Igor Zaytsev's blog

Current issues:

• International women’s day
• Nord Stream “investigation”
• Another “velvet revolution” attempt in Georgia
• Longer range JDAM’s for UA

First of all today is the women’s international day, so my best wishes to all women of the world.

Sadly, what comes in that regard is the dire state of women’s rights today. I’m not talking about wokeness which promotes abortions, destroys traditional family values, pushes women into a workforce for higher profits of business while abandoning the children (the ones that still being born despite all of this) into institutional “care” for their “education” and general well being.

I’m talking about the so called “human trafficking”, which implies slavery and forced prostitution. For some reason, the name has nothing to do with women, slavery or forced prostitution. As if someone is trying to blur the lines by defining the problem with unrelated terms.

Another point that stupefies me is how this phenomenon is possible at all at our level of social and technological development. The only reason I could think of, is that the powers which influence the government policies are not interested in eradicating this evil. Is it because they themselves are directly implicated in this activities, or they chose to allow this to happen for some convenience reasons — I don’t know. All I can say is the general public should held their governments directly responsible for any such activities under their jurisdiction. But the public seems to be viewing this evil as some kind of scary fairy tail that doesn’t have anything to do with them. It is someone else, from another countries, but they themselves and they families are safe.

There was a principle of mutual responsibility in the ancient world. An evil done by some members of community could draw God’s wrath on the entire community. As such, every citizen is responsible for his (or hers, though women weren’t citizens as such in those times, and usually shared the fate of their husbands together with the rest of the family) community, even if he himself has nothing to do with the sins and crimes being committed. Another example is a dead body found in the limits of ancient Judean city. The city became responsible for this death even if none of its residents were involved in the murder. This city citizens and authorities had to provide a sacrifice as if themselves committed the murder, to escape God’s punishment.

Sadly, modern governments are pushing to separate their communities into individuals, taking their power to collectively influence their governments. And then, those disconnected individuals are unified under a mainstream narrative, striping off their individuality as well. The people become gray mass that follows the authorities without critical thinking and unable to hold their leaders accountable.

***

The embarrassing article by Seymour Hersh seems to make some waves in the “Free World”. The first attempt to ignore it must have been less fruitful than expected, since the NYT has discharged an “article” in which it wildly speculates about this act of aggression as being planned and executed by some unnamed extremist group made of Ukrainian and/or Russian citizens. As ridiculous as it sounds, this must be the new and approved narrative that will be pushed for public consumptions.

It is hard to believe Germans, who are the actual victims of this crime, will buy into it. At best this excuse of ongoing “investigation” would delay the authorities from acknowledging US involvement for some time. It is also possible this fictional investigation is intended for other audiences in countries which haven’t suffered as the result of Nord Stream pipelines destruction, or even benefited from it. Those should gladly accept any “official” excuse to wave around, deflecting the blame of their responsibility or silent approval of the act.

***

Georgian (the post-Soviet one, not the Georgia, USA) Parliament is in a process to introducing a new law that would require any organizations and individuals who influence Georgian politics reveal if they are financed by foreign players. A few thousands of protesters tried to breach the Georgian Parliament building and clashed with police. Some “molotovs” were thrown at the riot police as well. However, I didn’t hear about any arrests made among the protesters, which is concerning.

What is interesting is the official US reaction. It has threatened Georgia with economic sanctions, the US argument being “support for democracy” or something like that. The funny thing is, the Georgian law is based on the US law for foreign agents. And storming the Parliament building? January 6th, anyone?

This all affair is quite remarkable sine Georgia was the first, mini Russo-Ukrainian war less than a decade ago. During which Russian military managed to counterattack and devastate Georgian army in 5 days, stopping on its way to Tbilisi by the Rasputin’s ceasefire deal, that left Russia with sanctions and paved a way for the history to repeat itself in Ukraine. That war happened after the first “velvet revolution” there Western-managed forces, headed by Saakashvili, came to the power. After the war and economic decline as a result of severing ties with Russia and adoption of EU agricultural regulations, Saakashvili government felt and was replaced by a neutral government.

Today, the Western-led wave of world-wide destabilizing actions has reached Georgia as well. Hopefully, the government would persist for now, or this country would again be used as a tool to poke Russia, hopping it will suffer significant damage.

***

Ukraine has demonstrated to its Western shepherds what it is able not only to engage strategic targets deep inside Russian territory, but also do it with impunity. Russian “red lines” turned to be empty words — no “decision making centers” were targeted in Ukraine or NATO countries after many repeated strikes and attacks on Russian soil. Moreover, some highly valuable Russian military assets were damaged, and operations disrupted, by using only old Soviet era systems.

Russian authorities have shown to the West it has nothing to worry about by supplying longer reaching stand-off weaponry to Ukraine. Moreover, it could serve Western interests by inflicting military, economic and PR damage to Russia. So the supplies of longer ranged weaponry was actually expected by this point.

What is interesting on a technical level, is that the regular JDAM kits previously supplied to Ukraine had little detectable consequences on if at all. I haven’t seen a single report about a JDAM bomb making significant damage in the Russian rear. The reason, as I see it, is the mode of operation of the JDAM equipped bombs. They stand-off range is achievable by three interconnected means: release velocity, altitude and angle. That is because JDAM bombs don’t have any means of propulsion, but rely instead on the initial kinetic and potential energy to travel. Since the theater has a heavy presence of anti-aircraft systems, the fighter jets are probably hard pressed to find an opportunity to get to a high enough altitude so that the JDAM will travel far enough to hit any major Russian target.

Introduction of the gliding JDAM-ER variant would theoretically allow the carriers to achieve longer toss distance without exposing themselves as much to the Russian air-defense.