Gen Sir Richard Barrons
Thomas Harding – The UK National Dec 26, 2023
Russia is heading towards victory in Ukraine with the initiative unequivocally transferring to Moscow, one of Britain’s most senior former officers has told The National.
In a wide-ranging interview, Gen Sir Richard Barrons argued that Ukraine’s military “has got nothing left in the locker right now” after its gruelling summer counter-offensive.
Unless the West improves its military aid, the momentum is likely to remain with President Vladimir Putin, fuelled by significant assistance from Iran which has sent not only kamikaze drones but ballistic missiles that are being used to soak up Ukraine’s air defence weapons.
If Europe and America fail to provide Kyiv with the weapons and money it needs then it would be “an absolute failure of politics” that will see a resurgent Russia on its doorstep with a far more powerful army than before the invasion, argued the former head of Britain’s Joint Force Command.
As the war approaches its third year, both sides are locked in an attritional stalemate along a 1,000km front line with little likelihood of a decisive breakthrough until 2025.
Putin ascendant
Donated by the West, Ukrainian Army tanks on the battlefields of Ukraine. Click to enlarge
“The initiative in this war is unequivocally transferring to Russia and that is not the situation we expected at the start of this year but it’s an honest appraisal of where we are,” said Gen Barrons.
2023 has not been without its challenges for Mr Putin, with the Wagner mutiny in June proving the gravest challenge to his authority. But with mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin probably assassinated in an air crash, the Russian President now appears more secure and confident than at any time since the February 2022 invasion.
“That’s a combination of the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive to deliver even its minimum objectives,” said Gen Barrons. “Then the major wobble in US politics and now EU politics on financial support to Ukraine. The reason he’s much more confident is because he’s not losing this war. And Russia wins by not losing.”
Artillery barrage
A key ingredient to victory for either side will be building enough shells to break through the front lines, said Gen Barrons, a former Royal Artillery officer.
It is estimated that Russia fired between 10 and 12 million rounds in the first year of the war – on occasion using an astonishing 60,000 shells a day.
While its stocks have depleted, one million shells from North Korea will help tide Moscow over until its manufacturing base ramps up production to two million a year by the end of 2024.
By contrast, the US should be able to produce about 600,000 155mm rounds next year and the EU might get to 300,000 with Britain’s BAE Systems up to another 100,000.
But Russia, whose industry is on a war footing, will still be outproducing the West by two-to-one.
Without massed artillery fire, and lacking a sizeable air force, Ukraine is unlikely to succeed and could itself be subject to a Russian offensive opened with a huge bombardment.
The Israel-Gaza war has seen a further depletion of western stocks, with munitions sent to Israel that may otherwise have gone to Kyiv.
“Putin will be rubbing his hands with glee at the distraction of Gaza particularly with artillery ammunition that was going to go to Ukraine now being fired at Palestinians,” said the veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Empty locker
A Ukrainian serviceman in front of a 105mm howitzer near Bakhmut. Click to enlarge
After a bruising 2023, both sides are now in a period of consolidation, using 2024 to train and re-equip their armies.
“Ukraine has got nothing left in the locker right now, so decisive action is not possible by either side before 2025,” said Gen Barrons, 64. “But the trend is firmly, but only marginally, in Russia’s favour right now. So Putin is in a pretty good place.”
Russia has lost nine out of 10 of the 360,000 soldiers from its initial invasion force with an estimated 120,000 dead and 200,000 wounded, according to a US intelligence estimate.
But Mr Putin is willing to absorb the huge losses as he has a much greater pool of manpower to draw from, with Russia’s population of 146 million outnumbering Ukraine’s 40 million.
Mr Putin, and most Russians, remain unfazed by the exceptionally high casualties, as many are from Asiatic Russia or are convicts.
So long as they can continue recruiting without the politically toxic policy of mass mobilisation of Moscow’s and St Petersburg’s middle classes, manpower should not be a problem.
Nato training
For more than four months from June, the Nato-equipped and trained new Ukrainian army attempted to batter a breakthrough in Russian lines.
Faced with a well-planned deep defence, including millions of mines, Kyiv’s generals made few inroads on the front line failing to achieve a breakout to the Sea of Azov and cut off occupied Crimea.
The average age of Ukrainian troops in some units is 45, because the country has decided against mobilising its youth to preserve its economy.
“So they’ve mobilised their dads essentially,” said Gen Barrons. “But the only way they can break the deadlock is by mobilising civil society. They’ve got to mobilise their youth and find more people willing to fight.”
With a lack of specialists in the summer offensive, each brigade of about 4,000 people could only produce about two company’s worth of actual assault troops, around 200 men.
When they attacked in armoured vehicles they got bogged down in the minefields, then the Russians fired “scatter-able” mines behind the attackers to isolate them and then pick them off.
Soon the assault companies were decimated leaving the Ukrainians only able to assault in small numbers which “was never going to them to the Sea of Azov”.
With the Uke armed-forces & their ZATO armaments virtually wiped-out…
it still takes the “military genius” of a THICKBrit puff-ball like a “General” Barrons almost TWO F’KIN YEARS to come to the same conclusion that a reasonably intelligent 5-year-old could have told him a month or so after the start of the conflict!
LMFAO!!!😄
Subheading to article states the US elections are rigged. As if the elections in Russia aren’t rigged as well.
Welcome to Whiteocide. What this General doesn’t tell you though is that this war is all prearranged by the Jews & Commies on both ‘sides’ (NATO-Ukraine/Russia) Both governments of Ukraine & Russia are infested with & ruled by Jews who are covertly coordinating these battles to wipe out thousands/millions of whites. The white masses of the West can’t figure this out though.
People keep on talking about Ukraine’s population at being 40 million but this must be clearly false and has anybody counted lately ?
Well before Obama’s Regime Change putsch in the 2014 Maidan, large numbers of Ukies had fled the country for the EU to escape the terminal corruption of the place. Former EU boss Jean-Claude Juncker (Drunker) recently stated in November that Ukraine has always had chronic, endemic corruption – yet the EU have been told it has to get ready to admit Ukraine. The 2014 regime change, introduction of blatantly discriminatory and racist policies towards Russian speaking Ukies and the military attack on those provinces refusing to accept this ethnic cleansing accelerated an exodus to Russia. Then came the NATO Russia War in 2022 and really significant numbers-those with some money and connections- fled to the West unlikely to return.
So the population isn’t anywhere near 40 million in this failed state which produces next to nothing and depends on massive amounts of money -with no accountability-and endless quantities of weapons from its NATO patrons. The casualty figures for Ukraine are thus far worse with this depleted population who likely cannot move anywhere. It is these unfortunates that the ghoul Zelensky demands must go to the front and die in droves so that he can blackmail NATO for more aid and weapons thus guaranteeing a mountain of corpses before he either flees or falls foul of his domestic rivals.
Why do the Ukies stand for it you ask? Or are they really so zealously connected to the war. It is a Mafia State and has a Gestapo like militia to enforce the regime’s aims via terror, murder, abduction and extortion. Similar to the Security Police in Caecescu’s Romania in 1989. Once they break or waver the regime is finished, notably its head. That being the case, Zelensky is likely begging for direct NATO intervention, boots on the ground before he gets his head booted in. This old buffer British General might well be trying to pave the way for such a thing: we’ve invested so much we cannot afford to let Putin preside- the gambler’s dilemma, just one more throw of the war dice.
But still able to inflict substantial defensive as well as offensive damage via the fancy radars, sensors, missiles, ECCM, Etc.
“The three confirmed recent Su-34 shoot-downs—four if you count Sunday’s claimed shoot-down— bring to 25 or 26 the number of the fighter-bombers the Russians have lost over Ukraine, out of a total pre-war fleet of probably fewer than 150 aircraft.”
‘Gen Sir Richard Barrons’
What a monumentally stupid face and man.
He uses these brain-dead verbal clichés like ‘wobble’ and ‘rubbing his hands with glee’ , as in –
‘“Putin will be rubbing his hands with glee at the distraction of Gaza particularly with artillery ammunition that was going to go to Ukraine now being fired at Palestinians,” said the veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.’
Of course Putin isn’t ‘rubbing his hands in glee’, he isn’t a rubbish two-dimensional cartoon, like this ‘veteran’ Barrons is –
Is ‘veteran’ supposed to suggest that this psychotic moron isn’t a psychotic moron?
“Ukraine has got nothing left in the locker right now’
Stop talking in brain-dead clichés, fatface!
There is a particularly stupid Radio 2 Presenter named Vernon Kay who describes every single has-been pop-star or pop-cultural reference as ‘iconic’ , but at least his verbal dribbling is not applied to actual lethality.
‘The reason he’s much more confident is because he’s not losing this war. And Russia wins by not losing.”’
We all have only one life each to lose – but brain-dead psychotics like this Barrons can be guaranteed not to lose theirs till they die of old age, whilst justifying maximum mass-slaughter on the Front Line, World War One style –
Almost certainly, as with W. Churchill, he has been warped for life by being buggered by older bullies in Public School –
(I am glad I only thought that last comment in my head , and didn’t post it 😕)
@MILI TANT
it is always the worst who survive !
after 1945 the character clean + decent men (the best)
were killed + the worst procreated .
same after 25 years of Stalins Gulag rules most russian
survivers were guilty as denunciants, snitches on their
neighbours but survived + procreated . the decents DEAD !
and so it will be with the Ukrainians : the worst survive +
procreate . their decent, character clean victims DEAD !
Nico X= High cognitive level comments 👍👍👍👍👍
NATO/US now need a reality check, they need to realize they are now Russia’s bitch !!!
Top photo:
What we have here is the all-too-common puffy, porcine, smarmy, self-satisfied, smug mug of the quintessentially clueless “Establishment” THICK Brit…
who – no doubt! – rose through the ranks by “strategically” dropping his soap in the communal shower,,
🙄
Zard
Excellent
moslems (Houthis,Hamas, al ansar, Taliban etc) are
freedomfighters but you western militaries are only
pension expecters ! and your bomber pilots dirty scum !