The Ukraine War will end on 8th August 2024

Week ended September 8, 2023, interesting news items to look at this week were:

1. The Ukraine War will end on 8^th August 2024: Yes, the title is absurd but for my own personal planning and perspective, I need to manage some understanding as to how the world would turn out and when this stage of chaos would end. To achieve this I put together different sets of data points, imperfect and conjectural as they may be, but at least I would have covered the basis should circumstances turn out different from my expectation thus allow me to react accordingly. For what is worth, the following are my summation and conclusion:

(i) A question of Political Brinkmanship: As early as May 2023, the US through Politico already floated the idea of freezing the Ukraine conflict in the same way as the armistice with North Korea. (Fig. 1).

On Thursday this week , an article in Zerohedge titled “Cracks Appear In US Deep State As Insiders Warn Negotiations With Russia The Only Way Out: "Everyone Loses" (Fig. 2).

We all witnessed the so called “nuclear option of economic and financial sanction” against Russia had backfired and had accelerated a global de-dollarization process as well as igniting inflation in the western alliance. Despite all these, the Anglo American Empire is not willing to back down. The reason, their bigger challenge is China and they think China will walk over the western alliance if China sees any weakness in the West’s resolve against Russia. The US Deep State has few options left. A direct Nuclear War with Russia with nuclear hyper-sonic missiles is not an option for the White House and Buckingham Palace. A conventional war with Russia already proved to be a disaster as the entire Western alliance had downsized her conventional munitions industrial capacity for to make lucrative high tech toys for the benefit of the MIA. Therefore the best the Anglo Americans can hope for is to build up bargaining chips before negotiation with Russia in ernst should begin. The interests of the people of Ukraine or for that matter, the interests of other members of NATO were never part of the equation. Remember during the US instigated Maiden Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, Victoria Nuland was caught saying “Fxxk the EU” (Fig. 3).  

Events of the past week showed what the US had in mind a preferred pathway by negotiation in strength with Russia.

(i) Ukraine Defense Minister Reznikov replaced by Umerov (Fig. 4):

Replacing Rezniko (a lawyer by training) by a Umerov (a fund manager) can hardly be described as enhancing the military skills to the ongoing armed conflict. The skills that Umerov had was he came from Crimea and since 2020, Umerov has been a member of a Ukrainian government task force working on the strategy to end the occupation of Crimea. (Fig. 5).

I venture to say from recent news clips that the true reason for Reznikov removal was Reznikov insisted on placing military assets in Bakmut to stop the Russian advance to the North and East at the same time as Pentagon wished to place all the chips on the Southern Counter-offensive. (Fig. 6).

The idea of the Anglo Americans were to breakthrough the Russian defense in Zaprorizhzhia and advance all the way to the Sea of Azov to threaten Russian Crimea before sitting down on the negotiation table. This strategy is actually a repeat of the Crimean War of 1853.

(ii) Crimean War 2.0 - In Crimean War 1.0 in 1853, the war was fought by an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Sardinia-Piedmont. by an alliance to prevent Russia gaining territorial control of various regions in eastern Europe, then under Ottoman control, and of routes into British India. These regions included the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus region and the Danubian provinces of modern-day Romania. (Fig. 7)

The Maiden Color Revolution was to place a new regime in Ukraine to deny Russia access through Crimea into the Black Sea and then onto the Mediterranean and beyond. 5 Years of US State Department Planning was foiled overnight when Putin through a general referendum with absolute majority support of the people of Crimea, annexed Crimea to Russia.

(iii) No Wonder Weapons and Silver Bullets for NATO: The world now clearly understood NATO cannot win a conventional war against Russia as NATO has exhausted its armory to supply Ukraine whether they be Howitzers, HIMARS, drones, Missiles, UK Challenger Tanks, German Leopard tanks US M1A2 Abrams Tanks or even F-15s, they will all be out-gunned by Russia. Just look at the weaponry and equipment destroyed by Russia in the Ukraine Conflict up to September 3, 2023. (Fig. 8).

If we tabulate the destruction of NATO/AFU weaponry and equipment since the summer counter offensive, the losses are equally mind numbing: Aircraft 39; Helicopters 12; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles 2,079; anti-aircraft missile system 11; Tanks and other armoured vehicles 2,359; Combat vehicles with MLRS Fire Systems 47; Field Artillery and Mortar Guns 1,310; Special Military Vehicles 2,265 with UAF KIA exceeding 40,000. The realization of “NO Game Changing New Weapons” is coming home to roost and this week the UK propaganda machine, Financial Times admitted Ukraine cannot win against Russia, but victory by 2025 is possible. (Fig. 9), provided the West build up military industrial capacity in Ukraine. REALLY? 

The West had been fooled by Russian’s clever tactic of not making quick advances to gain more Ukrainian territories. According to Russian American Expert ANDREI MARTYANOV, Russia’s design is not just to demilitarize Ukraine but to demilitarize NATO. An out all assault by Russia would just force the AFU to hide behind civilians but a tactical retreat at pre-planned locations would lure NATO/AFU into the open and attack the RAF in Grey Zones of Russian mines and artillery fires. I reported on my Blog dated August 19^th 2023 that Kiev sent her last and best trained troops, the “82^nd Air Assault Brigade” for the final counter offensive at Kupiansk (North of Donetsk) and now they have been totally annihilated. The entire Ukrainian army is finished, and fighting age Ukrainian young men fleeing the country to avoid conscription reported by the Economists (Fig. 10)

and Euronews (Fig. 11).

Reportedly, in Germany alone the number of fighting age young men that fled Ukraine into Germany exceeded 100,000.     

(iv) Why 8^th August 2024 to end the Ukraine War - nothing magic, it took 896 days in Crimean War 1.0 for Tsar Nicholas of Russia to admit defeat, so I reckon it will take just as long for Joe Biden and King Charles to admit defeat in Crimean War 2.0. when all their antics failed and eventually exhaust of lies to cover up this big fiasco. What would Ukraine look when an armistice is agreed. Over and above Crimea and the 4 Oblast which Russian Speaking Ukrainians had voted to join the Russian Federation, Russia will likely take 4 more south eastern Oblast with majority ethnic Russians and completely locked Ukraine out from the shores of the Black Seas. The final carved off areas would comprise about 46% of the pre-war Ukrainian Territories with Ukraine to permanently remain neutral devoid of military alliances but with security guarantees by mutually agreed countries. (Fig. 12)

2. China Anti-sanctioned Tech Moves: With Huawei now capable of delivery of full homegrown 5G communication devices, China countered further US tech sanctions by a move to block Apple iphones from government offices. This spooked the US stock market and tech sector and Apple shares fell 3%. and dropped below its 100 days moving average, giving up gains over the last 3 months. (Fig. 13).

The much hyped AI Chip stock Nvidia also fell 1.74%. The 7 AI and Cloud stocks which propelled the stock indexes puked and showed a double top. (Fig. 14)

3. Washington and Birmingham out of funds: The City of Birmingham has declared bankruptcies while the White House will be out of funds by September 30 and some government services will be stopped. (Fig. 15).

Birmingham was the cradle for Industrial Revolution 1.0 and at one time the manufacturing and technology hub of Europe. The decline of Birmingham is an epic sign of the season of change we are in right now.

4. Niger up Uranium Prices by 250 times: Having taken control of its national resources from its Colonial Masters, Niger raised its uranium exports prices from Eur 0.8 per Kilos to Eur 200 per Kilos. Global prices for resources will likely see a reset as the old “Rulers based international order” is being repudiated by a majority of world’s population.

Like I said before at the opening paragraphs, for my own planning purposes, I reckon it will take another year for the proud Anglo Americans to finally admit defeat and in the meantime

(a) Politicians will continue to lie. (Fig. 16).

(b) Interest rates in Western Economies will remain high as the Exchequer needs every penny they can grab by offering interest rates higher than your stressed out local banks. Citizens of Western Countries are “enticed” to hand over their savings deposits into buying govt bonds.

(c) Inflation will continue at a high level as currency depreciates against real goods and services and price of natural resources on a reset by the Global South.

(d) Private sector economy will continue to contract because the Public sector mandate their first bite (mainly to the armed forces).

(e) Lawlessness abound because of economic hardship and western government lack finances for domestic services.

Not much good news I am afraid but we should be thankful that we are not in a hot war zone.  

This week’s financial markets:

A. Stock Market: (Fig. 17): Dow closed at 34,576 for the week, a loss of 260 points or -0.75%. S&P 500 -1.61% and NASDAQ -2.61%..

The launch of a 5G Hauwei phone without western components spooked the entire western financial market as the draconian US led Tech sanctions proved inadequate to hold back China’s progress in competing with the West. Apple stock fell over 6%; Qualcomm -8.3%, Nvidia -8.43%,

B. Debt Market: (Fig. 18): USGG10YR ended the week at 4.264%, a rise of 8.3 basis points.

During the week the 10YR rate rose to a high of 4.30 before the rout in the Tech sector of the stock market brought some support for the bond market. Two weeks ago I reported the then weekly trading loss of the Federal Reserve was $92.6 billion. The situation continued to deteriorate with and the latest reported loss now swelled to $97.8 billion. (Fig.19).

In the meantime smaller commercial banks are facing a relentless deposit drain. (Fig. 20).

There will be a chain reaction of cascading bank runs without the Federal Reserve offering to lend at full face value against impaired USGG Bonds to US depository institutions in distress (current level $107 billion). (Fig. 21).

The question everyone ignores is WHO WILL RESCUE THE FEDERAL RESERVE?

C. FX, Commodities and Precious Metals: Trading results for the week: (Fig. 22)

Uranium (+3.97%), Bitcoin (+1.88%), Oil (+1.84%), Euro (-0.82%), GBP (-1.05%), S&P 500 (-1.11%), Rmb (-1.13%), NASDAQ (-1.14%), JPY( -1.17%), Gold (-1.18%), Rubble (-1.48%), Silver (-5.41%), This week I added Uranium to the weekly monitor because of its growing importance in world’s green energy requirement. USD appears to strengthen this week as DXY reached 106.982. Although those indebted in USD have no choice but to buy USD whatever the market dictates or be in default, the strength in USD this week is, in my opinion, contrived. CTA (Commodity Trading Advisory) Funds are seen massively reversing their trade in the gold/silver ratio by longing gold and shorting silver. The silver shorts , in particular, has a beneficial effect of pushing USD upwards. Latin America is the world’s largest silver producing region (Mexico - 24% Global share, Peru -12%, Chile - 6%, Bolivia - 5%), Shorting Silver is often used as a whipping boy in the FX market to prop up the trading value and momentum of the USD. There is also a possibility of using the Latin American countries as a punching bag for their support of the BRICS+ Summit. All these of course have very short term optical effects, the West have already lost their control over most commodities in production and usage, all that is at play are paper derivatives.   

^Luke 14:28  For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— ²⁹  lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, ³⁰  saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' ³¹  Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²  Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.