In chapter three of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, it says:
To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
Is Russia actually invading Ukraine? What will be the invasion routes?
Well, the answers to these questions are the world’s worst kept secret. All you need to do is to click on this link to find out what the invasion routes are. U.S. intelligence anticipates a Russian false flag operation (“liberating pro-Russian provinces” counts…and sounds like Hitler’s annexation of Alsace-Lorraine). Everyone reading the media knows what is going to happen next. All you need to do is visit Twitter to find endless videos of tanks, missiles, trucks, field hospitals and other war preparations being deployed on the Russian side of the border. This doesn’t look like a minor incursion.
Do you think Russia will do exactly what everyone expects them to do?
Of course not.
Russia is conducting psychological warfare and they are winning. Worse still, it is the actions of governments, mainstream media and social media doing the hard yards for Russia to win.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine.
Western governments pulled out their diplomats, and military personnel from Ukraine. They are telling their citizens to flee. The U.S. is relocating its embassy away from the capital. Airliners are treating Ukraine as a no-fly zone. All these announced on mainstream media and social media.
Although these are bad, but they are not so bad. You know what is worse?
We are now seeing Ukrainian state officials, politicians and business elites fleeing the country. Their president is urging them to return within 24 hours.
If this goes on, that will be the beginning of the end of Ukraine. Why?
Take a look at Valentina Constantinovska, a Ukrainian great grandmother. She’s training on an Ak-47 to protect against a probable Russian onslaught.
How will great-grandmother Valentina feel when she sees the leaders of her country fleeing? Will it help her to feel braver?
Or the foot soldier serving in the Ukrainian army near the frontlines. How will he feel when he hears the news that the leaders of his country are fleeing? What will happen to his morale?
Bravery is infectious. Fear is even more so. When leaders flee, fear spreads. When fear spreads, morale will collapse. When morale collapses, the will to fight evaporates. When the will to fight evaporates, the country surrenders. When the country surrenders, the enemy has won without a shot fired.
Day in, day out, we watched Russia’s war preparation on mainstream media and social media. There used to be 100,000 Russian troops at the border. Then it was 130,000. Now it is 150,000. If you are a Ukrainian, the more you watch, the lower your morale will sinks.
The current narrative is that 150,000 troops is enough to wage war, but not enough to maintain a long-term occupation of a country that still has the will to fight. Russia has more than two million reservists. They have plenty of scope to increase the number of troops. Eventually, at some point in time, the narrative is going to change from waging a short war to maintaining a long-term occupation. But before it can happen, it is likely that Ukrainian morale would have collapsed.
What can happen next?
Should Ukrainian generals and defence ministers flee, you can be sure that Ukrainian military morale will collapse. The Russian forces will cross the border and simply accept the surrender of the Ukrainian army. It will simply be a walk-over for the Russians.
Should the Ukrainian president himself flee, that is a sign of regime collapse. When a regime collapses, there will be a power vacuum. When there’s a power vacuum, anarchy will follow. Which country will have the means to help maintain law and order at a moment’s notice? The answer is obvious.
Napoleon claimed:
In war, three-quarters of victory is down to morale, only one quarter to the balance of military forces.
What is happening right now is that with each mainstream and social media image and video, Russia is chipping away at the morale of Ukraine by spreading fear. The US military and intelligence assessments that a Russian invasion can cause up to 50,000 civilian casualties and announced publicly on mainstream media is helping Russia to spread even more fear. As fear spreads and gains momentum, morale will collapse more and more. Without morale on the Ukrainian side, the primary task of the Russian army will be to process surrendered prisoners-of-war.
I do not know when Russia will fully invade. But I am very sure of this: any predictions and forward warnings by mainstream media and government agencies (of dates, invasion routes and specifics) will precisely be what is NOT going to happen. But the moment Ukrainian morale collapses, that is when Russia will move in. That is something not even Russia will know just yet.
– Peak Prosperity –
This article was written for Peak Prosperity by Terence Kam, founder and cybersecurity consultant at iSecurityGuru.com. You can follow his company on LinkedIn. Or subscribe to his writings on Medium, where he writes on a wider variety of topics.
The post Russia’s Art of War with Ukraine (and Putin’s Winning) appeared first on Peak Prosperity.
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