Just Not The Kind We Post On A Sunday -
Looking back over the past 13 years of BOOJUM! and how far we've come from 200 words of text with no pictures, to screeds that may hit 1,400 words and include my own photos and ones culled from teh Interwebz. No, today we are going to look back at the history of the Special Military Operation as it enters it's fifth year, thanks to the copious notes I took of Pyotr Kurzin's 'The Global Gambit', which is well worth checking out. Art!
That's Pyotr with a background of Washington, South Canada, where he now lives. In case you were wondering, and even if you weren't, he's half-British and half-Ruffian, and has a lot of contacts behind the <thinks> Tin Curtain.
The rather indigestible title of his vlog here is 'What's really happening inside Ruffia after 4 years of Putin's war'.
First observation is that this war has lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War, which is what the Sinisters used to call the Second Unpleasantness after their great chums the Nazis attacked them. We are now on Day 1,446 of the Special Idiotic Operation, as compared to Day 1,416 that brought the Red Army into the heart of Berlin. This total is about 1,000 times longer than anyone speculated on 24/02/2022. Art!
The front lines have essentially been frozen for the past 3 years, with a magnifying glass or travelling electron microscope needed to see where the orcs have prevailed and conquered. As various pundits have observed, a snail setting off from the orc's front lines in 2022 would be in either Vienna or Warsaw by now.
SO Pyotr offers to look at what is really happening on the battlefield, the myth of Ruffia's 'Inevitable Win' and what the near future will bring. Art!
QUESTION: If Ruffia is advancing at the heady pace of 70 metres OR 76 PROUD IMPERIAL YARDS per day, is this classed as 'Strategic Momentum' or 'Slow-Motion Implosion'? Especially as their daily losses amount to 1,000 on average. Doing a little calculation, at this rate it would take 54 years for Mordorvia to conquer Ukraine at a cost of about 20 million casualties. Conrad has used other metrics to calculate this end result, and they always end in gigantic Ruffian casualties expended over years, if not decades. Art!
Talking of snails. The Strugatsky brothers wrote some impressive sci-fi novels and short stories whilst having to try and accommodate the restrictions of the Sinister Union, which regarded them with a great deal of suspicion. Please take their opus as proof that not all Ruffians are orcs, and that back in the day their audience passed around samizdat publications that punctured Sinister lies and pomp.
The Kremlin in 2022
None of this happened.
What did happen was the bloodiest war since 1945, with Ruffian casualties hitting 1.25 million and Ukraine's probably at a third of that total. Over the expanse of 4 years Ruffia advanced 50 kilometres into Ukrainian Donetsk, or about one kilometre per month, with the weighting of this advance being at the start of the SIO. As Pyotr points out, the nature of warfare in Ukraine has changed markedly; from manoeuvre warfare with large mechanised and armoured formations at the start, to positional warfare dominated by trenches, mines, artillery, barbed wire and small infantry infiltration groups. If you didn't know this blog was being written in 2026 you might think we were discussing trench warfare of the Western Front in 1917. Art!
The photograph is in colour, which means it's unlikely to be WW1, but the defence line here is as it would have been in France circa late 1917. An anti-tank ditch, that will cause enemy AFVs to bog down and stall, requiring engineer assistance to extricate themselves. Dragon's teeth, to further block any vehicles from getting through. Barbed wire, to slow or completely stop enemy infantry. All this defence terrain would be covered by artillery in a previous life, and now - you may be ahead of me here - drones in 21st century warfare.
What has made the difference? O I'm so glad you asked!
Drones.
We're only about 1/4 through Pyotr's vlog, so I'm afraid we'll have to come back to it. I bet you can hardly wait.
Sataysfaction
NO! That is not a typo, it is an hilarious pun I tell you, hilarious!
For no apparent reason, Your Humble Scribe wondered about 'Satay Sauce' on Saturday, possibly whilst walking Edna and giving time to Thinking Deep Dark Thoughts. Art!
This, gentle reader, is Satay Sauce. Made from peanut butter, coconut milk, mashed spring onions, brown sugar, soy sauce and a scattering of chili flakes. I tried it with my Cheapo Chicken Skewers last night and it went down well. Over on the Continent they feature this kind of sauce in the Netherlands, whom recall their long-lost Indonesian empire the way we here in the UK recall Indian cuisine.
Speaking Of Which -
Another of those 'Ex-Manchester' experiences that Conrad did not take part in, for no very good reason. Art!
You can tell this photo is from decades ago as the bus in the background has a red livery - as mentioned about the Manchester Arndale bus station, they used to be orange and white. The DPH stood on the corner of St Peter's Square, where the huge memorial obelisk stands, and Oxford Road, which was the direct route to Student City Central. Art!
That's the thing about Manchester - if you stand still in the city centre for more than fifteen minutes, you'll be immediately built over by a new skyscraper or office block, economic downturn or recession be damned. Either that, or those jib cranes springing up all over the place are alien spies*.
Karma Komes Kalling
We recently mentioned the Supreme S****** Of Iran, Ayatollah Khameini, and wished him a lingering dispatch thanks to ingesting five pints of live sticklebacks. Well. It seems that the Israelis and South Canadians knew where he was hiding in plain sight, and at the inception of their Bomb, Assault & Blast & Missile Iran, hereafter BAMBI, they knew where he was and introduced him to a whole lot of high explosive. Art!
This, lest ye be unaware, is the political leader who gave permission - nay, ORDERED - that Iranian protesters be murdered by the thousands. To the upper bound mentioned of 36,000. O ho ho, how the piper comes for payment, hmmm?
Conrad is not remotely superstitious but can happily imagine this boakbag simmering in Hades for the next 624,335 years. And if the HR Department of Hades functions at all, they ought to put him alongside Leonidas**.
Finally -
Better go box up that Sunday Stew and see if Edna is willing to sit and watch 'Stranger Things' in the lounge with me.
* Prove they are not. Go on. I'll wait.
** Legendary leader of the Spartans at Thermopylae, fighting versus the Persians.
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