaria Collectors Network
Published 23 Mar 2026Step back into the 1960s and experience how the British Army trained the soldiers of the Cold War era. This rare archival recruitment film offers a fascinating look at military life, basic training, and the wide range of technical and career opportunities available to new recruits during a time of global tension and rapid modernisation.
From infantry drills and weapons training to engineering, communications, and education programmes, this film highlights how the British Army prepared men for both combat and skilled professions. Whether you’re interested in Cold War history, military training, or vintage government films, this is a unique glimpse into a defining period of British military history.
📽️ In this film:
– 1960s British Army basic training
– Infantry tactics and weapons familiarisation
– Technical trades and career paths
– Cold War-era military strategy and preparation
– Life as a British Army recruit
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July 29, 2026
1960s British Army Recruitment Film | Cold War Training & Life Inside the Army
QotD: Asymmetric warfare
Asymmetric Warfare is a term used to describe warfare between two belligerents with either starkly different amounts of resources or different warfare styles or systems. It is crucial to note this term denotes something about the relationship between two belligerents, not something essential to one of them; an army or a state is not asymmetric except in relations to another (the mistake here is often to set the modern western industrialized form of warfare as the “norm” against which all other forms are somehow asymmetric). While this term has been used to describe the war in Ukraine, it is ill-suited for it: both Ukraine and Russia are attempting to make use of a similar set of equipment (including the use of artillery and airstrikes) using a uniformed soldiery; they are both, to borrow one of my earlier definitions, attempting to operate within the “third system of war“. Ukrainian efforts to have uniformed soldiers use maneuver and surprise to engage Russian logistics and rear echelon units are not “asymmetric”, but rather a standard part of both Russian and Ukrainian warfighting, albeit one that Ukraine appears more skilled at in the present moment. Likewise, both sides are attempting a parallel “political struggle” of demonstrations and information warfare; Ukrainian success here too does not make their methods asymmetric.
Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-25.
July 28, 2026
Adventures in Surplus! Type 38 Arisaka Carbine in World War One
Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Mar 2026In the fall of 1914 it became apparent that the minor fracas in Serbia was going to stretch a lot longer than anyone had expected, and governments began scrambling to secure weapons production. Japan was one source of small arms for the Entente powers, and Britain purchased about 150,000 Arisaka rifles and carbines from the Japanese in late 1914 and early 1915. These were used to equip Royal Navy crews and Army raining and reserve units, but by late 1915 Enfield production had caught up and the guns were no longer needed.
In the fall of 1915, the British sent most of their Arisakas (about 128,000) to Russia, which had also been purchasing large numbers from Japan. There they were again used to arm second-line units, including troops occupying the Grand Duchy of Finland. When Finland declared its independence in December 1917, most of the Russian soldiers went home and left their weapons in Finland. As a result, the Arisaka was the second most common type of rifle available at Finland’s independence, and was used by the Civil Guard until about 1927.
This particular Type 38 Carbine was made at the Tokyo Army Arsenal in 1910, then sold to the British where it was given a set of unit marks on the stock. It was subsequently transferred to Russia, where a metal clip was added to prevent accidental magazine release. It stayed in Finland through the Finnish Civil War and afterwards, only being imported into the US recently by Postrock of Garden City, Kansas.
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July 27, 2026
The shambolic Fifth Crusade, or “Waiting for Fredot”
In The Critic, Anatoly Grablevsky reviews a new book on one of the less well-known attempts to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Islamic conquerors:
By the early 13th century, the military and geopolitical situation of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was dire. After the Third Crusade (1189-92) had failed to retake Jerusalem, the Frankish realm in the Holy Land was reduced to a thin coastal strip centred on the heavily fortified city of Acre. The rest of the Near East was in the hands of the Ayyubids, the successors of Saladin.
In response to Ayyubid encroachment, in 1213 Pope Innocent III called for a new holy war to reinforce the Kingdom of Jerusalem and reclaim the Holy City for Christendom. The bulk of the expedition was recruited in the Holy Roman Empire, whose young emperor, Frederick II, the wonder of the world himself, ostentatiously took up the cross. He was, however, in no hurry to join his countrymen in the east.
Learning from their bitter past experiences, this time around the Crusaders adopted a novel strategy. Instead of focusing their efforts on the Holy Land, the Christians targeted Egypt, the political and economic heartland of the Ayyubids.
The Crusader army’s first port of call was the coastal city of Damietta, which, after a lengthy siege, fell in 1219. This was a major victory for Christendom: Crusaders had not captured a city of Damietta’s size, wealth and strategic importance since the fall of Jerusalem in 1099.
The Ayyubid Sultan Al-Kamil, under pressure from Mongol attacks at the rear, now offered attractive peace terms that included the return of Jerusalem to the Christians. The Crusaders, overconfident and under orders from the absentee emperor, rebuffed Al-Kamil and instead decided to march on the Ayyubid capital of Cairo.
Here, the crusade took a shambolic turn. The Christians wasted precious months awaiting the arrival of Frederick II, but the emperor never bothered to show up (Smith might have called his book “Waiting for Fredot”). By the time the Crusaders finally began the march south, Al-Kamil had gathered his strength, and the Franks were quickly outmanoeuvred by the Sultan, who used his superior knowledge of the Nile’s flooding patterns to trap them against the river.
The Crusaders reacted by launching an all-out assault on their substantial wine provisions so that, when the Muslims attacked, the Christian army disintegrated in a drunken rout.
In the ensuing peace deal, Al-Kamil regained Damietta, in return for giving safe passage back to Europe to the Christian survivors.
July 26, 2026
How to Provoke a War – Death of Democracy 25 – Q1 1939
World War Two
Published 25 Jul 2026By March 1939, appeasement has failed.
Hitler’s Germany has moved from threats and persecution inside the Reich to the destruction of Czechoslovakia, the seizure of Memel, and renewed pressure on Poland. No shots have yet been fired between the great powers — but Europe is now locked on a course toward war.
In this episode of Death of Democracy, Spartacus Olsson reports from Berlin at the end of Q1 1939: the “Israel” and “Sara” decree, Schacht’s dismissal, Göring’s Central Office for Jewish Emigration, Hitler’s genocidal Reichstag threat, the launch of Bismarck, the coerced occupation of Prague, the Memel ultimatum, and Britain’s guarantee to Poland.
This is the moment when the Munich illusion collapses. Hitler is no longer pretending to unite Germans. He is dismantling states.
July 25, 2026
The last few hundred years of Anglo-German relations
The history of Britain and Germany has certainly had some peaks and valleys since the first “German” king was crowned in London in 1714. Prussia and Britain managed to team up most memorably in 1815 to defeat Napoleon in the Waterloo campaign, but things got much less clear after the Franco-Prussian War that heralded the rise of a unified German state. As long as Prince Bismarck was the guiding hand behind German ambitions, Britain could look at Germany as a relatively reliable continental ally. After the accession of Kaiser Wilhelm II, however, things got rockier quickly. Bismarck got sidelined soon afterwards and the Kaiser decided that the one thing he really, really wanted was to build a navy to rival the British Royal Navy. That, in my opinion, more than anything else pushed Britain into exploring other diplomatic channels and eventually deciding to ally (in all but name) with France. The cover of Jan Rüger’s Great Powers shows the future conflict zone that ensured Britain would view Germany as a threat and not a potentially valuable ally:
As an explicit criticism of the nonsense of great powers rising and falling as if “a timeless truth”, that offered for example by Paul Kennedy, Graham Allison, and Brendan Simms, Rüger, Professor of History at Birkbeck, emphasises the role of individuals and contingencies. His is a book that emphasises human agency, and at every level from that of nations to individuals.
[…]
For the period on which I am a specialist (and Rüger is not), the eighteenth century, there is a degree of nonsense. For example, George I did not have a “reliably anti-French stance” contributing to British “nation-building”. Instead, there was alliance with France from 1716 to 1731, the deployment of French troops into “Germany” to protect Hanover against Prussia and Austria was sought in 1727 (George II was similarly concerned in 1729), and so on. Nor were British interests successfully ringfenced to protect against their use for Hanoverian ends. Any detailed consideration of British foreign policy, or, indeed, the despatch of warships to the Baltic would suggest otherwise. Nor is Rüger correct to suggest that “at the heart of Britain’s national interest” was Britain choosing both Continental interventionism and trans-oceanic policies. Walpole’s determination to keep Britain out of European war, notably in 1733-35, and the beneficial consequences that flowed from this, demonstrates the contrary; as, indeed, did the earlier non-engagement, as in the Thirty Years’ War or against France in 1675-78. Rüger’s Whiggishness draws on a failure to understand the range of views in and on the eighteenth century.
From a German perspective, I would scarcely describe this book as a Bavarian or a Swabian viewpoint. Nor is there sufficient engagement with the extent to which Germany for long in Britain meant the Empire and thus included Austria. That only really ceased in the nineteenth century. Thus, there is on the part of Rüger a degree of anticipation that is misleading. Prussia takes far too central a position too early. This is linked to his misleading account of Prussia as a great power by the end of the Seven Years’ War. Not so, it was more significant by then than Bavaria and Saxony both of which had had their search for status crippled by defeat. However, Prussia also had had its vulnerability amply displayed, notably so to Russia. Furthermore, in terms of “reach”, Prussia in 1763 in no way matched Austria, Britain, France or Russia. Instead, it only became a great power as a result of developments from the 1860s. 1871 still seems to be the lens through which most Germans view their history. That includes Rüger, and is misleading.
So, lots to the good, particularly (but not only) for the post-1871 period; but with significant weaknesses, and notably so for the eighteenth century.
Civil War Gwyn & Campbell Carbines (aka Cosmopolitan, Union, & Grapevine)
Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Mar 2026The first version of this carbine was the Cosmopolitan, designed and patented by Henry Gross in 1859 and manufactured by Edward Gwyn and Abner Campbell. It is a single-shot .52 caliber carbine that loads from the breech with a paper cartridge and a separate external percussion cap. After producing a batch of the guns, Gwyn and Campbell realized that the breechblock design could be much simplified, and they patented that simplification — essentially pushing Gross out of his own invention.
Several successive contracts for the carbines were fulfilled during the Civil War, with about 8,200 produced in total. It was not the most popular or most numerous cavalry carbine of the war, but it is rather remarkable for actually being reliable and delivered consistently on time.
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July 24, 2026
QotD: The first rule of strategic analysis
Wars are theatres of chaos, noise, confusion and premature certainty. The temptation to declare victory, defeat or historical turning point within the first few hours or days is not analysis. It is posturing. Yet the modern media cycle, with its appetite for endless commentary and instant verdicts, cannot tolerate silence. The result is a steady stream of confident assertions, most of which will age badly.
The current conflict between the alliance of the United States and Israel and Iran has followed this pattern almost perfectly. Within days, it was announced that America was winning; America was losing; Iran is winning; Iran had been neutralised; Iran remained undeterred; Trump doesn’t have clear plan; he does have a clear plan; this was the start of a forever war; it wasn’t a forever war; the war is a catastrophe for the US; the war is a triumph for the US.; that the war would soon be over; the war is over.
Obviously, these claims cannot be true simultaneously. Most of them will turn out not to be true at all.
Resisting the customary rush to instant judgement and adopting a more analytical frame of mind, what can we, discerning sceptics that we are, sensibly say six weeks into the war? Which claims survive contact with reality, and which are, for now, better treated as conjecture?
Michael Rainsborough, “A Sceptical Stocktake of the Iran War So Far”, The Daily Sceptic, 2026-04-21.
Update, 27 July: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
July 23, 2026
The Korean War Week 109 – One Step From Peace! – July 21, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 22 Jul 2026There’s only one thing left at the Panmunjom Peace Talks standing in the way of an armistice — Article 51. However, this article deals with the release of POWs and the two sides have very different interpretations of it. The UN is however, currently releasing all the civilian internees they hold. In the field, the fighting for Old Baldy flares up again as the Chinese attack, and an anti-guerrilla campaign comes to its end.
QotD: The development of the Main Battle Tank (MBT) and Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV)
The result is the modern “main battle tank” (MBT), typically between 45 and 75 tons, with a single powerful direct-fire cannon as its primary armament. That’s not to say design differences between militaries drop away; there are still decisions to be made: the level of emphasis between speed, armor and firepower for instance. Another major decision is whether a tank is designed with a three-person turret (one of whom is a dedicated loader) or a two-person turret with an autoloader (that is, a machine that does the loading for you). It used to be that now I’d have to go on about why going autoloaders aren’t simply obviously the best but given the live demonstrations of some of the drawbacks of Soviet/Russian carousel autoloaders going on right now [in Ukraine] I’ll just say that both options have advantages and drawbacks and move on. So there is variety within the idea of an MBT, but by and large most countries field just one type of MBT (or one family of MBTs for countries which can’t afford to retire older systems) and that covers their tank needs.
But of course nothing could easy so just as tanks were getting easier to keep track of, APCs get much more complicated. Even before they were fully enclosed, APCs had generally carried some kind of defensive weapon (usually a heavy machine gun), but you weren’t supposed to fight with it if you could avoid it. Beginning in the 1950s, designers – first in West Germany – began experimenting with the idea that an APC could be armed to not merely deliver the infantry (“dismounts”) but to actually fight when they got there. The thing is, there are a lot of situations where an infantry formation might want more firepower but where a tank would be overkill: armored vehicles lighter than tanks, or enemies with lighter fortifications, for instance. West Germany pioneered the idea by putting a 20mm autocannon on their APC, the Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30, enabling it to put out some meaningful firepower, albeit much less than a tank.
The USSR cottoned on to the idea and liked it, resulting in the Soviet BMP-1 and the subsequent BMP family of what we call “infantry fighting vehicles” (IFV). Initially resistant to the idea (American doctrine was that APCs move troops and should not fight if they could help it), the United States, noticing the effectiveness of these sorts of platforms, got into the act with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle (these days the M2 Bradley). And IFVs, especially the Bradley, look like tanks. And indeed, they are sometimes called on to do the kind of armored reconnaissance and infantry support jobs that in a previous era would have gone to a light tank.
But they are also notably not tanks in several key ways. The primary job of an IFV is to move infantry and support them against lighter targets; some IFVs do maintain some kind of anti-tank capability, but it tends to be more limited (e.g. the Bradley’s pair of TOW AT missiles). The requirement that an IFV needs to be fairly fast but also needs to fit a bunch of dismounts means they can’t carry the firepower or the armor of a tank, often using lighter aluminum armor rather than steel or heavy composites. Finally, the tendency is for IFVs to mount lighter primarily armaments – again, space and weight concerns – like the Bradley’s 25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun. The BMP-3 is probably the most heavily armed IFV out there with a low-velocity 100mm rifled gun and a 30mm autocannon, which is still a far cry from the firepower of the high-velocity 125mm main gun of a contemporary T-80 or the 120mm high velocity gun of a M1A1 Abrams. Instead, most IFVs would rely on anti-tank missile systems to engage tanks (although IFV autocannons can cause a tank serious problems if they can engage the rear or side armor, which is thinner).
Note that the IFV did not mean the end of the APC just as the APC didn’t bring the end of soft-skinned troop transports. In the US military, the Bradley serves alongside lighter-but-still-IFV Strykers, the venerable M113 APC along with soft-skinned HMMWV (Humvees; to be in theory replaced with the Oshkosh L-ATV) and trucks of various kinds and uses. Likewise, the Russian army has its BMPs (which are IFVs), and BTRs (which are APCs) as well as soft-skinned vehicles – or at least it did until, I am now being told, they were all towed away by Ukrainian farmers. The real Iron Harvest.
The final category worth noting here are variations on the concept of the MRAP (Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected): infantry transport vehicles designed to resist the sort of dangers one encounters in counter-insurgency operations, mostly mines, IEDs and small-arms ambushes. In essence, these vehicles are a purpose-built version of the up-armored Humvees designed to operate in a very particular combat environment (insurgencies and particularly urban insurgencies). These sort of vehicles have gotten more visibility in the United States because many of them have been shifted into the hands of law enforcement, where their utility is questionable, to say the least.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: When is a ‘Tank’ Not a Tank?”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-05-06.
July 22, 2026
QotD: Burnside’s Army of the Potomac
This was the country of the boisterous forty-niner, the hell-roaring lumberjack, and the riverman who was half horse and half alligator. Without rancor (and also without the slightest hesitation) it annihilated Indian tribes so that it could people a wilderness, asserting that the only good Indian was a dead Indian and remarking casually of its own pioneers that the cowards never started and the weak died along the road. As it faced the cathedral aisles of endless virgin forests it shouted for immediate daylight in the swamp, even if whole generations must be brutalized for it. It was the country that invented the bucko mate and the Shanghai passage, and if the skysails of its incredible clippers gleamed on the farthest magic horizon they were taken there by men under the daily rule of clubs and brass knuckles. This nation accepted boiler explosions as the price of steamboat travel and it would boast presently of a dead gandy-dancer for every cross-tie on the transcontinental railroad. It wore seven-league boots and scorned to look where it planted them, and each of its immense strides was made at immense human cost. And the army of this country, buckling down to it at last in a fight which had to go to a finish, was going to be very rough on enemy civilians, not because it had anything against them but simply because they were there.
Of genuine hatred this army had practically none. The wild young men who ruined ancestral portraits and pranced in the smoky streets wearing the embroidered undergarments of gentlewomen were expressing nothing but plain hooliganism, which somehow was the obverse side of the medal that had laid nine hundred corpses in front of the stone wall west of town. Both sides of the medal bespoke raw youth which cheered and guffawed by turns, whose noble best forever went arm in arm with its ugly worst.
Bruce Catton, Army of the Potomac: Glory Road, 1952.
July 20, 2026
“Blame Canada”: evergreen. “Invade Canada”? It’s been done before
Upper Canadian Cavalier points out the obvious … that the United States absolutely could invade Canada and there’s not a lot the Canadian Armed Forces could do to stop them. But that would be the easy part:
“A mere matter of marching …”
The question of “could America ever invade Canada?” is wrong before it is even asked. Picture the MAGA politicos huddled in D.C. and the anon poasters spamming maps of how America could take Canada, as if it were even a question, as if the border were a wall and the wall the point. The whole conversation is midwits who never grasped what America already occupies.
Occupation is the crude instrument of the conqueror who arrives too late, who finds the ground already held by another and must break it by force, and that has never once been the American position in the north. The American position is that of the covert shareholder rather than the invader, and a shareholder does not knock down the door of a house whose deed already sits in his desk.
Empire in its highest form neither occupies nor marches, because it has learned to administer instead, and it does not plant a flag on the palace, since the flag is a confession that the palace was not yet yours. The genius of the modern Global American imperium has been to take without ever confessing, to hold Canada so completely that Canadians experience the holding as their own free choice. To reach for the army now would throw all of that away, trading a profitable and invisible dominion for a visible and bloody one, and teaching the empire at ruinous cost the difference between owning a country and holding it.
The republic was born reaching north with a bayonet, and it should remember how that went. In the winter of 1775 it sent Brigadier General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Benedict Arnold (yes, that Benedict Arnold) up through the snow to seize Quebec. The spirit of the country rose up in the snow to meet them, and Quebec killed Montgomery in a blizzard at the walls, the land itself passing sentence on the invasion before a single treaty could be signed.
That was first offensive act of the American project, it was a failed invasion of Canada that froze to death in the cold for its own arrogance. There is a symmetry waiting at the end of this essay that the reader should carry from the beginning, because a republic that opened its history reaching north may yet close its history the same way. America could invade Canada, but then it would not be able to conquer it, and in that attempt it would destroy the very thing that made its northern dominion worth having, because the soft empire cannot survive being seen and that invasion is nothing other than the act of trading quiet profits for overt pain and suffering.
Eight Great Powers Invade China: the Boxer Uprising 1900-1901
Real Time History
Published 20 Feb 2026After the defeat in the 1st Sino-Japanese War, the Qing Dynasty is under pressure: Some are calling for domestic reforms and ousting Western influence, while the Great Powers want to further open up China for their businesses. Violence erupts when the so called Boxer movement kills several Westerners.
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July 19, 2026
Rome’s Greatest Enemy: Bloodbath in Africa | EP 3
The Rest Is History
Published 9 Feb 2026Would the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio successfully march on Africa? What happened when Hannibal and Scipio — the greatest commanders of their age — came head to head at the Battle of Zama, in the ultimate showdown? And, what would be the fate of these two titans of the ancient world?
Join Tom and Dominic, as they discuss the Roman Republic’s audacious invasion of North Africa under the leadership of the dashing Scipio, and his clash with Hannibal.
00:00 Scipio’s night attack in Numidia
02:16 Hannibal as a commander
08:07 The rise of Scipio Africanus
13:05 The Roman invasion of Africa begins
21:56 The Battle of the Great Plains
25:29 Hannibal recalled from Italy
28:18 Preparing for the final showdown
33:02 The Battle of Zama begins
36:03 Could Hannibal have won?
40:25 Hannibal urges acceptance of defeat
42:40 Hannibal as a civilian reformer
44:22 Scipio after the war
46:45 Cato’s rise and the conservative backlash
49:29 Rome turns east after victory
52:32 The Hellenistic world after Alexander
56:45 Hannibal and Scipio compare great generals
58:31 Rome defeats Antiochus
1:00:18 Hannibal’s final flight and death
1:01:40 Scipio’s death and exile
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July 18, 2026
The current state of play in the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022
I don’t make a habit of sharing reports from the ongoing fighting in Ukraine, as the war has ground on (how do you say “short, victorious war” in Russian?). It’s not that I’m not interested, it’s that trustworthy sources are vanishingly thin, and most coverage is either hyper-pro Ukraine or hyper-pro Russia … so assessing events is somewhere between difficult and impossible for those of us without our own satellite and espionage networks. kulak, on the other hand, has been paying attention and does have some insights that are worth considering:
One could be forgiven for thinking that there is something deeply wrong with the Russian State and Vladimir Putin in particular.
Every 1 to 3 months some new unprecedented Ukrainian asymmetric attack hits Russia’s homeland in ways almost tailor designed to provoke an escalation, outrage the populace, and leave the Russian Government humiliated at the loss of face.
The “Crocus City Hall” (it’s a civilian music venue not an actual city hall) attack in Moscow was killed 151 and injured 600+ Civilian music fans in an “ISIS” terrorist attack … That everyone knows was funded, coordinated, and enabled by Ukraine (and the CIA). Right down to the assailants passing through Ukraine, and being on camera collecting their discarded firearm magazines (presumably because the manufacturer stamps would tie them to their backers) …
This was huge Russian News, and the specific band whose audience was targeted is also significant.
Piknik is a massive hit Russian 80s band. Now, Students of history will note that Russia was still communist in the 80s. They’ve been around forever, and are generally inoffensive and middle of the road (they were mainstream under the USSR)… They’re kind of a weird gothic slavic prog-rock blend of Phil Collins and the Tragically Hip. And they’re huge … Individual videos with 10s of millions of views on Youtube … As big as any hit western 80s band and lots of cultural fondness in the Russian imagination.
(Presumably it hits harder if you can appreciate Russian)
This matters because their core demographic are Russian boomers who are Nostalgic for their Soviet Childhoods, but are also established and content in Modern Russia … Ie. Putin’s Core demographic.
This would be like if you attacked a Hamilton performance or a Bono concert in the west. That’s the regime’s core supporters right there. That’s a knowledgeable and incisive cut that actual Muslim foreigners wouldn’t know or care to hit … But that Slavic Ukrainians and calculating CIA planners trying to apply pressure or destabilize Russia into escalation would know and salivate at.
Likewise Ukraine explicitly attacked Russia’s Nuclear Strategic Bomber fleet in Operation Spider Web, assets that were not used in the Ukraine war, and indeed were basically irrelevant to the conflict … But are core to Russia’s nuclear triad and the stability of the global nuclear balance of power … Again basically begging for a massive escalation and almost certainly making Russian Generals and Strategic planners break out in a cold sweat until they assessed the damage.
Beyond this there have been prominent assassinations of Russian Generals … In Moscow. And assassination attempts on Putin himself …
In addition to the destabilizing Ukrainian counter-invasion of Russia, and escalating strikes on Moscow itself.
The thing to understand is that none of these have been conventionally advantageous for Ukraine. The Invasion of Russia stretched their forces, the Assassinations if anything probably cycled in younger, more competent, hungrier generals, attacking Moscow Boomer civilians probably gave a massive morale spike to the outraged Russian populace … These strikes on Russia have infuriated Russians and made them call for blood.
This is in many respects THE OPPOSITE of what you’d normally want to do as a smaller country fighting a larger that hasn’t fully mobilized. Usually you want to exhaust a larger force that’s half committed or politically divided, without getting them to up their commitment or causing them to unify. Think of Vietnam … The Vietnamese wanted Americans to get tired of fighting them and get demoralized at the idea of ever “winning”, fight amongst themselves, then wind down and withdraw. If in 1972 Vietnamese terrorists had attacked the Superbowl and killed hundreds of American civilians on US soil … that’s actually one of the few things that could have united American in 1972 or gotten America to commit to another 5 years in Vietnam at that point.
It would have greatly damaged American prestige … Moscow or China might have liked that … But from Vietnam’s perspective where they want America to wander elsewhere, it’d lock in years of misery.
So that’s weird … but weirder has been Putin’s Reaction: Nothing. Basically no counter-escalation. Certainly nothing that’s made Zelensky sweat and hesitate at sending more drones at Moscow.
Indeed many sympathetic commentators both in Russia and the West have been screaming their frustration at Putin that he hasn’t suitably punished these insults to Russian Honor or restored Russian deterrence … Or merely enforced baseline international norms around targeting heads of state, civilians, and Strategic nuclear assets in a non-nuclear conventional war.
Russia has hundreds of these Tornado systems.
It’s not as if Russia lacks conventional options. Kiev is RIGHT THERE. Hell, If the Russians really wanted the Tornado MLRS (Multiple Launcher Rocket System) has a range of 200km, fires thermobaric warheads or White Phosphorus rounds, and could hit Kiev from Russian Ally Belarus …
Without even debating the extent of air-cover, and to what extent Ukrainian Air Defense is intact (or to what extent the US can supply them with interceptors) … Putin has the capacity to firebomb Kiev on the scale of Dresden if he wanted to, from the ground. He’s not lacking in conventional, nuclear, and every other kind of escalatory option.
And yet he’s not escalated … And his retaliations have been as close as possible to the bare minimum he could get away with to not be overthrown for treason.
So what the hell is wrong with Putin?
