The author of this article is Dr. Josef Demergis.

Yevgeny Prighozin, deceased leader of Wagner and unexpected champion of the Russian soldiers against the gross ineptitude and ill-preparation of all things military by the higher echelons of Putin’s inner circle, would have been vindicated, if alive, by Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk area and Russian’s unchanging tactics in its main contact line with the Ukrainian forces.

Russian strategy and resulting tactics in the invasion of Ukraine have been a long stream of extremely wasteful in manpower uncoordinated and semi-coordinated human wave attacks against Ukrainian prepared lines, not unlike similar tactics employed in the First and Second World War in the Eastern Front, with a smattering of modern weaponry and lots of artillery.

Coupled with the constant absence of critical war materiel at the early stages of the conflict, Prighozin’s cries against Shoigu and Yerasimov, ex Defence Minister of Russia and serving Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces respectively, (Shoigu, Yerasimov where are the shells?) ring true.

Quite some time after his death and with Russia making significant progress in the North by using, amongst other tactics, air-launched FAB bombs to denigrate Ukrainian resistance, while suffering an unprecedented loss of materiel and soldiers in what is termed as attritional warfare, neither Ukraine and its Western advisors, nor Russia can be accused as masters of economical strategy as far as military affairs are concerned.

Kursk is Ukraine’s folly, a folly that has the aroma of outside influence that nevertheless serves other purposes, both for the West and the Ukrainian leadership.

Optics, a vague and ill-mannered term used in politics to describe how to sell the main political aims as a palatable newspeak “truth”, matters a lot to both leaderships, especially to Zelensky that desperately needs to upsell yet another call for huge amounts of aid, to a country where heavy corruption is the main dish of the day and not just a by-product of war.

Internal Ukrainian political infighting while severely under-reported in the media, is something to nevertheless consider for the diligent student of politics and its instruments of war.

Optics also matter for the West, since it needs to convince its internal audience that more billions of aid to Ukraine is to their advantage in a war that has already cost Ukraine its future by sacrificing generations, in a stark reminder of what happened during WW1, the war to end all wars.

The political ends of both Russia and the US are nevertheless served, with Ukraine as the sacrificial lamb and with major political ramifications within the European Union.

When push came to shove and when steel met fire, the European Union crumbled under the political might of the one and only superpower.

All major European countries and most of the minor ones did Washington’s bidding, even when that went against their financial and political interests.

The Germany of Angela Merkel and of Olaf Scholz, always keen to point the finger at lesser EU countries about their financial inequities and punish them disproportionately, crumbled like badly cast pottery when the US essentially laid down the law and made others in the West follow.

The repercussion of this act are huge and are still either not recognised, underappreciated or chosen to be ignored by the European press and central political discourse.

Russian aggression is of course very real, and this war has to do with attaining more resources along with other considerations, although in the world of Realpolitik the same playbook has been worn thin by every major power.

Russia is nevertheless only a regional power that cannot project considerable, if any, power beyond its borders unlike what the world’s only superpower can do at the drop of a hat.

Optics negate this fact and also have suppressed another crucial one.

Regardless of when this war ends, Russia will have attained up-to date military experience, put in place a better system of designing, procuring and manufacturing functioning military equipment fit for purpose and will have a very deep mistrust of all things Western.

It will also be weakened, minus a portion of its capable to breed population and sharing vast, empty borders with the upcoming Eastern power that keeps its own timetable while incapable to make cultural inroads to the Western core.

The shadow of China looms large, as well as the raucous noise of the weapons manufacturing echo-chamber that talks about costly re-armament, security, and the bonds of political and military alliances.

Optics also choose to not represent the inescapable conclusion that the EU is no more in a politically self-efficient state if it ever were. It cannot possibly stand on its own as it is now, but rather as frontier states for US interests.

There will of course be all the magnificent imagery of the EU central bureaucracy and the petty squabbles amongst member-states that nevertheless behave as nature intended; protecting their interests to the level that these coincide or at least do not go against the superpower’s interests.

This effigy of a European political union will alas not attain the magnificent structure and utility of one of Pheidias’ creations.