Russia Prepares Bakhmut Cauldron; German ex General Calls for Peace, Says West Risks Defeat, WW3 (Alexander Mercouris)

The most interesting part of the video comes at the end, in the last 20 minutes, when Alexander reports the thoughts of a French intellectual who points out that when it comes to industrial production the Russians have been vastly underestimated. He points out that US industrial production is way down in recent years and that their GDP numbers are skewed towards financials and other non-industrial industries, while Russian productive capacity has increased.

The Russians have the upper hand when it comes to marshaling resources and producing things, but obviously not on the same scale as China. On the other hand the West outsourced a large sector of their own industrial production to China. The industry that remains in the West, although technologically advanced, is of a lower scale in general. In a war of attrition this means the US and the West tends to run out of legs when it comes to producing armaments. This is evident in the promised equipment and arms headed to Ukraine that include not enough artillery shells and wait times on certain equipment that stretch into 2024, a point when the war would likely be over.  

[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, January 18, 2023.]