Sipes also buttresses his thesis by pointing out that given how the Dnieper River divides Ukraine into east-west halves, if Russia really wanted to conquer the country, it would:
1. Strike and destroy bridges over the Dnieper River at Kiev, Cherkasy, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia using TU22 and TU60 heavy bombers or the equivalent.
2. Destroy the railroad yards at Lviv, Kiev, Dnipro, Poltava, and Uman using a combination of TU 22s and fighter bombers such as the Sukhoi 34 and the Tupolev 160.
3. Basically rinse and repeat the above for the highways systems M06 and MO3 at Kiev, the M12 at Kirovgard, the MO4 at Dnipro, and the M20 at Kharkiv.
4. Send in any suitable aircraft to simply shoot up the rail and road systems after the above was completed.
5. Target with 9K720s truck mounted surface-to-surface missiles and destroy electrical stations in key towns such as Lviv, Kiev, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia. This would have several effects, one being it would demoralize the citizens in the cities that were hit.
Sipes further claims that Russia enjoys — again, despite propaganda to the contrary — complete air superiority and could effect the above in just a week.
He then points out that if Moscow did take the above actions, the results would be:
1. With the bridges and other transport infrastructure destroyed, no fuel, military equipment, food or goods would move west to east.
2. Internal military communications would be severely disrupted.
3. Refugees would be swarming the bridge sites on the eastern side of the river, which would impede movement even more and produce an almost unimaginable humanitarian crisis.
4. Virtually no military equipment or reinforcements could be moved into the eastern areas in Donbas, Odessa, etc. to reinforce the already stressed Ukrainian defenders.
5. With the eastern part of the country cut off, after a few weeks what Ukrainian forces left in that region would be forced to surrender.
Sipes finds it striking that he could travel around Ukraine, observe the aforementioned and conclude that Moscow is waging this war with, he estimates, 10 percent of its capabilities and yet the mainstream media pushes the fiction of impending Russian demise.
The reporter also states that if wide-scale destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure does begin, we’ll know that Putin has changed strategy. As for now, however, Russia appears to be systematically accomplishing the precise objectives it established back on February 24, Sipes concludes.
All this said, it’s hard knowing what the truth is amid the fog of war. For example, while Macgregor is a fine source, he incorrectly predicted on March 4 that Russia would successfully conclude the Ukraine campaign in about 10 days.
What is certain is that reckless NATO expansion has contributed to this situation and Ukraine is not our fight — and that it’s not a cause over which it’s worth risking nuclear war.